Islam: Religion of the 21st Century
In I900 12 per cent of the world's population was Muslim. By 2000 20 per cent, or I.2 billion people, worshipped Allah. Yet until the 1990s this development passed largely unnoticed in both the West and the East (Marxist or Oriental). At the same time Christendom passed from being synonymous with Western imperialism over much of the world's surface to enter a postcolonial 'post-Christian age' looking anxiously into a 21st century (C21) 'age of Islam'.
How has this come about and what are the likely consequences? Answers lie in the nature and history of Islam itself, about which most non-Muslims know little of substance but its shahadah ('There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet') and pilgrimages to the holy city of Mecca.
What really is Islam?
There are five volumes in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, so what follows is very potted but hopefully not garbled. The faith has five (or six) essential beliefs and five (or six) essential practices (called 'pillars'), derived from its sacred book the Qur'an ('recitation') and the sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad (sunnah, collected in Hadith ['report']). Beliefs are in God, angels (especially Archangel Gabriel), scriptures (Qur'an, Old Testament and much of the New Testament), prophets (chiefly Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad), resurrection/final judgment and predestination (not accepted by all Muslims and not as individualistic as Calvinism). Practices involve recitation of the shahadah, prayer five times a day facing Mecca, zakat ('purification' or alms tax), daytime fasting during the month of Ramadan, hajj (at least one pilgrimage to Mecca if physically and financially possible) and jihad. As distinct from Protestant Christianity, the practices are collectively more important than the beliefs.
To outsiders the disputed requirement and implications of jihad, generally translated as 'holy war', are the most concerning. Does it mean conquest and jiyas (taxation) or murder of infidels as in the faith's early C7 and later expansions out of Arabia, or something more benign? Modernists assert that 'Muslim', 'Islam' and 'salaam' all come from the one Arabic root, meaning 'peace', though Islam is usually translated as 'surrender' (to the will of Allah). They also assert that jihad really means 'struggle', either activism to Islamicise society, as in Catholic Action, or the moral struggle of good over evil within each individual.
Debate over 'true' meanings in the Qur'an is possible for five reasons:
- the earliest manuscripts have no diacritical points characterising consonants or marks indicating the insertion of vowels, so the words themselves are conjectural;
- Arabic is a rhetorical, allegorical language and the Prophet himself was a poet. There's a story that, outraged by a rival satirical poet, he commanded "Cut out his tongue" but was aghast when this was done as he meant "Silence him with gifts";
- the later text was formulated sporadically 'when entranced' ('on the run' in response to passing moods and situations);
- there are many contradictions and only later ijma (consensus) has determined which conflicting ayah (verse) is preferable;
- it's often assumed that later surahs (chapters) replace contradictory earlier ones, but their placement in the Qur'an is chiefly by decreasing length, not chronologically as might be expected. On top of these uncertainties, as in Christianity, are some doubts over the authenticity of all the received text, whether through mistaken dictation or transcription, omission or interpolation.
It's clear, however, that for fundamentalists jihad means war against specific enemies, notably Israel and the United States. With this concern in mind the US covertly supported Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran War of I980-8. Ironically today the most fundamentalist country of all, and origin of the world's most notorious terrorists, is America's 'best Islamic friend' in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia.
Since I995 a number of ex-Muslims like Ibn al-Warraq (a pseudonym) have published books, articles and reviews in the world-wide humanist, especially American, press. Their general message is that 'fundamentalist' Islam is Islam and that it is inherently hostile to democratic values, multiculturalism and world peace. The argument is that, despite secular states like Turkey, religion and politics are really inseparable in Islamdom and that Islamic Shari'ah law devised by the ulama (jurists) is held to be binding on all Muslims and to take precedence over state law.
Notoriously, this law is more stringent than the Qur'an itself, which, apart from enjoining prayers only three times daily, decrees 100 lashes (surah 24:2) instead of the death penalty for adultery, is vague about purdah (female isolation and wearing the hijab or chador in public) and doesn't decree female circumcision. Incidentally, the veil is said to be a pre-Islamic Persian custom and female genital mutilation a pre-Islamic African custom, both originating with the aristocracy.
A few ex-Muslims and other 'revisionists' dispute the fundamentals of Islam. They assert that it began, not with Muhammad in Mecca and Medina, in early C7, but in the 'fertile crescent', extending from Mesopotamia round Arabia to Egypt, in C8; and, as with Christian mythicists, they question whether Muhammad ever lived. In support of these views they allege that Mecca and Medina didn't exist at all, or in their present positions, in C7 because the existing cities contain no Jewish artefacts, and a third of the Qur'an consists of Jewish and Christian material that wouldn't be known to an illiterate Arab. The last point echoes the orthodox Muslim legend that, though illiterate, the Prophet was able to read the words of God inscribed on a silken cloth shown to him by Gabriel.
My own view is that someone from an influential and well-to-do Meccan family and a professional merchant would be unlikely to be illiterate. I see no reason to doubt the traditional story - shorn of its magical accretions - given in all encyclopaedias and all biographies of Muhammad. He was said to have been influenced by his first wife Khadijah's cousin Waraka, a Jew who became a Christian, but, after initially converting or tolerating the Jews of Mecca and Medina, to have expelled them when he suspected treachery. Why Arab tribes, content for millennia to stay inside Arabia fighting only among themselves, should suddenly explode in C7 and early C8 across Northern Africa, Spain and the entire Middle East without the impetus of a newly acquired religious zeal is hard to understand. And if Islam originated outside Arabia, why did Mecca not Damascus or Baghdad become its holy city?
It isn't surprising that the Qur'an derived material from both Judaism and Christianity since Muhammad was "giving himself out as a prophet sent by God to put an end to idolatry, and to mitigate the rigour of the Jewish and the Christian law" (Washington Irving's Life of Mahomet (I849) I911 ed., p43).
Comparisons between Islam and Judaism
Though Arabs are often called 'anti-Semitic' by Zionist Jews, both people are of course Semitic, descended from the legendary Abraham. Judaism and Islam are religions of 'the Book', written supposedly at the behest of God in the language spoken in heaven (Hebrew and Arabic respectively). Both originated as reform movements within idolatrous polytheistic tribes and established a monotheism where God was an omnipotent, omniscient, jealous, but just and merciful lawgiver, regulating all aspects of political, social and moral life. It's often said the Jews have only Ten Commandments while Muslims have dozens, but the Jewish Torah in fact has 613 commandments. More than in other religions Islam and Judaism are all-engrossing for most believers, and apostates are much more likely to think of themselves as still in some sense 'faith' members than are backsliding Christians or Shintoists. This is especially true of Judaism, which despite claiming universality and occasionally admitting converts is basically a matrilineal ethnic religion.
An important similarity is the relationship between clergy and laity. Apart from BCE Judaism and some Muslim sects, the clergy aren't priestly intermediaries between God and man but teachers, and once instructed lay people can worship perfectly well in the desert or on a desert island.
Penology in both is retributive: "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth". Dietary laws are similar. In the visual arts great store is placed on the Second Commandment against making 'graven images', which orthodoxy interprets to mean all representational art though it seems only idolatry was originally tabu; but liberal religionists reject only statues. Both religions famously demand male circumcision, but apart from female circumcision there are other well-known customary differences between Judaism and Islam: maximal number of simultaneous wives (one and four), holy day (Saturday and Friday), attitudes to alcohol and usury (acceptable and banned - though modern Muslims use devices like futures contracts to ratify interest payments), clothing, headgear and 'church' architecture.
The significant difference, however, is Islam's rejection of the exclusiveness of Judaism's covenants with Jahweh.
Comparisons between Islam and Christianity
The most important and potentially dangerous similarity between Islam and Christianity is the aim of both faiths to secure universal conversion or at least compliance.
Though Islam became a state religion under its founder early in its history while Christianity existed as a minority sect or revolutionary movement for 300 years before it attained official status, the subsequent development of both shows many parallels. Like Roman Catholicism, Islam appears monolithic to casual outsiders but both have experienced a turbulent history and internal dissensions. It's often said that Islam has never had either a Protestant Reformation or an Enlightenment. The truth is it's had many, but none has proved self-sustaining to ultimately produce on the one hand capitalism and on the other a democratic, scientific-technological society of world class. Thus - a major cause of Muslim resentment - Christianity is seen as the religion of rich countries and Islam of poor ones.
Apart from internal and external wars that have marked Christendom and Islamdom, similar political and theological upheavals occurred in both in their early centuries. Chief of these are the Great Schism in one and the Sunnah-Shi'ah split in the other. As in most things ideological, they originated in geopolitical ambitions and personality clashes and acquired doctrinal and customary content along the way.
The Islamic schism, being played out in Iraq, is in every way greater than the Great Schism. At his death Muhammad left no designated successor, though he was thought by many associates to have expressed a partiality for Ali, his cousin and husband of his favourite daughter Fatimah. While Ali was attending funeral rites, however, tribal elders proclaimed as the Prophet's khalifah (caliph or 'successor' with doctrinal authority) Abu Bakr, father of his favourite wife A'ishah, who had a personal feud with Ali. After Abu Bakr's death the caliphate passed to Umar, father of Muhammad's wife Hafza, and then to Uthman, husband of Muhammad's daughter Rokaia. Accused of corruption, Uthman was assassinated. Ali at last succeeded but, suspected of involvement in Uthman's death, was himself assassinated. That ended the agreed caliphates.
Succession passed to Uthman's family, forming the Umayyad Dynasty (after ummah, or jama'ah, meaning 'community'). This dynasty was overthrown in a provincial revolution by the Abbasids, descended from Muhammad's uncle al-Abbas, brother of Ali's father Abu Taleb. Both dynasties claimed to preserve the sunnah and became known as Sunnites. Rejecting their legitimacy, Ali's supporters became minority Shi'ites ('partisans' of Ali).
Over time some thirteen doctrinal differences have separated the rival sects. They have their own Shari'ah and Hadith; accept or reject predestination, hostility to representational art, musical instruments and public emotion, and the exclusion of reason from ethics; and have variant teachings on marriage, turbans and prayers. But the main differences spring from understanding of the Qur'an. Sunnites consider it co-eternal with God, while Shi'ites consider it created in time. If the latter is true, then it can theoretically be adapted to changing circumstances by imams (and perhaps ayatollahs) with esoteric knowledge. Unfortunately the ayatollahs of Iran, which became officially Shi'ite in CI6, have put the clock back instead of forward.
Islam has many smaller sects and, like Christianity, had many internal debates in its early centuries among the faithful of its major sects. These involved (in Christian terminology) disputes over the content and interpretation of the biblical canon and canon law, the nature of God, freewill, church-state relations and the roles of reason and revelation in theology and ethics, and of faith and works in an individual's life, and thus whether divinely ordained temporal and spiritual rulers can and should be deposed for religious laxity or immorality. So both religions have had their scholars, missionaries, mystics, revivalists, aesthetes, ascetics, orthodox, heretics, saints and sinners.
Nevertheless, Islam never accumulated as articles of faith the baggage of Middle East and Mediterranean Basin paganism represented in the quasi-polytheism of Christianity's Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, sacrificial death and sacraments of the eucharist and baptism. It can claim to be more responsible morally than Christianity in that it puts orthopraxy (right practice) before orthodoxy (right belief). And, while both religions flirted with Gnosticism, Islam doesn't seem to have embraced its flesh-mortifying reductio ad absurdum of filthy anchorites and masochistic self-flagellants.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Islam today, after the jihad and fatwas for apostates, is the subservient position of women with regard to marriage and divorce, inheritance, litigation and education, to say nothing of the veil and genital mutilation. Apologists however assert that Islam never questioned, as Christianity once did, whether women have souls and are entitled to ownership of property brought into marriage. They also say women like to be 'protected' and Muslim rulers abolished female infanticide and self-burning or immolation of widows in occupied countries.
Appeal of Islam
Humanists may well feel the above survey contains many more negatives than positives for Islam. Of course we reject the validity and desirability of any religion and sometimes wonder why anyone wants or needs it. But granted that millions apparently do, what is Islam's special appeal?
I hope to have shown it's more complex than outsiders imagine. Yet for ordinary believers its doctrine and practice are relatively simple and its law relatively predictable. It's thus more adaptable than other religions to the mushrooming Third World: no priests, no sacraments, no icons, a one-line creed, as many romantic stories about the Prophet and other figures as you'd find in Arabian Nights' Entertainments or I920s films and musical comedies, but no obligatory miracles to swallow other than the Qur'an itself. Above all is its sense of community. In CI4 a Muslim judge Ibn Battutah travelled for 30 years throughout Islamdom and felt at home everywhere.
For men, the attractions are equality for all in worship (no private pews or bishops' thrones), preservation of manly dignity (no 'turning the other cheek' or sexual repression associated with 'original sin') and promise of a voluptuous houri-rich life in paradise (no harps or beatific vision). Probably brainwashed, most Muslim women say they accept their subordinate status, but some have even become prime ministers and suicide bombers.
Muslims with a knowledge of history point with pride to the literary, artistic, philosophical and scientific achievements of Islamdom while most of Europe was languishing in the Dark Ages, though critics say these came despite not because of Islam.
In Baghdad Abbasid DynastyC8 literature and C9 philosophy and science, and in Cairo Fatimid Dynasty C10 glass and ceramics, flourished. Between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance appeared Abbasid Dynasty CII medicine and philosophy in Persia and Almohad Dynasty CI2 arts, literature and philosophy in West Africa and Spain - a period which produced the imposing figures of Avicenna and Averroes. In CI3 Ibn an-Nafis in Egypt discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood four centuries before William Harvey, and the Mamluk Dynasty in Egypt began a period of excellence in crafts and in history writing, which culminated in CI4 Ibn Khaldun. Common to all these and other Muslim dynasties was a genius for architecture never surpassed. Muslims are usually credited with the invention of algebra and algorithms, though these may, like 'Arabic' notation, have originated in Hindu India. Because of Islamdom's location between East and West it also acted as a conduit for European exposure to Chinese silk, paper-making and other crafts.
Yet reflection on these past achievements brings more than Muslim pride. First comes resentment that they're not more widely known and appreciated in Christendom. Then there's frustration that Muslims today appear to be more traders in other peoples' wares than creators of their own. And, despite independence from Western political imperialism that Muslim countries - only Saudi Arabia and Turkey were never colonised following collapse of their own empires - attained in the second half of C20, there's anger over ongoing Western economic imperialism. This is highlighted by American and Russian lusting after Islamdom's oil supplies.
Forgetting their persecution of other minorities, Muslims have adopted a victim mentality. Chief grievances are the plight of Palestinian Arabs since formation, with Western connivance and American financial and military support, of the state of Israel and the invasion of Iraq. Add to these issues Israeli domination of Jerusalem (where Muhammad supposedly ascended into the seventh heaven), American bases in Saudi Arabia (home of Mecca and Medina) and other Middle Eastern countries, and West-supported Indian control of Kashmir - and one sees a multifaceted rallying point for the 'brown' world against the 'white'.
Increasingly this is being extended to the 'black' world, not only in sub-Saharan Africa but even among minorities in the West itself. A movement began with the Moorish Science Temple in Newark, New Jersey, in I9I3, when Prophet Drew Ali claimed a Moorish (Muslim) background for all 'African' Americans and urged their return to Islam to gain release from racial oppression. And in the I960s Elijah Muhammad, leader of America's Nation of Islam (Black Muslims), denounced Christianity as whites' "stratagem of enslavement". Some madrasahs (Muslim schools) and mosques continue the rhetoric.
It's important that non-Muslims not react with Islamophobia, especially as most Muslim immigrants in our midst came to escape the brutality, rigidity or poverty of their countries of origin. But equally we must avoid 'Islamophobia-phobia' (Dr Piers Benn in New Humanist, Summer 2002). Political correctness mustn't silence criticism intended to stop Islam doing to C21 what Christianity did to earlier centuries.
Author's Note: I've generally followed spelling in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica Macropaedia (15th ed., Vol. 22, pp1-133)
