If we are to intelligently discuss issues related to secularism it is imperative that we first define the term. Secularism is the divorcing of religious belief, religious ritual, or a sense of community based on religious affiliation from the moral life of society. Secularism has manifested itself historically in both a subjective and an objective sense. Subjectively, or at the level of individual experience, secularism involves the disappearance of religious thought, feeling and imagery from the understanding of worldly things. At this level of experience, many people who may appear outwardly extremely religious, may in fact be thoroughly secularized as their thought processes, sentiments, and worldview are void of any truly religious referents.
At the objective level secularism involves the exclusion of religious offices, institutions, and ceremonies from public life. All modern states are thoroughly secularized. This reality also includes the states of the Muslim world as our countries are ruled by elites who have adopted the secular institutional and bureaucratic structure of the Western Kafir state. Even those states, which have undergone some degree of Islamic reform, have done little to alter those structures.
The roots of secularism have been variously identified as emanating from Hellenic rationalism, the civil and communal values of Greco-Roman life, the Renaissance, the Reformation, Calvinism, and most prominently the moral and empirical philosophies spawned by the Enlightenment. Regardless of which of these developments we view as being pivotal in the development of secularism, we must return to one salient fact: Secularism constitutes open rebellion against Allah.
We are informed that the rationale for the creation of the human being is to worship Allah, and that the Islamic polity and the principles, which underlie it, are instituted to facilitate that worship. Hence, Islam is fundamentally anti-secular. Allah informs us in the Qur’an:
I have only created the Jinn and Humans that they worship Me.
Al-Dhariyyat: 56
He also informs us that the rejection of that worship involves grave consequences. He says:
Whoever turns away from My Remembrance will have a wretched life and
We shall resurrect him blind on the Day of Judgment.
Ta Ha: 124Whoever rejects the Remembrance of his Lord, He [Allah] will lead him
into a severe, unbearable punishment.
Al-Jinn: 17
Having thus defined secularism, we turn to the second theme introduced by the title of this lecture: secularism’s changing face. If we understand that secularism initially involved a struggle between its advocates and the European Church, we can see that it has indeed undergone significant changes. The first major change occurred during the latter 19th Century when the struggle between secularism and the church was replaced by a struggle between two competing versions of secularism: the Marxist/Socialist version and the liberal version. With the victory of the liberal version, a victory finalized by the falling of the “Iron Curtain” and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union, a set of circumstances was created which led to the return of the debate between secularism and religion. Secularism was to indeed change faces, or more precisely to reveal a new manifestation of an old face.
In the new debate between secularism and religion, Islam emerged as the standard bearer of religion. The reason for this is that Islam is, as admitted by Ernest Gellner, Zbigniew Brezinski and other leading Western intellectuals, the last true, or normative religion. The current secularist assault against Islam is thus assuming the intensity that characterized the earlier attack on Christianity. It is our contention that the origin of this assault lies in the rebellion of Satan against Allah, and his subsequent declaration of war against the descendants of Adam. The Qur’an describes that declaration in the following words:
Because you have caused me to stray, I’m going to lie waiting to ambush them [humankind] along your Straight Path. I’m going to assault them from in front, from behind, from the right and from the left; and you won’t find most of them thankful [for you blessings].
Al-‘Araf: 16
It is interesting to note that the earliest Muslim commentators as producing all of the psychological and behavioural traits that characterize the contemporary secular individual have understood this assault of Satan. Ibn Kathir relates the following passage in his commentary on this verse:
‘Ali ibn Abi Talha relates from Ibn ‘Abbas (May be Pleased with them both) that Satan’s
assault from in front means he will cause them to doubt about the Hereafter. From behind
means he will make them excessive in their craving for the World. From the right means he will cause them confusion concerning their religion. From the left means he will make sin
appealing to them. (This quote is from memory thus there may be slight changes from the
original wording)
When one views the damage which has been wrought by secularism in the Christian world, and the nature of the damage which is currently manifesting itself in the Muslim world, one can readily see the accuracy of Ibn ‘Abbas’ explanation. In the Muslim world, the reality of a life after death seems the furthest thing from many people’s mind. The obsession with the World, which drives Muslim participation in a new globalized consumer culture, is too clear to warrant further comment. Increasingly large numbers of Muslims feel deprived if growing arrays of labels and logos aren’t plastered over their clothing. The confusion in the Din is apparent in the expanding ranks of the religiously noncommitted, and the increasing pettiness of the issues being vehemently argued by the committed. The appeal of sin can be gauged by the ubiquitous nature of the satellite dishes which adorn the rooftops of houses throughout the Muslim world and the increased viewing of soft and hard pornography which those dishes facilitate.
The need for an Islamic response to an increasingly pervasive secularism is all too clear. The destructiveness of man’s effort to orchestrate the social, economic and political life of society has to be arrested if we are to conceive of a meaningful future for this planet. At the individual level, the insecurity, rootlessness, and anomie resulting from the elimination of religiously informed traditional institutions provides the conditions which encourage gangs, ethnically-based hate groups, and an oftentimes violence-prone religious fundamentalism. The legions of willing recruits for extreme Zionist groups, ultraconservative armed militias in the American Midwest, chauvinistic Hindu nationalism, and increasingly inflexible “Jihad” groups in the Muslim world are all the direct or indirect result of secularism.
At the family level, the disintegration of traditionally ascribed roles, rights, and responsibilities for men, women, and children is leading to stresses that many families cannot survive. In the Muslim community, the familial stability which made spouse and child abuse rare occurrences has given way to a volatile instability whose presence can be gauged by the rapidly escalating numbers of battered women, homeless children, and divorces.
Environmentally, secularist ideals have led to what Professor ‘Abd al-Hakim Murad has referred to as the “gang rape” of the planet. The toxic byproducts of an ill-conceived developmental model poison our land, air, and the seas. Untreated sewage chokes and defiles our rivers and streams. Whole communities in coastal areas are rendered economically unviable due to overfishing so severe that in some areas even the hardy, once abundant codfish has disappeared. Even in remote areas of the planet which are presented by the tourist industry as “island paradises” the destructiveness of man’s economic hubris is all too clear.
In Oahu, the most populous of the Hawaiian islands, a ceiling of smog hovers over the densely populated downtown area and the airport/American Air Force base during still summer days. Beaches are often closed due to sewage spills. The countryside is littered with garbage dumps and junkyards. Large areas of the island have been transformed into treeless wastelands, abandoned by the pineapple industry, which has moved on to greener pastures in the Philippines and elsewhere. What few forested areas remain rapidly disappearing as developers throw up acres of new “ticky tacky” condominiums. Keeping golf courses green uses up a disproportionate percentage of available fresh water, while pesticide residues from those same golf courses poisons scarce ground water.
The above-mentioned victory of the liberal version of secularism has meant the victory of what Francis Fukuyama, one of the leading advocates of that version, refers to as free market capitalism and liberal democracy. These twin forces have worked to ensure that the ethics of profit replace the ethics of the Prophets (Allah’s Peace and Blessings be upon them). Corporate profits determine if potentially privatized schools will teach children to think or to mindlessly consume. Profits determine if our rivers and lakes are swimmable. Profit determines if genetically engineered food grown in warehouses will eliminate the small farmer throughout the “developing” world just as corporate greed and agribusiness giants have practically eliminated the family farm in America. Furthermore, the relentless pursuit of profit has been the primary impetus behind the oppressive provisions of the recent Uruguay Round of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the associated WTO (World Trade Organization). This will allow massive transnational corporations to dump cheaply produced junk food, junk products, and a junk culture on any nation of the world, with the right to declare any opposition to that process -no matter how principled that opposition- as an impediment to free trade.
In terms of liberal democracy, the corrupt implications of this arrangement are epitomized by one of its leading philosophical schools -deconstruction. This school elevates a form of literary criticism and linguistic analysis to inform social action. It posits that just as language is the product of a set of subjectively experienced “deep structures” which don’t admit the existence of any universal referents for meaningful objective knowledge, so too social and political reality is subjectively formed and experienced. Hence, there are no universal or objective referents for meaningful transcending social or political action. Whatever, social or political action does unfold in this intellectual climate, unfolds along fragmented ethnic, cultural or gender lines. The spiritual strength and philosophical principles necessary to challenge the destructive hegemony of transnational capitalism disappear before they are created leaving both pseudo-liberated woman and a growing array of multicuturalisms united by a single unchallengeable characteristic: consumerism.
This dangerous school of thought, of which the more fundamentalist wing of our current Islamic reform is in many ways an unwitting agent, eliminates the possibility of meaningful social and political action leaving a void in the human soul which is filled by consumerism. It is no accident that McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken, two symbols of the emerging global consumer culture, have appeared in Mecca, the Holiest place in Islam, under the auspices of the most fundamentalist of all Muslim governments. Taken to it logical end, this consumerism will destroy the Earth.
Islam obviously opposes this arrangement. Although deconstructionalists don’t admit the existence of universal principles such as tolerance or compassion, which make ethnic, cultural and gender politics possible, Islam contains no such internal contradiction. Let us consider one of numerous examples. Allah declares in His Noble Book:
What is wrong with you that you don’t fight in the way of Allah and the oppressed;
men, women, and children who say, “Our Lord deliver us from this town whose people are oppressors. And raise up for us from yourself one who will protect us, and raise up for us from yourself one who will help!”
Al-Nisa’: 75
Assisting the weak, working to eliminate oppression, and protecting the defenseless are higher principles the knowledge of which is made possible by the existence of an ultimate, objective reality from which all else derives its existence, and upon which all else depends for its continued existence -Allah. Hence, Islam admits an ultimate reality. It admits a higher purpose to life, the worship of Allah. It similarly presents a set of principles and ideals that serve as the basis for meaningful collective action.
Reflecting on the state of the world, one cannot help but be struck by the penetrating words of Allah in His Glorious Book:
Corruption has appeared in the land and sea because of what the hands of men have wrought [by their sinful recklessness] This is so that We may give them a taste of what they have done, in order that they may return [to the way of Divine Guidance].
Al-Rum: 41
If man is to return to the way of the Divine, it will be the Muslims who will lead that return. Islam presents a viable critique of contemporary atheistic thought and it is also the only major socio-religious force with a viable ecological philosophy. The thoughtless abuse and waste which characterizes our contemporary secular world is roundly condemned by the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Allah declares in the Qur’an:
Eat and drink from the provision of Allah and don’t go through the Earth working
corruption.
Al-Baqara: 60Son of Adam! Adorn yourselves at every place of prayer; eat, and drink, but don’t
waste. Surely, He [Allah] doesn’t love those who are wasteful.
Al-‘Araf: 31
Allah says concerning the mercy which His Messenger (Allah’s Peace and Blessings be upon him) exemplified:
We have only sent you as a mercy to all the Worlds.
Al-‘Anbiya: 107
It is interesting to note that in the opening chapter of the Qur’an, Al-Fatiha, after mentioning his Lordship over all creation, Allah immediately mentions the vastness of His Mercy. He says, “Al-Hamdu lillahi Rabb al-‘Alamin, Al-Rahman Al-Rahim (All Praise is for Allah the Lord of All the Worlds, The Most Beneficent, The Most Merciful). Allah similarly reminds humanity that all living creatures comprise organized communities which have many of the basic rights possessed by humans. He says:
There is no creature on the Earth, nor any bird flying upon its wings, except that it
comprises communities like yourselves.
Al-An’am: 38
Muslims must honor the rights of those creatures as part of our custodianship over the Earth. However, petty little Islamic groups cannot exercise that custodianship. If Muslims are to provide badly needed direction for humanity we will have to transcend the divisions, which in many cases are the byproducts of the ill-conceived schemes of small men. In his insightful book, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century, Zbigniew Brzenski clearly implies that Islam can potentially offer a viable socio-political alternative for humanity. However, that Islamic alternative is generally unknown because unlike the failed communist alternative it hasn’t been articulated at the state level. Such an articulation must occur before Islam can respond seriously to the challenge of secularism.
In order for Islam to be a viable international actor, state or nonstate, Muslims will have to move beyond the petty political divisions which have afflicted the Ummah for much of the past century. In the West, we will have to prevent the emerging “Traditionalist-Salafi” division from becoming a fundamental, irreconcilable split. One way to do this is to define Ahli al-Sunnah w’al-Jama’ah as broadly and as inclusively as possible, instead of the narrow, exclusive definitions, which dominate current discourse. One such definition is provided by Tahir al-Bagdadi (d. 429 AH) in his book, al-Farq bayn al-Firaq (The Difference Between the Sects). He mentions Ahl al-Sunnah w’al-Jama’ah as being comprised of eight basic groups. These groups accommodate all of the orientations, which serve as the basis for the thought of informed Traditionalists and Salafis. He then mentions an objective standard (Dabit) which distinguishes these eight groups from the adherents of the sects such as the Khawarij, M’utazilah, and others. Adopting such a broad view, which represents the best of a rich academic tradition, is essential if we are to move forward as a unified community.
I have chosen to close by emphasizing the need for Muslim unity because the tremendous challenges confronting humanity and our Ummah require our collective action. Secularism, doesn’t have to be the enduring socio-political legacy of humanity. Islam, as we have tried to show, offers something a lot better to humanity, to a ravaged Earth, and her creatures. It is up to us Muslims to demonstrate to humanity through our unity, our love, our spiritual elevation, our sacrifice, our living, and our dying that Islam is truly the “solution.” If we can understand and take up the challenges of the day humanity will be able to see the first rays of a new dawn after a long, dark, and difficult night.
Zaid Shakir
Aylesbury, England
February 1999
‘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.
Dear `Abd al-Matin,
In the name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate
as-Salaamu ‘alaykum wa rahmatu Llahi wa barakatuh.
Thank you for your question about the notion of the “universal validity” of all religions and its relation to the Sufism of Sheikh Muhyiddin Ibn al-`Arabi and Emir `Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri. I do not have all the English books you mentioned that ascribe this notion to them, but I believe that some kind of an answer can be given on the basis of the books I have seen in English, and traditional Islam as I have taken it from my shiekhs in fiqh and Sufism.
I will try to touch on some general considerations about the universality of the message of the prophets (on whom be peace), the finality of Islam, the validity of non-Islamic religions, and the positions of Ibn al-`Arabi and Emir `Abd al-Qadir versus that of some of their modern interpreters. Some of the material included has been drawn from Tariqa Notes, and some from a letter last year to Christians in the Ukraine.
Allah sent mankind and jinn His prophetic messengers (upon whom be peace), who were trustworthy, intelligent, truthful, and fully conveyed their messages. He protected them from sin, and from every physical trait unbecoming to them, though as human beings, they ate, drank, slept, and married. They were the best of all created beings; and the highest of them was him whom Allah chose to be the final seal of prophethood, our prophet Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace).
Though the Sacred Law of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) superseded all previously valid religious laws, it was identical with them in beliefs, such as tawhid or “oneness of God”, and so on, a fact that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) emphasized by saying, “Let none of you say I am superior to [the prophet] Jonah,” (Bukhari, 4.193: 3412), for the illumination of Jonah’s tawhid (upon him be peace)–under the darkness of the storm, the darkness of the sea, and the darkness of the belly of the fish–was not less than the illumination of the Prophet’s tawhid at the zenith of his success as the spiritual leader of all Arabia (Allah bless him and give him peace). The light of their message was one, in which sense the Qur’an says, “We do not differentiate between any of His messengers” (Qur’an 2:285), showing that previous religions were the same in beliefs, and though differing in provisions of works, and now abrogated by the final religion, were valid in their own times.
As for today, only Islam is valid or acceptable now that Allah has sent it to all men, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) has said,
“By Him in whose hand is the soul of Muhammad, any person of this Community, any Jew, or any Christian who hears of me and dies without believing in what I have been sent with will be an inhabitant of hell” (al-Baghawi: Sharh al-sunna 1.104).
This hadith was also reported by Muslim in his Sahih by `Abd al-Razzaq in his Musannaf, and others. It is a rigorously authenticated (sahih) evidence that clarifies the word of Allah in surat Al ‘Imran
“Whoever seeks a religion other than Islam will never have it accepted from him, and shall be of those who have truly failed in the next life” (Qur’an 3:85)
and many other verses and hadiths. That Islam is the only remaining valid or acceptable religion is necessarily known as part of our religion, and to believe anything other than this is unbelief (kufr) that places a person outside of Islam, as Imam Nawawi notes:
“Someone who does not believe that whoever follows another religion besides Islam is an unbeliever (like Christians), or doubts that such a person is an unbeliever, or considers their sect to be valid, is himself an unbeliever (kafir) even if he manifests Islam and believes in it” (Rawda al-talibin, 10.70).
This is not only the position of the Shafi’i school of jurisprudence represented by Nawawi, but is also the recorded position of all three other Sunni schools: Hanafi (Ibn ‘Abidin: Radd al-muhtar 3.287), Maliki (al-Dardir: al-Sharh al-saghir, 4.435), and Hanbali (al-Bahuti: Kashshaf al-qina’, 6.170). Those who know fiqh literature will note that each of these works is the foremost fatwa resource in its school. The scholars of Sacred Law are unanimous about the abrogation of all other religions by Islam because it is the position of Islam itself. It only remains for the sincere Muslim to submit to, in which connection Ibn al-`Arabi has said:
“Beware lest you ever say anything that does not conform to the pure Sacred Law. Know that the highest stage of the perfected ones (rijal) is the Sacred Law of Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace). And know that the esoteric that contravenes the exoteric is a fraud” (al-Burhani: al-Hall al-sadid, 32).
As for the abrogation of all religions by Islam, many of us know Muslims who believe the opposite of orthodox Islam, perhaps due to a literary and intellectual environment in which any and every notion about this world and the next can be expressed, in which novelty is highly valued, and in which tradition has little authority. Many have even sought backing for their emotive preference for the validity of other religions from the books of famous Sufis who are far from such a beliefs, such as Ibn al-`Arabi or `Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri. In a recent work for example entitled “Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-`Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity”, Professor William Chittick says:
“The Shaykh [Muhyiddin Ibn al-`Arabi] sometimes criticizes specific distortions or misunderstandings in the Qur’anic vein, but he does not draw the conclusion that many Muslims have drawn–that the coming of Islam abrogated (naskh) previous revealed religions. Rather, he says, Islam is like the sun and other religions like the stars. Just as the stars remain when the sun rises, so also the other religions remain valid when Islam appears. One can add a point that perhaps Ibn al-`Arabi would also accept: What appears as a sun from one point of view may be seen as a star from another point of view. Concerning abrogation, the Shaykh writes,
“‘All the revealed religions (shara’i’) are lights. Among these religions, the revealed religion of Muhammad is like the light of the sun among the lights of the stars. When the sun appears, the lights of the stars are hidden, and their lights are included in the light of the sun. Their being hidden is like the abrogation of the other revealed religions that takes place through Muhammad’s revealed religion. Nevertheless, they do in fact exist, just as the existence of the light of the stars is actualized. This explains why we have been required in our all-inclusive religon to have faith in the truth of all messengers and all the revealed religions. They are not rendered null (batil) by abrogation–that is the opinion of the ignorant.’([al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya,] III 153.12[16])
“If the Shaykh’s pronouncements on other religions sometimes fail to recognize their validity in his own time, one reason may be that, like most other Muslims living in the western Islamic lands, he had little real contact with the Christians or Jews in his environment, not to speak of followers of religions farther afield. He had probably never met a saintly representative of either of these traditions, and he almost certainly had never read anything about these two religions except what was written in Islamic sources. Hence there is no reason that he should have accepted the validity of these religions except in principle. But this is an important qualification. To maintain the particular excellence of the Qur’an and the superiority of Muhammad over all other prophets is not to deny the universal validity of revelation nor the necessity of revelations appearing in particularized expressions” (Religious Diversity, 12526).
Chittick’s claim above that Ibn al-`Arabi “does not draw the conclusion that many Muslims have drawn–that the coming of Islam abrogated (naskh) previously revealed religions” is false, and could have been corrected by a fuller translation of the passage he has quoted from the Futuhat:
“The religious laws (shara’i’) are all lights, and the law of Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace) among these lights is as the sun’s light among the light of the stars: if the sun comes out, the lights of the stars are no longer seen and their lights are absorbed into the light of the sun: the disappearance of their lights resembles what, of the religious laws, has been abrogated (nusikha) by his law (Allah bless him and give him peace) despite their existence, just as the lights of the stars still exist. This is why we are required by our universal law to believe in all prophetic messengers (rusul) and to believe that all their laws are truth, and did not turn into falsehood by being abrogated: that is the imagination of the ignorant. So all paths return to look to the Prophet’s path (Allah bless him and give him peace): if the prophetic messengers had been alive in his time, they would have followed him just as their religious laws have followed his law. “For he was given Comprehensiveness of Word (Jawami’ al-Kalim), and given [the Qur’anic verse] ‘Allah shall give you an invincible victory‘ (Qur’an 48:3), ‘the invincible’ [al-‘aziz, also meaning rare, dear, precious, unattainable] being he who is sought but cannot be reached. When the prophetic messengers sought to reach him, he proved impossible for them to attain to–because of his [being favored above them by] being sent to the entire world (bi’thatihi al-‘amma), and Allah giving him Comprehensiveness of Word (Jawami al-Kalim), and the supreme rank of possessing the Praiseworthy Station (al-Maqam al-Mahmud) in the next world, and Allah having made his Nation (Umma) ‘the best Nation ever brought forth for people‘ (Qur’an 3:110). The Nation of every messenger is commensurate with the station of their prophet, so realize this” (al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, III 153.1220).
The passage, when read carefully, is merely an affirmation that Allah’s messengers (upon whom be peace) were true, and everything they brought was true, which is believed by every Muslim. It further suggests that everything their laws (shara’i’ means nothing else) contained has not only been abrogated, but is thereby implicitly contained in the new revelation, in which sense “their religious laws have followed his law.” A familiar example cited by ulama is the law of talion, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”, which was obligatory in the religious law of Moses (upon whom be peace), subsequently forbidden by the religious law of Jesus (upon whom be peace) in which “turning the other cheek” was obligatory; and finally both were superseded by the law of Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), which permits victims to take retaliation (qisas) for purely intentional physical injuries, but in which it is religiously superior not to retaliate but forgive. This is the absorption of the stars’ lights into that of the sun, of “what, of the religious laws, has been abrogated by his law (Allah bless him and give him peace) despite their existence, just as the lights of the stars still exist.” This is the sense in which Ibn al-`Arabi is interpreting Comprehensiveness of Word (Jawami’ al-Kalim) here.
What the passage does not say is that non-Islamic religions are valid now that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) has been sent with Islam. Professor Chittick’s omission of the second half of the passage (which is plainly punctuated in finish by the words “so know this”) is puzzling, for it is highly material to the topic, and in spirit and in letter (“because of his being sent to the entire world (bi’thatihi al-‘amma)”) plainly contradicts the professor’s suggestion that Ibn al-`Arabi does not believe that the coming of Islam abrogated (naskh) previously revealed religions. The wrongness of this notion is clear to anyone who reads the second half and knows what the expression bi’thatihi al-‘amma means from having read it in similar contexts from other works of the traditional Islamic sciences that formed Ibn al-`Arabi’s education.
In fact, one looks in vain in the works of Ibn al-`Arabi for the belief of the validity of currently existing non-Islamic religions, for this is kufr, as Imam Nawawi and the other Imams mentioned above unanimously concur. Traditional Islam certainly does not accept the suggestion that
“it is true that many Muslims believe that the universality of guidance pertains only to pre-Qur’anic times, but others disagree; there is no ‘orthodox’ interpretation here that Muslims must accept” (Religious Diversity, 124).
Orthodoxy exists, it is unanimously agreed upon by the scholars of Muslims, and we have conveyed in Nawawi’s words above that to believe anything else is unbelief. As for “others disagree,” it is true, but is something that has waited for fourteen centuries of Islamic scholarship down to the present century to be first promulgated in Cairo in the 1930s by the French convert to Islam Rene Gunon, and later by his student Frithjof Schuon and writers under him. Who else said it before? And if no one did, and everyone else considers it kufr, on what basis should it be accepted?
My point is that it would have been one thing to say it under their own auspices, but to project their views onto great Muslims of the past is a mistake that should be corrected. Another example is found in Islam and the Destiny of Man, in which Charles le Gai Eaton (omissions are his) says:
“According to the great mujahid (the ‘warrior in the path of Allah’), the Emir `Abdu’l-Qadir, our God and the God of all the communities opposed to ours are in truth One God . . . despite the variety of His manifestations . . . He has manifested Himself to Muhammad’s people beyond every form while manifesting Himself in every form . . . To Christians He has manifested Himself in the form of Christ . . . and to the worshippers of whatever form it may be . . . in the very form of this thing; for no worshipper of a finite object worships it for its own sake. What he worships is the epiphany in the form of the attributes of the true God . . . Yet that which all the worshippers worship is one and the same. Their error consists only in the act of determining it in a limitative manner. [Quoted from Mawqif 236 in the Mawaqif of `Abdul-Qadir (French translation by M. Chodkiewicz published by Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1982).] `Abdul-Qadir fought the Christians who invaded his land, Algeria, because he was a Muslim. Exiled in Damascus, he protected the Christians against massacre by taking them into his own home because he understood. Those who would challenge him or accuse him of heresy should be prepared to face his sword and accept death from its blade since small men risk their necks when they challenge great ones”(Islam and the Destiny of Man, 53).
The passage quoted from the Mawaqif is interesting, not only because scissors seem to have been harder at work on it than sword, but because the reference suggests it has been translated from Arabic to French to English, something of a journey from the original words of the author. I don’t know who arranged the French original, but the above passage has not been quoted from Mawqif 236 of the Arabic Mawaqif that I have, which was printed in 1329/1911 in Damascus from the copy of Sheikh `Abd al-Razzaq al-Bitar, a manuscript read by `Abd al-Qadir himself, with emendations in his own handwriting in the margins.
The idea, however, is familiar, and is mentioned in a number of places in the Mawaqif, and is also mentioned in the Chapter of Hajj toward the end of the first volume of the Futuhat of Ibn al-`Arabi, whom `Abd al-Qadir follows closely. Ibn al-`Arabi feels that while God consigns idolaters to hell eternally (if a prophetic warner has been sent to them, for otherwise they are not responsible to do or refrain from anything), their worship is not completely amiss, in that everyone, whether Christian, Jew, fire-worshipper, or idolator, consider what they worship to be the Divine (Ar. al-Ilah, “the Deity”), and do not worship what they worship except for this reason, in which sense “your Lord has ruled that you shall worship none except Him” (Qur’an 17:23), in which “ruled”, according to `Abd al-Qadir, means “brought about”; namely, that Allah, in virtue of this motive and this name (al-Ilah) and His jealousy for its prerogative, often answers the supplications of such worshippers and fulfills their needs; though as said before, their worship is not valid, for “Allah does not forgive that any should be associated with Him, but forgives what is other than that to whomever He wills” (Qur’an 4:48): From one side they do worship the God, but from another they have associated with Him the specific objects that they believe He inheres in, so their worship is invalid, because it does not conform to the absolute tawhid brought by the prophets, upon whom be peace, who taught that Allah is absolute in manifestation, not bound by any created form.
No matter what the religion, then, for Emir `Abd al-Qadir, Allah cannot not be “worshipped” in the limitary sense of the basic impetus of the worshipper towards the Divine. But this does not mean it is acceptable or valid in Allah’s eyes. Whoever confuses these two things, as the above passage does, has done violence to `Abd al-Qadir. He says:
“Since the manifestings of Him Meant by Worship are manifold, so are sects and creeds. For the aim of worship is to exalt with reverence, and the lowliness and humility of every worshipper is only rendered to someone able to harm or benefit, give or withhold, to give sustenance, to lower or raiseand these attributes are not in fact, those of anyone except one alone, who is Allah Most High, and He is absolutely beyond perception (ghayb mutlaq). “So every worshipper of a form, be it sun, star, fire, light, darkness, nature, idol, phantasm, jinn, or other, maintains that the form he worships is of Him Meant by Worship, and he ascribes the attributes of the Diety (al-Ilah) to it, of harm, benefit, and so on. Such a person would be right, in a way, if only he had not made Him finite and conditional. For no worshipper intends by adoring the form he worships anything except the Reality Deserving Worship, which is Allah Most High, and this is what Allah has ruled (Qur’an 17:23) and brought about. But they have proved ignorant of this Reality’s absolute manifestation, unsullied by conditionality or limitariness, and have proved ignorant of the Reality in point of fact, though they do know it in general terms, this being innately possessed knowledge” (al-Mawaqif, 1.33:8).
What is the consequence of their proving “ignorant of the Reality in point of fact?” Does it mean that every worshipper, whether he associates others with Allah or not, is acceptable to Allah? `Abd al-Qadir answers this question in another section of the Mawaqif in his exegesis of the words of the Meccan idolators quoted by Allah in surat al-An`am, “Had Allah not wanted, we would not have associated anything with Him, nor our fathers, nor would we have prohibited anything” (Qur’an 6:148):
“This is truth intended as falsehood, that is: ‘If Allah had willed us not to associate others with Him, we wouldn’t have associated them with Him; and if Allah had not willed that we prohibited anything, we wouldn’t have done so, for nothing we do occurs except what He wills.‘ And it is true; but the way this truth is intended as a falsehood is that they claim that everything Allah has willed for His servants is acceptable and liked by Him. “And this is a falsehood, for Allah Most High wills for His servants whatever He knows from them pre-eternally. And that which He knows from them pre-eternally is whatever is entailed by what they most truly are, which they seek through their primal disposition, be it good or evil, pure monotheism (tawhid) or unbelief (kufr). For His will is subject to His knowledge, and His knowledge is subject to what He knows, and what He knows includes both the guided person and the lost, the affirmer of pure monotheism (muwahhid) and the associater of others with Him (mushrik), the damned and the saved, the truthful and the liar. The beings that He Most High has created are the sites of manifestation (madhahir) of His names, and there are those of His names which entail beauty and mercy, this being the share of those who are saved, the ‘People of the Right Handful‘; and there are others of them that entail rigor and subjugation, this being the share of those who are damned, the ‘People of the Left Handful.‘
“So Allah’s willing something is not the sign of His love for it and acceptance of it, for ‘He does not accept unbelief for His servants‘ (Qur’an 39:7), though He has willed the unbelief of many of them. His will is only a sign of His beginningless eternal knowledge of that which He would will for endless eternity. If everything He willed for His servants were goodness, it would entail that His sending the prophetic messengers and appointing their laws was futile. For they came with commands and prohibitions, and explained the Right Handful and the Left Handful, as He says: ‘Of them [humanity], there are the damned and the saved‘” (Qur’an 11:105) (al-Mawaqif, 1.46970: 236).
So at the level of creation and destiny, everything is the will of God, and in a sense, all religions, according to `Abd al-Qadir’s viewpoint, are “worship” of the Deity. But at the level of validity and salvation, only the worship that conforms to what the prophets (upon whom be peace) have brought is acceptable to Allah.
In the first passage I have translated above from the Mawaqif, `Abd al-Qadir explains that the mushrik who associates others with Allah is in a sense “worshipping” God by the fact that he ascribes attributes of the Deity to the object of his worship, which he only worships for their sake, though he has proved “ignorant of the Reality [Deserving Worship] in point of fact” (al-Mawaqif, 1.33: 8). And in the second passage quoted, `Abd al-Qadir contrasts the will of God in creating the mushrik and his “worship”, from the acceptance of Allah, which applies to neither, for he mentions “both the guided person and the lost, the affirmer of pure monotheism (muwahhid) and the associater of others with Him (mushrik), the damned and the saved, the truthful and the liar” (al-Mawaqif, 1.469: 236). There is little doubt here as to who is who: the muwahhid is saved, the mushrik is lost. Whatever exception may be taken at the above use of “worship”, one thing that it certainly does not entail is the validity and acceptance of God for all forms of this worship. In the whole discussion, Emir `Abd al-Qadir closely follows Ibn al-`Arabi, who says,
“Allah says, ‘Your Lord has ruled that you shall worship none except Him‘ (Qur’an 17:23), that is, has determined, and for His sake have the gods been worshipped, for no one is intended by the worship of any worshipper except God, since nothing is worshipped for its own sake but Allah. The associator of others with Allah (mushrik) but makes the mistake of setting up for himself a worship in a particular way not given to him by God, and so is damned for that (fa shaqiya li dhalik). For they say of those they associate with Him, ‘We but worship them that they may bring us closer to Allah‘ (Qur’an 39:3), thus acknowledging Him” (al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, I 405.3133)
It is difficult to agree completely with Ibn al-`Arabi and `Abd al-Qadir’s interpretation of “Your Lord has ruled” (qada Rabbuka) as meaning “Your Lord has determined” (hakama, i.e. brought about), as opposed to meaning “amara” or “commanded”, the interpretation of other exegetes, for the latter is attested to by the remainder of the verse:
“[Your Lord has ruled that you shall worship none except Him,] and show goodness to parents” (Qur’an 7:23),
where if “ruled” (qada) meant “determined” (hakama), it would entail that every behavior in the created world towards parents may be termed “goodness”, which is not the case.
Ibn al-`Arabi ascribes his interpretation to “kashf” or “spiritual intuition” (al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, III 117.8) rather than linguistic or other conventional exegetical evidence–a private understanding that few ordinary readers can follow him in–but in any case his explicit words “and so is damned for that (fa shaqiya li dhalik)” leave little doubt about the acceptability of such worship in his eyes. If there were doubt, the same thought can be found many other passages of the Futuhat such as his description of the four groups who shall never leave the hellfire, the second of whom is those who associate others with Allah (al-mushrikun), a mushrik being someone who “affirms the existence of Allah, being unable to deny it, but Satan makes him associate others besides Allah in His divinity” (ibid., I 302.9), a sin which he notes in another section is “among those enormities that are never forgiven” (ibid., 749.16).
The upshot of these texts is that Ibn al-`Arabi, like `Abd al-Qadir (and virtually every other Muslim), clearly distinguishes between the divine will, which pertains to every created thing, and the divine acceptance, which only pertains to things the Sacred Law deems good. This brings us back to our starting point, the word of Allah in surat Al ‘Imran that
“whoever seeks a religion other than Islam will never have it accepted from him, and shall be of those who have truly failed in the next life” (Qur’an 3:85).
The reason that contemporary writers affected by the writings of Gunon and Schuon, such as Chittick and Gai Eaton (or such as Martin Lings, Titus Burckhardt etc.), seem to want the universal validity of all religions at any price, even to the extent of attributing it to masters like Muhyiddin ibn al-`Arabi (“in principle“) or Emir `Abd al-Qadir (“he protected the Christians against massacre by taking them into his own home because he understood” [as if other scholars considered massacring them halal]) would seem to be the emotive impalatability of followers of other religions going to hell. Where is the mercy? Would Allah put someone in the hellfire merely for worshipping in another religion besides Islam? This question is answered by traditional Islam according to two possibilities:
(1) There are some peoples who have not been reached by the message of the Prophet of Islam (Allah bless him and give him peace) that we must worship the One God alone, associating nothing else with Him. Such people are innocent, and will not be punished no matter what they do. Allah says in surat al-Isra’,
“We do not punish until We send a Messenger” (Qur’an 17:15).
These include, for example, Christians and others who lived in the period after the spread of the myth of Jesus godhood, until the time of the prophet Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), who renewed the call to pure monotheism.
The great Muslim scholar, Imam Ghazali, includes in this category those who have only been reached with a distorted picture of the Messenger of Islam (Allah bless him and give him peace), presumably including many people in the West today who know nothing about Allah’s religion but newspaper stories about Ayatollahs and mad Muslim bombers. Is it within such people’s capacity to believe? In Ghazali’s view, such people are excused until after they have had an opportunity to learn the undistorted truth about Islam (Ghazali: “Faysal al-tafriqa,” Majmu’a rasa’il al-Imam al-Ghazali, 3.96). This of course does not alter our own obligation as Muslims to reach them with the da’wa.
(2) A second group of people consists of those who turn away from God’s divine message of Islam, rejecting the command to make their worship God’s alone; whether because of blindly imitating the religion of their ancestors, or for some other reason. These are people to whom God has sent a prophetic messenger and reached with His message, and to whom He has given hearing and an intellect with which to grasp it but after all this, persist in associating others with Allah, either by actually worshipping another, or by rejecting the laws brought by His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace), which associates their own customs with His prerogative to be worshipped as He directs. Such people have violated God’s rights, and have accepted to go to hell, which is precisely what His messengers have warned them of, so they have no excuse:
“Truly, Allah does not forgive that any be associated with Him; but He forgives what is less than that to whomever He wills” (Qur’an 4:48).
In either case, Allah’s mercy exists, though for non-Muslims unreached by the message, it is a question of divine amnesty for their ignorance, not a confirmation of their religions validity. It is worth knowing the difference between these two things, for one’s eternal fate depends on it.
A final question arises here; namely, that since Allah alone is absolute, and all forms (presumably including religious ones) are relative, why could He not transcend the forms given in the Islamic Revelation; that is, if He can do anything, why should it be impossible for Him to simply “forgive everyone”?
The answer involves the concept of al-wajib al-‘aradi or “the contingently necessary,” which is part of traditional Islamic aqida (tenets of faith), and hence well known to scholars like Ibn al-`Arabi and Abd al-Qadir, but perhaps not familiar to many contemporary Muslims. It is arguably among the most important points one can learn from classical works of aqida.
The possible or impossible for Allah Most High involves the divine attribute of qudra or omnipotence, “what He can do”. This attribute in turn relates exclusively to the intrinsically possible, not to what is intrinsically impossible, as Allah says, “Verily Allah has power over every thing” (Qur’an 20:29), “thing” being something that in principle can exist. For example, if one asks “Can Allah create square circle?” the answer is that His omnipotence does not relate to it, for a square circle does not refer to anything that in principle could exist: the speaker does not have a distinct idea of what he means, but is merely using a jumble of words.
Similarly, if one were to ask, “Can Allah terminate His own existence?” the answer is that the divine omnipotence does not relate to this; it is intrinsically impossible (mustahil dhati), for the divine nature necessarily entails the divine perfections, of which Being is one. It is impossible that Allah could cease to have this perfection or any other, for otherwise He would not be God.
There are thus things that are necessarily true of God (that He cannot not be); and their opposites, things which are necessarily impossible of God. In terms of the question above, the choice to forgive everyone, that is, to simply suspend the implications of the Qur’anic verses and hadiths that indicate that some classes of people will never leave hell, is not intrinsically impossible (mustahil dhati) for Allah, in that it does not involve something inherently impossible as does the square circle, or negate something inherently true by the very nature of the Divine. Then why didn’t any scholar ever think of it? Because for Islamic orthodoxy, there is another class of both the necessary and the impossible that the divine attribute of omnipotence (qudra) has no relation to; namely, that which is necessary or impossible because, although not so a priori, it has become necessary or impossible by being connected with the knowledge (‘ilm) of Allah and His beginninglessly eternal attribute of speech, in His informing us of it.
For example, Abu Lahab was born with apparently the same chance as anyone to hear the Prophet’s message (Allah bless him and give him peace), enter Islam, and reach paradise. But when he persecuted the Muslims, and surat al-Masad (Qur’an 111) was subsequently revealed, and Allah manifested His beginninglessly eternal knowledge that Abu Lahab was of the people of hell. Although initially this outcome was merely contingent and possible, when the eternal Word of Allah connected with it, it became necessary, final, and inabrogable, for Allah only informs of what is in His knowledge, and His knowledge only conforms to what truly is, which is why no one alters the words of Allah (Qur’an 6:34), for otherwise His words would express ignorance, an attribute impossible for God, or lies, which equally contradict the nature of the Divine.
Abu Lahab is thus necessarily of the people of hell, necessary not logically or inherently, but contingently necessary, because of the contingent event of Allah having informed us of it. Everything that Allah has informed us of is of this class of thing, and divine omnipotence (qudra) does not relate to their contrary, for His Word shall be realized exactly as He has said, and it is impossible that any of it be nullified.
This is why for Sufis like Ibn al-`Arabi and Emir `Abd al-Qadir, the revealed law in a sense partakes of the Divine, for it returns to Allah’s attribute of speech, in the Qur’an, and to the unrecited revelation of the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) which is Allah’s act of inspiration-both of which are inseparable in principle from Allah’s entity. For such Sufis, the sharia is the haqiqa, and this is, after all, the position of Islam itself. To answer our question above, the first premise that Allah alone is absolute, and all forms are relative, is plainly wrong, and contradicted by the manifold existence of Allah’s determinations, which, though contingently necessary (wajib aradi) rather than inherently so, are no less absolute than the Divine itself.
I remain your brother,
[signature]
Nuh Ha Mim Keller
Was-Salamu alaykum wa rahmatu Llahi wa barakatuh.