Masud

Being a Real Man in Islam: Drugs, Criminality and The Problem of Masculinity

We praise Allah and we seek His aid, we seek forgiveness from Him and we affirm faith in Him, and upon Him we are utterly reliant. We shower blessings upon the noble Prophet, the Head of the Prophets and Messengers, and upon his family and his companions and those that followed them in righteousness until the Day of Rising. There is no power or might except Allah, the Exalted and Mighty. I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Devil. In the name of Allah, the All Merciful and Compassionate.

The Crisis of Criminality in the Muslim Community

The latest Home office statistics make grim reading for the Muslim community: Muslim prisoners have doubled in the last decade to reach a total of between 4000-4500—amounting to 9% of the total prison population—which is treble our proportion of the total population. One in eleven prisoners is Muslim. This surge in Muslim crime is not being discussed openly within the community, most probably out of a sense of shame. But in reality, we should be feel ashamed precisely because we are notdiscussing these problems openly and confronting them. Shame should impel not prohibit a constructive response.

So what sort of crime is being committed and who is doing it? Sadly, but not surprisingly, over 65% of these prisoners are young men between the ages of eighteen and thirty. This huge figure does not include youngsters under the age of 18 who are in custodial care. We should not forget to add that 10% are women. The sorts of crime committed not only include petty theft but also violent and obscene muggings. [1] Maqsood Ahmed, the Muslim Advisor to the Prison Service appointed by the government in 1999, says that currently (as of June 2000) 1005 out of the 4003 Muslim inmates have committed crimes related to drug pushing or drug use. So one in four of British Muslim prisoners have been convicted for drug-related offences. [2]

Muslims and the Global Drug Trade

We need to face facts: Muslim involvement in hard drugs is not confined to Muslims in the West. Of the traditional ‘natural’ drugs, Muslims are heavily involved with the planting, harvesting, refinement, smuggling, and distribution to Europe of heroin and cannabis. While cannabis is the most widely used illicit substance in Europe, heroin, the most deadly drug, is little used in comparison; but it is most associated with social marginalisation and addiction.

Cannabis

Today, Morocco is the world’s largest cannabis exporter, with a crop of 2000 metric tonnes, having had a tenfold increase in production from 1983-1993. While the Moroccan government has made agreements with the European Union (EU) to grow substitute crops and domestic seizures of hash have risen, total production has increased at the same time. There is deep government involvement, going right up to the Royal family; an assertion that can be given some credence because the Ministry of Agriculture produces highly accurate and confidential statistics about the total acreage of hash under cultivation every year. One estimate puts the value of hash exports at two thirds of Morocco’s total exports, or 10% of the country’s income. Most hash enters Europe through Spain, where it distributed by Moroccan and Dutch criminal elements among others.

Heroin

Of the world’s two major heroin suppliers, Afghanistan overtook Burma as world leader in the late 1990s. In 1999, it supplied 77% of the world’s heroin, a figure which has been publicly acknowledged by the Taliban. [3] We can also note the increased production and refinement of poppy seed in Tajikistan, Kirgyzstan and Kazakhstan. [4] Hitherto, the drug, in a semi-refined state, has been shipped from Afghanistan through Pakistan to the West.

It was CIA intervention—in support of the Mujahedin who were fighting Soviet oppression in the early 1980s—which was crucial in turning Afghanistan and Pakistan from local suppliers into international ones by providing the necessary political protection and logistical networks. The CIA in co-operation with Pakistan’s Interservices Intelligence supplied arms to the Mujahedin in return for payment in raw opium. It was only after Soviet withdrawal that the US gave serious monies to combat poppy seed production. Pakistan had started the 1980s as a major producer of poppy seed, but government anti-drugs measures have virtually wiped out production (2 metric tonnes) by 1999. [5]

When the Taliban first captured Kandahar in 1994, they announced a total ban on drugs, but this stance was quickly dropped when they realised that narcotics provided an invaluable source of income and, furthermore, that an outright ban would greatly alienate farmers dependent on the crop. So as Taliban control spread, production rose by a massive 25% up to 1997. ‘Abd al-Rasheed, the head of the Taliban’s anti-drugs control force in Kandahar said in May 1997 that while there was a strict ban on hashish, “opium is permissible because it is consumed by kafirs (unbelievers) in the West and not by Muslims or Afghans.” [6] In the process of institutionalising and guaranteeing income from the drug trade, the Taliban started to levy zakat on poppy cultivation and charge tolls on the transportation of the poppy residue under armed Taliban guard out of the country. [7] An increasing number of drug laboratories were set up in Afghanistan. Even if not much drug profit stays in Afghanistan and Pakistan—only about 9% of the total Western street value—this still added up to about $1.35 billion US dollars in 1999.

Poppy seed, either as a raw crop or in its initially refined form as morphine, has until recently been the major source of income in a war-shattered economy both for farmers and the government. Yet despite this economic dependency, it must still be said: the remark of the Taliban official quoted above was hypocritical and cynical. There is not one standard of upright conduct for Muslims and another for non-Muslims: our religion requires us to behave impeccably with both. And far from Muslims being unaffected by Afghani heroin, Pakistan now has the highest heroin addiction rate in the world. In 1979, Pakistan had no addicts, in 1986, it had 650,000 addicts, three million in 1992, while in 1999, government figures estimate a staggering figure of five million.

Nor is the problem confined to Pakistan. Despite one of the toughest anti-drugs policies in the world, where the death-penalty is given for the possession of a few ounces of heroin, Iran officially had 1.2 million addicts in 1998 (off the record, officials admit to the figure being more like 3 million). By 1998, only 42 % of total heroin production was exported out of South Asia; 58% of opiates were being consumed within the region itself. So heroin addiction is not only a Western problem, but also a deeply Muslim one.

Between 1997-1999, Kabul offered to end poppy seed production—to both the US and the UN—in return for international recognition, which suggests that the Taliban leadership was not serious in the past about ending production but used the whole issue of drug control as a diplomatic lever. [8] Thankfully, the Afghan government seems to have recently changed its public position. In 1999, Amir Mullah Omar Modhammed announced that poppy seed production should be cut by one third. On 28 July 2000, Mullah Omar ordered a complete ban of poppy seed cultivation, and appealed for the assistance of the international community in funding crop replacement schemes. [9] The official figures for 2000 showed a reduction of 28% on 1999, but this was mostly attributable to the terrible drought the country suffered during that period. [10] It has now been confirmed by outside agencies that the Taliban have wiped out the 2001 harvest, as a UNDCP team reported in February that the major growing areas were virtually free of poppies, which was corroborated by the US Drug Enforcement Agency in May. Despite the DEA’s prognosis that the ban will hit farmers hard, the US has pushed for continued UN sanctions because of its campaign to bring Osama bin Laden to trial. [10a]

After being put into its morphine base, either in Pakistan or Central Asia (and previously in Afghanistan), the drug is transported to Turkish laboratories, where it is further refined into heroin. About 80% of Europe’s supply is refined into heroin proper in Turkey, although the Turks are facing increased competition from the Russian Mafia in second-stage refinement and smuggling into Europe (via Eastern Europe and the Baltic). As with Morocco, the Turkish civil and military secret services are heavily involved with the drug trade. This complicity was highlighted by a car-crash in November 1996 involving four people: an extreme right-wing criminal on the run, a high-ranking policeman, a beauty queen, and the only survivor, a parliamentarian of ex-Prime Minister Ciller’s party. About 75% of Europe’s heroin is transported from Turkey in small quantities overland via the Balkan route, which is impossible to police effectively because of the high volume of traffic. [11] Once in Europe, a lot of the heroin is then distributed by significant numbers of European Turks among others, and it is then sold on to the dealers, who sell smaller quantities to users on the street.

Islamic Ruling on Drugs (non-alcoholic Intoxicants)

Ibn ‘Umar (radiya’Llahu ‘anhu) reported that the Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said, “Every intoxicant (muskir) is wine (khamr) and every intoxicant is forbidden. He who drinks wine in this world and dies while he is addicted to it, not having repented, will not be given a drink in the Hereafter.” [12] This hadith is one of the primary texts that prove the prohibition of anything that intoxicates like wine. Ibn Hajar al-Haytami (rahmatu’Llahi ‘alayh), considered to be among the foremost legal authorities of the entire late Shafi‘i legal school, has classified the consumption of hashish (hashisha) and opium (afyun) as an enormity or a major sin. [13] Imam al-Dhahabi (rahmatu’Llahi ‘alayh) defined an enormity as “any sin entailing either a threat of punishment in the hereafter explicitly mentioned in the Qur’an and Hadith, a prescribed legal penalty or being accursed by Allah and His Messenger (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam).” [14] Among those classical authorities who wrote of the prohibition of hashish were Imam Zarakhshi, Ibn Taymiyya, al-Qirafi, Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi and Imam Nawawi (rahmatu’Llahi ‘alayhim). In short, the four legal schools agree that all intoxicants are unlawful, and they include plants that intoxicate under this category of prohibited substances. [15] There is a misconception among Muslim users that although drugs are unlawful, smoking hashish is not so serious. Or they say that at least we don’t drink! They seem to divide drugs into hard and soft drugs: a division that is quite baseless according to Divine law. All drugs are Class A according to our religion.

British Muslims and the Drug Trade

The drug trade in Britain is breaking and shattering young Muslim lives. But to our great shame, we are not only talking about the many Muslim victims of drug use, but the fact that British Muslims are also heavily involved in street level drugs pushing. From the late 1980s onwards, according to Maqsood Ahmed, it appears that Asians replaced Afro-Caribbeans as the main drug pushers on the streets. [16]

However, Maqsood Ahmed says that it is only the small-time Asian street pushers, not the major suppliers, who are being caught and incarcerated. A retired lawyer, Gavin McFarlane, who once worked in the office of the Solicitor for Customs and Excise, confirms the view that the ‘Mr Bigs’ of drug crime are usually never caught. [17]

I am not suggesting that drugs are the only issue relating to crime, but because of the nature of addiction, drugs can do more to destroy the moral will and the social fabric of the Muslim community than any other type of crime. It appears that drug use among Muslim youth matches national levels: we have no more ‘moral immunity’ from drugs than anyone else.

It is instructive to look at the example of NAFAS, a Muslim-run outreach, educational and rehabilitation programme, based in Tower Hamlets in East London, which aims to target drug use among Bangladeshi youth. One NAFAS activist, Abdur Rahman, has worked among Muslims in the area of drugs, crime and mental health issues for the last ten years. I interviewed him in order to get a real sense of what is happening on the street. [18]

In his experience, it is mainly Pakistani and Bangladeshi youth that become involved with drugs, but it effects all the various ethnic Muslim groups. Commonly, the parents of these young men neglected their religious training, and instead left matters in the hands of the madrasas. Their experience in the madrasa has been of rote learning without any understanding, an experience that has left them bored and alienated not only from the madrasa but also from religion itself. Frustrated imams throw the more disruptive kids out of the madrasas onto the streets. Clubbing together in gangs of around 20-30, these young men are listless and bored. The result has very often been the emergence of gang violence and turf wars.

By far the most commonly used drugs are hashish and then alcohol. Heroin is used much less. Most that smoke ‘weed’ (as hashish is known in street slang) will not touch heroin, which is seen as a dirty drug. But the picture is complex, because 90% of those who do use heroin say that their first drug was hashish. Those Muslim youth that do use heroin do not use needles because they see it as a dirty practice. Habitually, those who take heroin also use crack cocaine. According to local police figures for the Borough of Tower Hamlets, 50% of drug offenders referred to drugs agencies are young Bangladeshi men. Of these, 90% are under twenty-five and more than 60% have never received any help to get off drugs. It was in part this last statistic that brought about the founding of NAFAS. There are no figures for young women, but the word on the street is that hashish use is increasing among them as well. Normally such women smoke hashish in the home. Abdur Rahman says that taboos are breaking down. It is becoming more common to see hashish being smoked and alcohol being drunk in the street.

What are the attitudes of these young men to religion? There are some that mock religion openly. “Islam is drab and boring,” they say, “it is only about things you are not allowed to do. There is no fun and laughter. We are young and now is the time for enjoyment.” Others, who have a stronger sense of being Muslim, say they want to practice but argue that the bad environment discourages them. Abdur Rahman says it is easier to reach those who have some religious feeling in them, and that these boys can point to examples where someone they know has come off drugs and has started practising Islam.

There is a real internal problem facing this community and it will not go away if we are merely content to highlight problems within the British criminal justice system, schooling and welfare. However necessary, this critique of the system is only part of the answer. To make myself absolutely clear, I am stressing the fact that the crucial element in any response is moral and religious guidance, which, of course, only the community can provide. This is not just a problem of young Muslim men who have lost their way, but a failure of the whole community to bring them up with Islamic values. We have neglected their spiritual training (tarbiya) and failed to teach them how to live in this world in accordance with the pleasure of Allah (akhlaqiyyat) in a way that makes sense to them. We have even ignored their secular education; so that on the streets of despair turning to drugs seems the best way to make a quick buck or to escape from the pressures of racism, Islamophobia and unemployment.

What we all need in front of us, young and old, is a clear picture of what being a real man in Islam means as opposed to being a fake one. Guidance comes with our comprehension of what religion expects us to do for ourselves, and for others, for the pleasure of Allah Most High. The rest of this essay is devoted to outlining the nature of negative and positive masculinity.

Negative Masculinity

Negative masculinity occurs when a youth misuses his natural qualities of enthusiasm, strength and bravery to satisfy his own desires. He becomes selfish, ignores the rights of others and ends up disobedient to his Lord. He thinks it is cool to follow the lifestyles of the street, and at the rough end this means getting involved in crime. What is even worse, as one young brother said to me recently, is that as corrupt lifestyles become widespread among Muslim youth, it is becomes harder for younger teenagers to see the straight path. There has been a real break down in moral values: besides drugs and crime, drinking and pre-marital sex are no longer taboo among the wildest elements. The negative role models closest to hand now come from within our own community.

Negative masculinity is about showing off, about trying to be ‘hard’, and about using physical strength to humiliate others. The fake man thinks strength should be used to dominate others so that he gets ‘nuff respect’ from his peers and enemies out of a sense of fear. But this is not how true respect is earned: it is really about acting like a loud-mouthed and proud fool. The youthful bully fights to remain leader of his ‘posse’ and, likewise, strives to dominate other street gangs: both perversions are achieved by instilling fear. Yet Islam teaches us that the strong should defend the weak not oppress them.

Negative masculinity is about the obsession to have the right ‘look’: the designer clothes, the most up-to-date mobile phone, the latest trainers, and the flashiest car. But how we appear to others is absolutely immaterial: Allah, who is perfectly Just and All Aware, will judge us by our hearts not our appearance on the Day of Reckoning. Pretending to be someone we are not is only a sign of spiritual emptiness. All this street gear costs a great deal of money: cash that is wasted when it could be used to help the weak and unfortunate. The Muslim community is the poorest in the country, and it can ill afford to waste money on such vain extravagance. Such materialistic excess is showing off for the sake of worldly honour, when the world, in the eyes of our beloved Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) was worth less than the rotting flesh of a dead goat. [19] But a real man doesn’t need to show off. He knows himself and remains humble and thankful to Allah Most Generous for whatever qualities He has given him.

Negative masculinity is about wasting time and playing around like a child when the corrupted youth already has the strength and intelligence of an adult. He looks out for himself first, neither respecting the wishes of his parents nor serving them, and ignoring the needs of others around him. Many of the criminalised gangs rob and prey on the weakest members of their own community. Instead of being the pride of the community, these lost young men have become its badge of shame.

Negative masculinity is about being a slave to desire. The signs of this slavery are the impulse for instant gratification and the immediate feeling of frustration and anger when desire is not quickly satiated. Servitude to caprice entraps the slave in a cage of restless discontent. Why? Because if we want the latest fashion, one thing can be sure, it will go out of date. Negative masculinity is about being a slave to the capitalist system. The real winners are the moneymen who sell an illusion: the falsehood that people should judge themselves, and judge others, by appearance. But the Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) taught us to be simple, not to pile up worldly things, but to do good deeds and help others. The only style that truly counts, that rises far above the fickle dictates of fashion, is the way of the Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam).

In short, the problem of negative masculinity is a spiritual one. Abu Talib al-Makki [20] (rahmatu’Llahi ‘alayh), in his classic work, Qut al-qulub (The Sustenance of Hearts), explains the nature of the soul that commands a person to do evil. “All the [blameworthy] character traits and attributes of the soul derive from two roots: inconstancy (taysh) and covetousness (sharah). Its inconstancy derives from its ignorance, and its covetousness from its eager desire (hirs). In its inconstancy the soul is like a ball on a smooth slope, because of its nature and its situation, it never stops moving. In its eager desire the soul is like a moth that throws itself on the flame of a lamp. It is not satisfied with a small amount of light without throwing itself on the source of the light that holds its destruction. Because of its inconstancy the soul is hurried and lacks self-restraint (sabr). Self-restraint is an attribute of our thinking selves, while inconstancy is the quality…of the [blameworthy] soul. Nothing can overcome inconstancy except self-restraint, for intellect uproots vain and destructive desire. Because of its covetousness, the soul is greedy and eagerly desirous. […] When someone knows the roots of the [blameworthy] soul and its innate dispositions, he will know that he has no power over it without the seeking the help of its Creator and Originator. The servant will not realise his humanity until he governs the animal motivations within himself through knowledge and justice.” [21]

Who is a real man?

Imam al-Qushayri [22] (rahmatu’Llahi ‘alayh) summaries what the nature of positive masculinity is. In Arabic this is called muru’a or manliness. Conceptually, manliness is closely related to futuwwa or chivalry. Imam al-Qushayri says in his famous Risala, “The root of chivalry is that the servant strive constantly for the sake of others. Chivalry is that you do not see yourself as superior to others. The one who has chivalry is the one who has no enemies. Chivalry is that you be an enemy of your own soul for the sake of your Lord. Chivalry is that you act justly without demanding justice for yourself. Chivalry is [having]… beautiful character.” [23]

The Noble Islamic Youth

In Arabic, fata literally means a handsome and brave youth. In the Chapter of the Prophets (60:21), the term fata is used to describe Abraham (‘alayhi s-salam), who had, with characteristic fearlessness, destroyed the idols of his people, and who was about to be thrown into the fire by them. In his commentary on this verse, Imam al-Qushayri (rahmatu’Llahi ‘alayh) says that the noble youth is one who breaks the idol and moreover that the idol of each man is his blameworthy soul that commands to evil (nafs al-amara bi al-su’). [24] Truly Allah Most High only bestows the title fata to those whom He loves. Youth, in this sense, is not a mere social category but a rank of piety.

Following the use of the word in the Holy Book, fata came to mean the ideal, noble and perfect man whose generosity did not end until he had nothing left for himself. A man who would give all that he had, including his life, for the sake of his friends. Futuwwa has a distinct sense for it means the way of fata or noble manliness, and the remainder of the essay concentrates on outlining these noble precepts.

The way to attain these qualities, to become a true man, is to kill the blameworthy soul, which can also be called our selfish impulses, or ego. The first thing is to learn is not to love the blameworthy soul, but instead to love others more than oneself and to love our Exalted Creator most of all. It is only after struggling to kill the ego that the trials of spiritual struggle, like those of our father Abraham (‘alayhi s-salam) in the fire, become ‘refreshment and peace’ (bardan wa salam). (21:69)

The Chivalry of the Companions

We find many examples of noble manliness among the Companions: the loyalty of Abu Bakr, the justice of ‘Umar, the reserve and modesty of ‘Uthman, and the bravery of ‘Ali (radiya’Llahu ‘anhum). Yet for all their greatness, those men still only partially reflected that supreme example of true manliness, the Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam). It was their life’s work to emulate him, like it is ours today. As the first young man to embrace Islam, it was ‘Ali (radiya’Llahu ‘anhu), the last of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, the cousin and son-in-law of our noble Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) and the Lion of Allah, who came to represent the supreme example of youthful manly perfection. Known for his selflessness, courage, generosity, loyalty, wisdom and honour, he was the invincible warrior of his day. His nobility on the battlefield shines forth like a bright lamp of guidance for us today.

In one battle, ‘Ali (radiya’Llahu ‘anhu) had overpowered an enemy warrior and had his dagger at the man’s throat when the man spat in his face. Immediately Imam ‘Ali (radiya’Llahu ‘anhu) got up, sheathed his dagger, and told the man, “Taking your life is unlawful to me. Go away.” The man was amazed, “O ‘Ali,” he asked, “I was helpless, you were about to kill me, I insulted you and you released me. Why?” “When you spat in my face,” our master ‘Ali (radiya’Llahu ‘anhu) answered, “it aroused the anger of my ego. Had I killed you then it would not have been for the sake of Allah, but for the sake of my ego. I would have been a murderer. You are free to go.” The enemy warrior was profoundly moved by this show of great nobility and so he embraced Islam on the spot.

In another of his battles against the unfaithful, our master ‘Ali (radiya’Llahu ‘anhu) encountered a handsome young warrior who moved to attack him. His heart was full of pity and compassion for the misguided youth. He cried out, “O young man, do you not know who I am? I am ‘Ali the invincible. No one can escape from my sword. Go, and save yourself!” The young man continued toward him, sword in hand. “Why do you wish to attack me? Why do you wish to die?” ‘Ali (radiya’Llahu ‘anhu) asked. The man answered, “I love a girl who vowed she would be mine if I killed you.” “But what if you die?” ‘Ali (radiya’Llahu ‘anhu) asked again. “What is better than dying for the one I love?” he countered. “At worst, would I not be relieved of the agonies of love?” Hearing this response, ‘Ali (radiya’Llahu ‘anhu) dropped his sword, took off his helmet, and stretched out his neck like a sacrificial lamb. Confronted by such nobility, the love in the young man’s heart was transformed into love for the great ‘Ali (radiya’Llahu ‘anhu) and for the One Most Exalted Whom ‘Ali loved.

The Code of Chivalry

In later centuries, a code was drawn up embodying the principles of futuwwa—brotherhood, loyalty, love and honour—that produced a class of spiritual Muslim warriors who protected the boundaries of the Islamic empire. The first caliph to create an order of noble Muslim knights was al-Nasir al-Din (reigned 576-622/1180-1225). They wore a distinctive uniform and were formally linked to the Sufi orders. In Asia Minor for instance, these Muslim knights lived in borderland lodges under the supervision and guidance of a spiritual guide (shaykh al-tasawwuf). It is reported they were hospitable to travellers and ruthless towards any unjust ruler who oppressed the people. The essence of this noble code is timelessly pertinent to us today: it calls us to subdue our egos and fight against injustice.

The code of noble manliness elaborated by the great Imam Sulami (rahmatu’Llahi ‘alayh) in his Kitab al-Futuwwa is offered in a truncated form here. Readers are strongly advised to consult the original work for themselves. [25] Futuwwa is that a young man adheres to the following code:

·        That he brings joy to the lives of friends and meets their needs. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said, “When one brings joy with his words into the life of a believer or satisfies his worldly needs, whether small or large, it becomes an obligation upon Allah to offer him a servant on the Day of Judgement.”

·        That he responds to cruelty with kindness, and does not punish an error. When a Companion (radiya’Llahu ‘anhu) asked if he should refuse to help a friend who had refused to help him before, the Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said no.

·        That he does not find fault with his friends. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said, “if you start seeking faults in Muslims, you will cause dissent among them or you will at least start dissension.” Dhu al-Nun al-Misri [26] (rahmatu’Llahi ‘alayh) said, “Whoever looks at the faults of others is blind to his own faults. Whoever looks for his own faults cannot see the faults of others.”

·        That he is relaxed and openhearted with his brothers. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said, “The believer is the one with whom one can be close. The one who is not close and to whom one cannot be close is of no use. The good among men are those from whom others profit.”

·        That he is generous. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said, “Paradise is the home of the generous.”

·        That he keeps up old friendships. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said, “Allah approves the keeping of old friendships.”

·        That he looks after his friends and neighbours. Ibn Zubayr [27] (rahmatu’Llahi ‘alayh) said, “Someone who eats while his next-door neighbour is hungry is not a believer.”

·        That he is lenient with his friends except in matters of religion. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said, “The first sign of intelligence is to believe in Allah. The next is to be lenient with people in affairs other than the abandoning of Truth.”

·        That he permits his friends to use his possessions as if they were their own. We know that the Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) used to use the property of Abu Bakr (radiya’Llahu ‘anhu) as if it were his own.

·        That he invites guests, offers food and is hospitable. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said, “How awful is a society that does not accept guests.”

·        That he respects his friends and shows his respect for them. A man entered the mosque and the Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) stood up for him out of respect. He protested and the Prophet replied that to be paid respect is the right of the believer.

·        That he is truthful. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said, “Say that you believe in Allah, then always be truthful.”

·        That he is satisfied with little for himself and wishes much for others. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said, “The best of my people will enter Paradise not because of their achievements, but because of the Mercy of Allah and their quality of being satisfied with little for themselves and their extreme generosity toward others.”

·        That such young brothers love each other and spend time with one another. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said that Allah Most High said, “The ones who love each other for My sake deserve My love; the ones who give what comes to them in abundance deserve My love. The ones who frequent and visit each other for My sake deserve My love.”

·        That he keeps his word and what is entrusted to him. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said, “If you have these four things, it does not matter even if you lose everything else in this world: protect what is entrusted to you, tell the truth, have a noble character, and earn your income lawfully.”

·        That he understands that what he truly keeps is what he gives away. ‘A’isha [28] (radiya’Llahu ‘anha) recounted that someone had presented the gift of a lamb to the Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam). He distributed the meat. ‘A’isha (radiya’Llahu ‘anha) said, “Only the neck is left for us.” The Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) replied, “No, all of it is left for us except the neck.”

·        That he shares in the joy of his brothers. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said, “If a person who is fasting joins his brothers and they ask him to break his fast, he should break it.” This refers to a non-obligatory fast, not the fasts of Ramadan.

·        That he is joyful and kind with his brothers. One of the many signs of the kindness and love the Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) had for his people was that he joked with them so they would not stay away from him out of awe. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said “Allah hates those who make disagreeable and sad faces at their friends.”

·        That he thinks little of himself or his good deeds. The Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) was once asked, “What thing most attracts the anger of Allah?” He replied, “When one considers himself and his actions highly, and worse still, expects a return for his good deeds.”

·        That he treats people as he would wish to be treated. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said, “As you wish people to come to you, go to them.”

·        That he concerns himself with his own affairs. The Messenger of Allah (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said, “One of the signs of a good Muslim is that he leaves alone everything that does not concern him.”

·        That he seeks the company of the good and avoids the company of the bad. Yahya ibn Mu‘adh al-Razi [29] (rahmatu’Llahi ‘alayh) said, “On the day when the trumpet is sounded, you will see how evil friends will run from each other and how good friends will turn toward each other. Allah Most High says, ‘On that day, except for the true believers, friends will be enemies.’”

Allah Most High says, “Surely they were noble youths (fityan) who believed in their Lord, and We advanced them in guidance.” (18:13) Imam al-Sulami (rahmatu’Llahi ‘alayh) comments, “they were given abundant guidance and climbed to His proximity because they believed in their Lord only for their Lord’s sake, and said, ‘Our Lord is the Lord of Heaven and Earth. Never shall we call upon other than Him.’” (18:14) The Imam continues, “Allah dressed them in His own clothes, and He took them in His high protection and turned them in the direction of His beauties and said, ‘And We turned them about to the right and to the left’.” (18:18). The Imam concludes, “Those who enter the path of futuwwa are under Allah’s direction and protection.” [30]

Khwaja ‘Abd Allah al-Ansari [31] (rahmatu Llahi ‘alayh) outlines the three degrees of perfection in futuwwa in his classic work, Manazil al-sa’irin (The Stations of the Wayfarers). “Allah Most High says, ‘They are chivalrous youths who have faith in their Lord, and We increased them in guidance.’ (18:13) The subtle point in chivalry is that you witness nothing extra for yourself and you see yourself as not having any rights. The first degree is to abandon quarrelling, to overlook slips, and to forget wrongs. The second degree is that you seek nearness to the one that goes far from you, honour the one who wrongs you, and find excuses for the one who offends you. You do this by being generous, not by holding yourself back, by letting go, not by enduring patiently. The third degree is that in travelling the path you do not depend upon any proofs, you do not stain your response [to Allah] with [any thought of] recompense, and you do not stop at any designation in your witnessing.” [32] May Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He, bless us, and make us true men, men of nobility and generosity.

The Way Forward

There are no easy solutions, and it is important to remember that Islam condemns those who feel it is enough to recriminate, but not to call towards the truth or to work to change a bad situation. The point is that we all have to pull together, and face up our individual and collective responsibility. It is not just a question of the youth seeing if they measure up to the ideals of positive masculinity, but for all of us to strive to embody the example of the Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam). It is a duty upon all parents and community leaders to deal wisely with our young men when they fall from the Straight Path, and not to cut them off out of self-righteous disdain or, even worse, indifference.

Imam Ghazali [33] (rahmatu Llahi ‘alayh) reminds us that it was the way of Companions like Abu Darda’ [34] (radiya Llahu ‘anhu) to forgive the mistakes and flaws of his brother. How much more does this apply to our sons? All should feel that your son is my son. The bond of religious brotherhood is like the bond of family. If someone has made a mistake in his religion by committing an act of disobedience, one must be gentle in counselling him towards repentance and starting again. If someone persists in disobedience, Abu Darda’ (radiya Llahu ‘anhu) advised us not to cut him or her off. “For sometimes”, he said, “your brother will be crooked and sometimes straight.” The great saint Ibrahim al-Nakha’i [35] (rahmatu Llahi ‘alayh) said, “Beware of the mistake of the learned. Do not cut him off, but await his return [that is, to the straight path].”

Imam al-Ghazali (rahmatu Llahi ‘alayh) argues that this advice holds even the major sins: we need not cut someone off. It was revealed to the Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) concerning his kinsfolk that “if they disobey you, say, ‘I am quit of what you do’.” (26.216) Abu Darda (radiya Llahu ‘anhu) referred to this verse when he was asked, “Do you not hate your brother when he has done such and such?” to which he replied, “I only hate what he has done, otherwise he is my brother.” [36] It is not proper to break with the disobedient, but to try and remind them of their duty to Allah Most High and to His creatures.

So any pragmatic measures should be undertaken in this spirit of understanding and patience, because at the heart of any solution is building trust between alienated youths and the community. It is easy enough to make these seven suggestions, but it will take a lot of sincere effort make them a reality by the permission of the All Merciful.

1.   To lobby the Moroccan and Turkish governments directly and indirectly to crack down on drug production and refinement in their respective countries. The fact that the European Union has systematically ignored the complicit involvement of both the Moroccan and Turkish governments in the export of drugs to Europe because of their NATO membership should be made an issue. With regard to Afghanistan, the European Union has recently admitted that it has no political influence there at all, which—in and of itself—is not likely to be a matter of great concern for Muslims. [37] Yet it does mean that European Muslims have to pressurise the EU to work to drop UN sanctions against Afghanistan, and to push for economic assistance to the country, so that viable and sustainable alternatives can be found for farmers in the wake of the enforced ban of 2001.

2.   To discuss openly the problems of criminality and drug dealing and use within the community with a view to understanding the nature of the problem, and coming up with ways to solve it. For instance, research is already being carried out by the community welfare organisation, Khidmat, in Luton, which is undertaking research to understand the nature and scale of drug use in the Asian community. [38]

3.   To appoint English-speaking imams as a matter of priority, and to conduct as many programmes as possible in English and which deal directly with issues facing young Muslims today. Imams should be properly paid, and they should also be expected to take up pastoral youth work outside of the mosque. It is a crime that many of young scholars who have graduated from seminaries based in Britain have not been able to find employment as imams. Their knowledge and training is being wasted. Most ‘imported’ imams are frankly not able to understand or reach out to young Muslims.

4.   To create vibrant and relevant madrasas in our mosques with a full and relevant curriculum up to at least the age of 16 by forging a strong partnership between the‘ulama’, the mosque committee and the community. There are already many examples of good practice in this area, especially in the Midlands and the North.

5.   To build Muslim-run youth and sports facilities as a badly needed alternative to the street. Where appropriate, such facilities should be incorporated into the mosque-complex. It is important that second generation parents, those who are now in their mid-thirties, get involved with making the mosques more accessible to the youth. If the mosque committees refuse to be co-operative, then it is necessary to work outside of them as the situation has already reached crisis proportions.

6.   To set up drug rehabilitation schemes run by Muslim workers in the major urban areas along the lines of NAFAS in Tower Hamlets in East London and others.

7.   In general terms, to lobby local and central government to put extra funds into helping our community that has the highest unemployment (over 40% for our youth), the poorest educational record, the highest poverty and the highest crime rates. It would be preferable if funds, which are readily available, are channelled through Muslim voluntary organisations. As a community as a whole, we have to be prepared to drop theological and legal differences inherited from the Sub-Continent to work together for the common good.

I end with supplicating our Creator, the All-Merciful that He save our misguided youth from further calamity and turn their hearts and ours towards repentance, that He give us forbearance and wisdom in tackling this problem, and that He may, in His infinite compassion, unite our hearts so that we may work together to solve these many problems. Glory be to our Lord, the Lord of Honour, Exalted above what they ascribe, and peace be upon those who were sent. And all praise is due to the Lord of the worlds. Amin.

June 2000, revised June 2001

Footnotes

[1] Faisal Bodi, ‘Muslim Advisor only one piece in a bigger jigsaw’, Q-News, 311, September 1999, pp. 14-15.

[2] Maqsood Ahmed, interview, 20/06/00.

[3] UN Economic and Social Research Council, World Situation with regard to illicit drug trafficking, p. 6. The Taliban’s Roaving Ambassador, Sayyid Rahmatullah Hashmi, accepted this figure during a lecture given at the University of South Carolina in 2001. This information was taken from a transcript of his talk.

[4] Strategic Studies 1997/8, p. 250; Strategic Studies 1998/9, p. 276.

[5] The authoritative study of CIA involvement in the heroin drugs trade in both Burma and Afghanistan is Alfred McCoy’s, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991), cited in Boekhout van Solinge, p. 103. It appears that the CIA even worked against United States officials from the Drugs Enforcement Agency during the 1980s, who wanted to stop the creation of a new international drug player.

[6] Ahmed Rashid, Taliban, p. 118.

[7] Ahmed Rashid, ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, p. 28.

[8] An agreement struck in October 1997 between the United Nations Drugs Control Programme (UNDCP) and the Taliban offering potentially $25 million US dollars for a ten-year crop-replacement scheme was allowed to lapse after UN agencies were asked to withdraw in 1998. For further details, see Rashid, Taliban, pp. 123-124.

[9] See Omar Modhammed, ‘Message of the Amir-ul-Mumineen on the occasion of the International Anti-Narcotics Day’, The Islamic Emirate (Kandahar), July 2000, no. 1, p. 1, and ‘Taleban calls for total poppy ban in Afghanistan’, The News International (Jang), 30/7/00, p. 9.

[10] UNDCP Press Release, ‘Afghan Opium Cultivation in 2000 Substantially Unchanged’, UNIS/NAR/696, 15 September 2000. A recent UNDCP-sponsored crop-replacement scheme in Kandahar province has reduced production by 50% in three districts.

[10a] Kathy Ganon, ‘Taliban virtually wipes out Afghanistan’s opium crop’, The Nando Times, 15 February, [www.nandotimes.com]; Barbara Crossette, ‘Taliban’s Ban on Growing Opium Poppies Is Called a Success’, New York Times [Internet edition], 20 May 2001. Given US support of these crippling sanctions, Colin Powell’s release of $43 millions (as of May 2001) in emergency funds for the drought in Afghanistan looks like a token gesture.

[11] Every year, 1.5 million lorries, 250,000 coaches and four million cars use the Balkans route between Asia and Europe. It takes hours, even a whole day, to search an articulated lorry effectively for drugs. The impossibility of stopping the smuggling of heroin into Europe might be noted by the fact that while the amount of heroin seized has gone up, street prices have gone down.

[12] This hadith is reported in all the Sahih Sitta (the Sound Six), Ahmad, Malik and Darimi.

[13] Al-Misri, Reliance, p. 976. Imam Ibn Hajar al-Haytami (d. 974/1567) was the foremost Shafi‘i Imam of his age, who authored major works in jurisprudence, Hadith, tenets of faith, education, Hadith commentary and formal legal opinion. He is recognised by Hanafi scholars, like Imam Ibn ‘Abidin, as a source of authoritative legal texts valid in their own school. (R) I have relied on The Reliance and on T. J. Winter’s biographical appendices in his translations of al-Ghazali. Each note will end with a short reference to these works: (R) or (W) respectively. Other references will name the author’s name in brackets.

[14] Al-Misri, Reliance, p. 652. Imam al-Dhahabi (d. 748/1348) was a great Hadith master (Hafiz) and historian of Islam. He authored over 100 works, some of which were of great length, for instance, Siyar a‘lam al-nubala’ (The Lives of Noble Figures), ran to 23 volumes. (R)

[15] For further detail on classical scholarly authorities see Anon. [Student of Darul-Uloom Bury], Islam and Drugs (Bury, UK: Subulas Salam, n.d.).

[16] Although Abdur Rahman disputes as stereotypical the assertion that young Asians became the main street-dealers in recent times, see below for brief profile of this experienced drug worker.

[17] Gavin McFarlane, ‘Regulating European drug problems’, pp. 1075-1076. He also notes that the drug trade is organised like a mainstream business with three main categories. First, there is the planner or organiser who is like the entrepreneur who puts up the capital. Second, there is the trusted assistant or middle manager that runs the operation. Third, there is the operative at the bottom end that knows little about the whole organisation: these are the dealers who carry the goods, bear the most risk of being caught, and who earn only a fraction of the profit. Also known as ‘camels’, it is they who are most likely to be caught by the police. There is even a level above the capital investor: that of the political overlord, who is either autonomous from the state, or acting on behalf of a complicit state.

[18] Abdur Rahman, interview, 22/6/00

[19] Jabir related to us that the Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and give him peace) once passed by a dead and ear-cropped young goat whose carcass was lying in the road, He enquired from those who were with him at the time, “Will any of you like to buy this dead kid for a dirham?” “We will not buy it at any price,” they replied. The Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) then said, “I swear in the name of Allah that in His sight this world is as hateful and worthless as the dead kid is in your sight.” Related by Muslim, and cited in Nomani, Meaning and Message of the Traditions, I: pp. 234-235.

[20] Abu Talib al-Makki (d. after 520/1126) was the author of the Qut al-qulub, the first comprehensive manual of how to tread the Sufi path, which was the direct inspiration for Imam Ghazali’s classic work, the Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din. He was a preacher, ascetic and scholar of the Sacred Law. (R)

[21] Cited in Murata, The Tao of Islam, pp. 271-272.

[22] Imam Abu al-Qasim al-Qushayri (d. 465/1072) was the author of one of the most widely read and respected works on the teachings of tasawwuf and the biography of the saints, the Risalat al-Qushayriyya. He also wrote a commentary on the Qur’an as well as some works pertaining to theology (kalam). (R, also Murata)

[23] Cited in Murata, The Tao of Islam, p. 267.

[24] Imam al-Qushayri, Principles of Sufism, p. 215.

[25] All chains of narration for the Prophetic reports in the Kitab al-Futuwwa go from Imam al-Sulami (d. 412/1021) back to the Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) himself, and are recorded in the index at the back of the English translation. Imam al-Sulami was a Shafi‘i scholar and one of the foremost historians and shaykhs of the Sufis. He authored several important works on Sufism, including a commentary on the Qur’an, and the Tabaqat al-Sufiyya, one of the most famous works on the lives of the Sufis. (R, also Murata)

[26] Dhu al-Nun al-Misri (d. 245/859) was one of the greatest of the early Sufis. He was Nubian in origin and had a great gift for expressive aphorisms, a large number of which have fortunately been preserved. He was the first in Egypt to speak about the states and spiritual stations of the way. (R)

[27] ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr ibn al-‘Awwam (d. 73/692) was the son of a famous Companion of the Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam), who led a major revolt against the Umayyad caliph Yazid I following the death of the Prophet’s grandson, al-Husayn. He was widely recognised as caliph before his revolt was crushed. (W)

[28] ‘A’isha (d. 58/678) was the third wife of the Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) and Mother of the Faithful. She was the most knowledgeable of Muslim women in Sacred Law, religion, and Islamic behaviour, having married the Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) in the second year after the Migration, becoming the dearest of his wives in Medina. She related 2, 210 hadiths from the Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) and was asked for formal legal opinions by the Companions. (R)

[29] Yahya ibn Mu‘adh al-Razi (d. 258/871-2) was a great Sufi of Central Asia. As one of the first to teach Sufism in the mosques, he left a number of books and sayings. He was renowned for his steadfastness in worship and his great scrupulousness in matters of religion. (W)

[30] The Way of Sufi Chivalry, p.36.

[31] Khwaja ‘Abd Allah al-Ansari (d. 481/1088) was a great Persian Sufi and scholar. His most famous work is his Munajat (Intimate Entreaties), written in rhymed Persian prose. His description of the spiritual stations, Manazil al-sa’irin (The Stations of the Wayfarers), in Arabic, was one of the most influential ever written on this subject. (Murata)

[32] Cited in Murata, The Tao of Islam, pp. 267-268, with minor modifications to the translation.

[33] Regarded by the consensus of the scholars as the reviver (mujaddid) of the fifth century of the hijra, Imam Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali’s (d. 505/1111) most famous work was the Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din (The Revivification of the Religious Sciences), which brought out the inner meaning of Islam practices and ethical ideals.

[34] Abu Darda’ (d. 32/652), one of the Medinan Helpers and a Companion of the Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam), was noted for his piety, his wisdom in giving legal judgements, his horsemanship, and his bravery on the battlefield. Before embracing Islam, he gave up commerce to occupy himself with worship. He is particularly esteemed by the Sufis. (W, R)

[35] Ibrahim al-Nakha’i ibn Yazid (d. 96/ 714-5) was one of the great scholarly Successors of Kufa, who was taught by Hasan al-Basri and Anas ibn Malik, and who in turn taught Imam Abu Hanifa.

[36] The various quotes on the subject of brotherly duties are from al-Ghazali, On the Duties of Brotherhood, pp. 60-65, which is one of the forty books that comprise the content of the Ihya’ (see footnote 33).

[37] ‘Drugs problems caused by Afghanistan and Pakistan’, Official Journal of the European Communities, 41 (1998), C178-C209 (98/C 196/112): 81-82.

[38] Faisal Bodi, ‘Crime: an everyday reality in Luton’, Q-News, 311, September 1999, p. 12.

Interviews

Maqsood Ahmed (Muslim Advisor to the Prison Service), 20/06/00.

Abdur Rahman (NAFAS, Tower Hamlets), 22/06/00.

Bibliography

Anon. [Student of Darul-Uloom Bury], Islam and Drugs (Bury: Subulas Salam, n.d.).

Bodi, Faisal, ‘Crime: an everyday reality in Luton’, Q-News, 311, September 1999, p. 12.

Bodi, Faisal, ‘Muslim Advisor only one piece in a bigger jigsaw’, Q-News, 311, September 1999, pp. 14-15.

Boekhout van Solinge, Tim, ‘Drug Use and Drug Trafficking in Europe’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 89(1), (1998): 100-105.

Crossette, Barbara, ‘Taliban’s Ban on Growing Opium Poppies Is Called a Success’, New York Times [Internet edition], 20 May 2001.

‘Drug Trafficking Routes in Central Asia’, Strategic Survey 1998/99, p. 276.

‘Drugs problems caused by Afghanistan and Pakistan’, Official Journal of the European Communities, 41 (1998), C178-C209 (98/C 196/112): 81-82.

Ganon, Kathy, ‘Taliban virtually wipes out Afghanistan’s opium crop’, The Nando Times, 15 February 2001, [www.nandotimes.com].

Ghazali, Abu Hamid al-, On Disciplining the Soul & On Breaking the Two Desires, trans. and annotated with an introduction by T. J. Winter (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1995).

Ghazali, Abu Hamid al-, On the Duties of Brotherhood, trans. by Muhtar Holland (New York: Overlook, 1976).

Ghazali, Abu Hamid al-, The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife, trans. and annotated with an introduction by T. J. Winter (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1989).

McFarlane, Gavin, ‘Regulating European drug problems’, New Law Journal, 149(6897), 16 July 1999: 1075-1076.

Misri, Ahmad ibn Naqib al-, The Reliance of the Traveller, rev. edn, trans., ed. and annotated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller (Evanston: Amana, 1994).

Modhammed, Omar, ‘Message of the Amir-ul-Mumineen on the occasion of the International Anti-Narcotics Day’, The Islamic Emirate (Kandahar), July 2000, no. 1, p. 1.

Murata, Sachiko, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (Albany: State University of New York, 1992).

Nomani, Mohammed Manzoor, Meaning and Message of the Traditions, trans. by Mohammed Asif Kidwai and Shah Ebadur Rahman Nishat, 5 vols (Lucknow: Islamic Research and Publications, 1975-1989), I (1975).

Qushayri, Abu ’l-Qasim al-, Principles of Sufism, trans. by B. R. Von Schlegell (Berkeley, Ca.: Mizan, 1990).

Rashid, Ahmed, ‘Dangerous Liaisons: Drugs are driving politics in Afghanistan and Pakistan’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 161(16), April 16 (1998): 28.

Rashid, Ahmed, Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), Ch. 9.

‘Source Countries and trafficking routes: Central Asia and South East Asia’, Strategic Survey 1997/98, p. 250.

Sulami, Ibn al-Husayn al-, The Way of Sufi Chivalry, trans. by Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1991).

‘Taleban calls for total poppy ban in Afghanistan’, The News International (Jang), 30/7/00, p. 9.

UNDCP, ‘Afghan Opium Cultivation in 2000 Substantially Unchanged’, UNIS/NAR/696, 15 September 2000. [press release].

UN Economic and Social Research Council, World Situation with regard to illicit drug trafficking and action taken by the subsidiary bodies of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (Vienna: UNESRC, 1999), E/CN.7/2000/5

The Jihad of Imam Shamyl

The Chechen peoples desperate struggle for freedom has taken many Muslims by surprise. As with Bosnia three years ago, the very existence of this Muslim country was unknown to many in our community. But now, as the savage hordes of Tsar Boris the First pour down from the barbarian lands of the north to bring fire and the sword to the Chechens, it is worth remembering that the Caucasus has always been the graveyard of Christian invaders and the birthplace of Muslim heroes whose names still resound in the forests and valleys of that most romantic of all mountain lands.

The Caucasus, a sheer rampart which divides Europe from Asia, is like no other mountain range on earth. The highest peaks in Europe are here, compared to which the Alps seem like the merest pimples. Stretching for 650 miles from the Caspian to the Black Sea, their average height is over 10,000 feet. This spectacular prospect is made still more forbidding by the vertiginous steepness of the slopes. The Caucasus is a man its body is without curves, says a Georgian proverb, and cliffs, dropping in places more than five thousand feet into icy torrents, seem to dissect the landscape into sheer blocks of stone.

The very impenetrability of the Caucasus, and the difficulty of internal communication, have allowed countless different peoples and tribes to dwell here. The historian Pliny tells us that the Romans employed a hundred and thirty-four interpreters in their dealings with the warlike Caucasian clans; while the Arab historian al-Azizi dubbed the region the Mountain of Languages, recording that three hundred mutually-incomprehensible tongues were spoken in Daghestan alone.

Some of the Caucasian peoples, such as the fair-skinned Chechens, are descendents of ancient migrants from Europe. Others, including the Daghestanis, are believed to be of Asian origin. But the harsh climate and impossible terrain have imposed a similar ascetic lifestyle on them all. Little agriculture is possible on the dizzying slopes, and only on the highest plateaus can sheep be husbanded with any success. Traditionally, the people lived in aouls, rugged Caucasian villages, fortified with stone blockhouses and sheer walls to keep out pumas, wolves, and enemy tribes. Built in the most inaccessible positions atop needle-thin peaks, the only route to these stubborn hamlets lay along footpaths which clung to the cliff-face, providing no place for rest, but only dizzying views of surrounding peaks, and of the eagles circling far below.

In such an extreme landscape, only strong children survived. Spending their days in endless toil up and down the slopes, by the time they reached maturity the Chechen and Daghestani men were wiry and immensely strong. It is recorded that in the mid-nineteenth century no Chechen girl would consent to marry a man unless he had killed at least one Russian, could jump over a stream twenty-three feet wide, and over a rope held at shoulder-height between two men.

The yawning gulfs which divided the aouls led easily to rivalry and war. Caucasian life was dominated by the blood-vendetta, the kanli, which ensured that no wrong, however slight, could go unavenged by the relatives of a victim. Tales abound in the Chechen epic literature of centuries-long conflicts which began with the simple theft of a chicken, and ended with the death of an entire clan. Warfare was constant, as was the training for it; and young men prided themselves in their horsemanship, wrestling, and sharpshooting.

Muslims have never conquered the Caucasus: even the Sahaba, who swept before them the legions of Byzantium and Persia, stopped short at these forbidding cliffs. For centuries, its people continued in their pagan or Christian beliefs; while the Muslims of neighbouring Iran regarded it with terror, believing that the Shah of all the Jinn had his capital amid its snowy peaks.

But where Muslim armies could not penetrate, peaceful Muslim missionaries slowly ventured. Many achieved martyrdom at the hands of the wild, angry tribesmen; but slowly the remote valleys and even the high aouls accepted the faith. The Chechens, Avars, Circassians and Daghestanis entered Islam; and by the eighteenth century, only the Georgians and the Armenians were still unconverted.

But despite this victory, a new threat was gathering on the horizon. In 1552, Ivan the Terrible had captured and destroyed Kazan, the great Muslim city on the upper Volga. Four years later the Russian hordes reached the Caspian. At their van rode the wild Cossacks, brutal horsemen who reproduced themselves by capturing and marrying by force the Muslim women who fell into their hands. As pious as they were turbulent, they never established a new settlement without first building a spectacular church, whose tolling bells rang out over the Tsars everexpanding empire in the steppes.

By the late eighteenth century the Christian threat to the Caucasus had not gone unnoticed by the mountain tribes. Their lack of unity, however, made effective action impossible, and soon the fertile lowlands of North Chechenia and (further west) the Nogay Tatar country were wrested from Muslim hands. The Muslims who remained were forced to become the serfs agricultural slaves of Russian lords. Those who refused or ran away were hunted down in an aristocratic Russian version of fox-hunting. Some were skinned, and their skins were used to make military drums. The enserfed women often had to endure the confiscation of their babies, so that the pedigree Russian greyhounds and hunting dogs could be nourished on human milk.

Overseeing this policy was the empress Catherine the Great, who sent the youngest of her lovers, Count Platon Zubov (he was twenty-five, she seventy), to realise the first stage of her Pan-Orthodox dream by which all Muslim lands would be conquered for Christianity. Zubovs army broke up along the Caspian shores, but the warning had been sounded. The Caucasus looked up from its internal strife, and knew it had an enemy.

The first coherent response to the danger came from an individual whose obscure but romantic history is very typical of the Caucasus. He is known only as Elisha Mansour an Italian Jesuit priest sent to convert the Greeks in Anatolia to Catholicism. To the anger of the Pope, he soon converted enthusiastically to Islam, and was sent by the Ottoman sultan to organise Caucasian resistance against the Russians. But at the battle of Tatar-Toub in 1791 his resistance came to an untimely end; and, captured by the enemy, he spent the rest of his life a prisoner at a frozen monastery in the White Sea, where monks laboured unsuccessfully to bring him back to the Christian fold.

Mansour had failed, but the Caucasians had fought like lions. The flame of resistance which he lit soon spread, nursed and fanned by one man of genius: Mollah Muhammad Yaraghli. Yaraghli was a scholar and a Sufi, deeply learned in the Arabic texts, who preached the Naqshbandi Way to the harsh mountaineers. Although he converted many thousands, his leading pupil was Ghazi Mollah, a religious student of the Avar people of Daghestan, who began his own preaching in 1827, selecting the large aoul of Ghimri to be the centre of his activities.

For the next two years Ghazi Mollah proclaimed his message. The Caucasians had not accepted Islam fully, he told them. Their old customary laws, the “adat”, which differed from tribe to tribe, must be replaced by the Sharia. In particular, the kanli vendettas must be suppressed, and all injustices dealt with fairly by a proper Islamic court. Finally, the Caucasians must restrain their wild, turbulent egos, and tread the hard path of self-purification. Only by following this prescription, he told them, could they overcome their ancient divisions, and stand united against the Christian menace.

In 1829, Ghazi Mollah judged that his followers had absorbed enough of this message for them to begin the final stage: of political action. He travelled throughout Daghestan, openly preaching against vice, and overturning with his own hand the great jars of wine traditionally stored in the centre of the aouls. In a series of fiery sermons he urged the people to take up arms for the Ghazwa: the armed resistance: A Muslim may obey the Sharia, but all his giving of Zakat, all his Salat and ablutions, all his pilgrimages to Makka, are as nothing if a Russian eye looks upon them. Your marriages are unlawful, your children bastards, while there is one Russian left in your lands!

It was the time of Jihad, he proclaimed. The great Islamic scholars of Daghestan gathered at the mosque of Ghimri, and, acclaiming him Imam, pledged their support.

The murids at Ghimri, standing out from the other mountaineers by their black banners, and the absence of any trace of gold or silver on their clothes and weapons, marched out behind Ghazi Mollah, chanting the Murid battle-cry: La ilaha illaLlah. Their first target was the aoul of Andee, which was submissive towards the Russians; but so impressive were the Murids that at the very sight of their silent ranks the formerly treacherous village submitted without a fight. Ghazi Mollah then turned his attention to the Russians themselves.

At this time, the Russians had moved few colonists into the region. Large military outposts had been established in the plains to the north, at Grozny, Khasav-Yurt and Mozdok, but elsewhere the process of clearing the Muslims from the land had only just begun. Ghazi Mollah could therefore count on local support when he attacked the Russian fort of Vnezapnaya. Without cannon, he proved unable to capture it; but its defenders, commanded by Baron Rosen, were forced to send for help. This came in the form of a large relief column, which, thinking it feared nothing from the Muslims, pursued them into the great forest which then stood south of Grozny.

In the dark woods, the murids were fighting on their own ground. Shooting from the branches of the giant beech trees, constructing traps and pitfalls for the stoical but disoriented Russians, they methodically picked off the enemy officers, and captured many of the bewildered foot-soldiers. In this twilight world of vast beech trees and tangled undergrowth, the lumbering Russian column, led by priests bearing icons and huge crosses, and burdened with oxcarts carrying five-foot samovars and cases of champagne for the officers, found itself slowly eroded and scattered. Only remnants emerged from the woods: and the first Mujahideen victory had been won.

Baying for revenge, the Russians attacked the Muslim town of Tschoumkeskent, which they captured and razed to the ground. But they paid heavily for this conquest: four hundred Russians had been killed in the operation, and only a hundred and fifty Murids. Even greater was their humiliation at Tsori, a mountain pass where four thousand Russian troops were held up for three days by a barricade, which, they later found to their chagrin, was manned by only two Chechen snipers.

Raging, the Russians rampaged through Lower Chechenya, burning crops, and destroying sixty-one villages. Slowly, the Chechen and Daghestani murids retreated to the mountains behind them. Ghazi Mollah and his leading disciple Shamyl decided to make a stand at Ghimri. After a bitter siege, with many casualties on both sides, the aoul was stormed by the Russians troops, who found Ghazi Mollah among the dead. Still seated on his prayer-carpet, the Imam, uncannily, kept one hand on his beard, and the other pointing to the sky. But in the meantime, his deputy, fighting with sixty murids in defence of two stone towers, seemed invincible, picking off with unerring aim any Russian who came near. At last, when only two Murids remained alive, Shamyl emerged, to imaugurate a reputation for heroism in combat which would resound throughout the Muslim Caucasus. As a Russian officer described the incident:

It was dark: by the light of the burning thatch we saw a man standing in the doorway of the house, which stood on raised ground, rather above us. This man, who was very tall and powerfully built, stood quite still, as if giving us time to take aim. Then, suddenly, with the spring of a wild beast, he leapt clean over the heads of the very line of soldiers about to fire on him, and landing behind them, whirling his sword in his left hand, he cut down three of them, but was bayoneted by the fourth, the steel plunging deep into his chest. His face still extraordinary in its immobility, he seized the bayonet, pulled it out of his own flesh, cut down the man and, with another superhuman leap, cleared the wall and vanished into the darkness. We were left absolutely dumbfounded.

The Russians paid little attention to <Shamyl’s escape, confident that with the destruction of the Murids capital they had achieved a final victory. They could not guess that thirty years of war, at a price of half a million Russian lives, awaited them at his hands.

After his dramatic escape from Ghimri, the wounded Shamyl painfully made his way to a saklia, a cottage in the glacier-riven heights of Daghestan. A shepherd sent word to his wife Fatima, who came secretly to him, and nursed him through a long fever, binding up eighteen bayonet and sword wounds. Months later, Shamyl was able once more to travel, and hearing of the death of Ghazi Mollahs successor, was acclaimed by the Muslims as al-Imam al-Azam, Leader of all the Caucasus.

Shamyl had been born in 1796 to a noble family from the Avar people of southern Daghestan. Growing up with his friend Ghazi Mollah, he divided his austere childhood between the mosque and the narrow terraces around Ghimri, where he grazed his familys sheep. Often he would look over the edges, down into the five thousand foot abyss beneath the village, and watch the lightning flash in the thunderclouds below. In the further distance, on the slopes, could be seen the ghostly glow of naphtha fires, where natural oil came bubbling up through the stones, burning for years.

This harsh landscape, and the rigorous Caucasian upbringing which went with it, accustomed the future Imam to a life with few worldly pleasures. When only a child, he persuaded his father to abandon alcohol by threatening to fall on his own dagger if he did not stop. The difficult spiritual discipline required of him as a young scholar seemed to come naturally, and by his early twenties he was renowned for all the virtues which the Caucasus respected: courage in battle, a mastery of the Arabic language, Tafsir and Fiqh, and a spiritual nobility which left a profound impression on all who met him.

Together with Ghazi Mollah, he bacame the disciple of Muhammad Yaraghli, the strict mystically-minded scholar who taught the young men that their own spiritual purity was not enough: they must fight to make Allah’s laws supreme. The Sharia must replace the pagan laws of the Caucasian tribes. Only then would Allah give them victory over the Russian hosts.

<Shamyl’s first exploits as Imam were purely defensive. The Russians under General Fese had launched a new attack on Central Daghestan. Here, in the aoul of Ashilta, as the Russians approached, two thousand Murids took an oath on the Quran to defend it to the death. After a bitter hand-to-hand fight through the streets, the Russians captured and destroyed the town, taking no prisoners. The stage was set for a long and bitter war.

Shamyl was no stranger to war with Europeans. While performing the Hajj in 1828, he had met Emir Abd al-Qader, the heroic leader of Algerian resistance against the French, who shared with him his views on guerilla warfare. The two men, although fighting three thousand miles from each other, were very similar both in their scholarly interests and in their methods of war. Both realised the impossibility of winning pitched battles against the large and well-equipped European armies, and the need for sophisticated techniques for dividing the enemy and luring him into remote mountains and forests, there to be dispatched by quick, elusive guerilla attacks.

The weakness of <Shamyl’s position in the Caucasus was his need to defend the aouls. His men, moving with lightning speed, could always dodge an enemy, or deal him a surprise blow from behind. But the villages, despite their fortifications, were vulnerable to Russian siege methods backed up with modern artillery.

Shamyl learnt this lesson in 1839, at the aoul of Akhulgo. This mountain fastness, protected by gorges on three sides, was itself divided into two by a terrifying chasm spanned by a seventy-foot bridge of wooden planks. Akhulgo had already filled with refugees fleeing from the Russian advance, and the presence of so many women and children to feed made the prospect of a long siege an ugly one. But he would retreat no further: here he made his stand.

By this time, the Naqshbandi army numbered some six thousand, divided into units of five hundred men, each under the command of a Naib (deputy). These Naibs, tough and scholarly, were a mystery to the Russians. In the thirty years of the Caucasian war, not one was ever captured alive. At Akhulgo, these men fortified the settlement as best they could, and then, in the evening after sunset prayers, went upon the roofs to sing <Shamyl’s Zabur, the religious chant he had composed to replace the trivial drinking-songs they had known before. There were many other chants, too; the most familiar to the Russians being the Death Song, heard when a Russian victory seemed imminent and the Chechens tied themselves to each other, and prepared to fight to the end.

The Russian attack began on June 29. The Russians attempted to scale the cliffs, and lost three hundred and fifty men to the Mujahideen, who threw rocks and burning logs upon them. Chastened, the Russians withdrew for four days, until they could place their artillery so as to bombard the walls from a safe distance. But although the walls were pounded to rubble, each time the Russians attacked, the Murids appeared from the ruins of the aoul and threw them back with heavy casualties.

Conditions in the village, however, were becoming desperate. Many had died, and their bodies were rotting under the summer sun, spreading a pestilential stench. Food supplies were almost exhausted. Hearing this news from a spy, the Russian general, Count Glasse, decided on an allout assault. Three columns he directed to attack simultaneously, thereby dividing the defenders fire.

The first column, carrying scaling ladders, climbed a cliff on one side of a ravine. But from the apparently bare rocks on the opposing cliff, gunfire directed by Chechen sharpshooters decimated their ranks within minutes. The officers were soon all killed, and the six hundred men, their backs against the cliff, were left trapped by the Murids in the knowledge that exhaustion and exposure would finish them off before dawn.

The second column attempted to make its way to the aoul along the ravine floor. This too ended in disaster, as the defenders rolled down boulders upon them, so that only a few dozen returned. The third column, inching along a precipice, found itself attacked by hundreds of women and children who had been hidden in caves for safety. The women cut their way through the Russian ranks, while their children, daggers in both hands, ran under the Russians and slashed at them from beneath. Here, as always in Chechenya, the women fought desperately, knowing that they had even more to lose than the men. Under this screaming and bloody onslaught, the Russian column staggered and fell back.

Baffled, Count Glasse sent a messenger to Shamyl to arrange a parley. Conditions at the aoul were extreme, and Shamyl, with a heavy heart, struck a deal, agreeing to release his eight-year old son Jamal al-Din as a hostage, on condition that the Russian army departed and left the aoul in peace. But no sooner had the boy been put on the road to St Petersburg than the artillery barrage opened up again, and Akhulgo was once more pounded from every side. Shamyl realised that he had been duped.

The next day, the Russians advanced again on Akhulgo, and found it populated only ravens greedily feeding on corpses. The survivors had slipped away during the night. The only Muslims to remain, those too weak to withdraw, were discovered hiding in the caverns in the nearby cliffs, which were reached with the utmost difficulty. A Russian officer later recorded this as follows:

We had to lower soldiers by means of ropes. Our troops were almost overcome by the stench of the numberless corpses. In the chasm between the two Akhulgos, the guard had to be changed every few hours. More than a thousand bodies were counted; large numbers were swept downstream, or lay bloated on the rocks. Nine hundred prisoners were taken alive, mostly women, children and old men; but, in spite of their wounds and exhaustion, even these did not surrender easily. Some gathered up their last force, and snatched the bayonets from their guards. The weeping and wailing of the few children left alive, and the sufferings of the wounded and dying, completed the tragic scene.

Shamyl had made a desperate attempt to lead his family and disciples away during the night. His wife Fatima was eight months pregnant, and his second wife Jawhara was carrying her two month- old baby Said. But together they managed to inch along a precipice unknown to the Russians, until they reached the torrent below. Here, the Imam brought a tree down to form a makeshift bridge. Fatima crossed safely with her younger son Ghazi Muhammad; but Jawhara was spotted by a Russian sharpshooter, who killed her with a single bullet, sending her and her child toppling over to vanish into the raging torrent. Slowly, Shamyl, his depleted family, and the surviving Mujahideen, dodged the Russian patrols, who were now being aided by the Ghimrians who had gone over to the Russian side. Once they encountered a Russian platoon, and in the ensuing fight the young Ghazi Muhammad received a bayonet wound. But <Shamyl’s sword accounted for the Russian officer, whose men fled in terror. They were free again: as at Ghimri, the Imam had effected a miraculous escape.

Count Grabbes report described the capture of Akhulgo in glowing terms. The Murid sect, he wrote, has fallen with all its followers and adherents. The Tsar was delighted; but again, the Russian celebrations were premature. While Shamyl was free he was undefeated. And Moscow had once again given the Caucasus reason to seek freedom.

In 1840, Shamyl raised a new army, and again unfurled his black banners. With the Russians falling back along the Black Sea coast in the face of a Circassian uprising, conditions were right for a major campaign, and by the end of the year, the Imam had retaken Akhulgo, and led his forces onto the plains of Lower Chechenya, capturing fort after fort. The Russian response was chaotic: one sortie led by Grabbe resulted in the death of over two thousand Russians. A new commander, the Tsars favourite General Neidhardt, promised to exchange <Shamyl’s head for its weight in gold to anyone who could capture him; but all in vain. Again and again the Imperial legions were drawn into the dark forests, divided, and annihilated.

<Shamyl’s techniques, meanwhile, were improving all the time. On one occasion, he attacked a Russian position with ten thousand men, only to reappear less than twenty-four hours later fifty miles away, to attack another outpost: an astonishing feat. One military historian has written: The rapidity of this long march over a mountainous country, the precision of the combined operation, and above all the fact that it was prepared and carried out under the Russians very eyes, entitle Shamyl to rank as something more than a guerilla leader, even of the highest class.

Russia’s next move was a bold attack by ten thousand men on <Shamyl’s new capital of Dargo. The commander, General Vorontsov, drove through Chechenya and Central Daghestan, encountering little resistance, and finding that Shamyl had burnt the aouls rather than allow them to fall into his hands. Confident, and contemptuous of the Asiatic rabble, he decided to lunge through the final ten miles of forest that separated him from Dargo and <Shamyl’s warriors. But when the Russians arrived, again to find that Shamyl had fired the aoul, and turned to retrace their steps, disaster overtook them. Shamyl had watched their advance through his telescope, and calmly directed his Murids to take up positions from which to ambush and harry the Russians. Fighting alongside the Muslims were six hundred Russian and Polish deserters, who dismayed the Russian troopers by singing old army songs at night, their mocking voices rising eerily from the hidden depths of the forest.

Shamyl had positioned four cannon slightly above the devastated aoul, and the Russians charged these and took them with little difficulty. But their way back lay through cornfields that concealed dozens of Murids, who stood up to fire, hiding themselves again before the dazed Russians could shoot back. A hundred and eighty-seven men died before the remains of this column rejoined the main army. Not even the bayoneting of the Chechen prisoners could raise Russian spirits after this omen of impending disaster.

The Russians now began to retreat back through the forest. But the woods were now alive with unseen foes. Slippery barricades blocked their way, and forced them to leave the paths, slashing their way towards ambuscades and bloody confusion. Hundreds of Russians died, including two generals. Heavy rain turned the paths to mud, and made rifles useless, so that at times the two sides fought silently with stones and bare hands. To escape the invisible snipers, the terrified Vorontsov himself insisted on being carried inside an iron box on the shoulders of a colonel. Thus trapped, with over two thousand wounded, and with only sixty bullets left apiece, the desperate Russians sent messengers to General Freitag at Grozny, begging for reinforcements.

At this crucial moment, Imam Shamyl received news that his wife Fatima was dying. He immediately gave orders for the continuing of the battle, and left for the day-long journey to the aoul where she lay. After holding her in his arms as she died, he rode back, to discover, to his deep distress, that his men had disobeyed him. Melting away at the sight of Freitags troops, they had allowed Vorontsovs column to limp out of the forest without further loss. Shamyl boiled with fury, and he fiercely denounced those who had shown faintheartedness instead of clinching the victory. But Russia had paid dearly, as the forest soil of Dargo folded around the bodies of three generals, two hundred officers, and almost four thousand infantrymen. Even today, Russian soldiers remember the Dargo catastrophe in a gloomy song: In the heat of noonday, in the vale of Daghestan, With a bullet in my heart, I lie …

For another ten years, <Shamyl’s flags flew over Chechenya and Daghestan, proclaiming what Caucasians still refer to as the Time of Sharia. The Tsar, fuming in his vast palace in St Petersburg, received message after courteous message from his generals praising their own victories; yet still Shamyl ruled. Vorontsov, Neidhardt and others were recalled, and died in gilded obscurity. But in 1851, command was given to a younger man, General Beriatinsky, the Muscovy Devil who was to change the course of the war for ever.

The new Russian commander knew his enemy, and adapted his techniques accordingly. He knew that the Chechens disliked going into battle unless they had performed their wudu-ablutions, so he ensured that great dams were built to cut off the water supply to his opponents. He adopted a policy of bribing villages into accepting Russian authority, and delayed the enserfment process indefinitely. He ended the former policy of informally butchering women and children during the capture of aouls. But his most significant innovation was his long, slow campaign against the forests. Like the Americans in Vietnam and the French in Algeria, he realised that his enemy could only be defeated on open ground. He thus deputed a hundred thousand men to cut down the great beech trees of the region. Some were so vast that axes were inadequate, and explosives had to be used instead. But slowly, the forests of Chechenya and Daghestan disappeared; while Shamyl, watching from the heights, could do nothing to bring them back.

In 1858, the last great battle erupted. The Ingush people, driven from their aouls by the Russians into camps around the garrison town of Nazran, revolted, and called on Shamyl for aid. He rode down from the mountains with his mujahideen, but sustained a crippling defeat under the cannon of a relief column sent to support the beleaguered garrison. When he returned to the mountains, he found the support of his people beginning to melt away. Whole aouls went over to the Russians rather than submit to siege and inevitable destruction. Even some of his most faithful lieutenants deserted him, and guided Russian troops to attack his few remaining redoubts.

In June 1859, Shamyl retreated to the most inaccessible aoul of all: Gounib. Here, with three hundred devoted Murids, he determined to make a last stand. The Russians were driven back time and again; but finally, after praying at length, and moved by Beriatinskys threat to slaughter his entire family if he was not captured alive, he agreed to lay down his arms.

Thus ended the Time of Sharia in the Caucasus. The Imam was transported north to meet the Tsar, and then banished to a small town near Moscow. Here he dwelt, with a diminishing band of family and relations, until 1869, when the Tsar allowed him to leave and live in retirement in the Holy Cities. His last voyage, through Turkey and the Middle East, was tumultuous, as vast crowds turned out to cheer the Imam whose name had become a legend throughout the lands of Islam.

His son Ghazi Muhammad, released from Russian captivity in 1871, travelled to meet him at Makka. He arrived, however, when the Imam was away on a visit to Madina. As he was walking around the Holy Kaba, a tattered, green-turbaned man came up and suddenly cried, O believers, pray now for the great soul of the Imam Shamyl!

It was true: on that same day, Shamyl, murmuring Allah! Allah!, had passed on to eternal life in Paradise. He was buried, amid great throngs and much emotion, in the Baqi Cemetery. But his name lives still; and even today, in the homes of his descendents in Istanbul and Madina, in flats whose walls are still adorned with the faded banners of black, mothers sing to their children words which will be remembered for as long as Muslims live in Chechenya and Daghestan:

O mountains of Gounib, 
O soldiers of Shamyl, 
Shamyl’s citadel was full of warriors, 
Yet it has fallen, fallen forever …

1099-1999 Remembering the Tragedy of Al-Quds

By the solar calendar, July 1999 represents the nine hundredth anniversary of the Crusader sack of Jerusalem. The event has been passed over in near-silence by the West, but for Muslims it vividly recalls a pain that will never be forgotten. To commemorate this most appalling event in the history of Islam, we publish on this site several evocative illustrations by the French engraver Gustave Dore, published in 1877 to great critical acclaim.

The Crusading armies which had flocked to Pope Urban’s call for a holy war against Islam had assembled on the seventh of June beneath the city walls. The swords of these wild, zealous men already ‘knew the taste of Saracen blood’, as a friar wrote. Many of the Crusaders had eaten Turkish children on their long and violent march through Anatolia. All were fired with the love of the Church, and of the Holy Spirit which drove the minds of the bishops who urged them on.

Jerusalem was well-defended, and copiously stocked with food and water. Its commandant, Iftikhar al-Dawla, had ensured that the city walls were in good repair, and had succeeded in blocking or poisoning the wells beyond, forcing the Christian armies to rely on a water supply several miles distant. A Muslim army had already set out from Egypt to relieve the city. Weighing up these factors, the Crusaders, under Godefroy, realised that a long siege was out of the question. Their only chance of success lay in launching an immediate, all-out assault.

This view was strengthened by a miraculous vision received by a priest, Peter Desiderius, who was instructed by a heavenly voice to lead the Christian hosts in a barefoot pilgrimage around the city walls, all the time repenting of their sins and calling upon Jesus to forgive them and grant them victory. The pilgrimage ended at the Mount of Olives, where the Crusaders listened to sermons from Peter the Hermit and other venerable members of the accompanying clergy. The sermons fired the Christians with excitement and an overpowering longing for the fight

During the night of the 13th July, the Christians pushed three great siege-towers towards the walls. The Muslims fought back with Greek fire and stones from catapults, and casualties were heavy on each side. By midday on the 14th, one siege tower under Godefroy himself reached the wall, and a bridge was thrown across to the battlements. A great press of Christians forced its way across, and a detachment was sent to open the nearest city gate, the Gate of the Column. Bursting through the gate, thousands of Crusaders poured into the streets of the city, singing hymns, with the Muslim population fleeing before them to the Aqsa Mosque, where they hoped to make a final stand.

Al-Aqsa was packed with fearful refugees; there was little standing-room even on its roof. Crusading knights under Tancred broke into the Dome of the Rock, and desecrated it, slaughtering all they found there. Then the Christian masses surrounded al-Aqsa itself, clamouring for the death of the Muslims inside. The Muslims had had no time to fortify the mosque, and within hours the flag of Tancred flew from the roof of the bloodied building, the third holiest of Islam.

In the narrow city streets the confusion on the hot July day was absolute. Men, women and children ran screaming from the triumphant Crusader swordsmen. Some hid in their homes, only to be found and put to death. The garrison commander, Iftikhar al-Dawla, who was surrounded in the Tower of David, the last redoubt of the defence, surrendered on condition that he and those soldiers who survived with him be allowed to depart safely.

Iftikhar and his men were the only Muslims to survive. Historians calculate that ninety thousand Muslims, and also the entire Jewish population of the city, were immolated by the joyful Crusader army. The city which had been captured peacefully by the Caliph Umar four centuries before, and which had been home to people of all religions, now swam deep in blood. Priests and friars later wrote exultantly of the scene, which they called a ‘marvellous judgement of God’. Muslim and Jewish blood, they noted happily, had ‘flowed up to the knees’ of the Crusaders’ horses.

With every Muslim life extinguished, the Crusading priests and knights processed solemnly to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where they sang hymns of thanksgiving. On receiving the joyful news, the bells of all Christendom pealed for hours.

Jerusalem became a Christian city and remained so until 1187, when Salah al-Din recovered it for Islam. His tolerance and magnanimity towards its people of all faiths became legendary, and recalled the generous spirit of the early days of Islam, and of Umar himself. But the memory of the Crusaders’ bloodlust has not been forgotten by the Muslim people of Jerusalem, or of the Islamic world. The militant intolerance of pre-modern Christianity towards the presence of unbelievers, which survived unchallenged until the Enlightenment, and which resulted in massacres no less apocalyptic in the Americas, Africa, Siberia, and every other place where Christian armies penetrated, is symbolised for Muslims by the bloodbath in one of the holiest cities of Islam, a crime which is without parallel in the history of religion.

No other event has done more to influence relations between Christianity and Islam, and to colour the mutual perception of these two faiths.

May Allah grant rest and light to the martyrs of al-Quds al-Sharif in all ages, forgive them their shortcomings, and secure for them the Intercession of the beloved Prophet, upon him be peace, on the last day.

The Language of Islamophobia

Paper presented at the “Exploring Islamophobia” Conference jointly organised by FAIR (Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism), City Circle, and Ar-Rum at The University of Westminster School of Law, London, on 29 September 2001.

Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim

There is a proverb “The pen is mightier than the sword” which expresses well the idea of the power, if not the sacredness, of the word, and perhaps there was an echo of this idea in President Bush’s recent statement that the “war against terrorism” had begun with a “stroke of the pen.” There was a television programme recently about the ten hardest men in Britain, and I assumed it was going to be another of those offerings glorifying brute strength or glamourising vicious gangsters. Well yes, there were some tough nuts in there, pretty well all of them hard men in television serials, but the hardest ones were judged to be not those who used their fists but those who used words, and rated top of this class, the prizefighter, was Jeremy Paxman, the presenter of Newsnight on BBC2.

So we understand the immense power of words. But with that power comes a truly awesome responsibility. In speaking of the language of Islamophobia, it would be a very simple matter to give examples over the last two weeks of the abuse of that power, what William Dalrymple castigates in a recent article in The Independent as the “ludicrously unbalanced, inaccurate and one-sided” images of Islam perpetrated by what he calls the “scribes of the new racism” even in our quality broadsheets. This is not, of course, a new phenomenon. In 1997 The Runnymede Report had described Islamophobia as marked by “brazen hostility, bordering on contempt, for the most cherished principles of Islamic life and thought, reaching an apoplexy of hate in the modern Western media who represent Islam as intolerant of diversity, monolithic and war-mongering.” As Dalrymple says, “such prejudices against Muslims – and the spread of idiotic stereotypes of Muslim behaviour and beliefs – have been developing at a frightening rate in the last decade” and “Anti-Muslim racism now seems in many ways to be replacing anti-Semitism as the principal Western expression of bigotry against “the other”.

What is so much more encouraging is the fact that politicians and writers of this quality, insight, intelligence and humanity are increasingly speaking out against this pernicious, corrosive and virulent form of bigotry and it would be a simple matter too to refer to a great many articles I have seen like Dalrymple’s which are truly civilised and humane and do not bandy about words like “civilisation” and “humanity” as mere rhetorical incantations or militant banners to promote the poisonous and ignorant doctrine of the clash of civilisations.

Let Western civilisation always hold fast to one of its founding principles in the Platonic vision which places reason and dialogue above rhetoric and emotional manipulation. And all those voices in political life and the media who have upheld this vision deserve our profound thanks, for what they are writing and saying is completely in accordance with the universal spirit of Islam and the many sayings of the Prophet (saws) which teach us to use words as well as actions in such a way that we become, in his words, “a refuge for humankind, their lives and their properties.” – a refuge for all of humankind, not for any single group or vested interest. Said the Prophet, “The true Muslim does not defame or abuse others” and “the perfect Muslim is he from whose tongue and hands mankind is safe.”

Now, I’ve said that it would be a very simple matter to give examples of Islamophobic language, but I want to go deeper than simply dredge up old clichés. We’ve all heard again and again the tired old clichés which stigmatise the whole of Islam as fundamentalist, ideological, monolithic, static, unidimensional, implacably opposed to modernity, incapable of integration or assimilation, impervious to new ideas, retrogressive, retrograde, backward, archaic, primaeval, medieval, uncivilised, hostile, violent, terrorist, alien, fanatical, barbaric, militant, oppressive, harsh, threatening, confrontational, extremist, authoritarian, totalitarian, patriarchal, misogynist, negatively exotic, and bent on imposing on the whole world a rigid theocratic system of government which would radically overturn every principle of freedom and liberal democracy cherished by the Western world. I have to say that I don’t know a single Muslim who embodies even one of these characteristics, and I have Muslim friends and colleagues in all walks of life and from many cultures all over the globe.

There is one possible exception, and that is the first one, the most overused of all: “fundamentalist”. If this means certain fundamental beliefs such as belief in a supremely merciful God and in a divine purpose for mankind and all creation; belief that only God can dispense infinite justice although we must strive to embody some measure of justice and the other divine attributes in the conduct of our own lives; belief in a fair and inclusive society which balances rights and responsibilities, which values all people equally irrespective of their race, gender and religion, and which gives equality of opportunity to all men, women and children to realize their God-given potential; and belief in freedom from tyranny and oppression – well then, yes, I am a fundamentalist, and my fundamental beliefs will be shared by many people of all faiths.

But if to be a fundamentalist is to engage in any kind of cruelty in the name of any doctrine or ideology, whether religious or secular, including the murder of innocent people either by terrorists or governments, wherever they may be, then I am most certainly not a fundamentalist.

This defamatory list is a very obvious manifestations of what Francis Bacon, one of the founders of Western empiricism and modern science , called the “Idols of the Mind”, those crippling conditioned beliefs and prejudices which prevent us from learning by critical enquiry, observation and experience, and those who perpetrate them would do well to return to some of the hallowed principles of objectivity which supposedly underpin Western civilisation.

But there is a deeper dimension to these prejudices. Behind them is the demonisation of what is perceived to be a dark and dangerous manifestation of the “other”, the singling out of the most extreme position which can be imagined as somehow representative of the totality of Islam, as if there is one absolutely monolithic, cohesive and uniform Muslim mindset, a kind of immutable, undifferentiated abstraction. In view of the extraordinary size and diversity of the Islamic world, this fantasy about a monolithic and aggressive Islam is not merely the outcome of ignorance. It goes deeper than that. It is quite simply a psychological phenomenon, a pathological state. The very vehemence of the language with its absurdly simplified polarisation of reality into competing and mutually exclusive positions is itself symptomatic of deeply unconscious projections. That is what is so intractable about this pathology. The people who think like this are deeply unconscious of their own psychic processes, or, even more dangerously, they are people who are intentionally exploiting this tendency in the human being to dichotomise, to split reality into polar opposites, to see only black or white, and hence to foster division and confrontation.

In addition to the obvious stigmatisation of Islam through unanalysed clichés stereotypes and labels, we have to contend with grotesquely naïve and childish misrepresentations of what Muslims believe and how they behave, including articles by eminent university dons printed in tabloid newspapers which show an ignorance and intolerance of Islam as profound as that shown in much more lightweight material. That is what is extraordinary about Islamophobic ranting. We can find the same kind of hyperbole, distortions, inaccuracies and unsubstantiated generalisations coming from intellectuals and from the liberal establishment (though with longer words) as we do from empty-headed commentators whose only claim to having their comments on Islam published is that they are (or were) talk-show hosts.

Recent examples in national newspapers in the wake of the atrocities include such utter nonsense as the claim that “the Christian concept of forgiveness is absent in Islam”, or that “the concepts of debate and individual freedom are alien in Moslem cultures”, or that Islam is, uniquely, a “religion that sanctions all forms of violence”, or that the Taliban “desire to return Afghanistan to the mores of Arabia in the time of the Prophet”, or that Islamic law permits a Muslim man to divorce his wife immediately by sending a text message saying “I divorce you”, or that only Islam sanctions “suicide as a path to Paradise”, or, indeed, that the fanatical Muslim hordes are “already there in their thousands. And they are not going to respect weaknesses any more than Lenin did.”

And let us not forget the Internet as a source of Islamophobic utterances. If you have the stomach to trawl through and sift out some of the most obnoxious material you are likely to find on the planet, much of it written by native-speakers of English whose cultural illiteracy is only matched by their inability to construct an intelligible sentence in the English language, you may, if you are lucky, turn up sites which are capable of coherent syntax, if not coherent thought.

For instance, you might find the one set up by an organisation which supports, in its own words, “liberal-democratic pluralism and modernism as opposed to fundamentalism” and which maintains that “Islam was spread by the sword and has been maintained by the sword throughout its history” and that ”the myth of Islamic tolerance was largely invented by Jews and Western freethinkers as a stick to beat the Catholic Church”, or that there is “no way that Islam can ever be made compatible with pluralism, free speech, critical thought and democracy”. If you disagree with this, then, according to these people, you are, of course, an “apologist”.

I was shocked to read the headline of a broadsheet on Wednesday which proclaimed “No refuge for Islamic Terrorists”. Did this newspaper proclaim that there would be no refuge for Christian Mass Murderers after the massacre of Muslims in Bosnia? Thank you, Mr. Blair, for your statement on Thursday that the atrocities in America were not the work of “Muslim terrorists” but of “terrorists”. On the same front page there is an article about the execution of Islamic “militants” in China, several dozen Muslim men who had been fed alcohol with their last meal and then, stupefied by drink, driven to their deaths on an open lorry past laughing crowds. But is there any leading article or other comment which demands sanctions against China for such gross and barbaric abuses of human rights? Is there likely to be in the current climate which rewards Chinese and Russian support for an international coalition by turning a blind eye to the inevitable increase in the oppression of their own Muslim minorities? Will the Italian Prime Minister stand by his statement that human rights are one of the reasons why, in his view, the West is superior to Islam? Will he announce that the West is superior to China and superior to all those regimes, including those supported by Western powers, which abuse human rights? Will he speak out against those Italian cardinals whose anti-Muslim statements have reinforced xenophobia in Italy and therefore threaten to undermine the rights and freedoms of Muslims?

On Thursday, the first thing I heard in the morning was a discussion about different types of terrorism, and the extraordinary suggestion that the real threat is not so much “ordinary” terrorism as terrorism motivated by “doctrine” and “ideology” (no rewards for guessing here which “doctrine” is referred to) as if we are supposed to believe that it is only the “others” who have any kind of belief-system.

And behind this is also the entrenched view that it is religion which must take the blame for so much violence in the world. In other words, the “doctrine” which feeds the worst kind of terrorism is necessarily religious doctrine. This unquestioned association between religion and war has been wheeled out time and time again in the media with almost no attempt to question it. Having heard this for the umpteenth time last week, I looked into it, and discovered some interesting facts. About 250 million people have been killed in the ten worst wars, massacres and atrocities in the history of the world. Of these, only 2% were killed in religiously motivated conflicts, in this case the Thirty Years War in Europe, which figures as number 10 in the list, and even then this 2% is based on what many scholars believe to be a grossly exaggerated death toll. The vast majority of deaths were the result of secular wars and exterminations, largely based on atheistic doctrines and ideologies. It is truly extraordinary how facts can be ignored in the need to confirm and strengthen cherished illusions.

I clearly haven’t the time today to unpick every example of Islamophobic discourse. This is an ongoing struggle being undertaken systematically and with increasing effectiveness and influence by the Media and Popular Culture Watch Project which is one of the major initiatives of FAIR.

But what I can do is draw your attention to some of the underlying characteristics of the way that political and social power abuse, dominance and inequality are enacted in the kind of discourse of which Islamophobia is currently a prime example. We need to understand the characteristics of such discourse, wherever it appears; we need to rigorously unpick and expose its deficiencies with the best analytical tools, to bring to light and make conscious its manipulations, because although we can of course do our own shouting in response to it, it is through the light of knowledge and understanding that we can most effectively counter it. And as the Prophet made it very clear, the “ignorant theologian” is equally damaging to Islam as the “ill-tempered scholar” or the “tyrannical leader.”

Now there is already an established academic tradition of unpicking such discourse in what is called Critical Discourse Analysis or CDA developed by such influential discourse analysts as Teun van Dijk, Professor of Discourse Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

According to Van Dijk, “much of racism is ‘learned’ by text and talk”.

CDA upholds that power relations are discursive, that is, that discourse is an instrument of ideology and is a means of perpetuating social and political inequality. Discourse analysis which unpicks the way such language works therefore has great explanatory power and is also a form of social action, because the discourse itself constitutes the society and the culture from which it emerges. I am reminded here of the words of the Prophet, who said: “Anyone of you who sees wrong, let him undo it with his hand; and if he cannot, then let him speak against it with his tongue, and if he cannot do this either, then let him abhor it with his heart, and this is the least of faith.” Critical Discourse Analysis, as a form of social action, is both undoing with the hand and speaking with the tongue.

There is an excellent survey of CDA by van Dijk with an exhaustive bibliography which is easily accessible on the following website (www.hum.uva.nl/~teun/cda.htm). This article contains a rigorous exposure of the way discourse promotes and sustains racism, by promoting prejudiced social representations shared by dominant groups (usually white, European) and based on ideologies of superiority and difference. This is done by analysing some fragments of a book misleadingly entitled The End of Racism by Dinesh D’Souza (1995), a book which embodies many of the dominant Eurocentric supremacist ideologies in the USA, and which specifically targets one minority group in the USA: African Americans. This book is one of the main documents of conservative ideology in the US and has had considerable influence on the debates on affirmative action, welfare, multiculturalism, and immigration, and on the formulation of policy to restrict the rights of minority groups and immigrants.

I emphasise here that the discursive moves and ploys used in this book are the same moves and ploys that are used in all such discourse, including Islamophobia, and I hasten to add that we should also be very clear that the same tools of analysis need equally to be brought to bear on “Westophobic” discourse and all forms of discourse which seek to foment strife, division, hatred and confrontation. If I make a strong case against Islamophobia today, this does not mean that I do not value the strengths of Western civilisation.

Here are some of these discursive moves and ploys , as identified in van Dijk’s analysis of just a few fragments of D’Souza’s book. I’ll point up as far as I can the way in which these ploys are also used in Islamophobic discourse, but I hope you will make your own connections too.

Denial, mitigation, euphemization, and explaining away

By denying, mitigating, euphemising or explaining away your own defects you make them invisible or harmless. A characteristic ploy here is to generalise or universalise them or make them seem natural. Thus, we are told that racism is “a rational and scientific response” to primitive peoples and was in any case “widespread among other peoples”. Thus, racism is an ‘all too human’ characteristic of ethnocentricism. It is simply ‘caring for one’s own’. In this way, generalisation is made to appear as explanation. Van Dijk claims that this is “one of the most common moves of ideological legitimation: abuse of power is not a self-serving, negative characteristic of dominant groups” but is innate, “genetically pre-programmed” and “biologically inevitable”, so there is nothing we can do about it.

“The Greeks were ethnocentric, they showed a preference for their own. Such tribalism they would have regarded as natural, and indeed we now know that it is universal.” (533)

Notice the use of positive-sounding words like “human”, “natural” and “universal” to give respectability, even nobility, to tribalism. And how often have we been told in recent days how “natural” revenge is, and how “universal” and “humane” are the principles enshrined in the self-image of the West and supported by the whole “international community”, whatever that is.

Mitigation and denial is also accomplished through the use of euphemisms, that is the substitution of mild, polite, saccharine, evasive or roundabout words for more direct and honest ones. We have become more familiar with this ploy, and the related one of omission of key words, through the honesty and integrity of those journalists who are trying to use words to tell the truth.

Here are some familiar examples, with thanks to Brian Whitaker, among others:

targeted killing (assassination/murder by death squads/extra-judicial killing/execution)

collateral damage (civilian casualties)

killed in crossfire (shot by soldiers or snipers)

respond (attack)

settler (illegal settler)

areas (communities/neighbourhoods) – the implication here is that people who live in “areas” are less civilised than those who live in communities or neighbourhoods.

suburbs (illegal settlements)

the international community (the West?)

a divided city (a city with 99.8% Arabs)

disputed territory (illegally occupied territory)

provocative act (criminal act according to international law)

There is a novel justification for euphemisms which I have recently heard from journalists. Apparently, column inches dictate that shorter terms have to be used to save space. “Settler” is only two syllables, whereas “illegal settler” is five, so the use of “settler” saves space. If so, why are the long words “neighbourhoods” and “communities” used to describe where the in-group lives , whereas “areas” is used for the out-group? Why, indeed, are the six syllables of “Islamic Terrorists” used in a headline on Thursday when space would have been saved by using only the three syllables of “Terrorists”?

And why is the mouthful “international community” used in cases where it clearly refers to “The West”?

Another well-known argumentative ploy is to invoke ignorance.

“It is impossible to answer the question of how much racism exists in the United States because nobody knows how to measure racism and no unit exists for calibrating such measurements.” (276)

Notice the use of academic jargon, and the appeal to scientific credibility. This is a clever ploy because, in a culture mesmerised by the supposed omniscience of scientists, most people dare not question “lack of scientific evidence”. By the same token, we can pretend to ignore the existence of all manner of self-evident and awkward truths, including the very existence of Islamophobia, under the banner of scientific respectability.

Positive Self-Presentation

Self-glorification is one of the most obvious and characteristic way to promote a positive self-image, and D’Souza’s book is full of glowing admiration for Western culture and accomplishments.

“What distinguished Western colonialism was neither occupation nor brutality but a countervailing philosophy of rights that is unique in human history” (354) – and by the way, colonialism is also legitimated in terms of scientific curiosity.

We are entitled to say in response to this that the supposedly unique philosophy of rights so selflessly propagated by Western colonialism was in fact prefigured and surpassed in the first truly pluralistic society established by the Prophet in 7th century Medinah, a vision which nurtured those splendid multicultural and multi-faith civilisations in Islamic Spain, Sicily, the Levant, and in the Mughul and Ottoman Empires.

“”Abolition [of slavery] constitutes one of the greatest moral achievements of Western civilisation” (112) – notice here this extraordinary reversal used to enhance the positive characteristics of European civilisation, which sits oddly with the justification and mitigation of racism as a natural and all too human inclination.

We are all familiar now with the vocabulary of self-glorification, first in the recent debates about multiculturalism which have included explicit assertions of the superiority of the supposedly mono-cultural virtues of “Englishness”, and more recently in reactions to the atrocities in America, which have included insistent repetition of words like “civilised”, “freedom”, “humanity” and of “good” versus “evil”. And on Thursday, we heard the Italian Prime Minister explicitly ascribe “superiority” and “supremacy” to the West over Islam. It has been encouraging to see that there is not a single political leader who has supported his completely out-of-tune remarks, and it was good to hear British government ministers, including David Blunkett and Claire Short, repudiate them yesterday as “offensive, inaccurate and unhelpful”. But it has raised a new discussion in the media about the differences between Islam and the West and once again all kinds of colourful figures are wheeled out to give their opinions on Islam. I heard one such figure on the Today programme yesterday, having flippantly admitted that he knew very little either about women or Islam, proclaim that the main difference between Islam and the West was the fact that women in Islam were 3rd class citizens. The implication was quite clear: the West is superior to Islam for this reason. Notice the appeal to the moral high ground in this kind of self-referential and self-congratulatory superiority.

To bring some light into this discussion, I recommend a look at the website of the Australian Psychological Society, particularly the section on Language, Social Representations and the media (www.aps.psychsociety.com.au/member/racism/sec3.html) which makes a very clear statement of the way in which “the media are cultural products central to the construction of social realities and to communication between groups and across cultures…..Media coverage of group differences, and often group conflicts, tend to highlight and exaggerate, oversimplify and caricaturise such differences”. A classic study from 1961 of this phenomenon is on cross-national images of the ‘enemy’ which showed that the cold-war images US citizens had of Russia were virtually identical, or the ‘mirror image’ of the views that the Russians had of the US.

The same source makes an important statement about “political correctness”. It can be anticipated that some commentators will suggest that the reluctance of other political leaders to endorse the Italian Prime Minister’s remarks is merely a matter of “political correctness”. It is important to realise that “while genuine political correctness can be a strong force in encouraging more humane reasonable and human behaviour, it is invariably represented by opponents as undermining free speech in the service of minority group interests….Dismissals of genuine and effective anti-racism initiatives as ‘merely’ politically correct thus legitimises racial intolerance….”.

Derogation and Demonisation of the Others

Now, van Dijk pointedly remarks that “it is only one step from an assertion of national or cultural pride and self-glorification to feelings of superiority, derogation and finally the marginalisation and exclusion of the Others”. And indeed, I would add not only marginalisation and exclusion, but ultimately persecution and genocide. We can go directly here to Islamophobic discourse without referring to van Dijk’s analysis.

A classic example is the shaping by Serbian orientalists of a “stereotypical image of Muslims as alien, inferior and threatening” which “helped to create a condition of virtual paranoia among the Serbs”2. As I have said, this is a pathological condition, and its pathology is absolutely transparent in its good vs. evil, “us and them” language. And language which uses the rhetoric of “either you’re with us or against us” partakes of the same psychically fragmented condition. It has been extraordinary to see the hatred which has been aroused by those who have refused to submit to this oppressive, self-righteous and divided mentality and have been courageous and clear-thinking enough to say so. Tony Benn is an example, and the furore he caused on Newsnight on Thursday night, while always retaining his own dignity, could not even be contained by the No. 1 hard man, Jeremy Paxman.

As is true of virtually all of the people of Europe, including the English, today’s Bosnian Muslims are an amalgam of various ethnic origins. Yet what the Serbs did was to differentiate and isolate the Muslim community “by creating “a straw-man Islam and Muslim stereotype” and “setting and emphasising cultural markers” which focused on Islam and the Muslims as alien, culturally and morally inferior, threatening and, of course, exotic, but in a perverse, negative way. The Serbs applied the label “Islamic fundamentalist” freely to all Muslims, who were seen as reflections of the “darkness of the past”. They claimed that “in Islamic teaching, no woman has a soul”; that “the tone of the Qur’an is openly authoritarian, uncompromising and menacing”; that the reading of the traditional tales in A Thousand and One Nights predisposed Muslims (in their words gave “subliminal direction” to the Muslims) to torture and kill Christians; that the destruction of places of worship belonging to other faiths is an obligation on all Muslims; that the “banning of tourism and sports” in Islam inevitably led to “xenophobia” and “segregation”, and so on.

It is quite clear that these Serbian orientalists, “ by bending scholarship and blending it with political rhetoric….defined Islam and the local Muslim community in such a way as to contribute significantly to…. making genocide acceptable”. And what allowed them to play such a role? It was “the extensive media exposure they enjoyed in Serbia”, as much as “their participation in official propaganda campaigns abroad”.

At this point, I will not trouble to examine the profusion of derogatory statements which have been made against Islam and Muslims not only in the last two weeks, but over the last ten years. I will only point to the evidence of how the distorted analysis of Islam by the Serbs, played out in the media, made the transition from pseudo-scholarly anlaysis to advocacy of violence and ultimately to genocide. Such is the outcome of words used without truth or responsibility. To see so many stereotypes in the Western press so similar to those invented by the Serbs is quite chilling.

Other discursive structures, strategies and moves I can only touch on these here. They include:

The rhetoric of repetition, emphatic hyperbole (exaggeration), ridicule, metaphor, association and blaming the victim.

Repetition: An American politician referred to the attack on America as an attack on the “civilised world”, “civilised countries” and “civilised peoples”, all in one sentence.

Hyperbole: A common one is that Muslims want to rule the world (warnings like this are regularly broadcast in national newspapers in Germany by Dr. Peter Frisch, head of the Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Pretection of the Constitution).

Ridicule: “Islam Week brought us the wonders of mosques and Mecca…. taking in – ho, ho, ho! – a Muslim football team….” (Julie Birchill, Guardian Weekend, 18 August, 2001)

Metaphor: “While the history of other religions is one of moving forward out of oppressive darkness and into tolerance, Islam is doing it the other way around.” (Birchill, op. cit.). Notice here the characteristic “darkness” metaphor, one of those favoured by the Serbs.

Association: (referring to Jools Holland’s Rhythms of Islam in the BBC’s Islam UK Week): “Mind you, I did briefly start to feel sorry for them here: any espousal of one’s cause by the terminally naff Holland must surely kill its cred stone dead.” (Birchill, op. cit.)

Blaming the Victim: even in such atrocious acts as those committed in Molln and Solingen where Turkish people were burnt alive (Europe’s Islamophobia by Sameera Mian in Muslim News, 28 November, 1997).

The well-known argumentative ploy of casual reference to “scholarly” studies so as to give weight and authority to fallacious arguments.

The use of presuppositions and premises which are taken to be held by everybody: “We all know that….”, “The reality is….”, “The truth is….”,

The familiar disclaimer of the apparent concession: “Of course there is some prejudice, but….”

The number game of comparative statistics – always used in favour of the dominant group.

After this focused linguistic analysis , I would like to finish by affirming the wider spiritual perspective which must inform this discussion. Years ago, when I was lecturing in Psycholinguistics at the University of Edinburgh, I had a strong academic interest in the relationship between language and mind, language and attitude, and language and prejudice, but it is only in recent years in my engagement with the faith, knowledge and civilisation of Islam that I have begun to understand how vital it is to understand the nature of language from a spiritual perspective and how sacred is that trust borne by all of us who use language to inform, educate, influence and persuade others.

And to use words like “spiritual” and “sacred” in relation to the use of language is simply another way of saying that to use language wisely and well is the mark of the fully human being.

The Greeks also understood well the responsibility imposed on mankind by the gift of language and the fierce debates about the role of rhetoric were most notably expressed and distilled in Plato’s affirmation that philosophical dialectic (that is the testing process of critical enquiry through discussion) is utterly distinct from and immeasurably superior to rhetoric, which, if not firmly subordinated to knowledge and reason, is roundly condemned as nakedly exploitative emotional manipulation.

It is this legacy which has ultimately ensured that “in the contemporary usage of all modern European languages….the word rhetorical is unfailingly pejorative [i.e. disparaging, negative]. It implies “ dissembling, manipulative abuse of linguistic resources for self-serving ends, usually in the political context…”1 How often have we heard in recent weeks from intelligent commentators of the dangers of “cranking up” the rhetoric and the need to “tone it down” in the interests of reason, restraint and proportionality. And, sad to say, how often have we heard too a new version of Orwellian Newspeak which admits only one version of reality, only one interpretation of events, and which discredits all alternative perspectives as evidence of complicity with terrorists.

And let us not forget the use and abuse of images as well as words in our increasingly visual culture. By “language” I mean both the verbal and the visual vocabulary and syntax. We are entitled to ask what on earth is implied by the juxtaposition of a picture of Muslim women praying next to an article entitled “Cradles of Fanaticism”. This speaks for itself. The intention is very clear. In this equation, to pray is to be fanatical. Elementary logic tells me that this must mean that all people from all religious traditions who pray are fanatics. This is the kind of shameful material I would have used when as a teacher of English I taught young people how to recognise the way they were manipulated by propaganda in the media. I wanted them to gain the essential critical thinking skills, as well as the qualities of empathy, tolerance and respect for diversity, which are presumably valued by civilised, humane and freedom-loving peoples.

But it is important to realise that from an Islamic perspective language is not just a tool of critical enquiry, rational debate and discussion which advances human knowledge, important as this is, but is a divine gift to mankind, a mark of his special status in the divine order.

The Qur’an says that God “imparted unto Adam the names of all things” (2:31). On one level this can be interpreted as the capacity for conceptual thought which is empowered through the definition and distinction inherent in naming, a capacity not shared even by the angels, who are commanded to prostrate themselves before Adam in recognition of his status as Khalïfah, or vicegerent, a term denoting man’s stewardship of the earth as a consequence of his being made in the image of God.

In another sense, the names are the letters from which all words are constructed (notice how we name the letters – we say alif, ba, alpha, beta, and so on). The proportioned script of Arabic lettering has the remarkable property that the shapes of all the other letters are generated in strict geometric proportionality by the alif (or more correctly from the dot, which defines the length and surface area of the alif). This is what gives Arabic calligraphy its sublime visual harmony. Alif is the first letter, the upright stroke, symbolic of our erect, Adamic, human nature orientated vertically towards remembrance of our divine origin.

We have heard much in recent days from politicians, military strategists, commentators and the general public about the need for a “proportional response”. Everyone with humanity feels this instinctively, because it part of the innate disposition (fitra) of the human being who is created, as the Qur’an says, “in due measure and proportion”. But proportionality in Islam is not just a quantitative and material matter, a question of deployment of forces. It is a qualitative matter, a defining marker of human character and spirituality, which in its primordial condition is in a state of balance and equilibrium.

So the “names” are not simply tools for logical thinking, for making fine distinctions. From an Islamic perspective, letters and words are the very substance of the created universe, emanating from the Divine Word which is the origin of all creation and in which all concepts find unity and reconciliation. It is therefore a sacred trust to use words which are fair, fitting, balanced, equitable and just, words which are in “due measure and proportion.”

In this conception of language, the letter is not an inanimate component of an abstract concept, but is a living entity, and the words which are formed from these letters, the phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs have the power to diminish or enhance our humanity. The word is in fact a deed, an act in itself, which carries the same responsibility as that taken in doing and acting. We have the expression “in word and in deed” and this encapsulates this wisdom, this convergence between speech and action.

“Art thou not aware how God sets forth the parable of the good word? [It is] like a good tree, firmly rooted, [reaching out] with its branches towards the sky, yielding its fruit at all times by its Sustainer’s leave. And [thus it is that] God propounds parables unit men, so that they might bethink themselves [of the truth]. And the parable of the corrupt word is that of a corrupt tree, torn up [from its roots] onto the face of the earth, wholly unable to endure.” (Qur’an 14:24-26).

Correctives must always be applied to what is out of balance. Islamophobia is a reality and it needs to be corrected, not by using the word itself as a label to stifle just criticism, not by defensive hostility, and not by shouting louder, but by knowledge, by reason, by detailed work, and above all by the example of our own humanity.

Jeremy Henzell-Thomas

Bath, 28 September 2001

Dr Jeremy Henzell-Thomas is Chair of the Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism (FAIR) and the Executive Director of the Book Foundation. He has worked in education for many years, having taught at primary, secondary and tertiary levels, both in the U.K. and overseas. Most recently he has held a lectureship in Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh and the post of Director of Studies at an UK independent school.

1. Robert Wardy, Chapter on Rhetoric (page 465) in Greek Thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge, edited by Jacques Brunschwig and Geoffrey E.R. Lloyd. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2000.

2. Norman Cigar, The Role of Serbian Orientalists in Justification of Genocide Against Muslims of the Balkans, Islamic Quarterly: Review of Islamic Culture, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3, 1994.

Islam and the Race Question

The racialized discourse prevalent in our own era has over the centuries proven alien to the societies which developed under the inspiration of Islam. Even more alien to those societies has been the tendency found in the West to articulate personal identity almost entirely in racial terms. For in racialized nations like the United States, Europe, South Africa or the Caribbean, appearance or physical attributes, such as hair, skin and bone structure, have been more consequential, more starkly invested with social signficance, than anything else such as family, wealth culture education or personal achievement.

It goes without saying that this investing of bodily marks with so high a degree of significance is sociogenic in origin and not phylogenic. To think otherwise would be to place racism beyond the possibility of eradication. It is a historical accident, not a necessity  of nature, that produces racist perceptions, actions and discourse. Some historians say that the concept of race did not enter European consciousness until the fifteen century. But certainly, by the midpoint of the nineteenth century Benjamin Disraeli could declare that “all is race.” That is, the basic human condition—and thus economic, political, scientific and cultural positions—are taken to be determined by race. So by the twentieth century, Cromer and Balfour, the most highly-esteemed of British colonial administrators, took it as a matter of course that Europeans and the English in particular, were the master race. All others were “subject races.”

The contrast with societies that grew up under the influence of Islam is considerable. Although Islamic so­ci­ety was multi-racial from the beginning, in none of the regions where the religion became dominant did the concept of race enter Muslim consciousness. In fact, Arabic had no word at this time which would correspond to the semantic range covered by the English word “race.” The word that is sometimes translated as “race” in versions of Classical Arabic texts is “jins” or “genus.” “Jins” is a classificatory term taken over from Aristotelian science and is used regularly in Islamic law, for example, to define the value of commodities. For example, the eleventh-century Transoxianian jurist Abu Bakr as-Sarakhsi, who writes:

The free and the slave are of one genus. As far as his origin is concerned, the human being is free. Slavery intervenes as an accident . . . So slavery does not bring about a change in genus. (Kitab al-Mabsut (Beirut: 1398/1978) XII, 83-84.)

In the fifteenth century, as racist ideology emerged in the West, the Muslim Ottoman empire was also coming on the scene. “Racism”, however, could not have formed part of its legitimating apparatus. It formed no part of the Ottoman Muslim legacy.

Of course, social differentiation did and does exist amongst Muslim peoples. This cannot be denied. In the tribal society in which Islam was born there existed differences in social status between the various tribes. Moreover, the societies of the Roman, Persian and Indian worlds where Islam planted its roots were highly articulated in terms of occupational differentiation. But while we find instances of discriminatory exclusion founded on a people’s social standing, this did not take on a predominantly racial character.

The Egalitarian Consciousness of Islam

Wherever Islam put down roots, Muslims grew to believe that discriminatory exclusion based on race was fundamentally alien to the spirit of their faith. This is understandable, given that there is almost a logical connection between affirming the oneness of God and upholding the equality of human beings before Him. We read, for example, in Islam’s sacred book, the Qur’an: “O Humankind! We have created you from male and female and have made you into peoples (shu‘ub) and tribes (qaba’il) that you may know one another; truly, the noblest (akram) among you before God are the most pious (atqa) among yourselves; indeed, is God the All-knowing, the All-seeing.” (49:13).  This verse was revealed immediately after the triumphant entry of the Prophet (on him be God’s blessing and peace) into Mecca. After a declaration of immunity from reprisal offered to the tribes of Mecca that had fought against him, the Prophet requested Bilal the Abyssinian to call the people to prayer. A group of three new Muslims saw this. One of them remarked how happy he was that his parents were not present to see such a disgusting sight. Another one, Harith ibn Hisham found it remarkable that the Blessed Prophet could find no-one other than a black to call the Muslims to prayer. Yet another, Abu Sufyan, abstained from making any adverse comment lest God send a revelation to Muhammad to deal with what he said. The sources record that God did indeed send the angel of revelation, Gabriel, to inform the Prophet of the discussion that had just taken place. The Prophet asked the three men about their conversation and they confirmed to the Prophet exactly what Gabriel had told him. This verse of the Qur’an was subsequently revealed because these three Arab men were discriminating between themselves and Bilal, an African. God revealed this verse to proclaim that the only criterion He uses to judge between believers is that of piety, a virtue which Bilal possessed and the three men did not.

Qur’an 49:13 has played a central role in Muslim discourse on the race question. Despite the circumstances of its revelation, there are interpretations which suggest that it refers to tribalism and not to race as such. This is because of the reference it makes to tribes, or “qaba’il.” Admittedly, because race calls upon kinship, this may seem a distinction without a difference. In any case, on this reading the word translated as peoples (shu‘ub) will mean “tribal confederacy” inasmuch as the singular form sha‘b signifies “a collecting” or “separating” and thus by extension came to denote genealogical units that resulted from the branching-off of earlier units. Earlier commentators like Sufyan ath-Thawri (d.777) state that “The shu‘ub are like the tribes Tamim and Bakr and the qaba’il are subtribes.” Tabari, (d.923), the great lawyer and historian, accordingly glosses this verse as follows:

We have caused you to be related in genealogy. Some of you are related to others remotely … When it says “That you may come to know each other” it means “That you may know each other with respect to genealogy … not because you have any superiority to others in that respect nor any nearness which will bring you closer to God, but because The most distinguished amongst you is the most pious amongst yourselves. (Jami¢ al-bayan ‘an ta’wil ai al-Qur’an (Cairo: 1373/1854) II, 138ff).

On this interpretation the Qur’an seems to legitimate people formulating personal-identity through the mediation of institutional resources of recognition and authorization. That is, it pronounces as legitimate an identity that locates each person in a given social grouping. Hence the words “That you may come to know each other” are taken to be a condemnation of ignorance of family lines without which a lawful life in Islam would be impossible, since if people ignored their genealogies, they would be unable to distribute inheritance or avoid marriage within the forbidden degrees.

Furthermore, it appears that the Blessed Prophet did affirm the benefit of genealogical knowledge when he said: “Know concerning your genealogies that by which you may make your ties of blood kinship close; for close ties of kinship are a cause of love amongst family.” But the stated motivation for mutual knowledge here is love. After all, the Blessed Prophet had announced, “The believers, in their love, mutual kindness, and close ties, are like one body; when any part complains, the whole body responds to it with wakefulness and fever” [Source: Muslim’s Sahih]. Hence it does not seem too much to interpret the phrase in Qur’an: “That you may come to know each other” as advancing mutual knowledge as a motivating force for mutual love. Knowledge of one’s particular ties of kinship would be only one means of accomplishing this, given that the entire human race descends from a common ancestor. The latter idea harmonises with the Prophet’s address in his farewell pilgrimage to which we will turn in a moment.

Giving ground to a more universalising interpretation of Qur’an 39:13 are glosses like that of al-Qushayri (d.1071) quoted in al-Qurtubi’s Jami‘ ahkam al-Qur’an (Cairo: 1387/1967) XVI, which stress the idea that “The shu‘ub are those the origins of whose genealogy (nasab) are unknown like the Indians and the Iranians and the Turks.” This reading emphasises the relevance for some commentators of Qur’an 39:13 to racism. For example, Abu’l-Futuh ar-Razi, the eleventh century commentator on the Qur’an in Persian (Rawh al-jinan (Tehran, 1383/1963-64) X, 261), wrote: “The shu‘ub are those whose relations are not described in terms of a person but in terms of a city (shahr) or land (zamin). Tribes are those which describe their relations in terms of ancestors (pidaran).” When he comes to the verse “And their Lord has hearkened unto them, I will not suffer the pious deed performed by anyone amongst you, either male or female, to be lost. The one of you is of the other” (3: 195) he glosses it as follows: “‘All men are one in respect to their innate nature in my sight’ as Muhammad—peace be upon him, said— ‘People are like the teeth of a comb’ that is, in respect to their innate natures.” (Rawh al-jinan, III, 136.)

If someone is a person of distinction, then, it is not because of race or genealogy. After all, a bad man may be wealthy and have prominent forebears and a good one may be poor and quite obscure in origin. Yet for all that he can be a human being of outstanding moral character. Commenting on 39:13 Fakhr ad-DÏn ar-Razi (d.1210) in his at-Tafsir al-Kabir (Cairo, 1933, XXVIII, 136) says: “People are equal insofar as they are irreligious and impious.” What makes them different is the content of their moral character.

Razi goes on to comment that when the verse proclaims “We have created you from male and female”, the preferred interpretation is that all humankind are descended from Adam and Eve. Hence we have no reason to boast because of our social standing, since we are sons and daughters of the same man and woman. Another interpretation is that human beings constitute one race because all human beings are offspring of one male and female.

The sentiments of the Qur’an are echoed in the proclamation of the Blessed Prophet during his farewell pilgrimage:

Oh humankind, your Lord is one and your ancestors are one. You are from Adam and Adam was from dust. Behold, neither the Arab has superiority to the non-Arab, nor the red to the black nor the black to the red except by virtue of piety (taqwa). Truly the most distinguished amongst you is the most pious.

The Prophet here makes the logical connection between monotheism and race of which I spoke earlier. Moreover, his language here is similar to that in a tradition transmitted on the authority of Abu Musa where the Prophet—on him be peace—says: “An Arab is no better than a non-Arab. Conversely, a non-Arab is no better than an Arab. A red-raced man is not better than a black one except in piety. Humanity are all Adam’s children and Adam was created out of clay.” [Sahihs of Bukhari and Muslim.] The Prophet’s language also shows that when it comes to discrimination, he has in mind not simply tribalism but also that type of differential exclusion that invests bodily marks with social significance. For the “black” and the “red” are usually taken to mean the Arabs and the Persians respectively, that is, those who relate their personal identity to a tribal grouping and those who relate it to a place or nation.

Razi ends his reflections on verse 49:13 with a story illustrative of the way he understands the Qur’an at this point. He writes:

I heard that one of the nobles in Central Asia [Khurasan] was with respect to his genealogy the closest of people to Ali—on him be peace—[the fourth Caliph of Islam] but he was corrupt morally (fasiq). There was a black former slave (mawla) who was pre-eminent both for his learning (‘ilm) and practice [of Islam] (‘amal). The people [of the locale] liked to seek [the shaykh’s] blessing. It came to pass that one day he set out to the mosque and the people followed him. The nobleman, in a state of obvious inebriation, came upon him. The people pushed the nobleman out of the way [of the shaykh]. But the nobleman overtook them and grabbing the shaykh’s arm, cried: ‘O Black one …  infidel and son of an infidel! I am a son of the Messenger of God. Humble yourself and show some respect!’ … The people beat the nobleman. But the shaykh said: “No! This is to be tolerated from him for the sake of his ancestor. Beating him is to be reckoned according to his sin. However, O nobleman, I am white within but black without. People behold the whiteness of my heart behind the blackness of my face … I have taken the path of your father and you have taken the path of my father. People see me in the path of your father and see you in the path of my father. They deem me a son of your father and you, a son of my father.

This story is in a real way illustrative of the exact importance Muslims throughout the ages have placed upon race in their daily lives.

Yet this was the spirit of Islam that the Prophet Muhammad taught, as we see from the tradition found in Ibn al-Mubarak’s (d.797) book, Kitab al-Birr wa’l-Sila. This relates that when some disagreement occurred between Abu Dharr and Bilal, the former said to the latter: “You son of a black woman!” The Messenger of God—on him be blessing and peace—was displeased by Abu Dharr’s comment and he  rebuked him by saying: “That is too much, Abu Dharr. He who has a white mother has no advantage which makes him better than the son of a black mother.” The Prophet’s rebuke deeply affected Abu Dharr and he immediately threw himself to the ground, swearing that he would not raise it until Bilal had put his foot over his head.

Does Islamic Monotheism Facilitate the Articulation of Racism?

Still, one may wonder how far the proposed logical connection between monotheism and egalitarianism works as an antidote to racist beliefs. Does Islam offer a conceptual barrier to them, or facilitate their articulation? Recently, efforts have been made to dismantle the impediments to tolerance in our increasingly global age. The hope behind these efforts is that with a better grasp of the roots of intolerance we will be better able to establish a genuinely ecumenical framework for living with our differences. Into this effort one must place Regina Schwartz, who argues that “through the dissemination of the Bible in Western culture, its narratives have become the foundation of a prevailing understanding of ethnic, religious, and national identity as defined negatively; over against others. We are ‘us’ because we are not ‘them’, Israel is not Egypt.” (The Curse of Cain. The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), X.)

The well-known Egyptologist Jan Assmann has also argued that monotheism has been the single most important impediment to cross-cultural translation, communication and understanding, and, for this reason, the single most influential source of negativity and intolerance. According to Assmann, it is only with monotheism that we encounter the phenomenon of a “counter-religion”, by which he means a religious formation that posits a distinction between true and false religion. Before the emergence of monotheism, the boundaries between polytheistic cults were in principle open. Translatability is readily grounded in a general function attributed to divinities whose work in nature shows a correspondence. “The polytheistic religions overcame the primitive ethnocentrism of tribal religions by distinguishing several deities by name, shape and function,” Assmann writes, “the names are of course different … But the functions are strikingly similar” [so that] “the sun god of one religion is easily equated to the sun god of another religion. In contrast, monotheism, because revealed and not grounded in nature, erects a rigid boundary between true religion and everything else. Whereas polytheism …  rendered different cultures mutually transparent and compatible, the new counter-religion blocked inter-cultural translatability. False gods cannot be translated.” (Moses the Egyptian. The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).)

Schwartz’s and Assmann’s understanding is grounded in what they take to be a pluralism demanded by today’s increasing global consciousness. For them, racial conflicts are generated through cultural and religious differences, the unwillingness to see the other as oneself. The other is just like oneself. His or her strangeness is simply a function of a different vocabulary. Strangeness comprises a different set of names that can always be translated. This seems to work when we are speaking of the abstract entities divine names signify: the natural functions of divinities. But then the individuality of the divinities seems exhaustible in the plethora of generalities we use in describing those functions. The reason why the ancient pagan gods enjoy the inter-substitutability of which Assmann speaks is that they were perceived as manifestations of rather general traits.

But it would seem that what people find most repugnant about racism is its easy generalisations about others, as though people of a certain race were inter-substitutable or as if one member of a given race were replaceable by another. Yet persons are irreplaceable like nothing is, like nothing else can be. The American philosopher Stanley Cavell notes this in his observation that the pre-Civil War American slaveowner did not deny the humanity of his slave (The Claim of Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979) p. 376). When he took a slave as concubine he did not think that he had embraced bestiality. He did not go to such lengths to convert his horses to Christianity or to prevent their getting wind of it. “It could be said,” Cavell writes, “that what he denies is that the slave is other …  to his one.” [Ibid.] That is, he denies that the slave has his own (i.e., the slave owner’s) sense of being singular and unique. But when Qur’an 39:13 enjoins us to know one another as members of different races it is not as instances of a set of general racial characteristics. It enjoins us to know each other as the unique, irreplaceable individuals that we are. This is why I have argued for the logical connexion of Islamic monotheism and egalitarianism. For in the uniqueness of the Creator we find the model of the uniquness of the human individual.

Here, cultural critic Slavoj Zizek’s reflections are helpful. He suggests that since every language, by definition, contains an space open to what eludes our grasp where words fail, we effectively understand a foreign culture when we are able to identify that language’s points of failure when we are able to apprehend its blind spots. Hence, we should not focus on the peculiarity of a people’s customs, but endeavour to encircle that which eludes the grasp of the people themselves, the point at which the Other is in itself dislocated. “I understand the Other,” Zizek writes, “when I become aware of how the very problem that was bothering me … is already bothering the Other itself” (The Abyss of Freeedom/Ages of the World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997, p.50). For intercultural understanding, then, demands that we go to those places where each of one of us becomes an enigma to him- or herself. For in the “we” of community there always inheres a strangeness, a space inside us where group identity fails and eludes the grasp of institutionally or religiously created solidarities.

It is this strangeness to which the Prophet Muhammad alluded when he said: “Islam began as something strange and shall again become strange. Blessed be those who are strange.” Someone asked: “In what way are they strange, O Messenger of God?” In one narration the Prophet replied: “Just as one says of a man that he is strange vis-à-vis a certain tribe.” Islam at its most ideal level, then, must be strange to an identity mediated by institutional resources of recognition. For this is like the identity of tribal membership, which is opposed to the ethic of singularity which the Prophet taught. The idea that “We are ‘us’ because we are not ‘them’”, therefore, is foreign to Islam. Solidarity amongst groups created on the basis of racial, tribal or even religious identity in Arabic is called Asabiyya. But of the latter the Prophet said: “He is not one us who calls for Asabiyya,  or who fights for Asabiyya or who dies for  Asabiyya.” (Narrated in the Sunan of Abu Dawud.)

Malaysia in the 21st Century

Malaysia’s position in the world at the present time is as unique as it is strategic. The country has earned for itself a voice in international affairs. Although the former Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir, never hesitated in many circumstances to voice vehement criticism of the Western world, its structures, strategies and modus operandi, this has not until now created an impression of Malaysia being irrationally anti-Western, anti-American, etc as has been the experience of many other “Muslim” or “Third world” countries. This must be seen as an achievement in itself.Malaysia’s relative autonomy in outspoken opinion and hence its influence in international ears and arenas is no doubt partly but not entirely due to Malaysia’s economic progress over the past few decades. This has commanded some degree of respect from the West and open admiration from nations of the South.

There are, however a number of other elements that contribute to Malaysia’s success in international affairs. Among these would be the quality and consistency of Malaysia’s diplomacy (including public relations) and the stability of Malaysia’s internal social and political climate including the very real achievement of inter-communal harmony so characteristic of Malaysian life.

International political positioning and image-making is a continual and delicate process, affected by changing perceived national interests and priorities, political alliances and the like. It is a constant matching of how the nation sees itself with how the world views the nation. Except perhaps for the very powerful, few nations can afford to rest on its laurels of achievements to maintain or enhance its overall image and respect in international eyes. The image makers and spin doctors (i.e. the more enlightened generation of modern propagandists) are constantly translating national achievements into PR imaging for international consumption. Of course; it is among governments’ duties to maintain these achievements as well as to nurture new ones. It goes without saying that many national achievements are conceived and attained purely with Public Relations aims in mind. For instance the benefits of constructing a Formula 1 racing circuit in Malaysia may seem putative. But there is a rationale. The rewards of maintaining or obtaining good Public relations imaging are not always immediately apparent in either “real terms” or, as one says in ICT, in “real time”.

Projects which are productive in PR terms may be (and usually are) on the level of economic development, scientific progress or industrial prowess in a certain field. Space projects are clearly and literally the highest vehicle for national PR imaging. Less tangible ones but equally as effective, if well managed and well aimed PR is deployed, may be in such areas as education and general educational standards, “openness” of society, tourism, cultural assets and cultural exports, especially those which have a “universal” interest or into which a “universal interpretation” can be inferred. Media exports constitute a prime PR vehicle which may well have the added advantage of being highly profitable.

There is another factor not to be ignored in international imaging: Diversity. A “developed” nation is perhaps characterized by the diversity and range of what that country has to offer. This may be in terms of products, services or activities, commercial, intellectual or recreational. Nations which are apparently “single product” or “single interest” nations hardly earn the respect nor even the interest from powerful modern nations. The derisive description for such nations in international diplomacy might be “Banana republics”. In the subtle world of national imaging; for a nation to be classed as such would be considered as a worst scenario and a PR disaster. “Oil kingdom” is not very far removed from “Banana Republic” as a PR epithet in international relations. There is no need to explain which nations can be described thus and thereby succinctly assessed complete with pejorative innuendoes. Try as they may to build museums out of the sand and promote their culture to balance out their image, the slant of “oil kingdom” remains. Wealth per se is not a PR image to be relied on. To anyone with minimal experience of human nature knows well that an excess of money in someone else’s pocket more often provokes jealousy, envy, obsequiousness at the best or at the worst predatory aggression in the heart of another, but rarely admiration unless there is something else to recommend by.

It took a long time for Western nations to reckon with Japan in relatively equal face-to-face terms. International appreciation of Japanese poetry, the spiritual traditions of Zen Buddhism, Japanese gardens and living space design, art films and quality documentaries, martial arts as well as scientific research in botany, climatic and seismic activity, probably contributed to this process as much as micro-electronics, efficient industrial production, management and sheer economic might. The West has had a better chance since the 2^nd world war to look into Japanese culture with a more balanced and detailed approach. Any nation with its own culture, history and which has any vision of its own role in the world should take careful note of this when conceiving PR priorities and reverse-translate these into real projects.

The chauvinism of Western culture is well known as well as Western nations’ notorious intolerance of differences perceived in foreigners who venture into their lands. However, kept at a safe distance, cultural differences and otherness are not only expected in other nations – but even required. This is what tourism (including “arm chair” tourism) is all about.

Malaysia is uniquely endowed with many priceless assets of natural interest and “bio-diversity”. Some priceless tracts of primeval virgin tropical rain forest remain, although many are severely threatened with what one glibly calls “development”. The continued destruction of invaluable forest assets is often defended in deliberate defiance of international (mostly western, of course) calls to stop. The attitude taken is “See what they have done withtheir own forests and now they are interfering in our affairs. They tell us how to organize ourselves, depriving us of the possibility of developing ournation and exploiting our own resources in our own way” There may well be justification for this attitude. Nothing, however justifies “cutting off the nose to spite the face” nor one’s neighbour’s face. If one considers the extent of the treasures which are being pillaged just for timber and fast cash, which like fast food nourishes only instantly, minimally and unhealthily, one has to think again. Certainly the way in which these assets are used to enhance Malaysia’s economy and/or reputation must be carefully considered in order to avoid international ridicule and scorn. When treasures such as the Belum rainforest are lost forever it will not be a laughing matter for Malaysia.

Some of these primeval tropical rain forests are among the oldest existing in the world, with a history of millions of years! They are unique both for the flora and fauna and orang asli (indigenous people) that they contain, many of which are yet to be discovered and recorded. Clearly these assets constitute a global heritage of no small importance. The peoples who live within these forests since the time of Adam and the Garden, one might say with reason, embody living reflections of man’s primordial past, the loss of which would be inestimable and irretrievable.

Even the currently fashionable catch word of “sustainable” development or exploitation describes the most horrendous pillage of natural treasures and the national heirloom. Replanting rarely occurs as promised by companies in for a quick buck and in any case how does one replant rare or unique species? The case for the enlightened, innovative and effective conservation of such places is crystal clear and should be given serious moralpriority. For this particular heirloom is as much spiritual as it is real and tangible. Its very existence is an honour to mankind invoking pride in its survival but whose thoughtless loss and destruction would be cause for shame.

Today at the beginning of the 21^st century the “Environment” is without doubt the No.1 issue for people of conscience across the planet, especially in the so-called “developed” world. Institutions and charitable organizations around the world preoccupied with the conservation of the environment, threatened species, etc; collectively raise far larger contributions of money from corporate bodies, governments and individuals than does the more “humanitarian” issue of refugees. Millions of individuals around the world take a keen and active interest in the environment contributing small and large amounts to causes of conservation. The depletion and destruction of the world’s natural treasures and species is regarded by millions as a global tragedy which they see happening before their eyes. It so happens that the rain forests of SE. Asia are particularly focussed as being a flashpoint in international concern. Forests are in the limelight more than any Academy award winner could ever be! How Malaysia deals with these issues can profoundly influence how the world views Malaysia.

It is also eminently clear that Malaysia is in a position to take the limelight in the defence of the remaining tracts of virgin tropical forests within its boundaries. If this is done in a way that is innovative, “unmistakeably Malaysian” resolute, wise and effective, Malaysia stands to be regarded as an international hero in the eyes of those of good conscience around the world: and make a PR scoop of truly global dimensions. Embarking on such a project with its accompanying public relations would also have an effect of creating an eco-conscious public within Malaysia. If tropical forests are the pride of the world how can they be less so to Malaysians? Let’s face it: Malaysians are generally a notorious litter scattering lot! Countless kampongs have become strewn with mountains of non-bio-degradables and the least desirable detritus and by-products of an industrializing society.

The manner in which conservation projects are designed is important. They must be conceived in a way that there are no loopholes for further destruction. Projects must also constitute clear statements in themselves. Making conservation projects into “tourist” projects is almost a contradiction in terms, as tourism is often as destructive to the environment as urban development. Tourist development is so often just the thin edge of the wedge which leads to urban or industrial development. Conservation and tourism have each to be considered clearly in their respective context.

A project for the complete conservation of an entire natural area or site for its inherent nature makes its own specific and momentous statement, which would not be ignored. The Belum Forest project in Hulu Perak (Belum di Raja) is such a project which carries an unequivocal message of hope and inspiration for the world, now more than ever in desperate need of symbols of hope: The message will be universal in its nature and will doubtless meet with universal approval… Generally speaking the choice is nearly always between black and white: Development or conservation. To balance the two extremes is more than 20-20 vision. It is indeed a vision for the 21^st century.

About the Author

Ayman Ahwal (RahimAllah)

Ayman Ahwal (RahimAllah) was a British journalist, film-maker, craftsman and environmentalist who campaigned for the protection of threatened rainforests in Malaysia and Indonesia. He converted to Islam in the late ’60s, while in the Moroccan desert. He travelled extensively across the world. Having spent many years living in the wildernesses, he firmly believed in the interconnectedness of all life. 

May Allah raise his rank and forgive his shortcomings.

Does the Bible Know About Islam?

If the Arabian prophet Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace) is to be considered part of the same stream of tradition as the other great prophets of that stretch of desert land, can we identify any mention of him in the Bible texts?

Muslims regard Muhammad as the final prophet, the seal over all who went before him. Can we find any forth-tellings of his coming in the present-day Christian scriptures; or would any such prophecy been a prime candidate for redaction and censorship, so that at best such anticipations today appear in heavily disguised form, legible only to the expert? This is an important matter. For if it is true that Muhammad must be recognised as a Messenger of God by people of Christian or Jewish inheritance, it would surely be strange if their texts included prophecies referring to the penultimate Messenger, but lacked indications of the later Seal who was to come.

In fact, the Old and New Testaments do contain evidence that there existed an expectation not only of a Messiah for the Jewish people, but also of another prophetic figure whose time would come later.^[1] One very important prophecy of this type is the one attributed to Moses, and recorded in Deuteronomy 18:

The Lord said to me [Moses] […] ‘I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren; and I will put My word in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not give heed to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.’ […] And if you say it in your heart, ‘How may we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’ – when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you need not to be afraid of him (Deut 18:15-22).

In these words the author, perhaps Moses himself, sets the criterion for knowing the truth of a prophecy. Needless to say, it would also apply to his own prophecy with which he commenced this passage. If Moses himself, as a man who was himself recognised as a prophet of God, was not ‘speaking presumptuously’, then one should expect the foretold event to come to pass. Did it? Who was the ‘prophet like unto him’? That description would surely signify a prophet who was called to be a lawgiver to the people, setting out God’s commandments clearly for the masses to listen and understand. Which prophet fits most closely to one who had the words of God put into his mouth, so that he repeated to the people all that he heard from God? A Christian might like to see a reference to the coming of Jesus in these words, but surely none fits the description more closely than the Blessed Muhammad.[2]

The ministry of Jesus was specifically delivered to convince the people that the Kingdom of God would be set up on earth. Muslim scholars maintain that this would come about through a Messenger of the family of Ishmael, the eldest son of Abraham, and thus heir of the original Covenant with Abraham.

They claim it is contentious editing of history that has falsely presented Abraham’s second son Isaac as the heir. Anyone with a knowledge of nomadic sheikhdom would understand that the eldest son was commissioned as ‘lord’ of the tribe (and therefore he and his descendants ruled from the Arabian region around the ancient shrine of Mecca), whereas the youngest son, in this case Isaac, would have had the role of ‘guarding the hearth’ (and staying with his father’s private tents and herds). The latter’s mission is hence local.

Genesis 15 reports the distress of Abraham that he had no son to be his heir, although he had the promise that his ‘seed’ would inherit from him (Genesis 15:4). God ‘brought Abraham outside and said, “Look toward heaven and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be”.’ Then Abraham asked for some proof, and was told to take three young animals and two birds. The animals were cut in two halves, and Abraham waited as the next day wore on, driving away all the birds of prey that came down on them. At sunset, he fell into a trance-like sleep, and God gave him prophecies about his descendants that would be slaves in Egypt (the descendants of the unborn Isaac). When the sun had gone and it was dark, a smoking fire-pot and a flaming torch passed between the cut pieces of the animal carcasses, and God made a covenant with Abraham: ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates.’ His was the task of subjugating ten different nations between those two rivers (Genesis 15:18-21).^[3] This promise of an heir was fulfilled when Ishmael was born (Genesis 16), and in due course, Ishmael’s descendants did subjugate all those peoples, an actual and literal fulfilment of one of the conditions of the Covenant which is usually overlooked.

When Ishmael was thirteen years old a further Covenant was made between God and Abraham: the Covenant of circumcision. Abraham circumcised himself, and his son Ishmael, and all his household that very day. All this took place long before Isaac was born. However, it was true that God had also promised that the barren Sarah would bear a son and that there would be an everlasting covenant with him too (Gen 17:15-19).

Sometimes it is argued that Isaac was Abraham’s true heir, as his mother was the beloved wife, and Ishmael’s mother only a servant, and hence, according to traditional assumptions, to be despised. But Deuteronomy 21:15-17 presents the true legal picture. If a man has two wives, one beloved and the other despised, and each has a son, and if the son of the despised wife is the first-born, that son, and not the son of the beloved wife, is still entitled to the birthright. The prophecy that ‘by Abraham all the generations of the earth shall be blessed’, would therefore more clearly refer to the heritage by birthright of Ishmael, and not Isaac.

The text of Genesis 22 now goes on to talk of Isaac as Abraham’s ‘only son’, and records Abraham’s famous test of obedience when he was asked to sacrifice him. In the Bible narrative, Isaac is kept in ignorance of what is going to happen until the very last moment. He is saved from the sacrifice when an angel of God stays Abraham’s hand, and a ram caught in a thicket is substituted as the sacrifice.

Professor Dawud, the former bishop who has meditated extensively on these themes, comments that ‘to efface the name Ishmael from the second, sixth and seventh verses of Genesis 22 and to insert in its place “Isaac”, yet to leave the epithet “the only begotten son” is to deny the existence of the former and to violate the Covenant made between God and Ishmael.’^[4]

Sura 37:100-113 has rather different emphases: when Ishmael was about fourteen (‘the age of serious work’), Abraham had a vision (or dream) that he should sacrifice Ishmael. He asked the boy’s opinion, and Ishmael agreed that he would do whatever was God’s will, and urged his father to sacrifice him, if that was what God required. However, God does not require the flesh and blood of animals (Sura 22:37), much less of human beings: what He requires is the giving of our whole being to Him. The ‘momentous sacrifice’ with which the youth was ransomed is commemorated in the great annual festival of Hajj and Eid ul-Adha. It was as a reward for Abraham’s faith that God granted the son Isaac to Abraham’s barren wife Sarah.

Genesis, true to its generally negative portrayal of Sarah, offers the story of her jealousy of Hagar and Ishmael, and her request that he be cast out: a thing which greatly displeased Abraham, although he complied (Gen 21:10-11). He sent them away into the southerly ‘wilderness of Beersheba’, where Ishmael nearly died of thirst. However, God sent an angel to save him, and Ishmael survived. He lived ‘in the wilderness of Paran’, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt, from whence she herself had come (Gen 16:1).[5]

The Qur’anic version does not record a comparable character lapse on the part of either Sarah or Abraham. Ishmael is left with Hagar in the valley-floor of Mecca, where Abraham trusts that God will take care of them. Hagar’s desperate search for water is commemorated in the ritual of the sa‘y during the Hajj; the spring of water revealed by the angel still flows today, and is called Zamzam. Sura 2:124-129 tells of Abraham and Ishmael sanctifying the Ka‘ba, and raising the foundations of the House.

Ishmael’s firstborn Kedar became the ancestor of the Arabs who from that time until now are the dwellers of the wilderness of Paran. As Dawud notes, this makes passages such as Deuteronomy 33:2 extremely interesting: ‘The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir[6] unto them; He shined forth from Mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints. From his right hand went forth a fiery law for them.’ Dawud identifies that Mount Paran with Mount Arafat near Mecca, and claims this passage as a direct prophecy concerning the ‘one who was to come’, the Hmd (or ‘Ahmad’, or ‘Praised one’). Dawud also picks out many possible Old Testament references to this man known as the ‘Himada’ (from the root hmd), which all point to a Messenger from the line of Ishmael.^[7] For example, one prophecy in the ever-enigmatic Book of Habbakuk is that the glory of the Holy One from Paran will cover the heavens, and the earth will be full of his praise.

Other interesting passages occur in the book of the prophet Isaiah: ‘Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar inhabits; let the inhabitants of the rock [Petra?] sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory and declare His praise in the islands. He shall go forth as a mighty man, he shall stir up zeal like a man of war, he shall cry, yea, roar; he shall prevail against his enemies.’ (Isaiah 42:11)

Other prophesies concerning Kedar occur in Isaiah 50:7 and 50:13-17. ‘All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto You, the rams of Nabaioth (the Nabataeans) will minister unto You; they shall come up with acceptance on My altar, and I will glorify the house of My glory.’ (Isaiah 50:7)

Ishmael inhabited the wilderness of Paran, where he sired the Arabian patriarch Kedar; and if the ‘sons of Kedar’ received revelation from God and accepted it, and came to a divine altar to glorify ‘the house of My glory’, then surely the ‘holy one from Paran’ of Habbakuk 3:3 is none other than the Blessed Muhammad. And Mecca is the house of God’s glory where the ‘flocks of Kedar’ came to bow the knee. The ‘flocks of Kedar’ have never come to the Trinitarian church, and have remained impenetrable to any influence of it.

The prophet Haggai, seeing the older generation weeping because of their disappointment that after their exile in Babylon the rebuilt Jewish Temple did not match up to the original one, consoled them with the message: ‘And I will shake all nations, and the Himada [the treasure?] of all the nations will come; and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of Hosts […] The glory of My last house shall be greater than the first one, says the Lord of Hosts; and in this place, I will give shalom [cognate with islam].’ (Haggai 2:7-9)

The New Testament documents are the work of many hands, many of them quite unknown, and the search for predictions of the world-shaking event of Islam is necessarily fraught with difficulties. However Muslim writers suggest that one should look again at the interpretation of the references of Jesus to the ‘Son of Man’ who would come,[8] and in John’s Gospel to the Counsellor who was to come after Jesus had left them. The Gospel calls this prophesied one a ‘Paraclete’, with the primary meaning of ‘counsel for the defence’. This was later supposed to be the ‘Holy Spirit’, the third entity in the Trinity. However these passages could be no less credibly read as prophecies of the ‘Himada’ or ‘Ahmad’. Given the defective orthography of the early Gospel texts, it is quite feasible that the Greek word was not parakletos but periklytos, thus corresponding exactly to ‘Ahmad’ or the Hmd, meaning ‘illustrious’, ‘glorious’ and ‘praised’.[9]

Therefore Muslims believe that the paraclete spoken of in those ‘Farewell Discourses’ was not the third being in a Trinity, but the future prophet Muhammad. The words clearly show that the Comforter had to come after the departure of Jesus, and was not with him when he uttered these words. Are we to presume that Jesus was devoid of the Holy Spirit, if its coming was conditional on Jesus’ leaving? The way in which Jesus describes him makes him a human being, with a particular role to fulfil.

Even if we include the words that Muslims would regard as Trinitarian editing, the prophecy runs: ‘I will pray to the Father, and He will give you another Counsellor, to be with you for ever, even the spirit of truth,[10] whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him [i.e. does not accept him]. You know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you’ (Jn 14:16). ‘These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Counsellor whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you’ (Jn 14:25-26). ‘When the Counsellor comes whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me’ (Jn 15:26). ‘When he comes, he will convince the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgement; of sin, because they do not believe in me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father; of judgement, because the ruler of this world is judged. I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he shall not speak on his own authority, but whatever he shall hear, that he shall speak and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.’ (Jn 16:8-16)

Muslims will recall straight away that the Qur’an consists not of the Prophet’s own words, but that which he heard, which was revealed to him; and it was said of him in the Qur’an: ‘Nay, he has come with the truth, and shows forth the truth of the Messengers.’

The Prophet Muhammad may have been the one foretold by John the Baptist (Mt 3:11; Lk 3:16). This would certainly explain why John carried on baptising, receiving initiates and disciples and foretelling a coming prophet more powerful than himself, without joining up with Jesus in Galilee. It is accepted by all Christians that Jesus and John had a parallel ministry until John’s martyrdom at the hands of Herod Antipas (Mk 6); but how few have marvelled at the oddness of the fact that John, having spent all his ministry ‘crying in the wilderness’ to prepare the way for the one to come, did not become Jesus’ closest and most intimate disciple. Our explanation also accounts for the rather odd remark Jesus made about John when he said that the ‘least’ in the Kingdom of Heaven would be greater than him. This sounds at first sight like an inexplicable and unnecessarily unpleasant derogatory remark; but if the word ‘least’ really meant the ‘last’ in the long line, the ‘youngest’, then what Jesus meant was that John had been the greatest of the prophets up to that time, but that the last of the prophets, the one who was still to come, would be greater than him: a remark that was in no way intended to belittle the saintly John. The Pshitta Version (the Aramaic version, which is older than the Latin Vulgate) does indeed use the word zira or zeira for ‘least’, meaning small or young, as opposed to rabba, meaning great or old.

Professor Dawud offers another interesting suggestion: could it be that the persecution of the true faith after the Council of Nicaea might have been prophesied in the enigmatic Book of Daniel? The ‘four beasts’ and the conquering ‘Son of Man’ of the vision in Daniel 7 have always invited speculative identifications; perhaps they represented the Chaldaeans (the eagle-winged lion), the Medo-Persian Empire (the bear), the Empire of Alexander the Great (the tiger with four wings and four heads), and the formidable Roman Empire (the fourth beast, the demon monster). The ten horns might have been the ten Emperors who persecuted the early Christians, down to the time of the so-called conversion of Constantine. So far, the beasts all represented the ‘Power of Darkness’, or the kingdom of Satan: idolatry itself.

But the nature and character of the Little Horn before which the three other horns fell, and which was finally defeated by a Bar Nasha (Son of Man) is quite different. It springs up after the Ten Persecutions under the Roman Emperors. The Roman Empire was then writhing under four rivals, Constantine being one of them. They were all struggling for the purple, and when the other three died or fell in battle, Constantine was left alone as the supreme sovereign of the vast Empire.

The earlier beasts were brutish, but the Little Horn possessed mouth and eyes: a hideous monster endowed with reason and speech. Maybe this was none other than Constantine, and the traditional presentation of him as ‘the first Christian Emperor’ is really Trinitarian propaganda. He was in fact one of the most dangerous and effective enemies of tawhid. The Little Horn was so diabolical and malignant, and his enmity to the faith the more harmful, because it sought to pervert the truth from within. This interpretation is on strikingly similar lines to that advanced by modern biblical experts who see Paul as the traitor and ‘Liar’ of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

This enemy spoke ‘great things’ against the Most High; the unity of God was openly and officially profaned by Constantine and his unbelieving ecclesiastical cronies as the Trinitarian dogmas of the Council of Nicaea were proclaimed and violently enforced by Constantine’s edict, amidst the horror and protests of three-quarters of the Church’s members! This Little Horn waged war against the saints of the Most High; so Constantine persecuted those Christians who, like the Jews, believed in the Absolute Unity of God.

More than a thousand ecclesiastics were summoned to the General Council at Nicaea, of whom only 318 persons subscribed to the decisions of the Council, and these too formed three opposite factions with their respective ambiguous and unholy expressions of ‘homoiusion’[11] or ‘homoousion’,^[12] ‘consubstantial’ and other terms utterly and wholly strange to the prophets of Israel, but worthy of the ‘speaking Horn’. The Christians who suffered persecutions and martyrdoms under the pagan Emperors of Rome because they believed in One God and in His servant Jesus were now doomed by the imperial edict of the ‘Christian’ Constantine to even severer tortures, because they refused to adore the servant Jesus as consubstantial and coeval with his Lord the Creator! [13] (Abdul Ahad Daud)

The elders and ministers who opposed Trinitarianism were deposed or banished, their religious books suppressed, and their churches seized and handed over to Trinitarian bishops and priests. Merciless legions in every province were placed at the disposal of the ecclesiastical authorities, and a reign of terror against the unitarians lasted in the East for three and a half centuries: until a ‘Son of Man’ did restore the religion of One God, and Muslims liberated the lands trampled and devastated by the four beasts, from the Pyrenees to the walls of China.

The soul and kernel of what Jesus taught is contained in that famous clause in his prayer: ‘Thy kingdom come! Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!’ Most Christians assume all sorts of illusory or meaningless things about the nature of this Kingdom. It is not a triumphant Catholic Church, nor a regenerated and sinless Puritan State. It is not a kingdom composed of celestial beings, including departed spirits of the believers under the reign of the Divine Lamb. The Kingdom of God on earth is a society of believers in One God equipped with faith to maintain its existence against the Kingdom of Darkness.

Jesus referred frequently to this kingdom which would come, and to the Bar Nasha or Son of Man who would inaugurate it; but Christians have assumed that Jesus meant his ‘church’, and that he himself was the Son of Man. Could he really have been referring to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad?

These theories also throw light on another religious group commended by the Qur’an along with certain Christians: the Sabians. Dawud interprets these as the followers of John the Baptist (Yahya ibn Zakariyya), adherents of a parallel movement to early Christianity, who were absorbed into Islam when it came. The Subba, or Sabaeans of the marshes are otherwise known as the Mandaeans in Southern Iraq. Significantly, ‘Mandaean’ was the name for the rank and file of these groups, whereas the Nazareans were the priestly elite.[14]

The original Aramaic or Hebrew word for the Greek ‘baptism’ is not certain. The Pshitta (Aramaic) version of the Gospels uses the word ma‘muditha, from the verb aa‘mid which means ‘to stand up like a pillar’. Its causative form means ‘to erect, set up, establish, confirm’ and has no signification of bathing or washing. Arabic versions of the New Testament call the Baptist ‘al-Ma‘midan’.

In fact, the Greek baptismos derives from the Aramaic Sab’utha or Sbhu’tha, (Arabic cognate, sabagha), which has the sense of ‘to dye, tincture or immerse’. These ‘Masbutheans’ (also called ‘Besmotheans’ and ‘Subba’) existed before the coming of Jesus – as did the Essenes of Qumran – and were either the same as, or strongly similar to, the Daily Bathers/Hermerobaptists and Sabaeans (or Sabuneans) mentioned by Hippolytus, whom we have encountered before. Probably all these names are simply overlapping designations and intertransference of various regions. These ‘Baptists’, like the Qumraners and Ebionites, led an austere life of self-discipline and prayer. Perhaps they caused their proselytes to stand straight like a pillar in a pool of water or river, in order to be baptised, whence the Pshitta name of Ma’muditha.

Baptism is not a purification (thara) or washing (rahsa) or immersion (tabhala), but a dyeing, a colouring (sab’aitha). Just as a Saba’a or dyer gives a new colour to a garment by dipping it into tincture, so a baptist gives a convert a new spiritual hue. It was a mark of admission into the society of purified penitents who promised loyalty to God and His apostles. It goes without saying that the baptism of John in the river of Jordan was considered sufficient to ‘dye’ the hundreds of Jewish penitents (‘all the country of Judaea and the entire region about the Jordan’ – Mt 3:5) who were baptised by him while confessing their sins. The idea of the shedding of the blood of a God-Man is superfluous.

There is little doubt that until the arrival of Paul on the scene, the followers of Jesus practised the same baptismal ritual as John. It may be significant that the converts of Samaria who had been baptised in the name of Jesus did not receive the Holy Spirit, but had to have an extra ritual: the laying on of hands (Acts 8:16-17). The same was said for John’s baptism in Acts 19:2-7. This appears to indicate that Jesus’ baptism was in actual fact precisely the same as that of John, and to provide evidence that the Trinitarian churches wantonly transformed the original rite into a sacrament or mystery. The statement that some twelve persons in Samaria ‘had not yet received the Holy Spirit, because they were only baptised in the name of our Lord Jesus’ (Acts 8:16-17) is surely decisive as evidence.

How was it that the Sabians did not embrace Trinitarian Christianity if their master John had truly and openly declared and presented Jesus as the ‘more powerful’ Prophet than himself who was to come, and whose shoes he was not worthy to unloose? The followers of John might have been excused if Jesus had come a century later; but they were contemporaries, born in the same year. They both baptised with water unto repentance, and prepared their penitent converts for the Kingdom of God that was approaching, but which was not to be established in their time.

The Sabians believed that although Jesus was one of the great Messengers, he was not the one referred to in the prophecy of John as the ‘one who was to come’; most of them happily recognised and embraced Islam when it came.

It is all too obvious that those who believe in the doctrine that baptism means an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, who believe that the ‘inspiration’ of the Holy Spirit fills the hearts of those who, in their emotional excitement and ecstasy, believe themselves to be ‘new-born’, are suffering from wishful thinking. These ‘new-born’ frequently slide back and become what they were before. The ‘miracle’ of the ‘Holy Spirit’ is a myth.[15] True baptism is that which comes only from submission to the Divine Will, and requires genuine commitment and a great deal of hard work.

Who turns away from the religion of Abraham but such as debase their souls with folly? […] ‘Oh my sons, God has chosen the Faith for you; do not die except in the faith of Islam’ […] They say: ‘Become Jews or Christians, if you would be guided aright.’ Say thou: ‘Nay! I would rather the religion of Abraham the true – he joined not gods with God. Say ye: ‘We believe in God, and the revelation given to us, and to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the tribes, and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to all prophets from their Lord: we make no difference between one and another of them: and we bow [only] to God. If they believe as you believe, they are indeed on the right path; but if they turn back, it is they who are in schism. God will suffice thee as against them, He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing. [Our religion is] the baptism of God: and who is better than God to baptise? It is He Whom we worship.’ (Sura 2:130,132,135-138)

The Baptism of God (sibghatu’Llah) does not move Muslims to believe themselves ‘made holy’. Every Muslim has to run the race of our short earthly life to the best of his or her ability and effort, in order to win the crown of glory in the next world. Every Muslim needs education and training in accordance with the Word of God: but stands in no need of the intercession of a priest or sacrament. God Himself is quite enough.

Extract from The Mysteries of Jesus (Sakina Books, 2000)

Notes

[1] Professor ‘Abdu’l Ahad Dawud is an example of a scholar with knowledge and competence who presents many extremely interesting theories on this topic in his book Muhammad in the Bible. The Professor himself is an interesting witness, for he was formally a Christian, the Catholic Bishop of Urmiah in Iran: the Reverend David Keldani, BD.
[2] The New Testament references to the ‘one to come, who will speak all that he hears’ is discussed later in the chapter.
[3] Notice how the prophecy concerning Isaac’s descendants broke into the narrative, and took place while Abraham was asleep.
[4] Dawud, p.32.
[5] Hagar was an Egyptian, possibly of the royal house, and not just a ‘servant’.
[6] Seir is usually identified with Petra.
[7] It can surely hardly be a coincidence that of all the names on earth his pagan relatives chose the very name Muhammad. In linguistic terms, Muhammad is cognate with the Hebrew passive particle of what is called the pi’el form of the verb hamad, and the passive participle of the second derived form of the Arabic hamida: its meaning being: ‘praise and praiseworthy, celebrity and celebrated, glory and glorious.’
[8] See above, p.oo.
[9] Dawud, pp23-24, 144-145.
[10] ‘Spirit of truth’ (Ruh al-haqq) is one of the Prophet’s titles of honour.
[11] Of like substance, similar but not the same.
[12] Of the one and the same substance.
[13] Dawud, p.67.
[14] Eisenman, op cit. p.836.
[15]Appalling atrocities have been committed by Crusaders, inquisitors and other enthusiasts who were convinced that they were following the Spirit.

A Muslim’s Commentary on Benedict XVI’s “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections”

In the Name of God, Merciful, Compassionate. Blessed are all the Prophets of God and all their true and righteous followers. Blessed is the last and the seal of all Prophets and all Prophecy: Muhammad. Blessed are his kin, companions, and followers. Peace upon those who follow righteousness and divine guidance.

The Pontiff of the Catholic Church of Christianity, Benedict XVI, delivered a lecture titled “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections” at the University of Regensburg (September 12th, 2006).[1]
The Pontiff’s lecture gave rise to a deep and painful rupture in Catholic – Muslim relations on many fronts: diplomatic, political, and, most intensely, popular. The superficial media coverage of the lecture, and the intensity of popular reactions to that coverage, have largely prevented clear-headed considerations and critiques of its contents. This paper strives to conduct a thorough study of the lecture.

It is hoped that a balanced and fair consideration of the lecture can prepare for an urgently needed theological and philosophical dialogue between Muslim and Catholic scholars, including the Catholic Pontiff himself. Such a dialogue is urgently needed in order to repair the damage in Catholic – Muslim relations, and to heal fresh wounds that have compounded the pains of an already tarnished and pained world.

Benedict’s paper is a complex work that has to be engaged at various levels and from various angles: theological, philosophical, and political. It is hoped that this paper will at least start a process of further Muslim reflections on it and discussion of it.

In order not to risk distorting, through paraphrasing, the meaning of Benedict XVI’s Lecture, I shall quote heavily from the official Vatican translation posted on the Vatican Website and copyrighted by Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

In order to make one’s presuppositions and tools clear from the outset, it is important to point out that the author of this paper is a devout Sunni Muslim theologian of the Ash’arite school, Maliki in jurisprudential tendency, and Shadhili/Rif’ai in spiritual leanings. The author is deeply committed to the possibility of fruitful philosophical discussions on the basis of our common humanity, and to the possibility of nourishing inter-religious dialogue on the basis of our common belief in the One True God. These commitments translated into several years of philosophical and inter-religious study and practice.

It is important to appreciate that Benedict XVI is speaking, at least to some extent, as a former Professor who is coming back to his beloved University to speak, once again, as a Professor. Of course, the discourse of a person, and its reception, depends a great deal under which aspect he happens to make the discourse. Different discourses are associated with different normative standards and are to be judged according to the standards appropriate to them.

It is one thing to consider the lecture as that of Joseph Ratzinger qua Benedict XVI, Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, and World-Leader of all Catholics. It is another to consider the lecture as that of Joseph Ratzinger qua German Professor of Theology. The nostalgic tone of the opening passages of the lecture, and the reference to earlier lectures of the 1950’s, make it clear that Ratzinger is, to some extent, speaking, once again, as German Theology Professor. However, Ratzinger having been ‘created anew’ as Pope Benedict XVI, and noting the ecclesiastical garb in which he gave the lecture, it is only natural that, despite the charming nostalgia, receivers of the lecture can not simply suspend the ecclesiastical role of Ratzinger.

It is inevitable, therefore, that the lecture is received as that of a Roman Catholic Pope, and not just that of a University Professor. The Vatican clearly assumes this by posting the lecture as that of the “Holy Father” and as part of an “Apostolic Journey”.

As the Roman Philosopher Cicero and the British Philosopher Bradley both point out, one’s duties depend a great deal upon one’s position or station. It is important to note that as Professor Ratzinger was speaking in his former University, Pope Benedict XVI was very much present to his listeners.[2]

In a cruel world full of wars and strife, much of which is between Christians and Muslims (under whichever flag or tag they happen to fight), it is extremely important that religious leaders of all religions speak and act responsibly. The gravity of responsibility is in direct correlation with the importance of the religious office from which one speaks. There are all sorts of university professors who say all sorts of unpleasant things about Islam and Muslims. They are often simply, and rightly, ignored. The lecture of Professor Ratzinger was very much that of Pope Benedict XVI. This is why it can not be ignored and must be engaged at all possible levels.

It is also important for Muslims, in the spirit of fairness dear to Islam, to appreciate and support whatever positive aspects are there in the lecture. One such aspect is the very important discourse, which is unfortunately relegated to the end of Benedict XVI’s Lecture, on the importance of deepening and widening the notion of Western Reason so as to include and accommodate the contribution that revelatory religiosity can make. The anti-Positivist critique of common Western University understandings of Reason can be readily appreciated and accepted by many Muslims. Of course, such a critique is not original in that it follows from the anti-Positivist developments of the Philosophy of Science since at least Karl Popper and his students wrote their important works. Nevertheless, the use of such anti-Positivist discourse for making way for revelatory discourse is fruitful for all.[3]

Had Benedict XVI started with his last passages and developed them further, and had he appreciated the historical commitment of Islam, throughout the ages, to reasonableness and proper discussion, we would have had an uplifting discourse conducive to co-living and peaceful Christian-Muslim co-resistance to the pretensions of irreverent scientistic Reason. Islam can actually be Christianity’s best ally against the arrogant pretensions of scientistic positivism, and for a deeper and more spiritual Reason. Alas, that is not what Benedict XVI actually did. Let us look at how he actually did start and then follow the Lecture section by section, quoting important sections as we go along.

Benedict XVI begins his lecture, nicely enough, with reminiscences on his time at the University of Bonn in 1959 where “We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties.”

It is clear that Benedict XVI is very much disposed towards, and cherishes, historical, philosophical, philological, and theological discussions. It is important that he is engaged at all these levels. From the contents of the lecture, it is very clear that Benedict XVI can do with more meaningful discussion with serious Muslim scholars.

There is no doubt that he is very much interested in Islam and that he takes it very seriously. However, the study materials and sessions he engages with seem to be of a very particular and narrow type. Being a Catholic scholar who respects specialization, Benedict XVI seems to heavily rely on the works of Catholic Orientalists some of whom are not particularly sympathetic to Islam.

Late last year, Benedict XVI devoted the annual retreat that he usually has with his former doctoral students to the study of the Concept of God in Islam. Very little is known about the contents of this retreat, but glimpses of what it must have been like can be gathered from two, sometimes conflicting, reports that were later provided by two of the key participants. The topic and content of the retreat is of direct relevance to Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Lecture. It would be most helpful for understanding Benedict XVI’s true position regarding Islam if the contents of this important ‘private’ Seminar were to be made fully public.[4]

It would have also been helpful to Benedict XVI to hear Muslim theologians themselves on what they thought and taught about God. Instead, Benedict XVI invited his students to listen to, and discuss with, two Catholic Scholars specialized in Islamics and Christian-Muslim relations. Both scholars: the German Jesuit Christian Troll and the Egyptian Jesuit Samir Khalil Samir are renowned Catholic experts in Islamic studies.  However, both tend to be deeply suspicious of what may be called ‘traditional Islam’. Troll is fundamentally convinced that Islam must be reformed and is an expert on, and an active supporter of non-traditionalist ‘reformers’. Samir is less charitable to Islam, be it traditional or ‘reformed’, and is often quite hostile. Together with some other close advisors of Benedict XVI, like the American Jesuit Joseph Fessio, Samir has been clearly taking an Islamophobic approach that may explain the direction of the Lecture of Benedict XVI.

It is noteworthy that some of Benedict’s closest advisors on Islam have recently been hostile types who believe that Islam, at least as it stands, is inherently violent and who are filled with fear of its expansion. Several Catholic or secular advisors who know better than to instill Islamophobia into the Pontiff’s heart have generally been marginalized, retired or ignored.  Some, like the deeply respected Bishop Michael Fitzgerald have been moved to other, respectable, but less central positions. The subsuming of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious dialogue under the Pontifical Council for Culture, and the continued deterioration of the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies, have all combined to create a situation where Benedict XVI is increasingly being advised on Islam by the least sympathetic Catholic scholars of it.[5]

It is important that Muslim scholars strive to intellectually and theologically engage Benedict XVI, and not through the filters of some Islamo-phobic Catholic Orientalists. It is important for the Catholic Pontiff to select his advisors more widely, and to be weary of narrow and prejudiced views, even if they happen to be held by so called ‘experts’ of Islamic Studies. He should also be careful of trusting the purely ethnic claims to expertise of some Arab Catholic scholars. It is well known that some members of minorities within a larger culture are sometimes the least expert on its full richness. Some members of minorities are often obsessed with feelings of persecution and fears of destruction. There are some Arab Catholic Islamics specialists who have very dubious views on Islam and Muslims, and whose Islamo-phobic views are trusted because they happen to be Arabs.

On the other hand, there are Arab Christians, both Catholic and non-Catholic, who do have a very deep understanding and appreciation of Islam and Muslims and who can provide the Pontiff with very good advice. Respected and fair figures such as Bishop Michel Sabah and Metropolitan Georege Khoder can offer Benedict XVI a deep understanding of Islam and Muslims. There are also several non-Arab Catholic Orientalists who can be of great help to Benedict XVI on Islamic matters. These scholars include Maurice Bourmans, Michel Lagarde, Etienne Renault,  and Thomas Michel.

In times of war and strife we humans tend to trust the views of those who tend to make us fear the perceived enemy and who help us mobilize our energies against it. It does not at all help Benedict XVI, or our tarnished world for the people he trusts on matters Islamic to openly say things like:

“Benedict is aiming at more essential points: theology is not what counts, at least not in this stage of history; what counts is the fact that Islam is the religion that is developing more and is becoming more and more a danger for the West and the world. The danger is not in Islam in general, but in a certain vision of Islam that does never openly renounces violence and generates terrorism, fanaticism.”[6]

Or, worse still:

“The West is once again under siege. Doubly so because in addition to terrorist attacks there is a new form of conquest: immigration coupled with high fertility. Let us hope that, following the Holy Father’s courageous example in these troubled times, there can be a dialogue whose subject is the truth claims of Christianity and Islam.”[7]

Such views are very dangerous and will only lead to more war and strife. They are the exact counter-part and mirror-image of the views of pseudo-Islamic terrorists.

Christians and Muslims must be on the alert for such Manichean and polarizing views, and must strive to live in daily deep and fair discernment so as to improve the painful situation in which we all live.

It is essential, therefore, that Muslims and reasonable-non-Muslim serious-and-fair scholars engage the Pontiff in scholarly and intellectual discussion of the kind he praises at the beginning of his Lecture.

“Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas – something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned – the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times makes it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason – this reality became a lived experience.”

Benedict XVI clearly appreciates the experience of ‘universitas’ through  the periodic encounter with the other. He sees clearly that specialization can lead to a dangerous narrowing that closes horizons of true communication. It is important to point out that just as there is a ‘universitas’ based on our common humanity and reasonableness, there is a monotheistic universitas based on our common belief in the One True God. It is important that Christians and Muslims, despite (and because of) their dedicated devotions to their own religions, work together in mutual-respect and dialogue for the sake of the One True God. Such a dialogue must become a lived experience that leads us closer to world peace.

Benedict XVI then points out the importance of research and discussions about the reasonableness of faith, and that in such research and discussions, even radical skepticism has to be considered and engaged. “That even in the face of such radical skepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

Recognition of the importance of such research and discussion is the very foundation of the extensive and deep field of Islamic Studies called ‘Ilm al-Kalam’, or Muslim systematic theology. As a matter of fact, many Kalam manuals open with extensive considerations of the position of the skeptics by way of establishing the validity of seeking out reasons in support of religious faith. All great scholars of Kalam recognized the fact that discussions, argumentations, and disputations with others can only be conducted on the basis of a shared human reasonableness that forms a kind of ‘universitas scientiarum’.

The manuals of Kalam are full of extensive reasoned discussions with Skeptics, Atheists, Naturalists, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Hindus, Aristotelians, Platonists, and a host of other religions and philosophies.

It is most unfortunate that Benedict’s appreciation of discussions based on ‘universitas scientiarum’ do not seem to extend to Islam and Muslims. Despite the fact that many Muslim scholars and institutions responded positively to the Catholic Church’s newfound openness to dialogue with them (as expressed in the documents of Vatican II), and worked very hard in many dialogue settings, Benedict XVI seems to think (from later parts of his lecture) that such reasonable discussion is only possible within a European/Christian/Hellenistic setting. This is both historically and actually untrue and unfair.

After his fairly benign Lecture opening, Benedict XVI suddenly conjures up a most troubling legacy:

“I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on – perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara – by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.”

It is not clear how Paleologus’ dialogue “reminded” Benedict XVI of “all this”. I would have liked to believe that Benedict XVI was reminded of the value of reasoned discussion, based on common humanity, by the fact that a Christian and a Muslim were having a reasoned discussion even in the midst of a siege.  Alas, I think a more likely reading is that Benedict XVI was reminded of the presumed intimate relationship between Christian faith and reason by the fact that a Christian, faced with a violent Islam, still focused on the equation of his faith with reasonableness.

Benedict XVI very much starting with a ‘siege’ setting resurrects a scene from the siege of Constantinople, with all its associated symbolism:

“It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur’an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between – as they were called – three “Laws” or “rules of life”: the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur’an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point – itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole – which, in the context of the issue of “faith and reason”, I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.”

It is strange that Benedict XVI selected an admittedly “marginal” point from an obscure medieval dialogue, written at a particularly abnormal and tense moment in history, to find a “starting-point” for his reflections on “faith and reason”. One could imagine an infinitely large number of possible, more direct and sensible, starting-points.

Many an alternative starting-point could have helped Benedict XVI make his main points about faith and reason without using a disfigured straw-man Islam. The connection between the medieval dialogue and the main point of the lecture is so strained and distant; invoking the dialogue unnecessarily damages Christian-Muslim relations. This is at a time when we truly need the healing of these relations.

Then, of all the sections of the Emperor’s book, the Pontiff chooses to focus on the one concerning Holy War or Jihad: “In the seventh conversation (d???e??? – controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: “There is no compulsion in religion”. According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war.”

It is also interesting that Benedict, invoking the authority of anonymous “experts”, summarily dismisses the clear and still normative Qur’anic ruling ‘There is no compulsion in religion’ by claiming that it was only upheld by Muhammad (peace be upon him) in times of weakness!
Instead of cherishing this ruling, and challenging Muslims today to live-up to it, the Pontiff dismisses an important Islamic resource for reasonableness and peace by seeing it as a fake Islamic stance that was only ever held because of temporary weakness! This is most unfortunate. The no-compulsion verse has never been revoked and has always been binding.

At no point in history did Muslim jurists legally authorize the forced conversions of people of other religions. This vital verse was foundational for the tolerance that Muslims did concretely demonstrate towards Christians and Jews living in their midst. It is very dangerous for the Pontiff to dismiss a Qur’anic verse that actually formed, and still forms, a juridical and historical guarantee of safety to Christians and Jews living amongst Muslims.

Furthermore, the disheartening claim by Benedict XVI that Muhammad (peace be upon him) whimsically changed Islam’s principles and juridical teachings, depending on his weakness or strength, is simply an echo of prejudiced unfair views that have surfaced again and again in Christian and Western polemics against Islam. Wiser and fairer advice could have saved Benedict XVI from adopting such prejudices.
The image of an opportunist Prophet, which Benedict XVI invokes in passing, is deeply painful and offensive to Muslims. How would Benedict XVI feel if Muslims pointed out that the Catholic Church only became tolerant of Muslims and Jews after it lost its power in Europe, and that this tolerance was really granted by Secular states and not by the Church, but opportunistically claimed by it. Such a point is likely to give pain and offence. Imagine, then, the pain and offense we Muslims feel as Benedict XVI claims that our beloved Prophet is an opportunist who teaches one thing when he is weak, only to reverse it when he gets stronger.

Benedict XVI goes further:

“Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels”, …”

Again, Benedict XVI strangely dismisses, in passing, yet another Islamic resource for tolerance towards Christians and Jews. Islam has always distinguished between ‘the People of the Book’ (Christians and Jews), and mere Pagans. The People of the Book living in Muslim communities were always granted the right to worship in peace largely based on this important distinction. It is very important to note that some of the hateful discourses of recent pseudo-Islamic terrorists have worked very hard to dilute the distinction between Christianity and Paganism (by calling Christians ‘Cross-Worshipers’) precisely in order to remove the juridical protection granted to Christianity and Judaism under Muslim Jurisprudence. Benedict XVI seems to imply that such distinctions are minor and only obscure Islam’s purported intolerance.

Benedicts XVI then goes on to quote one of the most disturbing passages in the Emperor’s discourse:

“… he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness which leaves us astounded, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”.

This hateful and hurtful passage is what the media picked up the most, and what most of the popular Muslim reactions have reacted to.
Tragically, Benedict XVI, having invoked this piece of hate-literature back from its historical dormancy, fails to distance himself from the opinion of its original author. He does use such languages as ‘brusqueness’, ‘leaves us astounded’ and ‘expresses himself forcefully’. However, none of these expressions constitutes a negative judgment or rejection of the opinion of the original author. As a matter of fact, they may even be read as indicative of a subtle support of a supposed bravery that may be a bit reckless.

When someone gratuitously invokes a very obscure text that expresses hatful things one has a moral obligation to explain why he goes out of his way to invoked it, and a further obligation to respond to it, and to dismiss the hate expressed in it. Otherwise, it is very reasonable to assume that the person invoking the hurtful text does mean it, and does share the views expressed in it.

To claim that no hurtful intent was present, and that Muslims simply did not understand the text, agonizingly adds insult to injury. This is why the quasi-apology of Benedict XVI was not considered adequate by many Muslims. All the Vatican’s statements to date, including the address of Benedict XVI express regret for the fact that Muslims supposedly misunderstood the Pontiff’s Lecture and have reacted badly to it.

Such an approach simply accuses Muslims of lack of understanding and over-reaction. This approach, instead of meekly and  humbly admitting the hurt one has caused, blames the ones being hurt for taking the insult the wrong way! Many devout Catholics have, unfortunately, seen Muslim rejections of the quasi-apology and Muslim’s emotional reactions to the words about their Prophet (peace be upon him) as indicative of Benedict XVI’s correct and heroic stance.

Benedict goes on:

“The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. “God”, he says, “is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably (s?`? ????) is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death….”

Interestingly, if one consults a reliable classical Qur’anic exegesis book (tafsir) for an exegesis of the verse ‘There is no compulsion in religion’, one would find explanations that are very similar to the Emperor’s point about the heart or soul being the abode of faith. All Muslim theological treatises have a section on faith (Iman). There is unanimity amongst all Muslim theologians that faith resides in the abode of the heart or soul and that no physical compulsion can ever affect it.

It is interesting to note that Benedict XVI was for many years the ‘Prefect of the Faith’ of the Catholic Church.  The Prefect of the Faith is the distant modern version of the Inquisition. The Inquisition seldom respected the sanctity of the human heart in matters of faith. Tragically, for Muslims and Jews, especially in Spain, the Church used a dizzying battery of physical torture techniques to get Muslims and Jews to convert to Christianity. The Inquisition never heeded such advice as that of the Emperor: “To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death”. We could all learn from this advice.

It is Qur’anically normative for Muslims to call to the path of God through wisdom, wholesome advice, and proper discussion. There is no sanction in Islam for torturing people into conversion. Indonesia and Malaysia have more Muslims than all Arab countries combined. No Muslim army ever entered these lands. How did Islam spread there?

Nevertheless, it will be dishonest or naïve to claim that no Muslim army ever conquered any land. However, creating a domain where God can be freely worshiped does not entail converting the inhabitants of that domain by force of the ‘sword’. Muslim conquests seldom translated into forced conversions. The evidence is clear: Muslim dominated lands still have Christian minorities. How many Muslims or Jews were left in Spain after the Catholic Ferdinand and Isabella re-conquered it?

Interestingly, Muslims, as immigrants, were only ever able to re-enter Europe under the multi-cultural policies of secular Europe. If the Catholic Church had its way would that have been possible? Benedict XVI himself is famous for rejecting Turkey’s plea to become part of Europe for lack of the right religious and cultural credentials.

In some past Vatican statements Muslims were sometimes called upon to forget the past (when it comes to the Inquisition or the Crusades). In Islam, acknowledgment and regret are necessary pre-conditions of true repentance and forgiveness. Benedict XVI, by self-righteously invoking the hurtful accusations of a long-dead Emperor, is, astonishingly, oblivious to the use of torture, cruelty, and violence in the history of the Catholic Church, not only against Muslims, but against Jews, and even fellow Christians.

The violence inflicted, or supported, by the Catholic Church extended all the way to modern times through the support of European colonial conquests of the rest of the world. Missionaries, especially Jesuits, went hand-in-hand with colonialists into the Americas, Africa, and Asia. In my native Libya Italian fascists armies and death squads used to be blessed by the local Catholic authorities in the Cathedral’s square before they went to hunt Libyan resistance fighters. This was happening as late as the 1930’s. The Ethiopian soldiers the fascists force-marched in the front of the Italian armies bore big red crosses on their chests just as the knights of Saint John did when they slaughtered Tripoli’s inhabitants back in the 1500’s.

The image of a non-violent hellenistically ‘reasonable’ Christianity contrasted to a violent un-reasonable Islam is foundational for the Lecture of Benedict XVI. This self-image is amazingly self-righteous and is oblivious to many painful historical facts. It is very important for our world that we all begin to see the poles that are in our own eyes, rather than focus on the specks in the eyes of our brethren.
Benedict XVI further says:

“The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practice idolatry.”

Benedict XVI’s ‘decisive statement’: ‘Not to act in accordance to reason is contrary to God’s nature’. This statement is very complex, and is open to many interpretations and discussions. What is amazing is the swiftness and ease with which it is used to make up what amounts to, a deeply disturbing, false contrast between a peace-loving-reasonable Christianity and a violent-loving-unreasonable Islam!

The reason for the swiftness and ease is the fact that such a contrast is a famous one taken from what we maybe called ‘contrast tables’ that are often simplistically invoked in some missionary and polemical discourses. The idea of such tables is to put Christianity at the top of one column and Islam at the top of the other. One then goes on to fill the table with such polarities as:  Love/Law, Peace/Violence, Freeing/Enslaving, Women-liberating/Women-oppressing and so on.

Such tables are reminiscent and are related to the tables the Athenians, the Romans, and even the German Idealists (who do have an influence on the Bavarian Pontiff) often developed to contrast the ‘Civilized’ with the ‘Barbarian’, the ‘European’ with the ‘non-European’.

Unfortunately, for their proponents such tables never work. They are grossly over simplified and create contrasts at a great cost to truth and fairness. In Islam, just as in Christianity, it is not human calculative reason that is salvific, but rather the free underserved grace (rahma) of God. One of the many graces that God gifts to human beings is the gift of reason.

Reason as a gift from God can never be above God. That is the whole point of Ibn Hazm; a point that was paraphrased in such a mutilated way by Benedict XVI’s learned sources. Ibn Hazm, like the Asha’rite theologians with whom he often contended, did insist upon God’s absolute freedom to act. However, Ibn Hazm did recognize, like most other Muslim theologians that God freely chooses, in His compassion towards His creatures, to self-consistently act reasonably so that we can use our reason to align ourselves with His guidance and directive.

Ibn Hazm, like most other Muslim theologians did hold that God is not externally-bound by anything, including reason. However, at no point does Ibn Hazm claim that God does not freely self-commit Himself and honors such commitments Such divine free-self-committing is Qur’anically propounded “kataba rabukum ala nafsihi al-Rahma” (Your Lord has committed Himself to compassion). Reason need not be above God, and externally normative to Him. It can be a grace of God that is normative because of God’s own free commitment to acting consistently with it.

A person who believes the last proposition need not be an irrational or un-reasonable human-being, with an irrational or whimsical God! The contrast between Christianity and Islam on this basis is not only unfair, but also quite questionable.

Granted that the Pontiff is striving to convince a secular university that theology has a place in that reason-based setting. However, this should not go so far as to make God subject to an externally-binding reason. Most major Christian theologians, even the reason-loving Aquinas never put reason above God.

When Muslim theologians make a similar move, they should not be accused of irrationality or un-reasonableness. Such misunderstanding is the direct result of simplistic contrast tables of which scholars like Theodore Khoury are apparently fond.

Benedict XVI should not trust his views on Muslim theology to scholars like Khoury or Samir Khalil Samir. Their views of Islam and Muslims are often most unfair. He may not want to consult with Muslims, and may not even trust them to know their own doctrines; but he should, at least, consult some serious scholars who are not necessarily from an Arab Christian minority or a very narrow Catholic Orientalist group.

Benedict goes on:

“At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?”

Benedict XVI’s way of phrasing this issue is again open to many interpretations and engagements. This is not the place for unpacking a very loaded question. Suffice it to say that talk of the ‘nature’ of God is itself problematic.

Talk of reasonableness and unreasonableness is also quite problematic. What is this reason we are talking about? Is it a human faculty of understanding? If so, what kind of understanding? Is it cognitive? Is it emotive? Is it spiritual? Or is reason, rather, some sort of an ontologically primary agent or emanation, as the Neo-Platonists often taught? What sort of reason and reasonableness are we talking about?

Such questions need further and deeper reflections. However, interestingly, the ambiguity and vagueness of the word ‘reason’ allow for the amazing leap of unifying the Greek and the Christian by appealing to the very Hellenistic Prologue to the Gospel of John.

As Benedict XVI puts it:

“I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: “In the beginning was the ?????”. This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, s?`? ????, with logos. Logos means both reason and word – a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason.”

Here we come close to getting a definition of what Benedict XVI means by reason: “a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication”. This is indeed close to what John speaks of. However, is this the same reason as the reason of the Greek Philosophers? I think not. Reason for most Greek philosophers was more associated with pure contemplation or theoria, than with creative activity or poesis. Furthermore, for most Greek philosophers it was being as such or to on that was truly ‘self-communicating’. Reason for most of them was a human capacity to receive this self-communicating being.

Therefore, the great unifying vision of Benedict, which brings together the Greek with the Christian, turns out to be a move made possible through the ambiguities of such rich and loaded words as ‘logos’ or ‘reason’. Of course such moves have often been practiced  in the past within the theological, exegetical and spiritual traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Of course, a great deal of medieval discourse depends precisely on this kind of ambiguity-fueled leaping. However, it is quite strange that this medieval leaping tactic is being used to bridge the gap between the cool rationalistic reason of the German University, and the logos of the Catholic Church!

Benedict XVI, then makes an astoundingly Hegelian statement:

“John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis.”

Benedict XVI claims that John spoke the ‘final word’ on the biblical concept of God. He also makes the Hegelian claim that biblical faith took a “toilsome” and “torturous” path to culminate in this Johannine synthesis.

I will leave it to Christian theologians of various denominations and schools to comment on such a claim. In light of the cumulative findings of historical-critical researches into the Bible, it is very strange that it is still possible to make such critically debatable statements about a biblical faith that is supposedly making a long journey to culminate in a Greco-Christian synthesis.

I am sure Jewish scholars will also find difficulties with the implicit claim that Torah threads of faith are “toilsome” and “tortuous”, and that John was needed to make it all culminate into true and final biblical faith. While Hegelian synthesis and culmination sounds wonderfully exciting to the one with the culmination results, it is sure to bother all who are being culminated!

Then, yet again, the argumentation leaps into Hegelian speculation, but this time introducing a dangerously ‘European’ claim to Christianity:

“In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” (cf. Acts 16:6-10) – this vision can be interpreted as a “distillation” of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.”

The Asia versus Macedonia contrast is used to justify the strange claim that there is an “intrinsic necessity” of rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

Thus in Europe and not in Asia, and with European reason and not with Asiatic Reason Christianity comes to unite with “Greek inquiry”. This Hegelian talk suffers from the same Euro-centric tendency of much of Germanic idealist philosophy.

This tendency is very dangerous indeed for it demotes versions of Christianity that manifest themselves in non-Greek and non-European milieus (for Example South American, African, and Asian theologies).

It also makes a claim to Reason in general, and to Greek reason, in particular, and appropriates it to make it purely Christian. Thus the historical facts of even clear, let alone partial, Jewish-Hellenistic syntheses (as in Philo of Alexandria), and Muslim-Hellenistic syntheses (as in Al-Farabi, Ikhwan al-Safa, Ibn Sina) are simply denied as impossible. Only the Christian is united with the Greek in a Johannine Hegelian European culmination.

Muslims, like Christians and Jews, before and after them, worked out many profound philosophical and theological systems the aim of which was the harmonization of the claims of human reasoning and the truths of divine revelation. The philosophers just mentioned were not alone. Theologians of the Mu’tazili, Asha’ri, Maturidi, Ithna Ashri, Isma’ili, Ibadi and even Hanbali schools all strived to articulate their faith in as reasonable a manner as possible. Even introductory texts of Islamic Philosophy and Theology make this clear. The intricate dialectical and logical works of the great Abdul Jabbar, Asha’ri, Baqillani, Jwaini, Ghazali, Razi, Maturidi, Nasfi, Ibn Rushd, and Ibn Sabain, amongst others, are testaments to the keen Muslim interest in reason and reasonableness when it comes to articulating matters of faith. Even the most conservative of Hanbalites, Ibn Taimmiyah, wrote important works on non-Aristotelian logics and has anti-Aristotelian arguments akin to those of Sextus Empiricus![8]

Benedict XVI, in the closing section of a long passage, that would fit very nicely as a preface to Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion or Philosophy of History, goes on to claim:

“A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act “with logos” is contrary to God’s nature.”

The Septuagint is, thus, accorded a primacy that I am sure will sound strange to many Christian ears. The synthesis of biblical faith and Greek reason is simply accorded ultimate value as the culmination of a process through which all other ways of religiosity are relegated to things subsumed and superseded.

Yet Benedict XVI, being a scholar of medieval theology knows that he can not deny certain facts:

“In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God’s voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God’s freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazm and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God’s transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions.”

This passage, while serving its author’s ultimate goal of undermining the theologies mentioned in it, does at least show that Benedict XVI is somewhat aware that other possible theologies do exist, and that Muslim theologians were not alone in caring about the affirmation of God’s sovereignty against human pretensions to govern Him with human criteria.

Unfortunately, he goes on to totally undermine such theologies as not being the true ‘faith of the Church’. It is also very interesting that, in a follow-on passage, Benedict XVI, for a moment, does affirm a love that transcends knowledge, but then re-interprets that affirmation by claiming it is logos that loves. Thus he synthesizes logos and reason. It turns out to be reason that actually loves.

Then, in clear and unambiguous terms, we see the actual foundational claim of Benedict XVI, and the ultimate reason for his troubles with Islam:

“This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history – it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.”

He clearly claims that Europe is the only place where Christianity and Reason culminated in a great synthesis that is European civilization. Thus Europe is Christian-Greek and rational, and Christianity is European-Greek and rational. If Europe-Christianity is to be kept pure, all non-European elements and non-Christian elements must be kept out. This is why Islam and Muslims have no place in this great Hegelian synthesis! This alarming set of neo-colonial ideas supports the thesis of the Barbarous (non-Greek) and non-European nature of Islam. Islam, according to this kind of thinking, is ‘Asiatic’ ‘non-rational’ and ‘violent’. It has no place in ‘Greek’, ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’ Europe.

Now that Benedict XVI has reached his thesis of the synthesis of the Greek and the Christian into a single logos, he proceeds to undermine all attempts to deny this synthesis. He goes on to criticize three phases of what he calls ‘dehellenization’:

“The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity – a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.”

It is better for Muslims to leave it to Christian theologians to comment on the extent of the fairness and accuracy of Benedict XVI assessment of the Christian tradition. However, to this Muslim, it does seem astonishing that Benedict XVI seems to sweep all of the Reformers’ efforts as a dehellenization that undermines the true synthesis earlier celebrated by him. I will also leave it to Protestant theologians to reply to Benedict XVI’s sweeping claims.

Benedict XVI then blames the theologian von Harnack for the second dehellenization. I will, again, leave it to von Harnack scholars to reply to the claims made by Benedict XVI. It does strike me as strange, however, to find von Harnack accused of dehellenization. Following Karl Barth, I believe that von Harnack was Hellenizing rather than the opposite. He may evem be seen as reducing theology to a kind of Aristotelian phronesis.

Benedict XVI’s the third, and last, type of dehelleniztion, is worthy of more attention.

“Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieu. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.”

Yet again, we are faced with a Euro-centric and Greco-centric arrogant approbation of Christianity. I will leave it to Latin American, African and Asian Christian theologians to address this strange appropriation.

For a Church that is now quite international, the Pontiff is really going out of his way to alienate all who are not into Greek-European culture. He is basically claiming that such Greek and European elements are fundamental to the Christian faith itself. I find the whole claim dangerously arrogant. It is not only Islam and Muslim who are threatened by it. I truly believe that this lecture should alarm Muslims, Christians and Jews alike.

This alarm is extenuated by the fact that the alarming position is not that of just a Professor or a theologian, but of a Roman Catholic Pontiff who leads millions of human beings. It is, therefore, urgent and vital that Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Secular scholars engage the Pontiff and challenge his views not only on Islam, but also on what it means to be a reasonable human being, and what it means to be a European.
As for Islam and its Prophet (peace be upon him), centuries of cruel and vicious attacks against them, both verbal and physical, have only made them stronger. The sun shall still shine no matter what dark clouds strive to do.

Let us pray for a better world, a peaceful world, a respectful world. Let us engage in a dialogue that is based on mutual-respect, and is elevated above mere polemics. The One God has created us all, and willed for us to be so different, let us learn more about each other, and let us, together, construct a better world, for God’s sake.

Notes
1. Published under the title:  “Faith, Reason and the University Memories and Reflections”, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican, 2006.http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html. All quotations are from the Lecture unless otherwise indicated.

2. Cicero, Marcus Tullius: De Officiis.Translated by Walter Miller. Loeb Editions. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1913. See also: Bradley, Francis Herbert. “My Station and Its Duties” in Ethical Studies. Oxford University Press, Oxford,1988.

3. I refer here to the post-Positivist Philosophy of Science of Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos and others. For the many meanings of Reason and Rationality and the possibility of deeper understandings of them see also Whose Justice? Which Rationality?  by Alasdair MacIntyre. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1988.

4. On this important Seminar, see:
“When Civilizations Meet: How Joseph Ratzinger Sees Islam” by by Samir Khalil Samir, S.J. www.chiesa, Roma, September 25, 2006. Orignally published by Asia News.http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=53826&eng=y “Islam and Democracy, a Secret Meeting at Castel Gandolfo: The synopsis of a weekend of study on Islam with the pope and his former theology students”by Sandro Magister. www.chiesa, Roma, September 25, 2006. http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=45084&eng=y

5. For confirmation of this account, see the excellent “Benedict XVI and Islam: the first year” by Abdal Hakim Murad. First appeared in Q News. http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/AHM-Benedict.htm

6. When Civilizations Meet: How Joseph Ratzinger Sees Islam It was written for and published by “Asia News.”  by Samir Khalil Samir, S.J. www.chiesa, Roma, September 25, 2006.http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=53826&eng=y

7. “Is Dialogue with Islam Possible? Some Reflections on Pope Benedict XVI’s Address at the University of Regensburg” by Joseph Fessio, S.J..  Ignatius Insight. September 18, 2006http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2006/jfessio_reflections_sept06.asp

8. The following is a useful standard text on Islamic philosophy and theology: Fakhry, Majid. History of Islamic Philosophy. Columbia University Press, 2004.

Aref Ali Nayed* ©2006

*The Author, Aref Ali Nayed, studied Engineering (B.Sc.(Eng.)), Philosophy of Science (M.A.), and Hermeneutics (Ph.D.) at the University of Iowa and the University of Guelph. He also studied, as a special student, at the University of Toronto and the Pontifical Gregorian University. He is a Former Professor at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (Rome), and the International Institute for Islamic Thought and Civilization (Malaysia). He is currently an Advisor to the Cambridge Interfaith Program at the Faculty of Divinity in Cambridge, and runs a family business as the Managing Director of Agathon Systems Ltd. (IBM, Nortel and NCR Partner for Libya).

Imam al-Haddad on Giving Good Counsel to Fellow Muslims.

You must be of good counsel to all Muslims. The highest point of this is that you conceal nothing from them which if made known would result in good or preserve from something evil. The prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) has said, “Religion is good counsel” Part of this is to support a Muslim in his absence as you would in his presence, and not to give him more verbal signs of affection than you have for him in your heart. It is also part of this that when a muslim asks you for advice, and you know that the correct course does not lie in that which he is inclined to do, you should tell him so. The absence of good counsel is indicated by the presence of envy of the favors God has given other Muslims. The origin of such envy is that you find it intolerable that God has granted one of His servants a good thing whether of the religion, or of the world. The utmost limit is to wish that he be deprived of it. It has been handed down that “envy consumes good deeds just as fire consumes dry wood”. The envious man is objecting to God’s management of His dominion, as if to say “O Lord! You have put your favours where they do not belong.”

It is permitted to be envious without rancour whereby when you see a favor being bestowed on one of His servants, you ask Him to grant you the like.

When someone praises you, you must feel dislike for his praises within your heart. If he has praised you for something you truly possess, say: “praise belongs to God who has revealed the good things and hidden the ugly things.” And if he praises you for something you do not possess, say “O God! Do not call me to account for what they say, forgive me what they do not know, and make me better than they think.”

In your case, do not praise anyone unneccesarily.

When you wish to give advice to someone regarding any behaviour of his that you have come to know about, be gentle, talk to him in private and do not express explicitly what may be conveyed implicitly. Should he ask you to tell him who told you that which you know, do not tell him lest it stir up enmity. If he accepts your advice, praise God, and thank Him. If he should refuse, blame yourself.

If you are given something as a trust guard it better than if it was yours. Return that which was entrusted to you, and beware of betraying trust. The prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said:

“He who cannot keep a trust has no faith” and “Three things are attached to the Throne of God: Benefaction which says “O God! I am by you, therefore let me not be denied!” Kinship, which says “O God! I am by you, thus let me not be severed!” and Trust, which says “O God! I am by you, so let me not be betrayed!”.

Speak truthfully and honor commitments and your promises, for breaching them are signs of hypocrisy. “The signs of a hypocrite are three: when he speaks he lies, when he promises he breaks his promise, and when he is trusted, he betrays that trust.”

Beware of arguments and wrangling, for they cast rancour into the breasts of men, alienate hearts and lead to enmity and hatred. If anyone argues against you and has right on his side, accept what he says for truth must always be followed. If on the other hand he is wrong, leave him, for he is ignorant, and God has said “And turn away from the ignorant.” [vii :199]

Renounce all joking, if very occasionally you do joke to assuage a Muslim’s heart, then speak only the truth. The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) has said: “Neither argue with your brother nor quarrel, and do not make him a promise and then break it.”

Respect all Muslims, especially those deserving of merit, such as the scholars, the righteous, the elderly. Never frighten or alarm a Muslim, never mock or ridicule them, or despise them.

Be humble for humility is the attribute of believers. Beware of pride for God does not like the proud. Those who humble themselves are raised up by God, and those who are proud are abased by Him.

There are signs that distinguish the humble from the proud:

“that God may separate the vile from the good” [VIII:37].

Signs of humility include a liking for obscurity, dislike of fame, acceptance of truth whether it be from a lowly or noble person, to love the poor, associate with them, to fulfill the rights people have upon you as completely as you can, thank those who fulfill their duties to you, and excuse those who are remiss. Signs of pride include a liking for positions of most dignity when in company, praising oneself, speaking proudly, open haughtiness, arrogance, strutting, and neglecting the rights of others upon you while demanding your rights from them.

Condensed from The Book of Assistance

The Meaning of Tasawwuf

Tasawwuf can be called the inwardness of Islam. Islam, like most other faiths to a greater or lesser extent, consists firstly of certain beliefs, such as the existence of God, and the coming of the Judgement, and reward and punishment in the next life, and the outward expression of these beliefs in forms of worship, such as prayer and fasting, all of which concern man’s relationship with God; and secondly, a system of morality, which concerns man’s relationship with man, and has its outward expression in certain social institutions and laws, such as marriage, inheritance, and civil and criminal laws. But it is obvious that the basis of this faith, the spirit that gives it life, is man’s relationship with God. Forms of worship are simply the physical vehicles of this relationship, and it is this relationship again which is responsible for the origin, the significance and the ultimate sanction of the principles of morality and their formulation into a specific social and legal system. If the interior converse with the Supreme Being and inspiration from Him are present, then they are comparable to the soul within the body of the exterior religion; if they die away, or in proportion to the extent that they wither or become feeble, the outward form of the faith becomes like a soulless body, which by the inexorable law of nature swiftly succumbs to corruption. It is therefore man’s direct relationship with his Maker which is the breath and life of religion, and it is the study and cultivation of this relationship that the word tasawwuf connotes.

It may be wondered why the words ‘Sufi’, which means ‘woollen-clothed’, and ‘Tasawwuf’, which means the path of the Sufis, i.e. the woollen-clothed ones, should have become so universal in order to denote something which belongs properly to the realm of the spirit. This name is symbolic rather than descriptive. To be a Sufi does not require a person literally to wear woollen clothes, but presumes an inner quality which was at one time characteristic of those who wore them. In the early generations of Islam, through the closeness to the time of the Noble Prophet (peace be upon him) and the illumination of his incomparable spirituality, which encompassed so completely the inner and the outer, the comprehension of the inwardness of Islam enwrapped in its outward expressions was so general that no group of people who devoted themselves specially to this aspect of the faith was distinguishable. It was only when the inevitable course of development of human affairs began to run and the original trunk of universality began to throw out branches of specialisation, that Islamic knowledge was progressively divided into the interior and the exterior, and the general word ilm (knowledge) began to denote more the academic study of the Qur’an, Hadith and Fiqh than their spiritual content, contrary to its Qur’anic use in the sense of ‘knowledge of Allah’. At this stage that body of Muslims who devoted themselves more particularly to the cultivation of the spiritual heritage of their Prophet (peace be upon him), began to use the termMa‘rifat (Recognition of Allah) and arif (One who recognises Allah) to denote this inward aspect of knowledge, and indeed still do to the present day. So it was possible that instead of being termed Sufis they might have been called Ahl-i Ma‘rifat, or Arifin. But not every aspirant to spiritual development is anArif, and the average human mind seeks more the outward badge than the inner reality, which in this case is anyway difficult to describe, so the habit observed in certain Godly persons (in reaction to the excessive luxury of the times) of wearing coarse woollen clothes, which were then the mark of extreme poverty, was taken as the symbol of all those who sought the inner life; and this term’s convenience and simplicity has withstood all the vagaries of time and place throughout the Islamic world.

The visible formulations of Islam are therefore both enlivened by the spiritual and moral force behind them, and so they are the manifestations of this force, and at the same time they are the means of attaining these spiritual and moral quaities; this can be said to constitute their main purpose. Thus these two aspects of Islam are mutually generative, each one producing the other. It can be seen from the Word of Allah, the Qur’an, that wherever something concerning man’s outward actions is decreed, its inward content and purpose is also stressed. Take Prayer for instance; Allah says ‘Observe Prayer for My remembrance’ (20:14); or ‘The believers have attained success; who are humble in their prayers’ (32:1), emphasising that the object of Prayer is not the mere outward performance, but to remember Him with a humble heart. In the case of fasting, Allah says, ‘Fasting has been decreed for you, as it was decreed for those who came before you, that you may be God-fearing.’ (2:183) Regarding sacrifice on the occasion of Pilgrimage, He says: ‘It is not their blood or their flesh which reaches Him, but the devotion from you.’ (22:37) On the subject of marriage: ‘It is one of His signs that He has made for you mates of your own kind that you may find peace in them, and He has created affection and kindness between you.’ (30:24) On spending for the poor: ‘They (the righteous) give food to the needy, the orphan and the prisoner, for the love of Him; they say: We feed for the sake of Allah only, and desire no reward or thanks from you.’ (76:8,9) If we reflect on these and other similar indications in the Qur’an, we are led to the conclusion that if it is necessary to observe the outward ordinances of our faith, it is equally necessary to develop within ourselves those qualities which are their soul; that these two are complementary and one cannot exist in a sound state without the other. When the word ‘Shari‘at’ is used, one immediately calls to mind the basic beliefs of Islam, without which a person cannot be reckoned a Muslim, and the external decrees comprising forms of worship, rules of behaviour, and civil and criminal laws. In short, it is the outwardness of Islam which is normally referred to by this term. But we have seen that within this outer Shari‘at there exists an inner Shari‘at of equal importance, which constitutes both its inspiration and its goal. Like the word ‘ilm’ (Knowledge) which originally comprised both the inward realisation of divine truths as well as outward knowledge of Islamic tenets, the term ‘Shari‘at’ (the road) should really include the devotion of the heart to Allah as well as the specific beliefs, and the attainment of moral excellence as well as submission to the law. But just as ‘ilm’ came to mean only book-knowledge, so ‘Shari‘at’ came to mean only the law; as a result, the Sufis, the devotees of the spirit of Islam, began to use the word ‘Ma‘rifat’ for the inner relationship with God, and in place of the word ‘Shari‘at’, they chose the word ‘tariqat’ (the Path) to denote the way to spiritual perfection. Just as the outer shari‘at consists of two parts, belief and practice, so also does this inner shari‘at manifest itself in two main fields.

The first is man’s attitude to his Maker. From the Qur’an and the teachings of the Noble Prophet (peace be upon him) we learn that this attitude should be inspired by love, hope, fear, gratitude, patience, trust, self-sacrifice and complete devotion; and that He should be felt to be constantly near. This is the inwardness of belief. The second is man’s attitude to his fellow men: Allah and his Prophet (peace be upon him) have taught us that this should be inspired by sympathy, justice, kindness, unselfishness, generosity, sternness on matters of principle, leniency wherever possible, and that we must avoid pride, jealousy, malice, greed, selfishness, miserliness and ill-nature. These qualities will not be found explained in the books of Fiqh; it required a group of people distinct from the jurists to determine and develop the science of the soul. Of these two parts of the inner Shari‘at, it is the first, i.e. man’s relationship with God, which is the root, the moral attitude of man towards his fellows being derived from it. It is the realisation that all men are creatures of the One God, and that He wishes us to treat them with mercy and kindness, and at times justice, which should reflect His own sublime qualities, and that if we succeed in this we shall win His pleasure, that is the real basis of morality. Some have made the mistake of imagining that morality can exist by itself without the foundation of religion, and have tried to promulgate a non-religious ethical code as a substitute for faith. This is nothing but a mental illusion. It comes about in this way: through the medium of religious teaching, a certain moral outlook permeates a whole society, and colours not only the specifically religious life, but education and social customs and habits of thinking and acting. When at a later stage some people take to agnosticism and rebel against the established faith, they are unable to separate themselves from this moral attitude which has now become the very stuff of their mental being. Without realising the origin of their morality, they fall into the error of considering it self-existent, and imagine that they can reform society by simply calling upon people to be ethical. But it is a matter of observation that such inherited moral attitudes, when cut off from the tree of religion to which they owe their being, very quickly decay, and it is not long before the very basis of morality is questioned and finally denied, and non-moral philosophies are openly proclaimed. By contrast, the morality based on faith in God, derived from a revealed Book and given life by the consciousness of Divine pleasure, has in it the seeds not of decay but of growth and fruition.

That it is man’s inner relationship with Allah which gives meaning and value to his outward expression of belief and the performance of his religious duties is asserted most pointedly in one of the most famous sayings of the Noble Prophet (peace be upon him). The following incident is reported by Omar, the second Khalifa.

‘We were sitting with the Messenger of Allah one day when a man appeared with very white clothes and very black hair, with no signs of travel upon him. None of us recognised him. He came and sat before the Prophet (peace be upon him) with his knees touching his knees, and his hands placed on his thighs. He then said: ‘O Muhammad, tell me, what is Islam?’ The Prophet replied: ‘Islam is that you testify that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and that you establish prayer, and Zakat, fast the month of Ramadan, and make the pilgrimage to the House of Allah if you are able.’ The man said: ‘You are right’, and we wondered that he both asked and confirmed the answer. Then he said: ‘what is Iman?’ The Prophet replied: ‘Iman is that you believe in Allah, His Angels, His Books, His Messengers and the Last Day, and that you believe in the predestination of good and evil.’ The man said: ‘You are right. Now tell me what is Ihsan (good performance)?’ The Prophet replied: ‘That you worship Allah as if you are seeing Him and if you do not see Him, He surely sees you.’’

Then after asking about the Last Day, the man left, and the Noble Prophet (peace be upon him) informed his companions that this was the Angel Gabriel who came to teach them their religion.

Here the word Ihsan, which means to perform something in the best manner, is explained as ‘the worship of Allah as if you are seeing Him, and if you do not see Him, He surely sees you.’ This means that the consciousness of the presence of Allah, and the feeling of Love and awe which accompany it, must permeate both our faith and practice (Iman and Islam) and it is in proportion to this consciousness that our excellence in religion can be judged. Clearly this sense of presence is not to be confined only to worship, but to all our actions (one version of the above incident, in fact, has ‘to work for Allah as if you are seeing Him’). It is precisely this awareness of the nearness and presence of Allah that the Sufis have as their ultimate goal in all their activities.

So far we have been speaking of the Muslims’ relationship with Allah in a general way. But Tasawwuf has a more specific content, that is to say, it aims at bringing the novice to the direct spiritual experience. The fountainhead of Islam (a fact which is often forgotten) is the direct spiritual experience of the Noble Prophet (peace be upon him) by means of which the message of God was conveyed to man. This spiritual experience had many forms, and was continuous throughout the period of the Prophet’s prophethood, starting from the initial vision of the Angel when the call to the divine mission was sounded, and persisting throughout the inspiration of the Divine Book, with other manifestations such as Hadith Qudsi (Divine inspirations apart from the Qur’an itself) and revelations of the next world. It is illustrated particularly in the Mi‘raj (the Ascension), which culminates in the vision of the Supreme Reality. When the essence of prophethood is the spiritual experience, it would be strange indeed if some portion of this aspect of the prophetic life were not inherited by the Prophet’s companions and those who followed them. So we find a tradition of spiritual experience alongside that of the more obvious branches of religious teaching concerned with beliefs and practices. In the early stages it was not considered proper to publish such experiences and considerable reticence was observed; it was thought sufficient only to hint at them. As time passed, reticence was lessened and gradually the science of Tasawwuf was outwardly formulated, although the very nature of these most inward matters makes some reticence inevitable at all times.

Abu Huraira, one of the intimate companions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) used to say: ‘I acquired two vessels from the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), one of which I published; but if I published the other my throat would be cut.’ This is an interesting allusion to the danger of making a show of spiritual experience before those who do not understand them. If the experiences are believed, then some people out of ignorance are inclined to raise the one who is spiritually gifted almost to divinity, if not to make him into God Himself. If they are disbelieved, the doubters become guilty of denying what is true, and deprive themselves of certain special benefits which it is the Will of God that they should have. This is the reason why ‘sufis’ have always counselled great caution in the matter of describing some of their spiritual states in detail as these can only be appreciated in the tasting, and not in the description. In spite of the obvious references in the Qur’an, the Hadiths and the lives of the companions, some have tried to deny this spiritual heritage of the Noble Prophet (peace be upon him) and claim that the early Muslims were only ‘ascetics’ and not ‘mystics’. But to perceive spirituality where it exists is not given to everyone, even to perceive it at all; let it suffice to say that the extraordinary dedication to Allah and His Prophet (peace be upon him) and their commands by the leading companions and followers would be inexplicable without a profound spiritual experience.

I have said that in the early period the outer and the inner aspects of Islam, that is, the outward observance and its spiritual content, were not divided but formed a homogeneous whole, but as time passed and specialised knowledge increased, it became necessary and inevitable that a body of Muslims should devote themselves more particularly to the inwardness of Islam which came to be known as Tasawwuf. If we consider the development of Tasawwuf as a science, that is the science of the soul, we find that it provides a close comparison with the development of other sciences based on the principle of the Divine Book and the life of Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him). To take the science of Hadith as an example, we find that during the first century, which was the time of the Companions and the followers, things remained very much in the original form of personal teaching from those who sat in the company of the Great Ones, with little sign of elaboration and formalisation. During the second century we begin to find a more or less comprehensive collection and criticism, which culminate in the third century in critical recensions based on now thoroughly elaborated and determined principles. In the case of Fiqh we find a similar process; after the first century of the direct and practical teaching of the companions and followers, the second century produces elaborate compendia of legal decisions and the formulation of principles of jurisprudence which again by the third century had been built up into a relatively independent science. Tasawwuf, too, was constructed into a spiritual science on the firm foundations of the spiritual heritage of the Prophet of God; here again, the elaboration begins in the second century in the recorded sayings and treatises and books of the early Sufis, and in the third century Tasawwufappears as a fully developed and formulated spiritual science. It is just as gratuitous to talk critically of later innovation in the matter of Tasawwuf as it is in the matter of Fiqh, Hadith and Tafsir. There is a world of difference between elaborations and innovations, which people with muddled minds find difficult to distinguish.

Although the development of Tasawwuf can be historically compared with that of the other sciences, there is an intrinsic superiority in Tasawwuf which should be well remembered. This superiority lies in that the expansion of the science of spiritual development is based on experience and direct observation confirmed in its broad pattern by thousands of travellers on the upward path of the soul, whereas the other sciences mainly owe their formulation to reason and conjecture. All, of course, are founded on tradition, that is, the Qur’an and its living commentary by the Noble Prophet (peace be upon him) and his followers, but the process of later elaboration has this fundamental difference. It cannot be contested that direct experience, especially when it is common to large numbers of people, is a vastly more authoritative source of knowledge than rational speculation. For instance, after the data provided by revelation and tradition the chief instrument in the development of Fiqh is Qiyas (analogy) or Ra’y (opinion). The main pillar of the science of Hadith is Jarh and Ta‘dil, which means the critical examination of the reliability of the reporters of a certain Hadith in addition to its subject matter. Obviously these processes are rational and speculative. The development of Tasawwuf, however, has consisted in the progressively more detailed expounding of the spiritual experience constituting the inner heritage of the Noble Prophet (peace be upon him) and has no content of conjecture and opinion. This vital element has resulted in a remarkable unanimity among the proponents of this science throughout the ages, and whatever differences that exist are those of emphasis or mode of expression and do not show any real cleavage in the essential unity.

We have already alluded to the function of Tasawwuf, which is to perfect the relationship of man first with his God, and secondly with his fellow men. Now it is obvious that only very few people have the call to devote themselves entirely to spirituality and become, as it were, specialists in the inner life. This appears to be the result of some innate urge which so drives those who possess it as not to allow them to follow any other vocation. This is not to say that even these specially gifted few entirely abandon all usual worldly activities. On the contrary, we find in Islam, in distinction from other religious communities, that its greatest scientists of the soul were mostly married, had children and conducted their household and similar affairs like other men. It is another matter that during the period of training for spiritual development a certain retirement, either total or partial, is usually required, as indeed it is during the acquirement of other branches of specialist learning. It is also true that even after reaching expertness many of the Islamic spiritualists paid very little attention to the earning of their livelihood and spent their whole time in teaching and giving solace, help and encouragement to the common people. Their physical wants were looked after by their pupils and admirers, as was the practice until recently even in the case of those who taught children how to read and write. In this deliberate neglect of their own material needs in order to devote themselves more unhamperedly to their mission, they observed the utmost selflessness and resignation to Allah, and never expressly or by implication gave any sign of the poverty or even hunger which they often had to undergo. If they neglected the world, it was only as far as their own wants were concerned; they never neglected the wants of those who came to them for spiritual nourishment, or even for physical nourishment if they had any to spare, for in addition to being at the service of those who were hungry for the things of the soul, they often conducted public kitchens for the feeding of the poor, and engaged themselves in the healing of the sick in body as well as those who were sick in spirit, as is well-known to those who have studied their lives.

Just as spiritual specialists are few by the nature of things, so also the number of the pupils who shape their lives in close conformity to those of their masters is also very small. These selected followers are those who, having the inner call, are later charged with the duty of carrying on the work of teaching and exhortation in a new generation. But the majority of those who visit these inheritors of the more inward traditions of Islam are those who, while engaged in their daily vocations, wish to refresh themselves from the toils of the world at the pure springs of sincerity and devotion which they find so abundant with the Sufis. It is here that we see the influence of the Sufis working and giving new life to the whole wide land of the community. The ordinary men and women who spend a part of their time with the Sufis acquire some measure of inspiration for their spiritual and moral betterment, and to this measure their whole lives are affected. It is the spiritual orientation and the moral attitude which constitute the fountain-head of human thought, and so of human action. Events in man’s history, and the growth, flourishing, and decay of peoples, can always be traced back to these inner sources. The contact of people of the world with the Sufis, whether they be kings, princes, captains, merchants, administrators, artisans or peasants, indirectly affects the whole movement of the nation along the uneven road of time. It is from these most intimate wells of inspiration that a certain quality is given to the thought and life of a whole culture; what a pity that some superficial intellects are unable to perceive these undercurrents of history. Economics, politics, and social life are all controlled by the mental processes of man; he can only ignore at his peril these deep directive forces from which his mental processes emerge. The apparent obscurity and detachment of the Sufi conceal an activity of radical importance to the whole Muslim nation.

(The writer (1915-1978) was an English convert to Islam who became a Shaykh of the Tariqa Chishtiyya, living a life of simplicity in Karachi, Pakistan, where his holiness gained him the love and devotion of thousands of Muslims from all walks of life. May Allah show him His mercy, and grant him light in his grave. Amin.)

The Condemnation of Status and Fame

The Revival of the Religious Sciences
by Hujjat al-Islam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (r.a.)
Abridged by Shaykh Ahmad al-Shami
Quarter III: Attributes leading to Perdition
Book VIII: The Condemnation of Status and Ostentation

Section I: The Condemnation of Status and Fame

In the name of Allah, most compassionate and merciful!

The condemnation of status and the merit of anonymity

You should know – may Allah bestow uprightness upon you – that the basis of status is reputation and fame, both of which are blameworthy. By contrast, anonymity is praiseworthy, except for him whom Allah, exalted is He, has given fame in the spread of His din without him making an effort to procure it.

Allah, exalted is He, says: {As for the abode of the hereafter, We grant it [only] to those who do not seek to exalt themselves on earth, nor yet to spread corruption…}.[1] Note that here Allah has juxtaposed the will for exaltation and the will for corruption, and shown that the abode of the Afterlife is only given to the one who is free from both wills. Allah, exalted is He, says: {As for those who care for [no more than] the life of this world and its adornment -We shall repay them in full for all that they did in this life, and they shall not be deprived of their just due therein: [yet] it is they who, in the life to come, shall have nothing but the fire. For in vain shall be all that they wrought in this world, and worthless all that they ever did!}.[2] In a general sense, these two verses also allude to love of status, for status is the greatest pleasure of the world and its best embellishment.

Allah’s Messenger – peace be upon him – said: “Many a dishevelled man covered with dust and wearing worn-out clothes passes unnoticed, [but] were he to adjure Allah, He would bring to pass his request.”[3] And he – peace be upon him – also said: “Shall I not inform you about the folk of Paradise: [they consist of] all weak persons deemed weak [by others], [but who] were they to adjure Allah, He would bring to pass their requests. As for the folk of Hell [they consist of] all proud, disdainful persons who are parsimonious with their abundant wealth.”[4]

Ibn Mas‘ud said: “You should be fountainheads of knowledge, lamps of guidance, recluses in your homes, engaged in worship at night with renewed hearts, and wearers of worn-out clothes, known by the folk of heaven and hidden from the inhabitants of the earth.” And al-Fudayl said: “If you can afford not to be known then do so. What harm shall ever come to you from being unknown? Why should you care if you are not praised? And why should you care if you are criticised by people while being praised by Allah, exalted is He?” And Ibrahim ibn Adham said: “He who loves status is not being truthful with Allah.”

It is reported that when Ayyub al-Sakhtiyani was once travelling, a huge group of people came to see him off. [When he saw them] he said: “Had I not known that Allah knows that I inwardly dislike this [reputation], I would have feared the loathing of Allah, exalted and glorified is He.”

A man said to Bishr al-Hafi: “Advise me!” The latter replied: “Retain your anonymity and seek lawful sustenance.”

These traditions and reports inform you that fame is to be condemned and that anonymity is praiseworthy. What is meant by fame is the repute which consists of status and position [that a person has] in people’s hearts. Furthermore, the love of status is at the root of all corruption. Seeking fame is blameworthy; but it is not blameworthy to acquire it by leave of Allah, glorified is He, so long as the bondsman makes no effort towards it.

The meaning and essence of status

Status and wealth are two pillars of this world. Wealth is the possession of beneficial substances, and status is the possession of [people’s] hearts from which obedience and glorification may be expected.

Just as the rich man possesses monies by means of which he can obtain his aims, purposes and all other requirements of the self, so does the person who possesses status own people’s hearts. That is to say he can use them to achieve his aims and desires. And just as fortunes are procured by means of different crafts and occupations, so too can people’s hearts be gained by means of different kinds of treatment. Hearts, however, do not become devoted except through information and conviction. If the heart believes in any trait of perfection in anything, it yields towards it and devotes itself to it according to the heart’s degree of conviction and the degree of perfection it sees in that trait. A person may consider perfect what is not actually so, yet the heart, nevertheless, necessarily yields to the holder of that trait in conformity with its conviction.

As the owner of wealth also seeks the acquisition of slaves, so does the seeker of status seek the bondage and slavery of freemen and the possession of their selves by means of owning their hearts. In fact the kind of slavery that the seeker of status aims for is the more powerful of the two.

Hence, the meaning of status is establishing position in people’s hearts. Status gives rise to [several] outcomes such as praise, extolling, service, assistance, preference, glorification and respect. Its cause is the belief that a person has perfect traits with regard to either knowledge, worship, good manners, lineage, authority or physical beauty.

The reason for the instinctive love of status

You should know that that which is a requisite for the love of wealth is also a requisite for the love of status. And as the possession of gold and silver provides man with the ability to obtain all his needs, so too does the possession of the hearts of freemen provide the same ability. The fact that they have a common cause implies that there is a common love. Nevertheless, there are three factors which give precedence to the possession of status over the possession of wealth.

First, it is easier to obtain wealth by means of status than it is to obtain status by means of wealth. For if the man of knowledge or the ascetic, who has status in people’s hearts, were to seek wealth he would easily obtain it. Conversely, if the mean person were to seek such status he would not obtain it even if he were rich.

Second, wealth is prone to misfortune and ruin, through [for example] theft. It may also be the object of transgressors’ and rulers’ resentful envy. As for the hearts of people, if they are owned, they can never be exposed to such misfortunes.

Third, the ownership of hearts carries on and increases without the need to toil or strive, whereas the increase of wealth has to be achieved through both.

There is an amazing characteristic about [people’s] natural dispositions towards the love of wealth and status which are used to achieve their purposes, and this characteristic is the love of amassing wealth, accumulating treasures and increasing the quantity of reserves they hold for all needs. Such is the extent of this love that were a bondsman to have two valleys of gold he would nevertheless wish for a third. Similarly, man likes to see his status increased and his reputation spread to the remotest lands, even to those which he categorically knows he will never set foot on and whose inhabitants he will never meet.

People’s hearts are hardly free from this love for two reasons.

First, it ends the pain of fear. Man is fearful for his future and has grave anticipations even if his needs are satisfied in the immediate term. He is conscious that the wealth which currently satisfies his requirements may vanish and that he will consequently have to rely on other people. Thus preoccupied, fear erupts in his heart. Nothing can put a stop to this fear except the tranquillity that follows the accumulation of another fortune which he may resort to when misfortune befalls his initial wealth. Because he takes pity on himself and because he loves life, man always expects longevity and is alert to the possibility of unexpected needs. Because he foresees and fears possible misfortunes befalling his wealth, he seeks that which might drive it away, and [in his opinion] this is abundant wealth. This fear, however, is not confined just to a specific measure of wealth. It is also the reason which arouses in man the love for position and wealth in the hearts of those living far away from his homeland. For he always expects a reason which would cause his departure from his own country or which could cause the departure of those distant people from their country to his.

Second, by natural disposition each person wants perfection. Having fallen short of such perfection, the soul does not give up its desire for it. The soul loves and desires perfection and delights in it for its own sake and not for any other purpose. It is in this sense that man instinctively loves controlling things through possessing the ability to dispose of them. Among these things are money and belongings but also the hearts and souls of other human beings which are the most precious of that which exists on earth.

Praiseworthy and blameworthy love of status

You have learnt that the meaning of status is the possession of hearts and that this is among the [desirable] substances of the world. That ends with death, and the world is but a sowing-field for the Afterlife. However, because it is incumbent upon a person to have a minimum of wealth for the necessities of food and drink, it is incumbent upon him to have a minimum of status for the necessity of living with other people. This is because he may need [for example] a servant, a friend or a teacher. That a person wishes to have a position in the heart of his servant as he calls the latter to be at his service is not blameworthy. Nor is it in itself blameworthy to like having a certain standing in the heart of one’s friend in that this cements the friendship and help him to his advantage.

Status, like wealth, is a means to [worldly] substances and in this sense there is no difference between the two. To like them in order to serve the needs of the body is not blameworthy, but to like them for their essences – in what exceeds the basic necessities of the body – is blameworthy.

In sum, status is sought in three different ways, two of them being permissible while one is prohibited. The prohibited way is seeking to establish a position in people’s hearts by making them believe that one possesses a trait which [in reality] one does not possess, such as knowledge, piety or [noble] lineage, and as a consequence of which people take one to be knowledgeable or pious when one is not. This way is unlawful because it is a lie and a deceit.

As for the two potentially permissible ways, the first entails seeking position [in people’s hearts] for a trait that one [truly] possesses, as was the case with [the Prophet] Yusuf -peace be upon him – who said as reported of him by Allah, exalted is He: {[Joseph] replied: “Place in my charge the store-houses of the land; behold, I am a good and knowing keeper”}.[5] [Note that] he asked for this position owing to his being good and knowledgeable and that he needed this position, but he was truthful [in attributing goodness and knowledge to himself]. The second involves concealing a defect or offence lest discovering it cause the cessation of one’s position. This is also permissible because concealing one’s ugly traits is permissible; to reveal what is concealed [of one’s failings] and to display one’s repulsive traits is not allowed. There is no deceit in such behaviour, for it is nothing more than concealing information which yields no benefit [to others]. It is like the person who although he hides the fact that he drinks wine nevertheless does not pretend to be a pious person. But if this person were to claim that he were pious then he would be committing a deception. The fact that he does not admit to drinking wine does not imply belief in his piety, for this [concealment] only prevents knowledge of his drinking.

Among those acts that are prohibited is perfecting one’s prayer in front of a person so that the latter thinks well of one, for this is nothing but ostentation. It is also an act of deception because it gives the other person the impression that one is among those who are sincere and humble with Allah while one is in fact indulging in a performance. How can such a one be sincere?

Seeking status through this means is unlawful, and so is seeking status through any offensive act. Seeking status through an offensive act is analogous to acquiring unlawful wealth. Just as a person is not allowed to take possession of someone else’s property by cheating in indemnification or in any other deal, so it is unlawful to take possession of a person’s heart by means of forgery or cheating; this because the possession of hearts is a more serious matter than the possession of properties.

The reason for loving praise and loathing condemnation

We mention this only so that one knows how to treat the love of status and the fear of condemnation. This is because a cause which is unknown cannot possibly be treated, for real treatment is nothing other than ending the causes of the disease.

Know that there are several reasons for the love of status and the heart’s joy in it.

The first and most powerful reason is the soul’s sense of perfection; and we have shown that perfection is cherished. Consequently, praise makes the praised person’s soul feel perfect. Here, a person’s joy is greater when the praise issues from a person who is knowledgeable and acquainted with these [praised] traits, a person who would not arbitrarily speak without proper verification. An example would be a pupil’s happiness with his teacher’s praise. [Praise which emanates from such people] is the acme of joy. For the same reason a person also loathes condemnation, and this loathing becomes all the greater when the condemnation emanates from a trusted, knowledgeable person.

Secondly, praise indicates that the heart of the praiser is possessed by the praised one, and that the former is a follower of the latter. The possession of hearts is something cherished and the feeling of its attainability brings joy. Moreover, this joy is greater when the praise emanates from a person of considerable power, and it weakens when the one who is praising has no weight. For the same reason, a person hates condemnation and his heart becomes offended.

Thirdly, the laudation of the one who is lauding and the praise of the one who is praising are means for captivating the heart of an audience, especially if they are among those whose words are taken into consideration and whose praise is highly valued.

All these factors might be present in the praise of a single praising person, so that the joy ensuing from such praise becomes greater. However, the first joy – the sense of perfection – is abandoned when the praised one knows that the praising person is not correct, as is the case when one is praised for being a man of knowledge when one knows that one is not. And the second joy – taking possession of the heart of the one who is praising – is also relinquished when one knows that the one who is praising does not believe in what he says, and when one knows that one does not truly possess the gifts that are being praised. In this case, all joys are annulled.

Healing the love of status

The one whose heart is overwhelmed by the love of status devotes himself completely to playing up to those he is infatuated with so as to gain their esteem. To this end, he indulges in performances for their sake, and always pays heed, in his speech and actions, to what magnifies his standing in their eyes. This is the seed of hypocrisy and the root of corruption which inevitably lead to making light of acts of worship, using them for display, and indulging in what is prohibited for the sake of hunting hearts.

Now, anyone who seeks a position in people’s hearts is forced to be deceitful with them and to display praiseworthy traits that he does not have; and this is the very essence of hypocrisy. Love of status, therefore, is among those perils which ought to be healed and driven from the heart. This because the heart has a natural propensity for status, just as it is naturally disposed towards the love of wealth. Its treatment is a synthesis of knowledge and action.

With regard to knowledge, a person should know the reason why he loves status. This can only be because he seeks full power over other people and especially their hearts. Even when this is sought for good and sincere purposes, status will end at death, for it is not among the everlasting good deeds. Hence, man should never leave the din, which is the eternal life, for its sake.

Love of status can also be healed by knowing its this-worldly defects, in essence by contemplating the dangers to which people of status are exposed. For everyone endowed with status is envied, and is always a target of hurt, constantly in fear for his status and wary that his position in people’s hearts might change. Moreover, such hearts are more prone to change than [the contents of] a cooking pot when it is boiling, and are always wavering between responsiveness and avoidance. Hence, anything resting on people’s hearts is like something built on the waves of the sea: it has no stability. The preoccupation with paying deference to [other people’s] hearts, protecting one’s status, ending others’ sly resentful envy and obstructing the hurt of one’s enemies, are all immediate anxieties which disturb the pleasure of status. This is then the healing [of status] as far as knowledge is concerned.

As for [its healing by means of] action, it consists of finding intimacy in anonymity and being content with the Creator’s responsiveness by eliminating one’s greed for what people have. Indeed, the content person can dispense with other people, and once he does so his heart is not preoccupied with them, nor does establishing his position in their hearts carry any weight. A person cannot give up seeking status unless he is content and gives up his greed for what people have. He can, however, seek help in the hadiths relating to the condemnation of status and the praise of anonymity [in order to achieve this contentment].

Healing the love of praise

You should know that most people have perished simply because of their fear of others’ condemnation and their love of others’ praise. Consequently, all their actions became responses to what pleases other people so that they could win their praise and avoid their criticism. Such a state of affairs is lethal and must be treated. In order to treat it you should ask yourself whether or not you truly possess the trait that you are praised for. If you do possess it then this trait is either one that is praised rightly, such as knowledge or piety, or one that is not praised rightly, such as fortune, status and all other such worldly substances. If the trait belongs to the category of worldly substances, then being delighted with it is like being delighted with the plants of the earth which before long will turn into chaff, only to be blown away by the wind. This can only be attributed to weak mental faculties, for the one endowed with reason would say, as the poet al-Mutanabbi said long ago:

To me, the sharpest distress lies in a delight
Of whose cessation one is certain.

On the other hand, if the trait is such that a person may rightly be delighted with it, for example knowledge or piety, then he should learn not to be so delighted with it because the way in which his life will be concluded is not known. He may feel delight in possessing such traits because they bring him nearer to Allah, but the danger of concluding his life in disobedience to Allah still remains. The fear of a bad conclusion to one’s life furnishes ample preoccupation from being delighted with all there is in the world. As for being delighted by praise for a trait that one does not possess, this is the height of all folly.

Healing the hate of condemnation

It was indicated earlier that the root cause why people hate being condemned stands at the opposite of that for love of praise. Its treatment, therefore, can be understood therein. We should, however, also say with regard to this question that the one who condemns you belongs to one of the following three states:

[1] Either he is truthful about what he says and his intention is offering you good advice, and he desires to benefit you;

[2] Or he is truthful about what he says, but his intention is to hurt you and to display enmity;

[3] Or he is lying.

Within the first state, if a person is truthful and wants to offer you good advice you should not be angry with him, condemn him, or feel rancour towards him. Rather, you should seize his favour because the one who brings your defects to your attention has indicated to you a source of danger so that you might avoid it. Hence, you should be happy with such a person and proceed, if you can, to remove this blameworthy attribute from yourself. As for any distress, hatred or condemnation felt as a result of this person’s expression, it is nothing but the height of your ignorance.

As for the second context, where a person intends to display enmity, [know that] you have nevertheless benefited from what he has said because he has pointed out to you your defect, should you have been ignorant of it. [Even if you were aware of the defect] he has nevertheless reminded you of it, in case you had become heedless of it; and should this defect have become unobjectionable to you he may have made it look repulsive to you so that your concern to remove it is reawakened. Either way, these are causes for your felicity, for you will derive from them benefit. You should, therefore, occupy yourself with seeking felicity because its means have been provided to you as a result of the criticism you have heard. Had you been about to enter upon a king, unknowingly wearing dirty clothes, and someone shouted at you: “You with the dirty clothes! Go and clean yourself!”, you would have been pleased.

The third context relates to criticism directed against you by someone but from which you are exempt in the sight of Allah, exalted is He. You should not hate such a person nor should you occupy yourself with condemning him. Instead, you should ponder the following three things:

First, even if you are free from the defect which is being attributed to you, you nevertheless are not free from similar defects, indeed your defects that Allah has kept concealed are more abundant. You should, therefore, thank Allah, exalted is He, that He has not revealed your real defects to this person, and led him instead to attribute to you something from which you have been protected.

Second, this accusation may act as an atonement for the rest of your defects; being accused of a defect that you are exempt from cleanses you from other defects that you are defiled with. Moreover, anyone who backbites against you has [by his action] offered you [the outcome of] his good deeds. Why should you feel sad to receive gifts which bring you closer to Allah, exalted is He?

Third, the poor person [who falsely accuses you] has harmed his din to the extent that he made himself fall in the Eyes of Allah and destroyed himself because of his calumny. Hence you should not add your anger to Allah’s wrath; nor let Satan be spiteful with him by causing you to say: “O Allah! Destroy him!” Rather, you should say: “O Allah! Give him uprightness! O Allah! Please forgive him!”

It is reported that Ibrahim ibn Adham once invoked Allah to forgive a man who had fractured his skull. When asked why he did so, he replied: “I know that I am getting a reward thanks to him and that I did not get but good from him. Hence I did not want him to be punished because of me.”

The disparity in people’s responses to praise and criticism

People have four states in relation to the one who praises them and the one who criticises them:

[1] A person may be delighted with the praise, and thank the person who is praising him. He hates condemnation, feels a rancour against the person who condemns him and retaliates against him or at least wishes to do so. This state represents the penultimate degree of offence in this context.

[2] A person may inwardly resent a person who condemns him but refrain from retaliation either in speech or action. Similarly he may inwardly love the one who praises him and feel comfortable with him but equally refrain from displaying any outward delight. This is [a kind of] shortcoming but it is nearer to wholesomeness than is the preceding state.

[3] Next there comes the first degree of wholeness. A person may treat with equal indifference both the one who praises him and the one who condemns him. He is neither grieved by condemnation nor delighted with praise. Many a devotee may think of himself as possessing this state, but he will still be conceited if he does not have the same attitude in all respects with regard to the one who praises him and the one who condemns him. How rare is such a state! And how very hard it is for people’s hearts!

[4] The fourth state, which can be referred to as truthfulness in worship, is that a person should hate praise and detest the person who praises him because he knows that such a person is a [cause of] tribulation that may cause subversion and damage to his din. He should also love the person who condemns him because he knows that it is to his advantage to have his defects identified, as it draws attention to what is beneficial to him.

However, all that people like ourselves can aspire to is the second state.

Section II: Ostentation [riya’]

Condemning ostentation

‘Ostentation’ is seeking status and position by means of acts of worship. Ostentation is unlawful, and the ostentatious person is loathed by Allah. This is evidenced by the verses of the Qur’an, the traditions of the Prophet – peace be upon him – and the traditions of his Companions and their successors.

Within the Qur’an, Allah, exalted is He, says: {Woe, then, unto those praying ones whose hearts from their prayer are remote – those who want only to be seen and praised}[6]. {… But as for those who cunningly devise evil deeds – suffering severe awaits them; and all their devising is bound to come to nought.}[7] [Commenting on this verse] Mujahid said that these were the ostentatious. Allah, exalted is He, also says: {… “We feed you for the sake of God alone: we desire no recompense from you, nor thanks…”}.[8] [In this verse,] Allah praises the sincere by denying [their aspiration for] any wish except the sake of Allah, whereas ostentation is the exact opposite. Allah, exalted is He, also says: {… Hence, whosoever looks forward [with hope and awe] to meeting his Sustainer, let him do righteous deeds, and let him not ascribe unto anyone or anything a share in the worship due to his Sustainer}.[9]

Concerning the traditions of the Prophet – peace be upon him -, it is reported that he – peace be upon him – said: “Whosoever acts with the intention of being heard or seen by people, Allah will cause him to be heard or seen by them but he will not receive His reward.”[10] The Prophet – peace be upon him – also said: “The worst I fear for you is minor associationism (al-shirk al-asghar)”. “What is minor associationism, O Messenger of Allah?” they asked. He replied: “[It is] ostentation; Allah, glorified is He, will say on the Day of Judgement when He repays the servants for their deeds: ‘Go to those with whom you were ostentatious in the world and see whether you find reward with them.’”[11] He – peace be upon him – also said: “Allah, glorified and exalted is He, says: ‘Whosoever performs a deed for My sake but associates in it someone else with Me, that deed will be entirely for the latter; I disavow the doer and I absolutely dispense with associationism.’”[12] The Prophet – peace be upon him – also said: “Allah will extend His mercy [on the Day of Judgement] to seven [kinds of people]”, and he mentioned among them: “… a man who gave alms and concealed his act so that his left hand would not know what his right hand had given.”[13]

As to the traditions of the Companions and their successors, it is reported that `Umar ibn al-Khattab – may Allah be pleased with him – once saw a man bending his head [in prayer], so he said: “O you with the head! Lift your head up, for humility does not lie in heads but in hearts.” Abu Umama al-Bahili – may Allah be pleased with him – saw a man at the mosque crying in his prostration, so he said to him: “What a virtuous person you could have been if only this [crying] had taken place in [the privacy of] your house.” And al-Fudayl ibn `Iyad said: “People used to be ostentatious with deeds they [truly] performed, but now they are ostentatious with deeds they do not perform at all.” And `Ikrima said: “Allah gives more reward for the bondsman’s intention than He does for his action because there can be no ostentation in intention.”

The essence of ostentation and its manifestations

The Arabic word for ostentation (riya’) is derived from ‘seeing’ (ru’ya), and the basis of ostentation is seeking position in people’s hearts by showing them good virtues. Nevertheless, status and position in the heart may be sought by means other than acts of worship just as they are also sought through acts of worship. [The word] ‘ostentation’ (riya’) is restricted through common usage only to seeking position in [people’s] hearts by means of acts of worship and their display. Thus, the definition of ostentation is: ‘seeking bondsmen by means of [displaying] obedience to Allah.’ The person who is ostentatious is the worshipper [who displays his worship]. Manifestations of this ostentation are the virtues which the ostentatious mean to display, and the ostentation itself is their intent to display these virtues.

Although the manifestations of ostentation are abundant, they can all be gathered together in five divisions which sum up all the ways in which a person can show off to others. These five divisions are: the body, attire, speech, action, followers and the external things. Worldly people do indeed display ostentation through these five means, but seeking status through non-worshipping acts is less serious than seeking it by means of acts of worship.

The first division is being ostentatious in din through the body, by showing a thinness and paleness to give the impression that one is striving hard, that one is greatly concerned with the din and is overwhelmed by fear of the Afterlife. By means of such thinness a person gives the impression that he eats little, and by his paleness he gives the impression that he stays awake at night, strives hard [to perform acts of worship] and that he is deeply concerned for the commandments of the din.

The second division is being ostentatious through outward appearance and attire. As for the outward appearance, it is done by dishevelling the hair to give the impression that one is fully absorbed in one’s concern for din and that one lacks the time to comb one’s hair or trim the moustache. It is also done by lowering the head when walking, showing a calmness in movement, leaving the mark which is caused by [repeated] prostration on the brow, wearing rough clothes and rolling them up nearly to the thigh, shortening the sleeves and not cleaning one’s clothes. All these acts are done to give the impression that one follows the sunna and imitates Allah’s righteous bondsmen. The ostentatious through attire belong to different categories, each of which identifies his standing by means of a specific attire and thus finds it difficult to change for what is best or even worse, even if it is permissible, lest people say: ‘he chose asceticism but has given up that path and sought the world’.

The third division is ostentation through speech. The ostentation of the folk of din is achieved in the form of preaching, reminding [others], pronouncing [words of] wisdom and memorising the traditions of the Prophet – peace be upon him -, and those of his Companions and their successors, when the intent behind all this is to display erudition and to.givethe impression that one pays great attention to the states of the righteous salaf. Such people pretend to be immersed in the remembrance [of Allah] in the presence of other people, display their anger against objectionable matters that take place and pretend to be sorry for offences committed by people. Ostentation by speech abounds and its different manifestations are beyond demarcation.

The fourth division is ostentation through action. Such is the case with the one who performs the prayer (salat) and who stands a long time [in each unit of prayer], who prolongs his bowing and prostration, lowers his head and makes a show of serenity. This behaviour also involves other acts of worship such as fasting, jihad, hajj, almsgiving, displays of humility when one is walking or meeting [someone else], and speaking in a dignified manner. Some people even force themselves to walk in a dignified manner whilst on their own; this so that they do not have to alter their gait when they are seen by others. In this way their ostentation is total, for they have become ostentatious even in solitude.

The fifth division is being ostentatious through one’s friends, visitors and acquaintances. Such is the case with the one who goes through much difficulty in order to make a man of knowledge visit him so that it can be said: ‘so-and-so has visited so-and-so’; or such as the person who works hard to achieve a visit from a devotee (`abid) so that it can be said that a pious man has been blessed with his visit. Or the one who often mentions the men of knowledge so that it can.be said that he has met many and received benefit from them, all of which serves him as a means to taking pride in himself.

[The legal ruling on ostentation]

Were you to ask: ‘Is ostentation unlawful, reprehensible or permissible? Or is there some need for elaboration?’,I would answer as follows. If a person is ostentatious by means of things other than acts of worship then this attitude should be viewed in the same manner as seeking wealth. As such, it is not prohibited to seek position in bondsmen’s hearts. However, just as it is possible to acquire wealth by deception and through forbidden means, so too is it possible to acquire status by the same; and just as it is praiseworthy for a man to acquire some wealth for which he is in need, so too may it be praiseworthy to acquire some status with which one can avoid some misfortune. It was for this reason that Yusuf – peace be upon him – asked [for status] when he said: {… I shall be a good and knowing keeper}.[14] Owing to this we would say that refining the clothes that a man wears when he meets people is [a kind of] ostentation, but it is not of the unlawful type, for it is ostentation through [a substance of] the world and not through acts of worship. Analogous to this are all the embellishments and outward beautifications that people choose. They are permissible even if such embellishments and refinements are done in order that one look good in other people’s eyes, avoid their blame and condemnation and find gratification in their respect. For a man has the right to avoid the pain engendered by condemnation and to seek the tranquillity of intimacy with his brothers.

Hence, to be ostentatious by means of acts which are not acts of worship may be permissible, as this can be an act of obedience [to Allah]. It may also, however, be a blameworthy act, depending on the aim through which one seeks to obtain it. In this respect, we should say that if a man spends his wealth on a group of wealthy people not as an act of charity or worship but only so that people believe that he is generous, then he is guilty of an ostentatious act, but it is not in itself unlawful, just as all similar instances are not unlawful.

If ostentation is displayed through acts of worship such as almsgiving, prayer, fasting and hajj, then the person who is ostentatious falls into one of two cases:

First, there is he who by his acts seeks nothing but absolute ostentation, and not reward [from Allah]. In this case his [act of] worship is void, for actions depend on intentions and his intention was not worship. Such an act does not simply nullify the worship, leaving one to assume that the ostentatious person remains as free of sin as he was before performing this act. No, the ostentatious person in this respect is sinning and offending, as is indicated by the verses of the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet – peace be upon him – and those of his Companions and their successors. There are two issues regarding this. Firstly, people imagine that the ostentatious person is sincere, that he is obedient to Allah and that he is of the folk of din, whereas in fact he is not. Deceiving in the affairs of the world [it must be remembered] is also unlawful. Secondly, by seeking Allah’s bondsmen through worship of Allah, exalted is He, the ostentatious person is mocking Him. An example of this is the servant who spends an entire day in the presence of a king, as is the servants’ habit, but his presence there is only to watch one of the king’s concubines. This servant is mocking the king, for he did not draw near to serve him, but rather his goal was one of the king’s slaves. Can there be anything more contemptible on the part of the bondsman than harbouring an intent through worship of Allah, exalted is He, to show off to a weak person who holds neither benefit nor harm for him? Is this not proof that the ostentatious person thinks that this person is more capable of fulfilling his goals than Allah; and that he is more deserving to get near to than Allah, for he prefers him to the King of kings and has made him the goal of his worship? This, indeed, is among the major perils, and it is because of this that the Messenger – peace be upon him – called it ‘minor associationism’.

Secondly, there is he who does not intend to draw near to Allah, intending to draw near to other than Him. Upon my life! If such a person were to glorify anyone other than Allah, through prostrating to him, he would be committing plain disbelief (kufr). Moreover, ostentation is a hidden disbelief, because the ostentatious person has glorified other people in his heart, and in some aspect, it is as if these other people are glorified when the ostentatious person prostrates. To the extent that the glorification of Allah through prostration ceases and glorification of other people remains, this amounts to something like associationism.

Such a state of affairs is the pinnacle of ignorance and none shall engage in it except the one whom Satan has deceived; the one whom Satan has deceived into believing that bondsmen have more ability than Allah, exalted is He, to harm him, benefit him, provide him with sustenance and control his life-span.

Degrees of ostentation

Some avenues of ostentation are graver and more serious than others, and the difference in ostentation is due to the difference of its pillars and degrees. There are three pillars of ostentation, namely: the object of the ostentation, the purpose of the ostentation and the intention of the ostentation itself.

The first pillar: the intention of ostentation

The intention behind any ostentation has itself four degrees:

The first, which is the most serious, is where a person does not initially intend to gain any reward [from Allah for his action], such as the one who prays when in the company of others so that if he were alone he would never perform the prayer; or even prays with the people but without performing the ritual ablution. Such a person is fully intent upon ostentation and is loathed by Allah, exalted is He. This is the most extreme degree of ostentation.

The second is where the person intends to gain some reward [from Allah for his action] but his intention is weak in the sense that if he were alone he would not perform this action, nor would his intention to gain [His] reward drive him otherwise to perform such an action. This person is similar to the preceding one, and his intention to gain Allah’s reward will neither abolish the offence nor Allah’s loathing.

The third degree is where a person is intent on gaining Allah’s reward and also ostentation, but both purposes are equal in such a way that were either of these intentions to be absent he would not be prompted to perform the action in the first place. Only when both intentions are brought together is this person’s desire [for performing the action] aroused. Alternatively, it could be the case that this person equally intends to obtain [Allah’s] reward and be ostentatious, but the presence of either intention is sufficient for him to perform the action. The act of corruption that such a person effects is equal to the benefit he brings forth. We hope that such a person will [on the Day of Judgement], be simply acquitted, neither possessing a surplus of rewards nor punished for excess sin, or that his reward will equal his sins. Nevertheless, the apparent meaning of the traditions [on this issue] indicates that a person recurrently in this state will not attain salvation.

The fourth is where people’s knowledge [of the performance of an act of worship] favours and enhances a person’s resolve [to perform it], although were they to be ignorant of it he would still not abstain from the performance of that worship. Furthermore, had he solely intended ostentation, he would not have undertaken that act in the first place. We think, and Allah alone knows best, that this person will not be entirely deprived of reward but will not be given it in full; or he might be punished in accordance with the extent of his ostentatious intent and rewarded in accordance with the extent of his intention to gain Allah’s reward. As for the saying of the Prophet -peace be upon him -: “Allah, exalted is He, says: ‘… I absolutely dispense with associationism;’”[15] this should be understood as referring to the instances where the intent for achieving Allah’s reward and the intent for being ostentatious are equal in strength, or where the intent to show off is stronger.

The second pillar: the object of ostentation

This refers to acts of obedience, and can be divided into two categories:

(i) Being ostentatious through the principles of acts of worship.

(ii) Being ostentatious with the outward performance of acts of worship.

The first category, which is the more serious of the two, entailing displays of ostentation through principles, has three degrees:

The first degree is ostentation in relation to the principle of faith (iman), which is the most serious form of ostentation. The ones who practise it will be cast into Hell for eternity; amongst them will be the one who utters the shahada in public while inwardly being filled with disbelief, the one who simply shows off his compliance to the outward form of Islam. It is to this type of ostentation that Allah, exalted is He, refers to time and again in His Book, such as by His saying, glorified and exalted is He: {When the hypocrites come unto thee, they say, “We bear witness that thou art indeed God’s Apostle!” But God knows that thou art truly His Apostle; and He bears witness that the hypocrites are indeed false.}[16] {Now there is a kind of man whose views on the life of this world may please thee greatly, and [the more so as] he cites God as witness to what is in his heart and is, moreover, exceedingly skilful in argument. But whenever he prevails, he goes about the earth spreading corruption and destroying [man’s] tilth and progeny…}[17] {… And when they meet you, they assert, “We believe [as you believe]”; but when they find themselves alone, they gnaw their fingers in rage against you …}[18] {… They rise reluctantly, only to be seen and praised by men, remembering God but seldom, wavering between this and that.}[19]

In the early days of Islam hypocrisy abounded, for there were people who would embrace Islam outwardly only to achieve some of their own goals. Nowadays, this phenomenon is less common. However, the hypocrisy of those who inwardly slip away from the din, and deny [the reality of] Paradise, Hell and the abode of the Afterlife still abounds, as is the case with heretics. The hypocrisy of those who suspend the authority of the shari`a and the legal ordinances, as is the case with the antinomianists, still abounds, as does the hypocrisy of those who believe in kufr or innovation but who pretend the opposite. This is the summit of hypocrisy and ostentation, and the hypocrites and ostentatious of this type will be eternally cast into Hell. Moreover, the condition of such people is worse than that of the disbelievers who openly declare their disbelief; this because they have combined inward disbelief with outward hypocrisy.

The second degree is being ostentatious with the principles of acts of worship while still believing in the principle of the din. This is also a grave matter with regard to Allah, but it is significantly less serious than the first [degree]. An example of this would be the man who asks the person who acquired his property to pay the zakat due from it, for fear that the latter might condemn him, but Allah knows that had the property remained in his possession he would not have given the zakat out. This person is ostentatious. He possesses the principle of believing in Allah and believes that there is none worthy of worship except Him. Had he been asked to worship any other than Allah or to prostrate himself to other than Him he would have refused. But such a person also abstains from performing acts of worship because of his laziness, and is invigorated only when people see his acts. This person’s standing with his fellowman is dearer to him than his position with his Creator. It is the height of ignorance, and the one who behaves thus deserves loathing even though he has not slipped away from the principle of faith as far as belief (i`tiqad) is concerned.

The third degree does not entail displays of ostentation through belief or [religious] obligations but rather in relation to supererogatory acts and the sunnas (which if a person were to leave he would not be sinning). In other words, this person is lazy in the performance of these acts when alone but performs them when in the company of others. Allah knows that were this person to be alone he would never have performed more than what is obligatory upon him.

This also is a serious matter, but less serious than the two degrees which preceded it, and it further seems to be a ramification of the second degree. The punishment for such behaviour is half the punishment of the second degree of ostentation.

The second category is ostentation through the outward performance of acts of worship and not with its principles, and this is also divided into three degrees.

The first entails displaying ostentation through a deed the abstention from which constitutes a deficiency in the [act of] worship. An example would be the person who intends to shorten his prostration or bowing and curtail his recitation [during prayer], and only when people see him does he perfect the bowing, prostration and the sitting position between the two prostrations. This is also [a form] of prohibited ostentation because it gives precedence to one’s fellowmen over the Creator, but it is less serious than ostentation through the principles of entire supererogatory acts.

The second entails displaying ostentation through a deed the abstention from which does not constitute a deficiency, but the undertaking of which is considered to complete and perfect a person’s worship, such as prolonging the bowing and prostration, assuming an upright posture (i`tidal) [with each act in prayer], and reading more from the Qur’an [than is usual].

The third degree entails displaying ostentation through acts which do not belong to the supererogatory category such as attending prayer in congregation well before other people [arrive at the mosque], standing in the first row and praying on the right side of the imam.

These are, then, the degrees of ostentation which relate to the objects through which ostentation is undertaken. Some of them are worse than others; but all are blameworthy.

The third pillar: the purpose of ostentation

In displaying ostentation, the person doing so has inevitably a purpose, such as obtaining wealth, status or some other goal. Such a purpose also has three degrees:

The first, which is the worst and most pernicious, is where a person displays ostentation in order to be in a position to commit an offence. Such is the case of the one who is ostentatious through his acts of worship, who pretends to be pious and righteous by multiplying his supererogatory acts and who abstains from taking properties emanating from doubtful sources, only to be known as a trustworthy person. Once entrusted with the office of judgeship (qada’), [public] endowments (awqaf), trusts and bequests (wasaya), the properties of orphans (mal al-aytam) or mortgage pledges (wada’i`) he will abuse his position and will embezzle money for his own use. Some even wear the attire of Sufis and assume postures of humility when their whole aim is simply to draw near to a woman.

This type of ostentatious person is the most loathed by Allah, exalted is He, because he has used obedience to his Sustainer as a ladder to offend against Him, and has taken this obedience as a tool, store and commodity for his sinfulness.

The second degree is where a person aims at obtaining worldly gain that is in itself lawful, for example property or marriage. An example would be the man who shows how he has suffered affliction, and undertakes the admonition and reminding of people so that he be given money and so that women will desire to marry him. This kind of ostentation is prohibited, for it entails seeking a substance of this worldly life through obedience to Allah; but it is less grave than the previous degree.

The third degree is where a person does not intend to obtain a worldly gain or wealth, but rather displays his worship for fear that he may be thought of as defective and not of the elite and ascetics. Here one would include the person who [usually] walks in a hurried manner but when he is seen by others walks slowly and with gravamen, lest it be said that he does not belong to the community of serious believers. One would likewise include he who joins others in thetarawih or tahajjud prayers for fear that he be accused of laziness and classified as one of the commoners. These too are among the pitfalls of ostentation, for the sincere believer does not care how his fellowmen look at him.

All these degrees of ostentation and ranks of different types of eyeservice are exposed to Allah’s wrath and loathing, exalted is He. Furthermore, ostentation is one of the severest causes of peril; so great is its severity that it contains pitfalls that are more hidden than the creeping of ants.

The ostentation which is more hidden than the creeping of ants

Ostentation may be either ‘apparent’ or ‘hidden’. The apparent type is that which moves and entices a person to perform an action, even if he seeks [Allah’s] reward, and this is the most apparent form of ostentation. Ostentation which is of a slightly hidden nature is that which in itself does not drive a person to perform an act but which nonetheless eases that action for him by which he seeks the face of Allah. Here, one would include the person who is used to constantly praying in the depths of the night (tahajjud), and who finds it difficult to do so, but who when he has a guest becomes invigorated and thereby finds the practice easier. Yet, this person still knows that had it not been for the expectation of reward from Allah he would not have prayed simply out of a desire to impress his guest.

A more hidden type of ostentation is that which neither affects the action nor makes it easy on the doer, yet is still harboured in the heart. For as long as it does not affect the motive for action, this type of ostentation cannot be noticed except by certain signs. The most apparent sign is when a person is pleased that other people take notice of his acts of worship. For there are many bondsmen who are sincere in their actions, who do not wish to be ostentatious, and in fact hate it, but who, when others notice their actions, are pleased and contented. Such pleasure implies a hidden ostentation, for had these people’s hearts not been turned towards others their pleasure would not have materialised when their actions were noticed.

If these people feel pleasure when others take notice of their actions and if they do not react disapprovingly against these feelings, they will become a source of nourishment and supply for their hidden disposition towards ostentation. This hidden ostentation will continue to grow within them, driving them, albeit subtly, towards means through which their actions are allusively noticed, even though they do not themselves aim for any open declaration of ostentation. It might also be that these people do not call others to notice their actions whether through allusion or by open declaration, but instead do so via outward manifestations of habit, for example by displaying thinness, paleness, lowering their voice, tear-stained faces and revealing signs of sleepiness to give the impression that they pray at length at night .

Even more hidden than this is the case where a person hides away and does not wish people to notice his action and indeed would be unhappy if they were to notice it. Despite all this, however, he likes others to greet him first, to respect him and be cheerful with him whenever he encounters them, and equally becomes vexed if he is neglected by others. Now, had it not been for this person’s previous practice of pious deeds, he would not have found it unlikely that people would be neglectful of him. Moreover, if the practice of an act of worship in relation to others is not equal to its non-practice then the person performing the act is not content with Allah’s knowledge of it, and thus is not immune from the hidden blemish of ostentation, that which is ‘more hidden than the creeping of ants’.

The sincere are always wary of hidden ostentation, making an effort to dupe people about their good acts and concealing them more than others insist upon hiding their vices, all in the hope that their righteous deeds may be sincere. Allah will reward them on the Day of Judgement for their sincerity that was open in front of people, because they knew that Allah will not accept on that Day any act except that which is sincerely accomplished for His sake. [On that Day]neither property nor progeny will be of any avail; it will be a Day when a father will not give ransom for his son and when even the truthful will be preoccupied with themselves, each one saying: “Me, me!”

Indeed, the pitfalls of hidden ostentation are multifarious and beyond count.

Delighting in the disclosure of a pious deed

If you were to say: “But no one can escape feeling delight when his pious deeds are disclosed, therefore is delighting to be condemned entirely or only partially?”, know that such delighting can be either praiseworthy or blameworthy. As for that which is praiseworthy, it can be divided into four categories.

First, a person’s aim may be to hide his good act and to be sincere to Allah. However, when others learn of his act he will know also that it was Allah Who disclosed it to them and that it was He Who revealed his good. Hence this person takes this disclosure as implying Allah’s good treatment of him and His care about him, for He concealed his sins and disclosed his good deeds. Consequently, this person becomes delighted only at Allah’s good treatment of him, and not as a result of anyone else’s praise of him or because he has acquired a position in their hearts.

Second is the person who deduces from Allah’s good treatment of him and His concealment of his repulsive deeds in this world that Allah will treat him in the same way in the life-to-come. For Allah’s Messenger – peace be upon him – said: “Allah shall not conceal a bondsman’s sin in this world without concealing it in the Afterlife.”[20] Hence this person’s delight is as a result of this.

Third, a person might think that those to whom his good action is disclosed will want to emulate it. Consequently his reward will multiply, for he will be rewarded for what he disclosed at a later stage and also rewarded for concealing what he initially intended. Expecting this is deserving of delight.

Fourth, those to whom the good act is disclosed may praise the doer for that act. He will be delighted at their pious deed, which is accomplished by praising him and showing love to such an obedient person, and also for the inclination of their own hearts towards obedience of Allah. Here the sign of sincerity is that a person is just as delighted at people praising others as he is when they praise him.

As for that delight which is blameworthy, know that it is a person’s delight for the rising of his position in other people’s heart so that they praise, love, and revere him, attend to his needs and treat him with deference. This type of delight is blameworthy.

And Allah, exalted is He, knows best.

Ostentation that thwarts one’s deeds, and ostentation which does not

When a bondsman is resolved to perform an act of worship with sincerity but then senses the insinuation of ostentation, this insinuation can occur either before or after completing the act. If he feels a simple delight at the disclosure of the act after completing it but does not show this delight, then the act is not invalidated, for the act itself was initially carried out with sincerity and was free from ostentation. It is further hoped that what takes place after completing the act does not have an effect, especially if the bondsman does not make an effort to show or speak about his deed. In this instance, the act’s disclosure coincides with Allah’s wanting it to be known. What the bondsman himself has done is simply to experience a delight and comfort in his own heart.

True, if the person were to feel a desire to disclose his act, to show and speak about it after he initially carried it out with sincerity and without any ostentatious intent, then he ought to fear for himself. But if the insinuation of ostentation takes place before completing the prayer, for instance, even though the person is initially sincere, then the delight that might be felt as a result can be either one that does not affect the act, or the kind of ostentation that drives a person to act. If it is the latter, and the person completes his act of worship with the same disposition, his reward will be nullified. However, if the insinuation of ostentation does not prevent him from intending to complete the act for the sake of achieving [Allah’s] reward, then it will not invalidate the action. That is, provided that its effect is not reflected on the action itself, that the undertaking of the action remains motivated by the din, and that the delight that this person feels is just supplemented. The action is not invalidated in this case because this person’s initial intent is not nullified, and it was this intention which motivated him and drove his action in the first place.

The cure of ostentation and treatment of the heart

From what has been indicated above, you will realise that ostentation thwarts action, that it is a cause for Allah’s loathing, exalted is He, and that it is one of the qualities which lead to peril. Therefore it is right that one’s zeal should be turned to removing it, even [if this can only be done] through effort and hardship. This because there is no recovery except through swallowing a bitter medicine, and this is one type of striving to which all people are forced. None can do without this strife, and although it is initially hard, it becomes easier. There are two stages in the treatment of ostentation: eradicating its roots and sources, and driving away that which occurs immediately.

The first stage is the eradication of roots and sources. The basis of this vice is love of position and status. Namely, the joy of being praised, escape from the pain of condemnation, and desiring what other people possess.

That these are the causes of ostentation and the motive which drives the ostentatious is substantiated by the report of Abu Musa where a Bedouin asked the Prophet – peace be upon him: “O Messenger of Allah! A man who fights driven by hamiyya (i.e. he resents being defeated or condemned as being defeated or beaten), a man who fights to acquire position (one who seeks the joy of status and esteem in others’ hearts), and a man who fights so that he be talked about (one who enjoys the verbal praises of others), are they fighting for the sake of Allah?”.He – peace be upon him – replied: “Whosoever fights so that Allah’s Word prevails is fighting for the sake of Allah.”[21]

These three things are what drive the ostentatious to play up to others, and the cure is that which was identified in the first section of this book.[22] Here, we will mention only that which is particular to ostentation. It is obvious that a human being seeks and desires something only if he thinks that in that thing lies his good, and that it is beneficial and delightful. If he realises that this thing is immediately delightful, but subsequently harmful, it is easy for him to give up his desire for it.

So, if a person were to realise the harmful effect of ostentation, and what he will miss in terms of his heart’s uprightness and what he will be deprived of in terms of immediate success and of rank in the eyes of Allah in the hereafter and his exposure to great chastisement, severe loathing and outright disgrace, [he will consequently avoid ostentation]. For so long as a bondsman meditates on this disgrace, compares what he will get from other people with what he is going to miss in the Afterlife and compares this with the thwarted reward of his actions, knowing that a single, sincere act might preponderate in the balance of his good deeds, and that if it is corrupted with ostentation it will be transferred to his offences, then he will realise that had there been in ostentation nothing except the thwarting of a single devotional act, that would be enough to make its harm plain. Furthermore, if his good deeds preponderate he will obtain high rank in the sight of Allah, exalted is He. Moreover, why should a person seek others’ praise and Allah’s condemnation when he knows that the praise of others will add neither to his sustenance nor his life-span? Nor will their praise benefit him at the time of his extreme need and poverty on the Day of Judgement.

As for desiring what other people possess, this can be dealt with by realising that it is Allah, exalted is He, Who commands people’s hearts to give or hold back, that people in this respect are not free, that there is no Lord except Allah, and that a person who covets what other people have will not reap anything except humiliation and disappointment. So how can someone then leave what is with Allah for false fancy and ill-founded expectation?

As for other people’s condemnation, why should anyone be wary of it? Other people’s condemnation of one will not add anything that Allah has not already decreed. Nor will such condemnation hasten the end of one’s life-span or delay one’s sustenance.

If a person inwardly admits the defect and damage of these causes, his desire will slacken, and he will be wholeheartedly devoted to Allah, for a person endowed with reason will not desire something whose harm is great and whose benefit is small.

Moreover, at the beginning of this chapter we expounded upon the cures related to knowledge which uproot the very foundations of ostentation. As for a practical cure, this consists of accustoming oneself to concealing acts of worship and not disclosing them to others, just as one would not disclose one’s bad habits. This is because there is no cure for ostentation like concealment.

The second stage involves driving away the insinuation of ostentation that comes to mind while performing devotional acts. This also needs to be learnt, because even a person who strives against himself, who eradicates the foundations of ostentation from his heart by means of contentment, elimination of greed, not seeking others’ esteem, and showing contempt for others’ praise and condemnation, will not be spared by Satan when he is practising devotional acts. On the contrary, Satan will expose him to the insinuations of ostentation, and his incitement to evil will not stop. Furthermore, the soul’s caprice and its inclination [to seek others’ praise] cannot be completely effaced. Hence it is necessary that a person’s zeal be turned towards driving away whatever such insinuations come into his consciousness.

Such insinuations of ostentation are threefold. They may either come to mind in one go, or present themselves in succession.

The first insinuation concerns knowing that others have taken notice of one’s action and hoping that they might take notice of it. This is then followed by the soul’s strong desire for other people’s praise and for obtaining a position amongst them. This is followed by a strong desire for the soul to accept it, to be confident with it and to be resolved to achieve it. The first is a state of awareness (ma`rifa), the second is a state of pleasure and desire, and the third is an intention and resolve.

The greatest form of strength lies in suppressing the first insinuation and driving it away before it is followed by the second. If this occurs, the person concerned should drive such notions away by considering that regardless of whether other people know about his act or not, Allah nevertheless knows his state. So what benefit is there in other people’s knowledge of his act?

If a person longs for the joy of being praised, he should remember the defect of ostentation which permeated his heart before, and remember his exposure to Allah’s loathing on Judgement Day. Knowledge of the defects of ostentation will arouse a dislike capable of opposing that desire. Desire calls him to accept ostentation, while dislike calls him to reject it, and the soul will inevitably obey that which is stronger and overwhelming. Hence, in order to drive away ostentation one needs [to be able to recognise] three things: namely, an awareness, a dislike and a rejection. Rejection is the result of dislike, and dislike is the result of awareness.

You may ask this question: ‘[What about] someone who dislikes ostentation and rejects it, but who is nevertheless still not free from an inclination towards it, a love of it and an inner fight against it? This even though he dislikes such love and inclination. Is this person still to be counted among the ostentatious?’

[In response] you should know that Allah has charged His servant only with what he can endure, and it is not in the servant’s power to stop Satan’s evil insinuations, nor to suppress any natural disposition to the point that he does not incline towards desire. All that a person is required to do is to meet his desire with a dislike, and if he does so, then he has accomplished the goal behind fulfilling what he is [legally] bound with.

This is evidenced by the Companions’ complaints to the Prophet – peace be upon him. One of them once said: “It would be better for us to be thrown down from the sky than to repeat some of the things that occur to our hearts.” The Prophet – peace be upon him – asked: “Does this occur to you?” “Yes!” he replied. “That is the solid iman”, he replied.[23] [Note that] they experienced only evil insinuations and felt a dislike for them. Now, it cannot be said that the Prophet – peace be upon him – referred to these insinuations as ‘the concrete iman’. Therefore, the only interpretation of the meaning of this expression is that it refers to having devilish insinuations which one follows with a dislike.

Despite being vile, ostentation is less grave than devilish insinuations with regard to Allah, exalted is He. Now, if the harm of something vile is driven away by simple dislike, what is less serious is more likely to be easily driven away by the same.

[Wariness of Satan]

If you were to say: ‘One cannot be safe from Satan’s evil insinuations; therefore, should one be on guard before he is present so that one might be wary of him? Or, should one rely on Allah so that He be the One Who drives him away? Or, should one busy oneself with worship and forget about him?’

With regard to these questions three different opinions are held. A group [of scholars] from Basra were of the opinion that the [spiritually] strong do without such a wariness of Satan, because they have devoted themselves to Allah and have preoccupied themselves with His love, and as a result Satan leaves them alone, having despaired of them. Another group [of scholars] from the Levant held the view that vigilance, in wariness of Satan, is necessary only for those whose certainty [in Allah] is weak and whose reliance [tawakkul] is lacking. This is because the one who has certainty that there is no partner with Allah in His providence will not be wary of any other than Allah, exalted and glorified is He. Yet another group of scholars advanced the view that wariness of Satan is indispensable, and that the Basran opinion is almost tantamount to a satanic deception. This because the Prophets themselves – peace be upon them – were not immune from Satan’s enticements and evil insinuations, so how could others be immune from these things?

Furthermore, not all evil insinuations concern pleasures and love of the world; they can also be about God’s attributes and names, and about innovations, misguidance and other things. No-one is immune from the danger of such things, which is why Allah, exalted is He, says: {Yet whenever We sent forth any apostle or prophet before thee, and he was hoping [that his warning would be heeded], Satan would cast an aspersion on his innermost aims: but God renders null and void whatever aspersion Satan may cast; and God makes His messages clear in and by themselves – for He is all-knowing, wise}.[24] And the Prophet – peace be upon him – said: “My heart does sometimes feel slackness and heedlessness …”,[25] and this despite the fact that his shaytan had become a Muslim and would not command him to do anything except that which was good.

Now, anyone who thinks that his preoccupation with the love of Allah is greater than that of Allah’s Messenger – peace be upon him – and that of all the prophets – peace be upon them – is in the grip of vainglory. Even in their complete immersion in divine love, none of these people felt immune from Satan’s ruse. It is for this reason that Adam and Eve were not spared it [even] in Paradise which is the very abode of peace and joy. Furthermore, Musa, peace be upon him, said, as reported by Allah, exalted is He–: {... “This is of Satan’s doing!”…};[26] and this is why Allah warns all His creatures against him when He, exalted is He, says: {O children of Adam! Do not allow Satan to seduce you in the same way as he caused your ancestors to be driven out of the Garden…}.[27] Moreover, the whole Qur’an, from beginning to end, is a warning against Satan; and this being the case, how can anyone be safe from him?

On the other hand, a wariness of Satan does not contradict one’s preoccupation with the love of Allah, as part of this love is to obey Allah’s command, exalted is He, to be wary of unbelievers and of Satan. Nor does this wariness of Satan contradict complete reliance [on Allah, exalted is He].

Wearing armour, using weapons, gathering an army and digging a trench did not impair the reliance [tawakkul] of Allah’s Messenger – peace be upon him – so how can taking guard from that which Allah has warned against impair reliance on Him? This is the opinion of al-Harith al-Muhasibi – may Allah have mercy on his soul – and it is the right opinion which is attested to by the light of knowledge, whereas other opinions seem to be the words of servants whose knowledge was not vast.

Revealing one’s devotional acts as a legal concession (rukhsa)

In keeping one’s acts secret there is the benefit of sincerity and safety from ostentation, while in revealing them there is the benefit of inspiring imitation and awakening other people’s desire to do good; and yet this may entail the defect of ostentation. It is for this reason that Allah, exalted is He, praises [the use of] both secrecy and openness when he says: {If you do deeds of charity openly, it is well; but if you bestow it upon the needy in secret, it will be even better for you…}.[28]

The showing of [one’s acts] is of two divisions: one concerns the action itself, and the other the disclosure of the action to others.

The first division

This concerns showing the action itself, such as openly giving alms, in order to awaken other people’s desire to do so, as was reported about the Ansari who had come with a bag of money, so that upon seeing him other people followed suit, with the result that the Prophet – peace be upon him – said: “Whosoever introduces a good sunna which is carried on by others, will have a reward for initiating the deed and also the equivalent reward of all those who follow his example.”[29] This applies to all actions.

The one who shows his action has two duties. The first is to show it where he thinks that his example is going to be followed, or at least likely to be followed. Many a man is imitated by his family and not by his neighbours, or perhaps by his neighbours and not by those who frequent the marketplace. Showing deeds for others to follow is valid only if done by a person who is in a position to prompt others to imitate his deeds. The second duty is for this person to keep his heart in check, for it may well harbour a love of hidden ostentation. Such a love would induce him to show his action under the pretext of awakening other people’s desire to follow suit, while his real desire is to brighten his own reputation through displaying his deeds and through being imitated by others. This is the state of all those who disclose their deeds, except for the sincere and strong; and they are very few. The weak should not deceive themselves with such notions, which would destroy them unawares.

The second division

This concerns disclosing one’s deed after completing it. The ruling on this is the same as the case of disclosing the action itself. In fact, the danger inherent here is more serious because speech is easy on the tongue, and it may well happen that one exaggerates what happened. The soul finds great joy in disclosing claimed actions, although if ostentation does creep in it would not invalidate the devotional act already performed. In this sense it is less serious than disclosing the action itself.

The ruling on such disclosure is that it is permissible, indeed praiseworthy, provided that the person who does so has a strong heart, that his sincerity is complete, that he pays little attention to other people and that their praise and condemnation are of equal weight to him. That is, so long as the intention is pure and the action free from all defects.

A similar situation to this was reported from a group of strong salaf. `Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, said: “I do not care whether I get up in the morning to face hardship or comfort, because I do not know which is better for me”. Ibn Mas`ud said: “I never reached a state and wished for another.”

All these are examples of the disclosure of exalted states, and such utterances can entail serious ostentation if they come from a person who speaks thus for the sake of display, just as there is in them the ultimate awakening of people’s desire for goodness if they proceed from someone who is imitated in his deeds.

Indeed the ostentatious disclosure of devotional acts brings much benefit for others, particularly if the latter do not know that it is ostentation. But it has evil consequences for the ostentatious themselves. Many a sincere person imitates, because of his sincerity, the one who is ostentatious in the eyes of Allah.

It is reported that a certain man used to hear the voices of people praying as they read the Qur’an from their houses every morning as he passed through the roads of Basra. Someone then wrote a book on the subtle aspects of ostentation, so those people gave up reading the Qur’an out loud and consequently people’s desire for it waned. They used to say: ‘We wish that that book had never been written!’

Hence the disclosures of an ostentatious person may carry much good for others – that is if his ostentation is not known – and “Indeed Allah may support thisdin with the help of the corrupt man,”[30] and also “… with the help of people without any share [of the good things of the Afterlife]”[31].

Concealing sins, and resentment at their being noticed

A person is rarely free from committing sins with either his heart or limbs, and he always tends to conceal these and to dislike their being noticed by others. He might think that their concealment is a prohibited act of ostentation while it is not. What is prohibited, however, is concealing sins so that other people think he is pious, and this is what constitutes the concealment of the ostentatious.

A person may well conceal his offences and have a valid intention in doing so. Equally valid may be his anxiety when other people take notice of his offences. This is due to different considerations, some of which are as follows:

First, he should be delighted with Allah’s concealment of his sins owing to the hadith: “Whensoever Allah conceals someone’s sin in this world, He shall conceal it for him in the Afterlife,”[32] and this emanates from a strong iman.

Second, he knows that Allah dislikes the disclosure of offences, preferring instead their concealment. Hence, even if he has committed an offence, his heart will not be devoid of liking what Allah likes. This grows out of a strong iman in Allah’s dislike of the disclosure of offences. The sign of sincerity in all this is when the person equally dislikes other people’s sins being disclosed.

Third, shame (haya’) is a noble trait and a praiseworthy attribute. The Prophet -peace be upon him – said: “Shame (haya’) is good on all accounts.”[33]Therefore, the one who engages in vice and does not care if it is revealed to others, has added insolence and lack of shame to the sin itself. Such a person’s state is worse than that of someone who commits sins but is ashamed of committing them and who conceals his offences.

Fourth, he should be wary of his sin’s disclosure, lest others dare do the same so that he has set a bad precedent.

The error of abstaining from devotional acts for fear of ostentation

Some people abstain from good works for fear of seeming ostentatious. This is wrong, and is an attitude which is a submission to Satan. Abstaining from an action for fear that it might be said: ‘he is ostentatious’, is in fact itself a form of ostentation. This because if one did not love other people’s praise and fear their condemnation, one would not have minded their opinion that one was ostentatious or sincere.

Furthermore, what difference is there between abstaining from an action for fear of being accused of ostentation and performing an action for fear of being accused of heedlessness and neglect? In fact, abstaining from the good action is more serious. All this is part of Satan’s ruse against ignorant worshippers (`ubbad).

You should know that it might be that a man spends the night somewhere with other people, and they, or some of them, happen to get up for the night prayer (tahajjud), and upon seeing them his desire to follow their example is aroused, beyond what he normally performs in the way of night prayer. Or, it may be that he joins those people in their prayer when he is not accustomed at all to praying at night. This could well be considered as ostentation, and may require that this person does not join in. But such is not the case. This is so because each believer desires to worship Allah, exalted is He, to pray at night and to fast during the day, but he may well be obstructed from doing so. His work may stop him from engaging in such acts, or it may be that heedlessness has enchanted him. Hence, it may well be that seeing others brings an end to his heedlessness, or that all obstacles and preoccupations cease in some places and his resolve be aroused.

What the disciple (murid) ought to do before,
during and after an action

The first thing that a disciple needs to restrain his heart with at all times is his contentment with Allah’s knowledge about all his good acts. No-one shall be content with Allah’s exclusive knowledge but he who fears Allah and whose hope is towards Him. As for the one who fears other than Him and whose hope is directed towards other than Him, he desires that others take notice of his good state of affairs. If one is at this level, one should force one’s heart to hate it from the point of view both of reason and of iman, owing to the danger of exposing oneself to Allah’s loathing.

One should keep oneself in check while performing great, hard devotional acts which others are unable to perform. This because the soul is then almost boiling for want of divulging such acts. In such matters, one needs to keep one’s feet firmly grounded, and remember that in return for one’s great deeds, there will be the greatness of the kingdom of the Afterlife, the bounty of Paradise and its everlasting bliss; but that there shall be the rigour of Allah’s wrath and loathing for the one who seeks a reward from mere creatures by means of His obedience.

One should hold one’s heart to this truth after completing the action so that one does not disclose it or speak about it to others. And even when one has done all this, one should remain afraid for one’s deeds, and be in fear that they have been tainted with hidden ostentation of which one was entirely unaware.

Notes

1 Al-Qasas: 83.

2 Hud: 15-16.

3 Narrated by Muslim with the following wording: “Many a dishevelled man who would be turned back from people’s houses, were he to adjure Allah to do something He would bring it to pass for him”.

4 Bukhari and Muslim.

5 Yusuf: 55.

6 Al-Ma`un: 4-6.

7 Fatir: 10.

8 Al-Insan: 9.

9 Al-Kahf: 110.

10 Bukhari and Muslim.

11 Narrated by Ahmad and al-Bayhaqi.

12 Narrated by Malik without the expression “I disavow the doer” and also narrated by Muslim and Ibn Maja.

13 Bukhari and Muslim.

14 Yusuf: 55.

15 Narrated by Muslim.

16 Al-Munafiqun: 1.

17 Al-Baqara: 204-205.

18 Al `Imran: 119.

19 Al-Nisa’: 142-143

20 Narrated by Muslim.

21 Bukhari and Muslim.

22 Cf. the section on status above.

23 Narrated by Muslim.

24 Al-Hajj: 52.

25 Narrated by Muslim, and the continuation of the hadith is “… and I do seek forgiveness from God a hundred times a day.” Commenting on this hadith al-Qadi `Iyad says that it refers to an abatement about and distraction from the dhikr that he used to practise continuously. He used to consider distraction from such supererogatory acts a sin from which he had to seek forgiveness.

26 Al-Qasas: 15.

27 Al-A`raf: 27.

28 Al-Baqara: 271.

29 Narrated by Muslim.

30 Bukhari and Muslim.

31 Narrated by Muslim.

32 Narrated by Muslim.

33 Narrated by Muslim.

The Foundations of the Islamic Belief

Shaykh Ahmad Darwish Mosque of the Internet P.O. Box 601, Tesuque, NM 87574 USA Foreword by Professor Hasan El Fatih Dean of Umm Durman Islamic University. This book was written in Arabic by Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, or Algazel as he was known to medieval Europe (died 505/1111).

His numerous works are well known, respected and quoted not only in the middle east but in the higher universities of west. His contribution to theology and philosophy have proved to be major cornerstones of resource throughout the centuries.

During the revival of Greek philosophy in the middle ages, many Christians were attracted and swayed by the persuasion of Greek logic. In an effort to protect Christianity, Christian theologians relied upon the profound arguments of Al Ghazali to defeat the adherents of Greek philosophy and thereby protected their religion.

Al Ghazali’s works have been translated and printed in many languages. Comparative studies have shown that Jean Jacques Rousseau, known in the west as the pioneer of children’s education, based his ideas and methods upon the work of Al Ghazali.

The Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam says of Al Ghazali:

“He was the most original thinker that Islam produced and its greatest theologian.”

A.J. Arberry, professor and director of the Middle East Centre at the University of Cambridge, England referred to him as being:

“He was one of the greatest mystical theologians of Islam and indeed of all mankind.”

I pray that the readers will benefit from the sound reasoning which they are about to embark upon and that it will open guiding channels of thought that will give pleasure in this life and in the Hereafter.

Hasan El Fatih Umm Durman Sudan 1992

Contents of this Section

• PREFACE
• The Belief of the Sunni, The Way of the Prophet
• The Meaning of the First Phrase of Witnessing
  • Transcendence
  • Life and Power
  • Knowledge
  • Will
  • Hearing and Seeing
  • Speech
  • Deeds
• The Meaning of the Second Phrase of Witnessing

PREFACE

The first translation into English was by the late Professor Nabih Amin Al Faris, American University, Beirut, October 31, 1962 with the examination of Dr. John H. Patton, Professor of Religion Park College, Parksville, MO. USA.

The reason for this work being undertaken yet again is due to the need for updating this work and also to rectify English linguistic usages and to adapt it for the computer with the addition of an index.

If the reader encounters difficulty in understanding some parts of this book, we would advise a visit to the grand philosopher and Sufi of Islam, Professor Hasan El Fatih, at the Mosque of Sheikh Muhammad El Fatih, Umm Durman, Sudan.

It is interesting to note that in the English versions of the Bible we found that the proper noun of the Creator referred to as “God” whereas we found in the Arabic edition of the Bible the proper noun changes to be “Allah” which is the same proper noun mentioned in the Arabic Qur’an.

In the Name of the Compassionate, the Merciful Allah,
This is the Book of the Foundations of Islamic Belief.

Chapter 1

• The Belief of the Sunni, the way of the Prophet

The Exposition of the Belief of the Sunni, way of the Prophet, is embodied in two phrases of witnessing (Shahadah) which form one of the Pillars of Islam.

(A) The meaning of the first phrase of witnessing:

We say – our success is from Allah – praise be to Allah the Creator, the Restorer, the One who does whatever He wills. He whose Throne is glorious and whose Power is Mighty; who guides the select amongst His worshippers to the righteous path. He who grants them benefits once they affirm His Oneness by guarding the articles of belief from the darkness of doubt and hesitation. He who leads them to follow the way of His chosen Prophet Muhammad – praise and peace be upon him – and to follow the example of his companions, the most honored, by directing their footsteps to the way of truth. He who reveals Himself to them in His Essence and in His Works by His fine attributes which none perceive except the one who inclines his ear in contemplation. He who makes known to them that He is One in His Essence without any associate, Single without any equal, Eternal without a similar.

Nothing precedes Him, He is without any beginning. He is Eternal with none after Him, Everlasting without any end, subsisting without cessation, abiding without termination He has not ceased and He will not cease to be described by the epithets of Majesty. At the end of time He will not be subject to dissolution and decay, but He is the First and the Last, the Hidden and Apparent, and He knows everything.

i. Transcendence (Exaltation)

Allah is not a body possessing form, nor a substance restricted and limited: He does not resemble other bodies either in limitation or in accepting division.

He is not a substance and substances do not reside in Him; He is not a quality of substance, nor does a quality of substance occur in Him.

Rather, He resembles no existent and no existent resembles Him. Nothing is like Him and He is not like anything. Measure does not bind Him and boundaries do not contain Him. Directions do not surround Him and neither the earth nor the Heavens are on different sides of Him.

Truly, He is controlling the Throne in the manner in which He said and in the sense in which He willed – in a state of transcendence that is removed from parallel and touch, residence, fixity of location, stability, envelopment, and movement.

The Throne does not support Him, but the Throne and those who carry it are supported by the Subtleness of His Power and are constrained by His Firmness. He is above the Throne and Heavens and above everything to the limits of the earth with an aboveness which does not bring Him nearer to the Throne and the Heavens, just as it does not make Him further from the earth.

Rather, He is Highly Exalted above the Throne and the Heavens, just as He is Highly Exalted above the earth. Nevertheless, He is near to every entity and is “nearer to the worshipper than his juggler vein” and He witnesses everything since His nearness does not resemble the nearness of bodies, just as His Essence does not resemble the essence of bodies.

He does not exist in anything, just as nothing exists in Him: Exalted is He that a place could contain Him, just as sanctified is He that no time could limit Him.

For, He was as before He had created time and place, and just as He was, He is now. He is distinct from His creatures through His attributes. There is not in His Essence any other than Him, nor does His Essence exist in any other than Him.

He is Exalted from change and movement. Substance does not reside in Him and the quality of substance do not befall Him. Rather, He is in the attributes of His Majesty beyond cessation. And He is in the attributes of His Perfection. He is not in need of an increase in perfection. In His Essence, His Existence is known by reason (in this life).

In the Everlasting Life, His Essence is seen by the eyes of the righteous as a favor from Him, and a subtlety as a completion of favors from Him through their beholding His Gracious Face.

ii. Life and Power

He is Living, Able, the Conqueror and All-subduing.

Inadequacy and weakness do not befall Him; slumber does not overtake Him nor sleep; annihilation does not prevail over Him nor death. He is the Owner of the visible and invisible Kingdom, and of Power and Might. His are dominion, subjugation, creation, and command; the Heavens are rolled in His Right and created things are subjugated in His Firmness.

He is Single in creating and inventing. He is Alone in bringing into existence and innovating. He created all creatures and their deeds, and decreed their sustenance and their life span; nothing decreed escapes His Firmness and the mutations of the affairs does not slip from His Power.

Whatever He decrees cannot be numbered neither does His Knowledge end.

iii. Knowledge

He is Knowledgeable of all the known, encompassing all that happens in the depths of earth to the highest heavens. He is Knowledgeable in which there is not an atom that escapes His Knowledge in heaven and earth.

Rather, He knows the stamping of the black ant upon the solid rock in the darkest night. He perceives the movement of a particle of dust in mid-air. He knows the secrets and that which is more hidden.

He is the Overseer of the whispering of the self and the flow of thoughts, and the most deepest concealment of the selves.

With a knowledge which is ancient from eternity and by which He has not ceased to be described through the ages.

Not by a knowledge which is subject to updating by occurring and circulating in His Essence.

iv. Will

He is the Willer of all existence and the Planner of all contingent things. There is nothing that occurs in His visible or invisible world except by His prior planning and His execution whether it is little or plenteous, small or large, good or evil, benefit or harm, belief or unbelief, gratitude or ingratitude, prosperity or loss, increase or decrease, obedience or disobedience all is according to His Wisdom and Will, what He wills occurs and what He does not will does not occur. There is not a glance of the onlooker nor a stray thought that is not subject to His Will.

He is the Creator at first, the Restorer, the Doer of whatsoever He wills. There is none that rescinds His command, and none that supplements His decrees, and there is no escape for a worshipper from disobeying Him, except by His Help and Mercy, and none has power to obey Him except by His Will. Even if mankind, jinn, angels, and devils were to unite to try to move the weight of an atom in the world or to render it still, without His Will they would fail.

His Will subsists in His Essence amongst His Attributes. He has not ceased to be described by it from eternity, willing, – in His Infinity – the existence of the things at their appointed time which He has decreed. So they come into existence at their appointed times as He has willed in His Infinity without precedence or delay. They come to pass in accordance with His Knowledge and His Will without variation or change.

He directs matters not through arrangement of thought and awaiting the passage of time, and so no affair occupies Him from another affair.

v. Hearing and Seeing

He – the Most High – is the Hearer, the Seer. He hears and sees.

No audible thing, however faint, escapes His Hearing, and no visible thing, however minute, is hidden from His Sight.

Distance does not prevent His Hearing and darkness does not obstruct His Seeing. He sees without a pupil and eyelid, and hears without the meatus and ears, as He perceives without a heart, and seizes without limbs, and creates without an instrument, since His attributes do not resemble the attributes of the creation, and as His Essence does not resemble the essence of creation.

vi. Speech

He – the Most High – speaks, commanding, forbidding, promising, and threatening, with a speech from eternity, ancient, and self-existing.

Unlike the speech of the creation, it is not a sound which is caused through the passage of air or the friction of bodies; nor is it a letter which is enunciated through the opening and closing of lips and the movement of the tongue.

And that the Qur’an, the original Torah, the original Gospel of Jesus, and the original Psalms are His Books sent down upon His Messengers, peace be upon them.

The Qur’an is read by tongues, written in books, and remembered in the heart, yet it is, nevertheless ancient, subsisting in the Essence of Allah, not subject to division and or separation through its transmission to the heart and paper [by this he meant that the movement of the reciter’s tongue and his management of the flow of air in his mouth and ear etc., or the writer’s inscription upon paper, all of which are created. Whereas the logic of Ghazali addresses what is beyond this human quality and dimension of time and physic. Thereby he refers to the Qur’an before one’s movement of the tongue or transcription onto paper. Most errors have come from our human dimensions, and that we try to describe Divine attributes through our own limited human attributes – Darwish]. Moses – Allah praised him and gave him peace – heard the Speech of Allah without sound and without letter, just as the righteous see the Essence of Allah – the High – in the Hereafter, without substance or its quality.

And since He has these qualities, He is Living, Knowing, Willing, Hearing, Seeing and Speaking with life, power, knowledge, will, hearing, sight, and speech, not solely through His Essence.

vii. Deeds

He, the Exalted, the High, there is no existence except Him, unless it occurs by His action and proceeds from His Justice, in the best, perfect, complete and just ways.

He is Wise in His verdicts. His justice is not to be compared with that of worshippers, because it is conceivable that the worshipper is unjust when he deals with properties of other than his own. But, harm is not conceivable from Allah – the High – because He does not encounter any ownership of other than Himself, in which His dealing could be described to be harmful.

Everything besides Him, children of Adam and jinn, angels and devils, heaven and earth, animals, plants, and inanimates, substance and its quality, as well as things perceived and things felt, are all originated things which He created by His Power and before they were nothing, since He existed in Eternity alone and there was nothing whatsoever with Him.

So He originated creation thereafter as a manifestation of His Power and a realization of that which had preceded of His Will and the realization of His Word in eternity, not because He had any need or necessity for it.

He is magnanimous in creating and inventing and in imposing obligations, not doing it through necessity.

He is Gracious in beneficence and reform, though not through any need. Munificence and Kindness, Beneficence and Grace are His, since He is able to bring upon His creatures all manner of torture and to try them with all kinds of pain and affliction. Even if He should do this, it would be justice from Him, it would not be vile, it would not be tyrannous.

He – the Mighty, the Glorified – rewards His believing worshippers for their acts of obedience according to generosity and encouragement rather than according to their merit and obligation. For there is no obligation upon Him in any deed towards anyone and tyranny is inconceivable in Him. For there is no right upon Him towards anyone.

As for His right to be obeyed it is obligatory and binding upon all creatures because He made it obligatory upon them through the tongues of His prophets and not by reason. But He sent His prophets and showed their truthfulness through explicit miracles, and they conveyed His commands and prohibitions as well as His promises and threats. So it became obligatory upon all creatures to believe them and what they brought.

(B) The meaning of the second phrase of witnessing which is the witnessing for the messengers and their message.

Allah sent the unlettered, of Quraish, Prophet Muhammad – praise and peace be upon him – with His Message for Arabs and non-Arabs alike, to the jinn and humanity. Therefore Allah superseded other religions by the Religion of Prophet Muhammad – praise and peace be upon him – except that which He confirmed amongst them.

He favored Prophet Muhammad over all other prophets and made him the master of mankind, and declared incomplete any profession of faith which attests to Oneness, which is “ There is no god except Allah, ” unless it is followed by the witness to the Messenger, which is your saying, “Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.” He obligated all nations to believe in everything he informed of the affairs of here and the Hereafter.

Allah will not accept the belief of any one (worshipper) until he believes in that which the Prophet informed of the affairs that occur after death, the first of which is the question of the angels Munkar and Nakeer. These are two awesome and terrifying beings who will make the deceased sit up in the grave, both soul and body; they will ask him about the Oneness of Allah and about the Message, asking, “Who is your Lord, and what is your Religion, and who is your prophet?” They are also known as the two examiners of the grave and their questions are considered as the first trial after death.

Again, one should believe in the punishment of the grave, and that it is real and that His Ruling is just over both the body and soul in accordance with His Will.

And one should believe in the Scale with the two pans with its indicator – the magnitude of which is like the stages of the Heavens and the earth – in it, the deeds are weighed by the Power of Allah, and its weights or measures are the mustard seed and the atom, in order to establish exact justice.

The records of good deeds will be placed in a fine image in the scale of light, and then the balance will be heavy according to its rank with Allah, by His Virtue.

The records of the evil deeds will be cast in an evil image in the scale of darkness, and they will be light in the balance through the Justice of Allah.

One should believe also that the Bridge is real; it is a Bridge stretched over Hell, sharper than the edge of the sword and finer than a hair. The feet of the unbelievers slip on it, according to the decree of Allah – the Exalted – and they will fall into the Fire; but the feet of the believers stand firm upon it, by the Grace of Allah, and so they are driven into the Everlasting residence.

And one should believe in the frequented pool, the Pool of Prophet Muhammad – Allah has praised and given him peace. From which the believers will drink before entering Paradise and after crossing over the Bridge. Whoever drinks a single mouthful from it will never thirst again. Its width is the distance of one month’s journey; its waters are whiter than milk and sweeter than honey. Around it are ewers in number like the stars of the sky, and into it flow two springs from al-Kawthar.

And one should believe in the Judgement and the distinctions between those in it, that some will be closely questioned, that some will be treated with forgiveness and that others will enter Paradise without questioning – these are the nearest.

Allah will ask whomsoever He will of the prophets concerning the deliverance of the Message, and whosoever of the unbelievers concerning their rejection of the Messengers; and He will ask the innovators concerning the way of the Prophet (sunnah) and the Muslims concerning their deeds.

One should believe that the believer in the Oneness of Allah (if he enters Hell on account of his sins) will be released from Hell fire after he has been punished, so that there will not remain in Hell one single believer.

One should believe in the intercession of the prophets, of the learned, and of the martyrs, then the rest of the believers – each according to his influence and rank before Allah.

Whosoever remains of the believers and has no intercessor will be released through the Grace of Allah, the Mighty, the Glorified.

Therefore not one single believer will abide in Hell forever; whosoever has in his heart the weight of an atom of belief will be brought out from there.

One should believe the virtues of the Companions – may Allah be pleased with them – and their different ranks, and that the most excellent of mankind, after the Prophet – Allah praised and gave him peace – is Abu-Bakr, and then `Umar, and then `Uthman, and then `Ali – may Allah be pleased with them – and one should think well of all the Companions and praise them, just as Allah – the Mighty, the Glorified – and His Prophet praised them all – Allah has praised the Prophet and given him peace -. All these were reported in the news and witnessed traditions (of the Prophet). Therefore whosoever believes in all this and believes in it without doubting will be among the people of truth and the congregation of the Way of the Prophet (sunnah), and indeed has separated themself from the followers of error and party of innovation.

So we ask Allah to perfect our faith and make us steadfast in the Religion for us and for all Muslims through His Mercy. Truly He is the Most Merciful. And may the praise of Allah be upon our Master Muhammad and upon every chosen worshipper.

Defending the Civilians: Mudafi’ al-Mazlum: Shaykh Muhammad Afifi al-Akiti’s Fatwa on Suicide Bombings

Introduction by Gibril F Haddad
[originally on the Living Islam Website]

Introduction

In the Name of God, the All-Beneficent, the Most Merciful.

Gentle reader, Peace upon those who follow right guidance!

I am honored to present the following fatwa or “response by a qualified Muslim Scholar” against the killing of civilians by the Oxford-based Malaysian jurist of the Shafi`i School and my inestimable teacher, Shaykh Muhammad Afifi al-Akiti, titled “Defending the Transgressed by Censuring the Reckless against the Killing of Civilians.“

The Shaykh authored it in a few days, after I asked him to offer some guidance on the issue of targeting civilians and civilian centers by suicide bombing in response to a pseudo-fatwa by a deviant UK-based group which advocates such crimes.

Upon reading Shaykh Afifi’s fatwa do not be surprised to find that you have probably never before seen such clarity of thought and expression together with breadth of knowledge of Islamic Law applied (by a non- native speaker) to define key Islamic concepts pertaining to the conduct of war and its jurisprudence, its arena and boundaries, suicide bombing, the reckless targeting of civilians, and more.

May it bode the best start to true education on the impeccable position of Islam squarely against terrorism in anticipation of the day all its culprits are brought to justice.

Dear Muslim reader, as-Salamu `alaykum wa-rahmatullah:

Read this luminous Fatwa by Shaykh Muhammad Afifi al-Akiti carefully and learn it, distribute it, publicize it, and teach it. Perhaps we will be counted among those who do something to redress wrong, not only with our hearts as we always do, but also with our tongues, in the fashion of the inspired teachers and preachers of truth.

I have tried to strike the keynote of this Fatwa in a few lines of free verse, mostly to express my thanks to our Teacher but also to seize the opportunity of such a long-expected response to remind myself of the reasons why I embraced Islam in the first place.

A TAQRIZ – HUMBLE COMMENDATION:

Praise to God Whose Law shines brighter than the sun!
Blessings and peace on him who leads to the abode of peace!
Truth restores honor to the Religion of goodness.
Patient endurance lifts the oppressed to the heights
While gnarling mayhem separates like with like:
The innocent victims on the one hand and, on the other,
Silver-tongued devils and wolves who try to pass for just!

My God, I thank You for a Teacher You inspired
With words of light to face down Dajjal’s advocates.
Allah bless you, Ustadh Afifi, for _Defending the Transgressed
By Censuring the Reckless Against the Killing of Civilians_!
Let the powers that be and every actor-speaker high and low
Heed this unique Fatwa of knowledge and responsibility.

Let every lover of truth proclaim, with pride once more,
What the war-mongers try to bury under lies and bombs:
Islam is peace and truth, the Rule of Law, justice and right!
Murderous suicide is never martyrdom but rather perversion,
Just as no flag on earth can ever justify oppression.
And may God save us from all criminals, East and West!

By permission of Shaykh Afifi, I have done some very light editing having to do mostly with style, spelling, or punctuation such as standardizing spacing between paragraphs, providing in-text translations of a couple of Arabic supplications, adding quotation marks to mark out textual citations, and so forth.

I also provided an alphabetical glossary of arabic terms not already glossed by the Shaykh directly in the text.

May Allah Subhan wa-Ta`ala save Shaykh Muhammad Afifi here and hereafter, may He reward him and his teachers for this blessed work and grant us its much-needed benefits, not least of which the redress of our actions and beliefs for safety here and hereafter.

Blessings and peace on the Prophet, his Family, and all his Companions, wal-Hamdu lillahi Rabb al-`Alamin.

G.F. Haddad
Day of Jumu`a after `Asr
1 Rajab al-Haram 1426
5 August 2005
Brunei Darussalam

SHAYKH AFIFI’S TEXT
Defending the Transgressed, by Censuring the Reckless against the Killing of Civilians

bismillahi r-rahman al-rahim

al-hamdulillah alladhi yahuddu l-harba wa-la yuhibbu l-mu’tadina wa s-salatu wa-s-salamu ‘ala qa’idi l-ummah alladhi huwa asbaru ‘ala adha l-a’da’i bi-futuwwatin kamilatin wa-muru’atin shamilatin wa-‘ala alihi wa-ashabihi wa-jayshihi ajma’in! [Praise be to God Who sets the boundaries of war and does not love transgressors! Blessings and peace on the Umma’s leader, the most enduring of men in the face of the harm of enemies with perfect chivalry and complete manliness, and upon all his Family, Companions, and Army!]

This is a collection of masa’il, entitled: Mudafi’ al-Mazlum bi-Radd al-Muhamil ‘ala Qital Man La Yuqatil 
[Defending the Transgressed, by Censuring the Reckless against the Killing of Civilians]; written in response to the fitna reeling this mercied Umma, day in and day out, which is partly caused by those who, wilfully or not, misunderstand the legal discussions of the chapter on warfare outside their proper contexts [of which the technical fiqh terminology varies with bab: Siyar, Jihad, or Qital], which have been used by them to justify their wrong actions. May Allah open our eyes to the true meaning [haqiqa] of sabr and to the fact that only through it can we successfully endure the struggles we face in this dunya, especially during our darkest hours; for indeed, He is with those who patiently endure tribulations!

There is no khilaf that all of the Shafi’i fuqaha’ of today and other Sunni specialists in the Law from the Far East to the Middle East reject outright [mardud] the above opinion and consider it not only an anomaly [shadh] and very weak [wahin] but also completely wrong [batil] and a misguided innovation [bid’a dalala]: an ‘amal that cannot at all be adopted by any mukallaf. It is regrettable too that the above was written in a legal style at which any doctor of the Law should be horrified and appalled (since it is an immature yet persuasive attempt to mask a misguided personal opinion with authority from Fiqh, and an effort to hijack our Fiqh by invoking one of its many qadaya of thisbab while recklessly neglecting others). It should serve to remind the students of Fiqh of the importance of forming in one’s mind and being aware throughout, of the thawabitand the dawabit when reading a furu’ text, in order to ensure that those principal rules have not been breached in any given legal case.

The above opinion is problematic in three legal particulars: (1) the target [maqtul]: without doubt, civilians; (2) the authority for carrying out the killing [amir al-qital]: as no Muslim authority has declared war, or if there has been such a declaration there is at the time a ceasefire [hudna]; and (3) the way in which the killing is carried out [maqtul bih]: since it is either Haram and is also cursed as it is suicide [qatil nafsah], or at the very least doubtful [shubuhat] in a way such that it must be avoided by those who are religiously scrupulous [wara’]. Any sane Muslim who would believe otherwise and think the above to be not a crime [jinaya] would be both reckless [muhmil] and deluded [maghrur]. Instead, whether he realizes it or not, by doing so he would be hijacking rules from our Sacred Law which are meant for the conventional (or authorized) army of a Muslim state and addressed to those with authority over it (such as the executive leader(s), the military commanders and so forth), but not to individuals who are not connected to the military or those without the political authority of the state [dawla].

The result in fiqh [Islamic jurisprudence] is: if a Muslim carries out such an attack voluntarily, he becomes a murderer and not a martyr or a hero, and he will be punished with that in the Next World.

The proposition: “so it is acceptable for them to attack the non-muslims in the west”, where “non-Muslims” can be taken to mean, and indeed does mean in the document, non-combatants, civilians, or in the terminology of Fiqh: those who are not engaged in direct combat [man la yuqatilu].

This opinion violates a well known principal rule [Dabit] from our Law: “la yajUzu qatlu nisA’ihim wa-la SibyAnihim idhA lam yuqAtilU” [it is not permissible to kill their [i.e., the opponents’] women and children if they are not in (direct) combat], which is based on the Prophetic prohibition on soldiers from killing women and children, from the well known Hadith of Ibn ‘Umar (may Allah be pleased with them both!) related by Imams Malik, al-Shafi’i, Ahmad, al-Bukhari, Muslim, Ibn Majah, Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, al-Bayhaqi and al-Baghawi (may Allah be well pleased with them all!) and other Hadiths.

Imam al-Subki (may Allah be pleased with him!) made it unequivocally clear what scholars have understood from this prohibition in which the standard rule of engagement taken from it is that: “[a Muslim soldier] may not kill a woman nor a child soldier unless they are in combat directly, and they can only be killed in self-defence” [al-Nawawi, Majmu’, 21:57].

It goes without saying that men and innocent bystanders who are not direct combatants are also included in this prohibition. The nature of this prohibition is so specific and well defined that there can be no legal justification, nor can there be a legitimate Shar’i excuse, for circumventing this convention of war by targeting non-combatants or civilians whatsoever, and that the Hukm Shar’i of killing them is not only Haram but also a Major Sin [kabira] and contravenes one of the principal commandments of our way of life.

The proposition: “so it is acceptable for them to attack the non-muslims in the west whether in retaliation for constant bombing and murder taking place all over the Muslim world at the hands of the non-muslims,” where it implies that a state of war exist with this particular non-Muslim state on account of its being witnessed as the aggressor.

This opinion violates the most basic rules of engagement from our Law: “amru l-jihAdi mawkulun ila l-imAmi wa-ijtihAdihi wa-yalzamu r-ra’iyyata TA’atuhu fImA yarAhu min dhalika” [The question of declaring war [or not] is entrusted to the executive authority and to its decision: compliance with that decision is the subject’s duty with respect to what the authority has deemed appropriate in that matter] and “wa-li-imamin aw amirin khiyarun bayna l-kaffi wa l-qitAli” [The executive or its subordinate authority has the option of whether to declare war or not].

Decisions of this kind for each Muslim state, such as those questions dealing with ceasefire [‘aqd al-hudna], peace settlement [‘aqd al-aman] and the judgment on prisoners of war [al-ikhtar fi asir] can only be dealt with by the executive or political authority [imam] or by a subordinate authority appointed by the former authority [amir mansubin min jihati l-imam]. This is something Muslims take for granted from the authority of our naql [scriptures] such that none will reject it except those who betray their ‘aql[intellect]. The most basic legal reason [‘illa asliyya] is that this is a matter involving the public interest in which only the authority has jurisdiction in considering it [li-anna hadhA l-amra mina l-masAliHi l-‘Ammati allati yakhtassu l-imAmi bi-n-naZari fI-hA].

All of this is based on the well known legal principle:

taSarrufu l-imAmi ‘ala r-ra’iyyati manUTun bi l-maSlaHati [the decisions of the authority on behalf of the subjects are dependent upon the public good].

And:

fa-yaf’alu l-imAmu wujUban al-aHaZZa li-l-muslimIna li-ijtihAdihi [So the authority must act for the greatest advantage of (the rest of) the Muslims in making his judgement].

Nasiha! Uppermost in the minds of our authority during their deliberation over whether to wage war or not should be the awareness that war is only a means and not the end. Hence, if there are other ways of achieving the aim, and the highest aim is the right to practice our religion openly (as is indeed the case in modern day Spain, for example, unlike in medieval Reconquista Spain), then it is better [awla] not to go to war. This has been expressed in a few words by Imam al-Zarkashi (may Allah be pleased with him!) as:

wujUbuhu wujUbu l-wasA’ili lA l-maqASidi
[Its necessity is the necessity of means, not ends]

The upshot is, whether one likes it or not, that the decision and the discretion and the right to declare war or jihad for Muslims lies solely with the various authorities today represented by the respective Muslim states – and not with any individual, even if he is a scholar or a soldier – and not just anyone is a soldier or a scholar – in the same way that only an authority (such as the Qadi in a court of law: mahkamah) is the only one with the right to excommunicate or declare someone an apostate [murtad]. Otherwise, the killing would be extra-judicial and unauthorized.

Even during the period of the Ottoman caliphate, for example, another Muslim authority elsewhere such as in the Indian subcontinent could have been engaged in a war when at the same time the Khalifa’s army was at peace with the same enemy. This is how it has been throughout our long history and this is how it will always be and this is what the reality is on the ground.

The proposition: “attacks such as the September 11th Hijackings is a viable option in Jihad,” where such attacks employ a tactic – analogous to the Japanese “Kamikaze” missions during the Second World War – that have been described variously as self-sacrificing/martyrdom/suicide missions.

There is no question among scholars and there is no khilaf on this question by any Qadi, Mufti or Faqih, that this proposition and those who accept it are without doubt breaching the scholarly consensus [mukhalifun li-l-ijma’] of the Muslims since it resulted in the killing of non-combatants, and moreover, the proposition is an attempt to legitimize the killing of indisputable non-combatants.

As for the Kamikaze method and tactic in which it was carried out, there is a difference of opinion among some jurists as to whether it constitutes suicide, which is not onlyHaram but also cursed, or whether it does not. In this, there are further details. (Note that in all of the following cases, the target is assumed to be already legitimate – i.e., a valid military target – and that the action is carried out during a valid war when there is no ceasefire [fi hal al-harb wa-la l-hudna fihi], just as with the actual circumstance of the Japanese Kamikaze attacks.)

Tafsil I: If the attack involves a bomb* placed on the body or placed so close to the bomber that when the bomber detonates it the bomber is certain [yaqin] to die, then the More Correct Position [Qawl Asahh] according to us is that it does constitute suicide. This is because the bomber, being also the Maqtul [the one killed], is unquestionably the same Qatil [the immediate/active agent that kills] = Qatil Nafsahu.

Furu’ If the attack involves a bomb (such as the lobbing of a grenade and the like) but when it is detonated, the attacker thinks that it is uncertain [zann] whether he may die in the process or survive the attack, then the Correct Position [Qawl Sahih] is that this does not constitute suicide, and were he to die in this selfless act, he becomes what we call a martyr or hero [shahid]. This is because the attacker, were he to die, is not the active, willing agent of his own death, since the Qatil is probably someone else.

An example [sura] of this is: when in its right place and circumstance, such as in the midst of an ongoing fierce battle against an opponent’s military unit, whether ordered by his commanding officer or whether owing to his own initiative, the soldier makes a lone charge and as a result of that initiative manages to turn the tide of the day’s battle but dies in the process (and not intentionally at his own hand): that soldier died as a hero (and this circumstance is precisely the context of becoming a shahid – in Islamic terminology – as he died selflessly). If he survives, he wins a Medal of Honour and becomes an honoured war hero and is remembered as a famous patriot (in our terminology, becoming a true mujahid).

This is precisely the context of the mas’ala concerning the “lone charger” [al-hajim al-wahid] and the meaning of putting one’s life in danger [al-taghrir bi-l-nafs] found in all of the Fiqh chapters concerning warfare. The Umma’s Doctor Angelicus, Imam al-Ghazali (may Allah be pleased with him!) provides the best impartial summation:

It is clear that this selfless deed which any modern soldier, Muslim or non-Muslim, might perform in battle today is not suicide. It may hyperbolically be described as a ‘suicidal’ attack, but to endanger one’s life is one thing and to commit suicide during the attack is obviously another. And as the passage shows, it is possible to have both situations: an attack that is taghrir bi-l-nafs, which is not prohibited; and an attack that is of the tahluka-type, which is prohibited.

Tafsil II: If the attack involves ramming a vehicle into a military target and the attacker is certain to die, precisely like the historical Japanese Kamikaze missions, then our jurists have disagreed whether it does or does not constitute suicide.

Qawl A: Those who consider it a suicide argue that there is the possibility [zanni] that the Maqtul is the same as the Qatil (as in Tafsil I above) and would therefore not allow for any other qualification whatsoever since suicide is a cursed sin.

Qawl B: Whereas those who consider otherwise, even with the possibility that the Maqtul is the same Qatil, will allow some other qualification such as the possibility that by carrying it out the battle of the day could be won. There are further details in this alternative position, such as that the commanding officer does not have the right to command anyone under him to perform this dangerous mission so that were it to be sanctioned, it could only be when it is not under anyone else’s orders other than the lone initiative of the concerned soldier (such as in defiance of the standing orders of his commanding officer).

The first of the two positions is the Preferred Position [Muttajih] among our jurists, as the second is the rarer because of the vagueness of a precedent, and its legal details are fraught with further difficulties and ambiguities, and its opposing position [muqabil] carries such a weighty consequence (namely, that of suicide, for which there is Ijma’ that the one who commits suicide will be damned to committing it eternally forever).

In addition to this juristic preference, the first position is also preferable and better since it is the original or starting state [Asl], and by invoking the well known and accepted legal principle: al-khurUju mina l-khilAfi mustaHabbun [to avoid the controversy is preferable].

Finally, the first position is religiously safer, since owing to the ambiguity itself of the legal status of the person performing the act – whether it will result in the Maqtul being also the Qatil – and since there is doubt and uncertainty over the possibility of it either being or not being the case, then this position falls under the type of doubtful matters [shubuhat] of the kind [naw’] that should be avoided by those who are religiously scrupulous [wara’]. And here, the wisdom of our wise Prophet  may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him! is illuminated from the Hadith of al-Nu’man  may Allah be well pleased with him!):

“fa-mani ttaqA sh-shubuhAti istabra’a li-dInihi wa ‘irDihi”
[He who saves himself from doubtful matters will save his religion and his honour]
(Related by Ahmad, al-Bukhari, Muslim, al-Tirmidhi,  Ibn Majah, al-Tabarani, and al-Bayhaqi with variants.)

wallahu a’lam bi-s-sawab!

Fa’ida

The original ruling [al-Asl] for using a bomb (the medieval precedents: Greek fire [qital bi l-nar or ramy al-naft] and catapults [manjaniq]) as a weapon is that it is Makruh[offensive] because it kills indiscriminately [ya’ummu man yuqatilu wa-man la yuqatilu], as opposed to using rifles (medieval example: a single bow and arrow). If the indiscriminate weapon is used in a place where there are civilians, it becomes Haram except when used as a last resort [min darura] (and of course, by those military personnel authorised to do so).

From the consideration of the foregoing three legal particulars, it is evident that the opinion expressed regarding the ‘amal in the above article is untenable by the standards of our Sacred Law.

As to those who may still be persuaded by it and suppose that the ‘amal is something that can be excused on the pretext that there is scholarly khilaf on the details of Tafsil II from the third particular (and that therefore, the ‘amal itself could at the end of the day be accommodated by invoking the guiding principle that one should be flexible with regards to legal controversies [masa’il khilafiyya] and to agree to disagree); know then there is no khilaf among scholars that that rationale does not stand, since it is well known that:

lA yunkaru l-mukhtalafu fIhi wa-innamA yunkaru l-mujma’u ‘alayhi
[The controversial cannot be denied; only {breach of} the unanimous can be denied]

Since at the very least, it is agreed upon by all that killing non-combatants is prohibited, there is no question whatsoever that the ‘amal overall is outlawed.

Masa’il Mufassala 

If it is said:

“I have heard that Islam says the killing of civilians is allowed if they are non-Muslims.”

We say: On a joking note (but ponder over this so your hearts may be opened!): the authority is not with what Islam says but with what Allah (Exalted is He) and His Messenger  may His blessings and peace be upon him! – have said!

But seriously: the answer is absolutely NO, for even a novice student of Fiqh would be able to see that the first Dabit above concerns already a non-Muslim opponent in the case of a state of war having been validly declared by a Muslim authority against a particular non-Muslim enemy even when that civilian is a subject or in the care [dhimma] of the hostile non-Muslim state [Dar al-Harb]. If this is the extent of the limitation to be observed with regards to non-Muslim civilians associated with a declared enemy force, what higher standards will it be in cases if it is not a valid war or when the status of war becomes ambiguous? Keep in mind that there are more than 100 Verses in the Qur’an commanding us at all times to be patient in the face of humiliation and to turn away from violence [al-i’rad ‘ani l-mushrikin wa l-sabr ‘ala adha l-a’da’], while there is only one famous Verse in which war (which does not last forever) becomes an option (in our modern context: for a particular Muslim authority and not an individual), when a particular non-Muslim force has drawn first blood.

If it is said:

“What about the verse of the Qur’an which says ‘kill the unbelievers wherever you find them’ and the Sahih Hadith which says ‘I have been ordered to fight against the people until they testify … ‘?”

We say: It is well known among scholars that the following verse, “fa-qtulU l-mushrikIna Haythu wajad-tumUhum” [kill the idolaters wherever you find them] (al-Tawba, 9:5) is in reference to a historical episode: those among the Meccan Confederates who breached the Treaty of Hudaybiyya [Sulh al-Hudaybiyya] which led to the Conquest of Mecca, and that therefore, no legal rulings, or in other words, no practical or particular implications can be derived from this Verse on its own. The Divine Irony and indeed Providence from the last part of the Verse, “wherever you find them” – which many of our Mufassirs understood in reference to place (i.e., attack them whether inside the Sacred Precinct or not) – is that the victory against the Meccans happened without a single battle taking place, whether inside the Sacred Precinct or otherwise, rather, there was a general amnesty [wa-mannun ‘alayhi bi-takhliyati sabilihi or naha ‘an safki d-dima’] for the Jahili Arabs there. Had the Verse not been subject to a historical context, then you should know that it is of the general type [‘amm] and that it will therefore be subject to specification [takhsis] by some other indication [dalil]. Its effect in lay terms, were it not related to the Jahili Arabs, is that it can only refer to a case during a valid war when there is no ceasefire.

Among the well known exegeses of “al-mushrikin” from this verse are: “al-nakithina khassatan” [specifically, those who have breached (the Treaty)] [al-Nawawi al-Jawi, Tafsir, 1:331]; “alladhina yuharibunakum” [those who have declared war against you] [Qadi Ibn ‘Arabi, Ahkam al-Qur’an, 2:889]; and “khassan fi mushkriki l-‘arabi duna ghayrihim” [specifically, the Jahili Arabs and not anyone else] [al-Jassas, Ahkam al-Qur’an, 3:81].

As for the meaning of “people” [al-nas] in the above well related Hadith, it is confirmed by Ijma’, that it refers to the same “mushrikin” as in the Verse of Sura al-Tawba above and therefore what is meant there is only the Jahili Arabs [muskhriku l-‘arab] during the closing days of the Final Messenger and the early years of the Righteous Caliphs and not even to any other non-Muslims.

In sum, we are not in a perpetual state of war with non-Muslims. On the contrary, the original legal status [al-Asl] is a state of peace, and making a decision to change this status belongs only to a Muslim authority who will in the Next World answer for their ijtihad and decision, and this decision is not divinely charged to any individuals – not even soldiers or scholars (and to believe otherwise would go against the well known rule in our Law that a Muslim authority could seek help from a non-Muslim with certain conditions, including for example that the non-Muslim allies are of goodwill towards the Muslims [la-yast’Inu bi-mushkrikin illA bi-shurUTin ka-an takUna niyyatuhu Hasanatan li-l-muslimIna]).

If it is said:

“I have heard a scholar say that ‘Israeli women are not like women in our society because they are militarised’. By implication, this means that they fall into the category of women who fight and that this makes them legitimate targets but only in the case of Palestine.”

We say: No properly schooled jurists from any of the four schools would say this as a legal judgement if they faithfully followed the juridical processes of the orthodox schools in this bab, for if it is true that the scholar made such a statement and meant it in the way you’ve implied it, then not only does this violate the well known principal rule above {Section I: “It is not permissible to kill their women and children if they are not in (direct) combat”} but the supposed remarks also show a lack of sophistication in the legal particulars. If this is the case, then it has to be said here that this is not among the masa’il khilafiyya that one can afford to agree to disagree, since it is outright wrong by the principles and the rules from our Usul and Furu’.

Let us restate the Dabit again, as our jurists have succinctly summarised its rule of engagement: a soldier can only attack a female or (if applicable) child soldier (or a male civilian) in self-defence and only when she *herself* (and not someone else from her army) is engaged in direct combat (as for male soldiers, it goes without saying that they are considered combatants as soon as they arrive on the battlefield even if they are not in direct combat – provided of course that the remaining conventions of war have been observed throughout and that all this is during a valid war when there is no ceasefire).

Not only is this strict rule of engagement already made clear in our secondary legal texts, but this is also obvious from the linguistic analysis of the primary proof-texts used to derive this principal rule. Hence, the form of the verb used in the scriptures, yuqAtilu, is of the musharaka-type so that the verb denotes a direct or a personal or a reciprocal relationship between two agents: the minimum for which is when one of them makes an effort or attempt to act upon the other. The immediate legal implication here is that one of the two can only even be considered a legitimate target when there is a reciprocal/direct relationship.

In reality, this is not what happens on the ground (since the bombing missions are offensive in nature – as they are not after all targeting, for example, a force that IS *attacking* an immediate Muslim force but rather the attack is directed at an overtly non-military target, so the person carrying it out can only be described as attacking it – and the target is someone unknown until only seconds before the mission reaches its termination).

In short, even if these women are soldiers, they can only be attacked when they are in *direct combat* and not otherwise. In any case, there are other overriding particulars to be considered and various conditions to be observed throughout, namely, that it must be during a valid state of war when there is no ceasefire.

If it is said:

“When a bomber blows up himself he is not directing the attack towards civilians. On the contrary, the attack is designed to target off-duty soldiers (which I was told did not mean reservists, since most Israelis are technically reservists). The innocent civilians are unfortunate collateral damage in the targeting of soldiers.”

We say: There are two details here.

Tafsil A: Off-duty soldiers are treated as civilians.

Our jurists agree that during a valid war when there is no ceasefire, and when an attack is not aimed at a valid military target, a hostile soldier (whether male or female, whether conscripted or not) who is not on operational duty or not wearing a military uniform and when there is nothing in the soldier’s outward appearance to suggest that the soldier is in combat is considered a non-combatant [man la yuqatilu] (and the soldier in this case must therefore be treated as a normal civilian).

A valid military target is limited to either a battlefield [mahall al-ma’raka or sahat al-qital] or a military base [mu’askar; medieval examples: citadel or forts; modern examples: barracks, military depots, etc.] but certainly NEVER at anything else such as restaurants, hotels, around a traffic light, a public bus or at any other public place, since firstly, these are not places and bases from which an attack would normally originate [mahall al-ra’y]; secondly, because there is certain knowledge [yaqin] that there is intermingling [ikhtilat] with non-combatants; and thirdly, the non-combatants have not been given the option to leave the place.

As for when the soldiers are on the battlefield, the normal rules of engagement apply.

As for when the soldiers are in a barracks or the like, there is further discussion on whether the soldiers become a legitimate target, and the Qawl Asahh [the more correct position] according to our jurists is that they do, albeit to attack them there is Makruh.

Tafsil B: Non-combatants cannot be considered collateral damage

Non-combatants cannot at all be considered collateral damage except at a valid military target for which they may be so deemed, depending on certain extenuating circumstances.

There is no khilaf that non-combatants or civilians cannot at all be considered collateral damage at a non-military target in a war zone, and that their deaths are not excusable by our Law, and that the one who ends up killing one of them will be sinful as in the case of murder, even though the soldier who is found guilty of it would be excused from the ordinary capital punishment [hadd], unless the killing was found to be premeditated and deliberate [aw ata bi-ma’siyyatin tujibu l-hadda]. If not, the murderer’s punishment in this case would instead be subject to the authority’s discretion [ta’zir] and he would in any case be liable to pay the relevant compensation [diya].

As for a valid military target in a war zone, the Shafi’i school have historically considered the possibility of collateral damage, unlike the position held by others that it is unqualifiedly outlawed. The following are the conditions stipulated for allowing for this controversial exception (in addition to meeting the most important condition of them all: that this takes place during a valid war when there is no ceasefire):

(1) The target is a valid military target.
(2) The attack is as a last resort [min darura] (such as when the civilians have been warned to leave the place and after a period of siege has elapsed). [wujUb al-indhAri qabla l-bad’i bi-l-qatli li-annahu lA yajUzu an yaqtula illA man yuqAtilu]
(3) There are no Muslim civilians or prisoners.
(4) The decision to attack the target is based on a considered judgement of the executive or military leader that by doing so, there is a good chance that the battle would be won.

(Furthermore, this position is subject to khilaf among our jurists with regard to whether the military target can be a Jewish/Christian [Ahl l-Kitab] one, since the sole primary text that is invoked to allow this exception concerns an incident restricted to the same “mushrikin” as the Verse of Sura al-Tawba above.)

To intentionally neglect any of these strict conditions is analogous to not fulfilling the conditions [shurut] for a prayer with the outcome that the Salat would become invalidated [batil] and useless [fasad]. This is why the means of an act [‘amal] must be correct and validated according to the rule of Law in order for its outcome to be sound and accepted, as expressed succinctly in the following wisdom of Imam Ibn ‘Ata’illah:

man ashraqat bidayatuhu ashraqat nihayatuhu
[He who makes good his beginning will make good his ending].

In our Law, the ends can never justify the means except when the means are in themselves permissible, or Mubah (and not Haram) as is made clear in the following famous legal principle:

wasIlatu T-TA’ati TA’atun wa-wasIlatu l-ma’Siyati ma’Siyatun
[the means to a reward is itself a reward and the means to a sin is itself a sin].

Hence, even a simple act such as opening a window, which on its own is only Mubah or Halal, religiously entailing no reward nor being a sin, when a son opens it with the intention for his mother’s comfort on a hot summer’s day before she asks for it to be opened, the originally non-consequent act itself becomes Mandub [recommended] and the son is rewarded in his ‘amal account for the Next World and acquires the pleasure of Allah.

wallahu a’lam wa-ahkam bi-s-sawab!
{God knows and judges best what is right!}

If it is said:

“In a classic manual of Islamic Sacred Law I read that

“it is offensive to conduct a military expedition [ghazw] against hostile non-Muslims without the caliph’s permission (though if there is no caliph, no permission is required).”

Doesn’t this entail that though it is Makruh for anyone else to call for or initiate such a jihad, it is permissible?”

We say: lA ghazwata illA fi l-jihAdi
[there can be no battle except during a war]!

Secondary legal texts, just as with primary proof-texts (a single Verse of the Qur’an from among the relatively few Ayat al-Ahkam or a Hadith from among the limited number of Ahadith al-Ahkam), must be read and understood in context. The conclusion drawn that it is offensive or permissible for anyone other than those in authority to declare or initiate a war is evidently wrong, since it violates the principal rule of engagement discussed above.

The context is that of endangering one’s life [taghrir bi-nafs] when there is already a valid war with no ceasefire as seen in the above example from the Ihya’ passage, but certainly not in executive matters of the kind of proclaiming a war and the like. This is also obvious from the terminology used: a ghazw [a military act, assault, foray or raid; the minimum limit in a modern example: an attack by a squad or a platoon [katiba]* can take place only when there is a state of jihad [war] not otherwise.

Fa’ida

Imam Ibn Hajar (may Allah be pleased with him!) lists the organizational structure of an army as follows: a ba’th [unit] and when together, a katiba [platoon], which is a part of a sariyya [company; made up of 50-100 soldiers], which is in turn a part of a minsar [regiment; up to 800 soldiers], which is a part of a jaysh [division; up to 4000 soldiers], which is a part of a jahfal [army corps; exceeding 4000 soldiers], which makes up the jaysh ‘azim [army]. [Ibn Hajar, Tuhfa, 12:4]

In our School, it is offensive but not completely prohibited for a soldier to defy or in other words to take the initiative against the wishes of his direct authority, whether his unit is strong or otherwise. In the modern context, this may include cases when soldier(s) disagree with a particular decision or strategy adopted by their superior officers, whether during a battle or otherwise.

The accompanying commentary to the text you quoted will help clarify this for you:

[Original Text:] “It is offensive to conduct an assault [whether the unit is strong (man’a) or otherwise; and some have defined a strong force as 10 men] without the permission of the authority ([Commentary]: or his subordinate, because the assault depends on the needs [of the battle and the like] and the authority is more aware about them. It is not prohibited [to go without his permission] {if} there is no grave endangering of one’s life even when that is permissible in war.)” [Ibn Barakat, Fayd, 2:309]

If it is said:

“What is the meaning of the rule in fiqh that I always hear, that Jihad is a Fard Kifaya [communal obligation] and when the Dar al-Islam is invaded or occupied it is a Fard ‘Ayn [personal obligation]? How do we apply this in the context of a modern Muslim state such as Egypt?”

We say: It is Fard Kifaya for the eligible Muslim subjects of the state (as for non-Muslim subjects, they evidently are not religiously obligated but can still serve) in the sense that recruitment to the military is only voluntary when the state is at war with a non-Muslim state. It becomes a Fard ‘Ayn for any able-bodied Muslim when there is a conscription or a state-wide draft to the military if the state is invaded by a hostile non-Muslim force, but only until the hostile force is repelled or the Muslim authority calls for a ceasefire. As for those not in the military, they have the option to defend themselves if attacked even if they have to resort to throwing stones and using sticks [bi ayyi shay’in aTAqUhu wa-law bi-HijAratin aw ‘aSA].

Furu’

When it is not possible to prepare for war [and rally the army for war (ijtima’ li-harb), and a surprise attack by a hostile force completely defeats the army of the state and the entire state becomes occupied] and someone [at home, for example] is faced with the choice of whether to surrender or to fight [such as when the hostile force comes knocking at the door], then he may fight, or he may surrender, provided that he knows [with certainty] that if he resisted [arrest] he would be killed and that [his] wife would be safe from being raped [fahisha] if she were taken. If not [that is to say, even if he surrenders he knows he will be killed and his wife raped when taken], then [as a last resort] fighting [jihad] becomes personally obligatory for him. [al-Bakri, I’ana, 4:197].

Reflect upon this legal ruling of our Religion and the emphasis placed upon preserving human life and upon the wisdom of resorting to violence only when it is absolutely necessary and in its proper place, and witness the conjunction between the maqasid and the wasa’il and the meaning of the conditions when fighting actually becomes a Fard ‘Ayn for an individual!

If it is said today:

“In the {Shafi`i} Madhhab, what are the different classifications of land in the world? For example, Dar al-Islam, Dar al-Kufr and so forth, and what have the classical ulema said their attributes are?”

We say: As it is also from empirical fact [tajriba], Muslim scholars have classified the territories in this world into: Dar al-Islam [its synonyms: Bilad al-Islam or Dawla al-Islam; a Muslim state or territory or land or country, etc.] and Dar al-Kufr [a Non-Muslim state or territory].

The definition of a Muslim state is: “Any place at which a resident Muslim is capable of defending himself against hostile forces [harbiyyun] for a period of time is a Muslim state where his judgements can be applied at that time and those times following it.” [Ba’alawi, Bughya, 254]. A non-Muslim who resides in a Muslim state is in our terminology: kafir dhimmi or al-kafir bi-dhimmati l-muslim [a non-Muslim in the care of a Muslim state].

By definition, a country is a Muslim state as long as Muslims continue to live there and enjoy the political and executive authority. (Think about this, for the Muslim lands are many, varied, wide and extensive; and how poor and of limited insight are those who have tried to limit the definition of what a Muslim state must be, and whether realizing it or not thus tries to shrink the Muslim world!)

As for a non-Muslim state, it is the absence of a Muslim state.

As for the Dar al-Harb [sometimes called, Ard al-‘Adw], it is a non-Muslim state which is in a state of war with a Muslim state. Therefore, a hostile non-Muslim soldier from there is known in our books as: kafir harbi.

Furu’

Even if such a person enters or resides in a Muslim country that is in a state of war with his home country, provided of course he does so with the permission of the Muslim authority (such as entering with a valid visa and the like), the sanctity of a kafir harbi’s life is protected by Law just like the rest of the Muslim and non-Muslim subjects of the state. [al-Kurdi, Fatwa, 211-2]. In this case, his legal status becomes a kafir harbi bi-dhimmati l-imam [a hostile non-Muslim under the protection of the Muslim authority], in which, for all intent and purposes, he becomes exactly like the non-Muslim subject of the state. In this way, the apparent difference between a dhimmi and a harbi non-Muslim becomes only an academic exercise and a distinction in name only.

The implications of this rule for the pious, godfearing and law-abiding Muslims are not only that to attack non-Muslims becomes something illegal and an act of disobedience [ma’siya], but also that the steps taken by the Muslim authority and enforcers, such as in Malaysia or Indonesia today, to protect their places, including churches or temples, from the threat of killings and bombings, is included under the bab of amr bi-ma’ruf wa nahi ‘ani l-munkar [the duty to intervene when another is acting wrongly; in the modern context: enforcing the Law], even if the Muslim enforcers [muhtasib] die in the course of protecting non-Muslims.

If it is said:

“What land classification are we in the European Union, and what is the hukm of those who are here? Should they theoretically leave?”

We say: It is clear that the countries in the Union are non-Muslim states, except for Turkey or Bosnia, for example, if they are a part of the Union. The status of the Muslims who reside and are born in non-Muslim states is the reverse of the above non-Muslim status in a Muslim state: al-muslim bi-dhimmati l-kafir [a Muslim in the care of a non-Muslim state] and from our own Muslim and religious perspective, whether we like it or not, there are similarities to the status of a guest which should not be forgotten.

There is precedent for this status in our Law. The answer to your question is that they should as a practical matter remain in these countries, and if applicable, learn to cure the schizophrenic cultural condition in which they may find themselves – whether of torn identity in their souls or of dissociation from the general society. If they cannot do so, but find instead that their surroundings are incompatible with the life they feel they must lead, then it is recommended for them to leave and reside in a Muslim state. This status is made clear in the fatwa of Imam al-Kurdi (may Allah be pleased with him!):

The Dabit for this mas’ala is:

wa-in qadara ‘ala iZhAri d-dIni wa-lam yakhfi l-fitnata fi d-dIni wa-nafsihi wa-mAlihi lam tajib ‘alayhi al-hijratu [if someone is able to practice his religion openly and is not afraid of trouble to his religion, life and property, then emigration is not obligatory for him].

Furu’

Our Shafi’i jurists have discussed details concerning the case of Muslims residing in a non-Muslim state, and they have divided the legal rulings about their emigration from it to a Muslim state into four sorts (assuming that an individual is capable and has the means to emigrate):

1. Prohibited to leave: when they are able to defend the territory from a hostile non-Muslim force and withdraw from it and they do not need to ask for help from a Muslim state, since their place is a Muslim state: if they emigrated it would become a non-Muslim state.

2. Offensive: when it is possible for them to practice their religion openly and they wish to do so openly.

3. Recommended: when that is possible but they do not wish to do so openly.

4. Obligatory: when in the only remaining option, that {to practice their religion openly} is not possible.

If it is said:

“Would you say that in the modern age with all the considerations surrounding sovereignty and inter-connectedness, these classical labels do not apply any longer, or do we have sufficient resources in the school to continue using these same labels?”

We say: As Imam al-Ghazali would say: “once the real meaning is understood, there is no need to quibble over names”. Labels can never be relied upon; it is the meaning behind them that must be properly understood. Once they are unpacked, they immediately become relevant for all times; just as with the following loaded terms: Jihad, Mujahid and Shahid. The result for Muslims who fail to notice the relevance and fail to connect the dots of our own inherited medieval terms with the modern world may be that they will live in a schizophrenic cultural reality and will be unable to associate themselves with the surrounding society and will not be at peace [sukun] with the rest of creation.

Just as the sabab al-wujud of this article is a Muslim’s misunderstanding of his own medieval terminology from a long and rich legacy, the fitna in the world today has been the result of those who misunderstand our Laws.

Pay heed to the words of Mawlana Rumi (may Allah sanctify his secrets!):

End of the Masa’il section

It is truly sad that despite our sophisticated and elaborate set of rules of engagement and in spite of the strict codes of warfare and the chivalrous disciplines which our soldiers are expected to observe, all having been thoroughly worked out and codified by the orthodox jurists of the Umma from among the generations of the Salaf, there are today in our midst those who are not ashamed to depart from these sacred conventions in favour of opinions espoused by persons who are not even trained in the Sacred Law at all let alone enough to be a Qadi or a Faqih – the rightful heir and source from which they should receive practical guidance in the first place. Instead they rely on engineers or scientists and on those who are not among its ahl yet speak in the name of our Law. With these “reformist” preachers and da’i comes a departure from the traditional ideas about the rules of Siyar/Jihad/Qital, i.e., warfare. Do they not realise that by doing so and by following them they will be ignoring the limitations and restrictions cherished and protected by our pious forefathers and that they will be turning their backs on the Jama’a and Ijma’ and that they will be engaging in an act for which there is no accepted legal precedent among the orthodoxy in our entire history? Have they forgotten that part of the original maqsad of warfare/jihad was to limit warfare itself and that warfare for Muslims is not total war, so that women, children and innocent bystanders are not to be killed and property not to be needlessly destroyed?

To put it plainly, there is simply no legal precedent in the history of Sunni Islam for the tactic of attacking civilians and overtly non-military targets. Yet the awful reality today is that a minority of Sunni Muslims, whether in Iraq or Beslan or elsewhere, have perpetuated such acts in the name of Jihad and on behalf of the Umma. Perhaps the first such mission to break this long and admirable precedent was the Hamas bombing on a public bus in Jerusalem in 1994 – not that long ago. (Ponder about this fact!) Immediately after the incident, the almost unanimous response of the orthodox Shafi’i jurists from the Far East and the Hadramawt was not only to make clear that the minimum legal position from our Sacred Law is untenable, but also to warn the Umma that by going down that path we would be compromising the optimum way of Ihsanand that we would thereby be running a real risk of losing the moral and religious high ground. Those who still defend this tactic, invoking blindly a nebulous usuli principle that it is justifiable out of darura while ignoring the far’i strictures, must look long and hard at what they are doing and ask the question: was it absolutely necessary, and if so, why was this not done before 1994, and especially during the earlier wars, most of all during the disasters of 1948 and 1967?

How could such a tactic be condoned by one of our rightly guided caliphs and a heroic fighter such as ‘Ali (may Allah ennoble his face!), who when in the Battle of the Trench his notorious non-Muslim opponent, who was seconds away from being killed by him, spat on his noble face, immediately left him alone. When asked later his reasons for withdrawing when Allah clearly gave him power over him, answered: “I was fighting for the sake of God, and when he spat in my face I feared that if I killed him it would have been out of revenge and spite!” Far from being an act of cowardice, this characterizes Muslim chivalry: fighting, yet not out of anger.

In actual fact, the only precedent for this tactic from Muslim history is the cowardly terrorism carried out by the “Assassins” of the Nizari Isma’ilis. Their most famous victim was the suicide mission in assassinating the wise minister and the Defender of the Faith who could have been alive to deal with the Fitna of the Crusades: Nizam al-Mulk, theJamal al-Shuhada’ (may Allah encompass him with His mercy!) on Thursday, the 10th of the holy month of Ramadan 485/14 October 1092. Ironically, in the case of Palestine, the precedent was set not by Muslims but by early Zionist terrorist gangs such as the Irgun, who, for example, infamously bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on the 22nd of July 1946. So ask yourself as an upright and godfearing believer whose every organ will be interrogated: do you really want to follow the footsteps and the models of those Zionists and the heterodox Isma’ilis, instead of the path taken by our Beloved  may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him!, who for almost half of the {twenty-three} years of his mission endured Meccan persecution, humiliation and insults? Is anger your only strength? If so, remember the Prophetic advice that it is from the Devil. And is darura your only excuse for following them instead into their condemned lizard-holes? Do you think that any of our famous Mujahid from history, such as ‘Ali, Salah al-Din, and Muhammad al-Fatih (may Allah be well pleased with them all!) will ever condone the article you quoted and these acts today in Baghdad, Jerusalem, Cairo, Bali, Casablanca, Beslan, London and New York, some of them committed on days when it is traditionally forbidden by our Law to fight: Dhu l-Qa’da and al-Hijja,Muharram and Rajab? Every person of fitra will see that this is nothing other than a sunna of perversion. This is what happens to the Banu Adam when the wahm is abandoned by ‘aql, when one of the maqasid justifies any wasila, when the realities of furu’ are indiscriminately overruled by generalities of usul, and most tragically, as illustrated from the eternal blunder of Iblis, when Divine tawakkul is replaced by basic nafs.

Yes, we are one Umma such that when one part of the macro-body is attacked somewhere, another part inevitably feels the pain. Yet at the same time, our own history has shown that we have also been a wise and sensible, instead of a reactive and impulsive, Umma. That is the secret of our success, and that is where our strengths will always lie as has been promised by Divine Writ: in sabr and in tawakkul. It is already common knowledge that when Jerusalem fell to the Crusading forces on 15 July 1099 and was occupied by them, and despite its civilians having been raped, killed, tortured and plundered and the Umma at the time humiliated and insulted – acts far worse than what can be imagined in today’s occupation – that it took more than 100 years of patience and legitimate struggle under the Eye of the Almighty before He allowed Salah al-Din to liberate Jerusalem. We should have been taught from childhood by our fathers and mothers about the need to prioritize and about how to reconcile the spheres of our global concerns with those of our local responsibilities – as we will definitely not escape the questioning in the grave about the latter – so that by this insight we may hope that our response will not be disproportionate nor inappropriate. This is the true meaning [haqiqa] of the true advice [nasiha] of our Beloved Prophet  may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him!: to leave what does not concern one [tark ma la ya’nih], where one’s time and energy could be better spent in improving the lot of the Muslims today or benefiting others in this world.

Yes, we will naturally feel the pain when any of our brothers and sisters die unjustly anywhere when their deaths have been caused directly by non-Muslims, but it MUST be the more painful for us when they die in Iraq, for example, when they are caused directly by the self-destroying/martyrdom/suicide missions carried out by one of our own. Ontafakkur, the second pain should make us realize and feel insaf that missions of this sort when the means and the legal particulars are all wrong – by scripture and reason – are not only a scourge for our non-Muslim neighbours but a plague and great fitna for this mercied Umma, so that out of maslaha and the general good, it must be stopped.

To this end, we could sum up a point of law tersely in the following maxim: two wrongs do not make the second right [lA yaj’alu Z-ZulmAni th-thAniya Haqqan]. If the first pain becomes one of the mitigating factors and ends up being used as a justification by our misguided young to retaliate in a manner which our Sacred Law definitely and without doubt outlaws (which makes your original article the more appalling, as its author will have passed the special age of 40), then the latter pain should by its graver significance generate a greater and more meaningful response. With this intention, we may hope that we shall regain our former high ground and reputation and rediscover our honour and chivalrous qualities and be no less brave.

I end with the first ever Verse revealed in the Qur’an which bestowed the military option only upon those in a position of authority:

wa-qAtilU fI sabIli LlAhi l-ladhIna yuqAtilUnakum
wa-lA ta’tadU inna LlAha lA yuHibbu l-mu’tadIna
[And fight for the sake of God those who fight you: but do not commit excesses,
for God does not love those who exceed (i.e., the Law)]
(al-Baqara, 2:190).

Even then, peace is preferred over war:

wa-in janaHU li-s-salmi fa-jnaH la-hA wa-tawakkal ‘ala LlAhi
[Now if they incline toward peace, then incline to it,
and place your trust in God] 
(al-Anfal, 8:61).

Even if you think that the authority in question has decided wrongly and you disagree with their decision not to war with the non-Muslim state upon which you wish war to be declared, then take heed of the following Divine command:

yA ayyhuhA l-ladhIna AmanU aTI’u l-LAha
wa-aTI’u r-rasUla wa-uli l-amri minkum
[O believers, obey Allah, and obey the messenger,
and those with authority among you!]
(al-Nisa’, 4:58).

If you still insist that your authority should declare war with the non-Muslim state upon which you wish war to be declared, then the most you could do in this capacity is to lobby your authority for it. However, if your anger is so unrestrained that its fire brings out the worse in you to the point that your disagreement with your Muslim authority leads you to declare war on those you want your authority to declare war on, and you end up resorting to violence, then know with certainty that you have violated our own religious Laws. For then you will have taken the Shari’a into your own hands. If indeed you reach the point of committing a violent act, then know that by our own Law you would have been automatically classified as a rebel [ahl al-baghy] whom the authority has the right to punish: even if the authority is perceived to be or is indeed corrupt [fasiq]. (The definition of rebels is: “Muslims who have disagreed [not by heart or by tongue but by hand] with the authority even if it is unjust [ja’ir] and they are correct [‘adilun]” [al-Nawawi, Majmu’, 20:337].)

That is why, my brethren, when the military option is not a legal one for the individuals concerned, you must not lose hope in Allah; and let us be reminded of the words of our Beloved  may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him!:

afDalu l-jihAdi kalimatu Haqqin ‘inda sulTAnin jA’irin

[The best Jihad is a true (i.e., brave) word in the face of a tyrannical ruler]. (From a Hadith of Abu Sa’id al-Khudri  may Allah be well pleased with him!) among others, which is related by Ibn al-Ja’d, Ahmad, Ibn Humayd, Ibn Majah, Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, al-Nasa’i, Abu Ya’la, Abu Bakr al-Ruyani, al-Tabarani, al-Hakim, and al-Bayhaqi, with variants.)

For it is possible still, and especially, today to fight injustice or zulm and taghut in this dunya through your tongue and your words and through the pen and the courts, which still amounts in the Prophetic idiom to Jihad, even if not through war. As in the reminder [tadhkira] of the great scholar, Imam al-Zarkashi: war is only a means to an end and as long as some other way is open to us, that should be the course trod upon by Muslims.

Masha-Allah, how true indeed are the Blessed words, so that the latter Mujahid or activist will be no less brave or lacking in any courage with his or her campaign for a just cause in an oppressive country or one needing reforms than the former Mujahid or patriot who fought bravely for his country in a just war.

fa-t-taqillaha wa-raji’ mufatashata nafsika wa-islaha fasadiha wa-huwa hasbuna wa-ni’ma l-wakil wa-la hawla wa-la quwwata illa billahi l-‘aliyyi l-‘azim! wa-salawatuhu ‘ala sayyidina Muhammadin wa-alihi wasallim waradiyallahu tabaraka wa-ta’ala ‘an sadatina ashabi rasulillahi ajma’in wa-‘anna ma’ahum wa-fihim wa-yaj’aluna min hizbihim bi-rahmatikaya arhama r-rahimin! Amin!

May this be of benefit.

With heartfelt wishes for salam & tayyiba from Oxford to Brunei,

M. Afifi al-Akiti 16 Jumada II 1426 23 VII 2005

ahl = 1: people; 2: qualified adherents or practicioners
`aql = intellect, reason
`amal = deed
asl = see usul
bab = chapter
Banu Adam = human beings
dabit = see dawabit
darura = necessity
dawabit = pl. of dabit = standard or pricipal rule
Doctor Angelicus = Angel-like scholar or Scholar of the angels, a title given to Thomas Aquinas, the great theologian of the Western Church.
da`i = summoner
dunya = this world
fa’ida = benefit
Faqih = see Fiqh
fard `ayn = personal categorical obligation
far`i = adj. from far`, see furu`
fiqh = Islamic jurisprudence, the expertise of the Faqih
fitna = strife, temptation, seduction, delusion, chaos, trial and tribulation
fitra = sane mind and soul, primordial disposition
Fuqaha’ = pl. of Faqih (q.v.)
furu` = pl. of far`, 1: branches (of the Law), secondary legal texts; 2: corollaries
hadith = saying of the Prophet Muhammad, upon him blessings and peace
halal = lawful, permitted
haram = categorically prohibited, unlawful
hukm shar`i = legal status
Iblis = Satan
Ihsan = Excellence, the pinnacle of religious practice
Ijma` = Consensus
insaf = fairness
Jama`a = congregation (of the Muslims)
Jamal al-Shuhada’ = Beauty of Martyrs, the title of the murdered vizier Nizam al-Mulk
Jihad = military or moral struggle by the Mujahid
khilaf = (juridical) disagreement
khilafiyya = fem. adjective from khilaf= having to do with (juridical) disagreement
madhhab = school of law
makruh = detestable, abhorrent, abominable, disliked, legally offensive
maqasid = pl. of maqsad, objective
maqsad = see maqasid
masa’il = pl. of mas’ala = question
mas’ala = see masa’il
maslaha = welfare
mubah = indifferently permissible
mufassir = exegete
mufti = one who formulates fatwas or formal legal responses
mujahid = one who does jihad (q.v.)
mukallaf = legally-responsible Muslim
musharaka = mutual or reciprocal matter
nafs = ego, self
nasiha = faithful, sincere advice
qadaya = pl. of qadiyya = issue
qadi = judge in an Islamic court of law
qatil nafsahu = self-killer, suicide
qawl = saying, position
qital = warfare, battle
sabab al-wujud = raison d’etre
sabr = patient endurance and fortitude
shahid, pl. suhada‘ = self-sacrificing believer who dies for the sake of God alone, “martyr”
shar`i = adj. legitimate in the eyes of the Shari`a (Islamic Law), lawful
siyar = military expeditions
sunna = way, path
tafakkur = reflexion
tafsil = detailed discussion
tahluka = self-destruction
thaghrir bi l-nafs = risking one’s life
tawakkul = God-reliance
thawabit = pl. of thabit = axiom
Umma = Community (of the Prophet Muhammad  )
usul = pl. of asl = foundational principle. Adj. usuli
wahm = imaginative faculty
wasa’il = pl. of wasila, means
wasila = see wasa’il

Select Bibliography:

• Ba’alawi, Abd al-Rahman. Bughyat al-Mustarshidin fi Talkhis Fatawa ba’d al-Muta’akhkhirin. Bulaq, 1309 H.
• al-Bakri. Hashiyat I’anat al-Talibin. 4 vols. Bulaq, 1300 H.
• al-Ghazali. Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din. Edited by Badawi Ahmad Tabanah. 4 vols.
• Cairo: Dar Ihya’ al-Kutub al-‘Arabiyya, 1957.
• Ibn ‘Arabi, Qadi. Ahkam al-Qur’an. Edited by ‘Ali Muhammad al-Bajawi. 4 vols. Cairo: Dar Ihya’ al-Kutub al-‘Arabiyya, 1957-8.
• Ibn Barakat. Fayd al-Ilah al-Malik fi Hall Alfaz ‘Umdat al-Salik wa-‘Uddat al-Nasik. Edited by Mustafa Muhammad ‘Imara. 2 vols. Singapore: al-Haramayn, 1371 H.
• Ibn Hajar al-Haytami. Tuhfa al-Muhtaj bi-Sharh al-Minhaj al-Nawawi in Hawashi al-Shirwani wa-Ibn Qasim ‘ala Tuhfa al-Muhtaj. Edited by Muhammad ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Khalidi. 13 vols. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1996.
• al-Jassas, Ahkam al-Qur’an. 3 vols. Istanbul: Dar al-Khilafa al-‘Aliya, 1335-1338.
• al-Kurdi. Fatawa al-Kurdi al-Madani. In Qurrat al-‘Ayn bi-Fatawa ‘Ulama’ al-Haramayn. Edited by Muhammad ‘Ali b. Hussayn al-Maliki. Bogor: Maktaba ‘Arafat, n.d.
• al-Nawawi. al-Majmu’ Sharh al-Muhadhdhab. Edited by Mahmud Matraji. 22 vols. Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1996.
• al-Nawawi al-Jawi. Marah Labid Tafsir al-Nawawi: al-Tafsir al-Munir li-Ma’alim al-Tanzil al-Mufassir ‘an Wujuh Mahasin al-Ta’wil al-Musamma Marah Labid li-Kashf Ma’na Qur’an Majid. 2 vols. Bulaq, 1305 H.

America as a Jihad State

Middle Eastern perceptions of modern American theopolitics

© Abdal-Hakim Murad, 2013

‘I love America, such a wonderful country – such a shame to see it taken over by religious fundamentalists.’
(Iranian diplomat, cited in 2011)^[1]

The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities provides a helpful opportunity to consider recent evolutions in Muslim perceptions of Western religious intention. The rhetoric and dichotomies of the immediate aftermath have receded, and the more recent years have seemed to initiate some possible resolutions of the polarity which look beyond the faltering and controversial ‘security agenda’. The publication in 2007 of theCommon Word marked perhaps the clearest and most remarkable sign of this, a genuine shift in the Muslim-Christian equation: David Burrell, one of the most seasoned Catholic scholars of Islam, wrote of a dramatic turn-about unparalleled in the recent history of the relationship.^[2] More recently, the fall of the Bush administration seemed to permit a more measured and less histrionic assessment of America’s travails with political Islam and political Christianity over the years since 2001. The Obama victory was followed within days by the death of Samuel Huntington, most notorious of advocates of the thesis of the mutual allergy of Islam and Christendom. It is a good time to take stock.

In this essay I propose to examine one of the less frequently-noted of post-9/11 developments by attempting a survey of changing Middle Eastern perceptions of America following the increased visibility of so-called ‘theocon’ tendencies in Washington under George Bush Jr. I will then move on to some more general reflections on the issue of scripturally-based political xenophobia as a strand in the mutual regard – or disregard – of what remains of Christian and Muslim civilisation, and its implications for the wider atmosphere in which the Muslim-Christian engagement is conducted.

The approach is necessarily imprecise. Determining a generic Muslim view of this (or of most things) is hardly possible: regional, sectarian and educational variables see to that. Muslim elites which conform to the emerging global monoculture have often been resistant to the idea that religion might be a factor in the politics of a country which is such a leading icon of modernity, while Islamists, by contrast, may exaggerate US official religiosity in order to appeal to audiences who think in religious terms, or, on occasion, to bolster a polemic against the secular discourse of the regimes. A further difficulty is that Muslim elites attracted to the monoculture may not have access to the books and media reports written in local languages which should form the basis of our survey. Increasingly such elites read only in English and French, and a survey of regional newspapers and vernacular TV channels is unlikely to provide sure clues to their perceptions of the world. As a final complication, their subject populations are typically consumers of mass media over which they exert only a very limited influence, and which are shaped by the censorship which is still normal in most Muslim states. Hence the Middle Eastern media coverage of American fundamentalism has been extremely erratic, and our conclusions can be no more than tentative.

But for all the measurement problems, the transformation of Muslim perceptions of America has been considerable. In 2009, at the edge of the Tanezrouft desert near Timbuktu, the present writer listened to a traditional Sufi shaykh expounding the view that America’s ‘violence towards Muslims’ (i‘tida’ ‘ala’l-muslimin) is the consequence of a sahwa masihiyya, a Christian revival. He seemed well-aware of the role of the Christian Coalition in the run-up to the Iraq war, despite living in a region where I saw no newspapers, and where internet access is almost impossible. Yet he was familiar with the names of Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, and other icons of the Christian Right. For him, Alan Greenspan’s explanation of the Iraq invasion in terms of America’s need for oil was entirely unpersuasive:^[3] Bush and his team were crusaders (salibiyyin), servants of Israel (a‘wan Isra’il), and madcap harbingers of the violent Second Coming of Christ.

Here is another anecdotal sign, this time from the opposite end of the cultural spectrum. In November of 2005, a very different group of Muslims gathered in Casablanca for the second symposium of an ‘Arab-American Dialogue’. The sponsor was a neoliberal American trust, and the subject was the familiar one of the relationship between religion and state in the Arab and American contexts. The American team presented a critique of Arab society based on an apparent assumption that its political processes were rooted either in medieval Islamic thought (essentially Mawardi’s model), or in modern radical Islamism, with its Salafite doctrine of tawhid al-hakimiyya (the monopolising of sovereignty by God). The Arab team, mainly composed of secular intellectuals, attempted to explain that most modern Arab regimes, as nationalist autocracies, do not see themselves as standing in continuity with either tradition. They added that for Muslims, political thought lies largely in the ijtihadi category of rulings, and is hence one of those branches of the Shari‘a which are more readily susceptible to change.

At this point the discussion grew more stimulating. Some of the Arab thinkers present raised the issue of American theopolitics, citing Tocqueville’s well-known observations about the coexistence of American official laicism with popular religiosity, and pointing out that many modern Muslim jurisdictions preside over a broadly similar separation. But as in the world of Islam, where popular religious convictions can still influence the decision-making of the officially secular elites, American politicians cannot and do not ignore the hundred million or so voters who grade politicians for their correctness on faith-specific issues. The report in al-Sharq al-Awsat continued: ‘our American colleagues (some of whom play an influential role in the American decision-making process) failed to respond objectively and precisely to the fears of their Arab partners concerning the role of Christian fundamentalism in American political decision-making.’^[4]

In the early years of the decade, a major concern of Muslim commentators seemed to be Christian Zionism. The Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram and the Lebanese-rooted al-H{ayat ran a number of op-ed pieces interpreting the apparent indulgence shown towards Israel by the Bush presidency in terms of the influence of pro-Israel evangelicals. On occasion, the Iraq invasion was glossed in the context of end-time persuasions attributed to some members of the White House staff and the Pentagon. For instance, a 2003 article by Ja‘far Hadi Hasan in al-Hayat urged readers to broaden their understanding of US objectives in the region to include the chiliastic. For Hasan, Bush’s core electorate are expecting the parousia in their lifetime, and as he writes: ‘they believe that occupying Iraq confirms the predictions of the Bible; it is one incident in a series of events before the return of the awaited Christ.’ Hasan offers an outline of the history of Christian dispensationalism, summarising its schema of ‘seven ages of the world’, and explains how many Bush voters believe themselves to stand at the threshold of the seventh age: Christ’s millennial reign. Hasan then goes on to identify dispensationalist decision-makers in the Bush team, including Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, a disciple of Billy Graham, and discusses Graham’s son Franklin in his role as the President’s personal religious mentor.

Hasan then summarises the core passages of the Book of Revelation which are central to the world-view of many so-called ‘theocons’. Much of Revelation, he writes, is ambiguous, but the role of Iraq in the end-time scenario is clear: Iraq, or ‘Babylon’, will fill the nations with impurity; and an angel of God’s wrath will bring it to destruction, and it will be divided into three parts: exactly what America has achieved.

When that takes place, Jerusalem, the city of true belief and the polar opposite of Babylon, will hear the four angels liberated by the fall of the false city. They will proclaim the imminence of a great battle, and then the reappearance of Jesus. Thus the next stage in the theocon plan will be the destruction of the Dome of the Rock and the rebuilding of Solomon’s Temple, where Christ himself will preside over the sacrificial rituals in order to symbolise the restoration of God’s order on earth.

Hasan concludes with some reflections on right-wing American policies, attempting to fit them all into his interpretation. Pat Robertson, he reports, preaches to the Christian world on the inexorable disappearance of virtue, the spread of abortion and sodomy, and the forgetting of God. The environmental crisis is a positive sign that the present world is coming to an end.^[5] Peacemaking is an illusion, even a demonic subversion, since conflict can only come to an end with Christ’s millennial reign. ^[6]

Hasan’s article may be fairly typical of the growing Muslim concern over the influence of America’s religious right. Baffled by what appears to regional commentators to be the foolhardiness of the Iraq invasion, and by the administration’s perceived maximalist support for Israel, such Arab journalists have sought a master explanation in the Bible-time beliefs of key Bush decisionmakers.^[7] ‘Instead of a clash of civilizations,’ one journalist concludes, ‘we are witnessing a clash of religions’.^[8]

As Hasan indicates, this interpretation of American actions is new. And it will be helpful to trace the conduits by which, in a highly-censored media environment not particularly open to innovation, such a sea-change in understanding has taken place.

One key channel has been provided by Christian Arab journalists, whose greater cultural familiarity with the Bible and with Christian eschatology has allowed them to unravel the so-called ‘double-coding’ in presidential speeches, in which apparently innocuous phrases turn out to trigger specific Biblical resonances important to the religious electorate. Particularly impressive was al-Hayat’s coverage from Washington during the 2008 elections. Its correspondent, Joyce Karam, showed a close awareness of the evangelical hesitations over John McCain. Conservative evangelicals will almost invariably vote Republican, she observes, despite McCain’s uneven record on abortion, but some moderate evangelicals, less convinced that religion requires a state of endless Middle Eastern war, had been seduced by the Obama camp, which had adroitly revived the memory of the Carter years. Karam then accounts for the last-minute appointment of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running-mate. Altogether, she presents a persuasive account to her Arab readers of the issues surrounding Barack Obama’s rise to power: religious politics, as well as the economy or a general post-conflict tristesse, are a significant hermeneutic key.^[9]

If there is an interpretation, or an explaining-away, of the embarrassing – to Christian Arab nationalists – notion of a religious driver to American policy in the Near East, then it seems to have been articulated most typically by the Israeli Arab writer and former Knesset member, ‘Azmi Bishara. In a characteristically outspoken article in al-Ahram, this left-wing secular Christian explains the theocon phenomenon by outlining its historic roots in America’s Puritan heritage. For Bishara, the New Testament does not provide guidance, other than ‘a universal message of love and understanding.’ The Puritans, however, ‘stressed the moral code expressed in the Old Testament.’ Apparently revisiting perhaps the oldest trope of Christian anti-Judaism, the law-versus-spirit dichotomy, Bishara concludes that this is a Judaizing Christianity, which turns the Gospels into a simple extension of what is, by implication, the unpleasant, lawbound violence of the Hebrew Bible.^[10]

Bishara’s view is one that may also be heard from Orthodox church leaders in the Middle East. The theocons are a reversion to an older, ‘Jewish’ type of political religion, and have failed to notice that St Paul proclaims the radical inferiority of Judaism and its law. As for the theocon preoccupation with the seer of Patmos, this is also, by implication, a sort of Judaizing. However the true meaning of Revelation is the eschatological disclosure of transformed life which is the Church. This was Augustine’s conviction; but not every Protestant has been so happy to explain away the evident violence and retributive quality of the text. Fifty-nine percent of Americans, according to a recent poll, affirm its literal truth.^[11]

Another view was offered by the Lebanese-American writer Ghassan Rubeiz, who as the former secretary for the Middle East of the World Council of Churches is also active in the Arab media. Rubeiz, evidently more aware of modern sensitivities, chooses not to adopt the old theme of a ‘Judaizing Christianity’, but offers a more sociological account. He asks why the religious right now appears to be the prevalent form of religion in America, with conservative megachurches experiencing boom times while older, soi-disant ‘mainline’ denominations face economic and numerical decline. His interpretation is sociological and somewhat moralising: America’s ever-increasing social mobility and rootlessness, set against the background of an unstable job market and the rise in divorce and remarriage, allow fundamentalist preachers to offer a simple explanation of an otherwise confusing world. On the basis of this interpretation the map divides into Christendom and the lands of darkness, while history is interpreted as a series of Biblically-foretold signs which culminate in the imminent and longed-for end of ambiguity and doubt at the Rapture and the Second Coming.^[12]

Another Christian writer has been the Egyptian Samir Murqus. A sociologist of religion who founded a Coptic Centre for Social Studies and has been active in Muslim-Christian dialogue, Murqus published, in 2001, a popular but careful book on the role of Protestant fundamentalism in American foreign policy.^[13] In the wake of the 9/11 attacks he went on to publish American Imperialism: The Triad of Wealth, Faith and Power,^[14] in which he seeks to challenge the widespread Arab perception that current American policies reflect the pragmatic post-Soviet world of sole-superpower status, rather than a much older configuration of faith, money and power. On his view, the processes whereby ‘missionary, soldier and trader’ worked together in conquering the New World reasserted themselves in the twentieth century, until they finally became the prevalent paradigm during the Bush administration, their relationship ‘taking a contemporary shape relevant to globalisation’ but still recognisably rooted in the original pattern of American religious conquest.^[15] The book is based on a wide range of Western academic studies, enriched by the author’s own daily scrutiny of President Bush’s faith-oriented pronouncements. On the basis of these and other books on American political religion^[16] Murqus has also contributed a number of articles to the Arab press.

Turning now to Islamic and Islamist mass media – a small part of the whole in the Middle East – we encounter a slowly increasing sophistication and level of awareness. While takfiri Salafi formations such as those which self-identify as al-Qa‘ida are content to use generic terms such as ‘crusading’ to account for American interventions in the Muslim world, and offer simple accounts of the power of the ‘Jewish lobby’ over Christians paralyzed with guilt over the Holocaust, moderate Islamism appears able to adopt a slightly more informed view. One example would be the coverage by the Turkish religious newspaper Zaman (associated with the movement of Fethullah Gülen) of President Bush’s apparently enthusiastic reading of the memoirs of Oswald Chambers, a Baptist missionary who accompanied the British invasion of Ottoman Palestine in 1917, and whose crusading manual is apparently still popular as inspirational reading for advocates of ‘faith-based war’.^[17]

A further case of this was Islamist coverage of the role of Blackwater, the security firm engaged by the Pentagon in conflict zones such as Iraq. Exempted by Paul Bremer’s Immunity Order No.17 from prosecution by Iraqi authorities, Blackwater operatives were accused of a range of abuses against Iraqi civilians, including the Nisour Square incident late in 2007.

At least two major sources of Islamist knowledge about the alleged religious agenda of Blackwater can be identified. Firstly, there is a European Parliament report written by Giovanni Claudio Fava, which details the connections between Blackwater and the Knights of Malta, a sovereign fraternity of Catholic military elites answerable directly to the Pope. The occasion for the European Parliament’s inquiry was the claim that two Blackwater subsidiaries were involved in US special rendition flights. Fava confirmed the connection with the Knights of Malta, and indicated that Malta was one of Blackwater’s primary operational bases. Its vice-president, Cofer Black, had been the CIA officer responsible for special renditions of detainees to pro-Western regimes which employed torture as an interrogation technique.

The second source is a popular book on Blackwater by the American journalist Jeremy Scahill. Meticulously referenced, this book convinced many in the West that the leadership of Blackwater was driven by a hardline Christian agenda championed by, as Scahill puts it, ‘extreme religious zealots’.^[18]Scahill records that its head, former Department of Defence Inspector General Joseph Schmitz, is himself a Knight of Malta. He is portrayed as an energetic preacher on behalf of a crusading ideology for our time, his recurrent theme being ‘the rule of law under God.’ America’s role in the world is to bring God’s law to all humanity, in what Scahill terms a vision of ‘Christian supremacy’.

Scahill’s book appeared in March 2007, and became a world bestseller, following already intense speculation about private armies and their role in the Pentagon’s new wars in the Islamic world. A month later, even before the Arabic translation was published,^[19] a review appeared on a website connected to the Muslim Brotherhood leader Shaykh Yusuf al-Qardawi.^[20] The review homed in on the religious ideology of the Blackwater leadership, and particularly on Erik Prince, the founder-chairman, a figure already known to the Arab press. Prince, the review believes, is a ‘secretive, neo-crusader mega-millionaire […] a major bankroller of President George Bush.’ On Scahill’s account, with his connections to right-wing Catholic groups Prince believes that Blackwater is an important vehicle for ensuring the central role of Christianity in US foreign policy. As Prince says: ‘Everybody carries guns, just like the Prophet Jeremiah rebuilding the temple in Israel – a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other.’

Media reports on Blackwater’s apparent right-wing Catholic affiliations had several consequences, most notably an instruction purporting to be from al-Qa‘ida summoning Muslims to attack the Cairo embassy of the Knights of Malta. (In the event, nobody bothered.)

From a different ideological base, Jordanian MP Jamal Muhammad ‘A<bida<t wrote in the Abu Dhabi newspaper al-Bayan that the revelations about the religious motivations of the Blackwater management shed new and disturbing light on American intentions:

The painful saga of modern Arab-Muslim history evokes the battles fought in the Crusades of the eleventh century, when the Knights of Malta began their operations as a Christian militia whose mission it was to defend the land conquered by the Crusaders. These memories return violently to mind with the discovery of links between the so-called security firms in Iraq such as Blackwater which have historic links with the Knights of Malta. You cannot exaggerate it. The Order of Malta is a hidden government, or the most mysterious government in the world.^[21]

In 2009, a book on the Knights of Malta appeared from the prolific pen of Mansur ‘Abd al-H{akim. Entitled The State of the Knights of Malta and the Iraq Invasion, its more lurid subtitle ran The Military Wing of the Antichrist, Masonic Knights Templars, Soldiers of Darkness.^[22] ‘Abd al-Hakim, an Egyptian lawyer and journalist, is one of the region’s most popular religious writers on current affairs. Many of his hundred-odd books reveal a strong predilection for conspiracy theories. Sources for his long account of the Knights of Malta include, as well as Scahill’s book, an eclectic mixture of Ibn Kathir, Robert Fisk, Dan Brown, and David Icke, indicating the success of a new genre of apocalypticism which mingles Islamic with popular Western lore (another of his best-selling works offers an Islamic reading of the predictions of Nostradamus). In their fondness for doom-laden prophecies, particularly in the post-9/11 age, some modern Middle Eastern readers have tastes intriguingly similar to their American counterparts.

Through investigative journalism popularised by mass-circulation screeds, the notion of the world’s largest mercenary army, accused of arbitrary and excessive violence in Iraq, being led by soldiers who take a direct oath of obedience to a Pope who had already caused controversy with his comments on Islam, seems to have entered a wide circulation. It was reinforced by the American journalist Seymour Hirsh, who in a speech in Doha on 17 January 2011 alleged that Knights of Malta and other Christian militants exercised increasing influence in the US military. ‘We’re going to change mosques into cathedrals […] that’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Special Operations Command.’^[23]

The practice of rendition also triggered Arab media concern with the interrogation style and cultural policies applied to Muslim suspects in American custody. While it has not been possible for the media, including Arab media, to know precisely what procedures have been used at the various ‘black sites’ around the globe, there has been extensive public-domain documentation of American practices at the Guantánamo Bay facility. The various methods of detainee control were deployed by interrogators schooled in what they took to be the cultural vulnerabilities of Arabs and Muslims. The use of methods such as the playing of loud rock music, insults to female family members, nudity, comparing prisoners to rats and dogs, and requiring detainees to wear female clothing, has been familiar in the Muslim world since, in June 2005, Time magazine published classified logs recording the interrogation of the Saudi prisoner Muhammad al-Qahtani.^[24]

Culturally-specific interrogation techniques designed to cause maximum distress to Muslim detainees were, of course, likely to cause maximum outrage to Muslim public opinion.^[25] Best-known were the instances of ‘Qur’an abuse’ by camp guards; but the use of Christian imagery to humiliate prisoners is also documented, such as the use of crosses to which prisoners pointed or reached to indicate that they were ready to talk. An example is the poem by Mohammed El-Gharani, a fourteen year-old Chadian taken to Guantánamo (since released):

We saw such insults from them,
Not even the book of God was protected.
Along with their malice, they were foolish.
Tribulations, then hitting and imbecility.
For they are a people without reasonable minds,
Due to their supply of alcoholic drinks.
The ‘Greasy’ arrived, in our state of need,
On the condition that we raise the card with a cross.
‘If you want dignity and protection,
Then raise the cross for protection.’
All of us threw the card away,
Intent that our spirits be redeemed in sacrifice.^[26]

Also popular among Muslim readers is the memoir of the former Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo, James Yee, who was arrested in 2003 on charges which were subsequently dropped.^[27] He describes the curiously religious atmosphere on the base, with camp commander Major-General Geoffrey Miller appearing at the forefront of morning prayers with his guards and interrogators before they dispersed to their tasks.^[28] To his recollection, religiously-specific forms of abuse, such as desecration, appeared to be woven into the system;^[29] ‘Gitmo’s secret weapon,’ he writes, ‘was the use of religion against the prisoners.’^[30] The evangelical Miller, shortly afterwards, departed for Iraq with a brief to ‘Gitmoize’ the prison facility at Abu Ghraib. He was sent there by General William Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defence for intelligence, himself a committed evangelical known for regularly preaching in uniform, claiming to his congregations that ‘Satan wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army;’ however ‘they will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus.’^[31] Through reports by Yee and others, perceived evangelical control of the major detention facilities in the War on Terror again appears to have had a significant impact on Muslim public opinion.

A further conduit through which information on US theopolitics has reached the Middle East has been the translation of Kimberly Blaker’s collection of essays by academics, first published as The Fundamentals of Extremism in 2003. In 2006, an Arabic translation, Usul al-Tatarruf, appeared with the Cairo-based publishing house al-Shuruq, whose managing director ‘A<dil al-Mu‘allim has taken a close interest in the rise of American theopolitics. This is a careful and responsible translation of an important text, perhaps, along with Chris Hedges’ book American Fascists and Kevin Phillips’American Theocracy, the most serious study of American religious radicalism yet to appear.^[32]

Through all of these channels, then, the perception of the leading Western nation as profoundly driven by Christian evangelicalism and dispensationalism has taken root in the Middle East. The consequence has been far-reaching: whereas ten years ago Muslims tended to view America as a secular republic containing many religious Christians, the perception is now gaining ground that America is a specifically Christian entity, whose policies on Israel, and whose otherwise mystifying violence against Muslims, whether in occupied countries or in detention, can usefully be explained with reference to the Bible.

Commentary
Reflecting on this transformation, it may be appropriate to begin with some remarks on the irony of this mutual regard. Superficially, the dispensationalist and dominionist ethos regularly noted during the Bush years appears as a mirror image of takfiri Salafism; the parallel has been drawn by, amongst others, the Turkish theology graduate Sule Albayrak in her 2007 work on Christian extremism,^[33] and by the Egyptian Majdi Kamil in a book equating Christian and Islamic radicalism which appeared in the same year. ^[34] In the vision of some Pentagon generals prosecuting the hunt for Bin Laden, the world seemed to divide into an abode of peace, freedom and love, presided over by America’s believing army; and an abode of war, a Muslim Babylon, the necessary object of invasion and subsequent economic and cultural control. For Albayrak, this is premised on a kind of ‘moral Manicheanism’.^[35] Evangelical leaders are the equivalent of rogue mullahs, issuing fatwas which sanctify wars which devastate whole nations. The enemy is Satan himself, opposed by self-appointed Hegelian heroes: Boykin, Ashcroft, Miller. Scripture supplies values and law; secularity is Godless hubris and the reign of darkness, which allows and is assisted by the growth of false religions. Each side figures itself primarily as the virtuous opposite of the Other: Boykin was raised by God to challenge Bin Laden, rather as Charles Martel existed because of al-Ghafiqi. Rights are easily suspended: Islamists kill noncombatants by opportunistically invoking maslaha (public interest) and the principle of takfir; while Washington is seen as rendering and killing suspects in the spirit of Tocqueville himself, who had supported the total abolition of human rights in order to suppress the 1848 Paris revolution. Both seem to call for a utopia established through drastic constraint. Both, finally, are erastian in their constitutional thinking: the established religious leaders (the derided ‘moderates’) are to be bypassed as false mediators, in favour of a divine sovereignty exercised by a righteous prince alone. Such warriors are clear that they take their orders directly from God.^[36] (President Bush himself said: ‘I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.’^[37] )

Such a mirroring is easily claimed; but historians of religion will be suspicious of so neat a schema. In a simple way members of each culture seem to believe that they can lessen their own burden of guilt by pointing to reciprocities on the other side; and at times Albayrak and Kamil seem to do this, as do other Muslims keen to echo William Arkin’s denunciation of the Pentagon’s ‘Christian jihad’.^[38] More taxingly, the discourse of a clear mirroring implies that the internal differentia of Christianity and Islam have only insignificant entailments today, which, again, is hardly likely.

What is ‘odd-handed’ (Kenneth Cragg’s phrase) about this ‘clash of fundamentalisms’? There are asymmetries which demand to be listed prominently. One of these, noted by Muhammad ‘Arif, is that they have distinct sociologies and histories. For ‘Arif, the Islamic world has spent the past century moving from a religious towards a secular frame of reference, but while Ataturk was secularising Turkey, fundamentalists were laying the foundations for a theocratic order in America.^[39]

‘Arif also points out the connection between wealth and evangelicalism, something normally absent in the Islamic case.^[40]   In fact, one needs no Marxian baggage to observe that Islamic civilisation, with minor Gulf exceptions, is presently a Lazarus at the gate of Dives. Christianity, which emerged – pace the prosperity-gospellers – as a discourse of the poor, has become the favoured sacred space of the wealthiest and most competitive economic culture that has ever evolved. For many theocons this is not a paradox but a sign of God’s grace.

Takfiri Islamism, however, exists in part in order to refute this discourse. Despite its abhorrence of Sufi asceticism, and its hyperconservative social ethos, it often takes itself to be a site of resistance to wealth and privilege. It is not Babylon – that was the self-serving laicity of Saddam and the Ba‘thist nomenklatura – but Ishmael. Like the dispensationalist, the Islamist seems unnerved by the strange inactivity of God – the deus abscondituswho because of the sins of the faithful has allowed the rise of liberal secularity, the growth of vice and the atrophy of faith. Yet the usual Islamist response has been precisely the ancient trope of God’s preference for the underdog, the mustad‘af. For Boykin, God is with America, and this is shown by America’s economic and martial prowess; for the Islamist, God is with Ishmael, as is shown, again, by America’s economic and martial prowess. Attorney-General John Ashcroft had himself anointed with holy oil,^[41] denounced church-state separation as ‘a wall of religious oppression’, ^[42] and strove to implement God’s law. Islamists behave in a roughly analogous way. Yet theirs is taken to be a site of resistance, on behalf of Ishmael’s ‘black house in Mecca’, against the evangelical White House in the city of Masonic symbolism, seen as the nerve-centre of wealth and Pharaonic evil. This is not the pacifism and political indifferentism of the Gospels, nor a Baptist joy in God’s empowerment of His covenant people; it is more akin to Amos’s prophecy of the uprising of the poor. Much of its appeal derives from this sense of moral drama.

Hence instead of a simple symmetry we might prefer to diagnose a resuscitation of the ancient theme of ‘Rome and Jerusalem’, beloved of Tacitus, and present in its most iconic form in Josephus. On this view, Hamas are the sicarii, the assassins of occupied Judea, who gave their lives in suicidal missions against their Herodian and Roman overlords. So Hamas’s struggle has included assassinations of local collaborators and quislings, who have failed to observe that God’s law alone applies, and that the civic space of Rome, now the global empire of the monoculture, has its foundations in anthropolatry: public sports, the shameless cult of the body, the greed of the forum. Rome, in contempt at the rebels, deploys its Herod, whose name may not only be Mahmud ‘Abbas, but is also Asif Zardari and H{usni Mubarak, and many others besides, as the loyal tribune of a world empire in which exotic local deities may be tolerated only in the private space. The public square is ruled only by the emperor and his deputies.

Such a historical analogy might help us to parse the optimism of the apocalyptic Islamist. Even utter defeat at Masada is reckoned a victory for the Zealot martyr, who, therefore, is invincible. Guantánamo turned into the zealot’s triumph: during six excruciating years, several camp guards converted to Islam, but not a single inmate reached for the Cross.^[43] Under the unblinking eye of the evangelical in Ray-Bans and crew-cut, the detainee may lose his sanity, or attempt suicide, but he is not defeated. Rome, he knows, will fall in the end; God is with the tormented.

So the cage, the great panopticon in the sun, inverts its creator’s purpose. It was built, it now seems, not to extract confessions – since the more significant suspects mostly remained out of view in the ‘black sites’ – but as a therapeutic exhibition akin to the victory parades of Caesar, who had Vercingetorix placed in a cage and displayed to the citizens of Rome. The American soul was wounded on 9/11, and the parade of humiliated men in beards at Camp X-Ray was an icon which it could contemplate, and in which it could find healing. Jesus himself will stare, with eyes of fire, at the sinners, before consigning them to the lake of torment; and the Cuban cages seemed to serve as a proleptic anticipation of the vengeance of Christ promised in the Book of Revelation. Yet still the icon failed. In the world of Islam it was experienced not as a healing but as a kind of auto-da-fé, in which internees whose crimes seemed always doubtful, but whose Muslimness was certain, were tormented by Christian inquisitors. For many in the world of Islam it also seemed to represent, in the most public way, the private habits of the local Herods, whose cages were also well-stocked with the same kind of zealots.

Rome may torment the body, and Herod is even keener to do so. But as the cage suggests, her main instrument of pain is psychological. In the mid-19th century, American penal reformers invented a ‘Philadelphia System’, following the ‘scientific’ British innovations at Pentonville. For the most enlightened reasons, physical abuse was reduced or abolished as a relic of the medieval past, to be replaced by modern and hygienic methods of intangible pressure. Prisoners were to be referred to only by numbers. They would be permitted no visitors and no letters, and would wear black hoods whenever taken from their cells. Silence was universally imposed. ‘In the penitentiary, the sense of criminal community was voided: all other prisoners were silent, invisible abstractions to the man in his solitary cell. The republic of crime was vaporized, and all social sense along with it, leaving only a disoriented, passive obedience.’^[44]

Charles Dickens, visiting Philadelphia’s new Eastern Penitentiary, was terrified by this enlightened Benthamite machine:

I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts […] There is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers can fathom. I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body; and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface […] therefore the more I denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.^[45]

No less Benthamite was the new willingness to abandon ancient precedent and to convict on the basis of alleged intention. The Kafaesque trial of Jose Padilla, driven to the brink of insanity by his experience in custody, has been only the most notorious case of this.^[46] The panopticon will not allow even the mind to be a private space.

Here we might learn from Slavoj Zizek’s division of violence into three kinds: subjective, symbolic, and systemic. This violence against the subject, recently curtailed in President Obama’s directives, was more than replicated not only by Herod, in the prisons of Egypt or Tunisia, but by the zealots themselves: whatever their liberative cast of mind, the zealots have not hesitated to use forms of physical pain immeasurably greater than those documented at Guantánamo. This has been the pattern of much Islamist revolt since the time when the enragés of the Iranian revolution, moralising about the Shah’s secret police, quickly brought in Ayat Allah Khalkhali as their own Robespierre.

But more substantial, Zizek claims, is symbolic violence ‘embodied in language and its forms, what Heidegger would call our “house of being”.’ ^[47] By this he means the monoculture’s imposition of ‘a certain universe of meaning’:

In our secular, choice-based societies, people who maintain a substantial religious belonging are in a subordinate position. Even if they are allowed to maintain their belief, this belief is ‘tolerated’ as their idiosyncratic personal choice or opinion. The moment they present it publicly as what it is for them, say a matter of substantial belonging, they are accused of ‘fundamentalism’. What this means is that the subject of ‘free choice’ in the Western ‘tolerant’ multicultural sense can emerge only as the result of an extremely violent process of being torn out of a particular lifeworld, of being cut off from one’s roots.^[48]

For Zizek, then, religion is always oppressed by the monoculture. An example would be the latter’s insistence that freedom of expression, although in practice favouring those with access to media and money, is always a precondition for human dignity. If remnants of non-monocultural worlds complain, as they do, that they prefer to suffer physical over symbolic violence, the monoculture appears to have no reply. The Muslim who says she would rather be physically tortured than hear her Prophet insulted or see the Qur’an ‘abused’ is, from the perspective of the monoculture, simply living in the wrong world. The post-9/11 world, of a passionate susurration of anti-Muslim sentiment, is the only world that exists. Those who experience it as violent must learn to experience it differently.

Zizek’s third category, systemic violence, takes us back to Ishmael and his casting-out into the desert by the privileged forms of modern Biblicism. Zizek, of course, prefers to think in terms of Marx. For him, turbo-capitalism, on trial since 2008, is straightforwardly at fault for the infant mortality rate in Mali. It is also the dynamo of terrorism. He writes of ‘the hypocrisy of those who, while combating subjective violence, commit systemic violence that generates the very phenomena they abhor;’^[49] a view likely to resonate with much Muslim criticism.

What was notable, for Islamist observers, in the experiment with radical Christianity during the Bush years, was not so much the presence of an adjustment in Christendom’s systemic violence towards the East, which they regard as a historic constant. What they seem to find refreshing is that the core religious differentials, once politely or even sincerely buried away, are now in the foreground. Both Islam and Christianity claim to be reverting to themselves (for Islamists, this is the rhetoric of asala). Yet historians are likely to demur: the processes of identity-retrieval in fact tend to yield a growing distance from historic mainstreams.^[50] In the former world, kalam, Sufism, and classical legal and political thought are giving way to an insistence on building a scriptural commonwealth which champions the rights of the righteous, and in which the classical Islamic denial of legislative powers to the state is replaced by a totalitarian etatism. In Christendom, some forty percent of Americans now believe that the Antichrist is already on the earth;^[51] and nine percent would like to see the Bible become the ‘only’ source of legislation.^[52] Europeans may shrug, but even in the UK, the number of worshippers at one Pentecostal church in Walthamstow one Easter Sunday was more than double the congregations at St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey combined,^[53] and the presiding pastor, an advocate of the prosperity gospel, is very clear that Israel is Isaac, while the Arabs are ‘Ishmael’, the outcast.^[54] In both worlds there has been a steady growth in ideological, dichotomising religion, whose provocative conspicuousness tends to feed the growth of its rivals, producing a vicious circle.

No doubt this tendency will be seen in simple terms as a decadence. As Cardinal Newman put it, ‘the nation drags down its Church to its own level.’ But it is a protest against decadence as well. If the modern world is experienced as a kind of Mardi Gras, all differences levelled in the pursuit of pleasure and the right to pleasure, and if mainline denominations have substantively acceded to monocultural values and ideologies of progress, then the fundamentalist fight for difference, including a difference that can only exist by discriminating against increasingly ideologized Others, can to some extent claim to be a site of real resistance and a genuine ‘awakening’ (sahwa). Milan Kundera said that ‘the struggle of men against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’^[55] The end of history at the hands of liberal consumerism finds it hard not to comprise an amnesia, an end of memory and therefore of the authentic self: Foucault’s ‘end of man’. However an age of drowsy comforts craves a stimulant. Fifty years ago, during another era of polarities, Arthur Schlesinger wrote that self-satisfied Western man was in crisis; casting around for a catharsis he decided that the Cold War ought to be used as an opportunity to wake him up. ^[56] Tocqueville thought that France’s invasion of Algeria would resuscitate it from post-Napoleonic torpor. Hannah Arendt, reflecting on both Nazism and Communism, concluded that the content of ideology tends to be less attractive than the invigorating fact of belonging to it, of being steered in a rudderless world.^[57] Even further back, militant Puritans believed that ‘the world’s peace is the keenest war against God,’^[58] because it led to complacency and the stagnation of the spirit. As at Guantánamo, morality is not the core issue, what matters is the symbolism of belonging, animated by a sense of destiny.

These examples, drawn from Corey Robin’s recent study of political fear, are linked by the idea that it is lack of direction which drives people into the arms of apparently absurd conflictual certainties, so that their selfhood is reborn in the refiner’s fire of a perpetual state of alarm. Today, the Saudification of Islam, or the Southernization of American Christianity, are both strengthened by their claim to resolve our modern anomie. Earlier ages suffered such temptations, but it is possible that we are endangered by them far more, since we are that much further from tradition, identity, and consensual truths. What is after post-modernity? When it arrives, whatever it is, can it possibly allow the puer aeternus (Jung’s contemptuous diagnosis of our post-sacred condition, now exacerbated by media ‘dumbing-down’) once more to achieve anything resembling adulthood? If scientists are now writing books like Daniel Wegner’s The Illusion of Conscious Will,^[59] if we are told that what we do simply happens to us, then how likely are we to find any true humanism outside the imaginative world of theism? Put in Ash‘arite terms, can we look for any values in a secular world which denies our own acquisition, kasb, of our actions? Zizek should not assume so quickly that the believer’s cynicism about secular ethics cannot be accompanied by an ethical alternative.

For Zizek, the two mutually parasitic fundamentalisms will only be neutralised when the world appreciates the value of a public neutrality, thus resurrecting the central energies of the Enlightenment and supplying an alternative and more tolerant awakening. His prescription and prediction, then, are startlingly conservative, converging with the polemics of Roger Scruton: one recalls the way in which al-Qa‘ida has reconciled the Hitchens brothers. As in the time of Charlemagne, the West will be united by Islam, but whereas for American believers this will happen beneath the banner of political Christianity, Zizek still yearns for a secular revival.

Where mainline belief continues to be full of passionate conviction, it will probably prefer enlightenment in the form of better education. In an era of connectivity, few seem to sufficiently informed: Muslims shopping for books in Cairo may learn the names of Pat Robertson and John Hagee, but are likely to ignore the existence of the archbishop of Chicago. Reciprocally, it appears that few in Christendom can yet name a single mainstream Muslim thinker. This was brought home in an absolute way in 2008, when two magazines, Foreign Affairs and Prospect, sponsored a global survey to identify the world’s hundred most influential public intellectuals. The overall winner was Fethullah Gülen, a fact that surprised few in the Muslim world, but which baffled Westerners familiar only with the names of radicals.^[60]

This aporia has had practical consequences for the mutual regard of Christianity and Islam. America seems increasingly to figure itself as what-is-not-Muslim, or even, for some, as ‘the world’s leading Bible-reading crusader state’;^[60] while the Islamists, no better informed, consider themselves to be under a generic military and cultural attack from Christians (and from their allies ‘the Jews’).^[62] Everywhere this polarity is strengthened by the sense that the moderates have not done enough to denounce the extremists; as Jan Linn says: ‘The virtual silence within the Christian community about the rise of the Christian Right is partly responsible for its gaining mainstream status.’^[63]

I began by suggesting that we are now in what feels like an aftermath, following the closure of the Bush parenthesis. Obama feels like Charles the Second: after a decade of Puritan discourses on sin and redemption, divine immanentism, providence, and the special destiny of the people, ^[64] the population has grown tired, and the flags have begun to disappear from the churches. The mutedness of religious slogans during the recent ‘Arab Spring’ suggests that the Islamists, too, are losing the initiative.

Perhaps one sign of this is the prospering of the Common Word, a document which in many ways may be seen as a product of the later post-9/11 environment (several of its authors and signatories had clearly been concerned by the ‘biblicising’ of American discourse towards the Islamic world). Where the fundamentalists take scripture to be the site of the most irreducible Christian-Muslim differences, and the symbol and engine of the Other’s revanchism, the Common Word’s use of Qur’an and Bible seeks to indicate the possibility of a new and more conciliatory discursive relationship. In 2008 the Common Word process reached Yale Divinity School, which had already coordinated an endorsement of the document by three hundred evangelical leaders; the ensuing conference saw evangelicals and Muslims adopting language about a common ‘Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheistic heritage’.^[65] The decade closed with several substantial publications by Muslim and Christian theologians seeking ways in which the two scriptures, even on very classical readings, could facilitate positive theological, political and social engagement between monotheists.^[66] While less conspicuous than the growth of the ‘theocon’ agenda or its Muslim epigones, this too has increasingly formed part of the evolution of the Muslim-Christian regard in the last decade.

A generation or two ago, writers on international affairs would have ridiculed the idea that ancient eschatologies could become factors in 21st-century politics. This is, however, our situation. Holy books, and the mood of their interpreters, are bound up with the world’s current polarities. It is likely that exegetes, of whatever stamp, will do much to shape the future of countries like Egypt and Turkey as they move towards full democracy, and decide whether to maintain their recent secular patterns, or to learn from the American model of a complex symbiosis of faith and power. Conversely, some Americans may find the experience of Islamism a helpful reminder of the dangers attendant upon reading God’s word as the manifesto of a utopian political ideology.

Endnotes

Forgiveness and Justice: meditations on some hadiths

[PDF 65KB]

Hadiths on Justice