A Student's Notes and Comments on
No-Nonsense Guide to Islam
Ziaauddin Sardar and Meryl Wyn Davies
Toronto: New Internationalist Publications
and Between The Lines, 2004

the Pillars:

1. shahadah (used in the call toprayer)
2. salat (prayer)
3. fasting during Ramadan
4. zakat -- 'poor due' or 'religious tax' 2.5% of annual income and wealth
5. hajj -- pilgrimage to Mecca

the Traditions consist of:

1. sunnah (the example of the Prophet)
2. hadith (the sayings of the Prophet) -- 6 collections of haddith (all in the 8th & 9th centuries)

very few legal injunctions in Qur'an -- so the Traditions (sunnah and hadith) became a basis for developing Islamic Law, or sharia

in addition, legal consesnus (ijma) and a huge body of traditional jurisprudence (fiqh) have become inditinguishable from the original sharia

it evolved on the basis of the Islamic concept of ijtihad or systematic original thinking

but during the 14th century religious scholars closed 'the gates of ijtihad' and both sharia and fiqh became trapped in the traditions of the early Muslim communities -- contemporary Islam therefore tries systematically to replicate the customs and traditions of the classical period (more in Chptr 8)

Fiqh is not monolithic -- right from the beginning there were strong difs of opinion leading to 5 distinct Schools of Thought (madhabs) named after the most eminent jurists of the period:

• Imam Malik
• Imam Shafi'i
• Imam Abu Hanafi
• Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbali
• Imam Jafar al-Sadiq

Maliki School (based in Medina) is the oldest -- now dominant in most countries of Muslim Africa

but largest of classical period is the Shafi'i, which evolved in Baghdad, capital of the Abbasid Caliphate -- more sophisticated than the austere Maliki -- gives more emphasis to free will and consensus

the Hanafi school, the more rationalist, develped as a reaction against the narrow traditionalism of Maliki Arabs -- relies more on legal reasoning and precedents than on hadith -- also developed court procedures and rules of evidence and cautioned against extreme punishments -- is followed in Egypt, Turkey, and much of Southeast Asia

the Hanbali is the most puritanical -- rejected the use of legal reasoning as well as consensus and insisted that sharia be based exclusively on literal interpretaion of the Qur'an -- state religion in Saudi Arabia

Jafari school is dominant largely in Iran and Iraq -- followed principally by Shi'a Muslims

fiqh is based on worldly life -- but was a parallel evolution of mysticism called sufism -- based on the concept ot tariqah (the path of union with God) -- Sufism is also called tasawwuf

one of the first Sufis was the great woman saint Rabia Basri, who developed the doctrine of 'disinterested love of God' -- central tenet of Sufism

different schools within Sufism too -- devotional mysticism as well as intellectual and philosophical mysticism -- authority in Sufism belongs to the Sheikh (the Perfect Master who guides his followers)

many Sufi Orders: Qadiriyyah, Chishti, Shadhiliyyah, Maluvi (Rumi)

throughout its history Sufism has been in simmering conflict with orthodox, fiqh-based Islam

worldview:

• fundamental concept is tawhid -- 'the unity of God' -- the oneness of god and hence the unity of His creation -- hence the unity of humankind and the unity of people and nature
• men and women are khalifah (trustees of God)
• implicit in the created order are signs (ayah)
• ilm (knowledge) -- almost 1/3 of qur'an is devoted to extolling virtues of knowledge
• adl (distributive social justice)
• ijtihad (sustained intellectual reasoning)
• the thought and action of khalifah are based not on blind faith but on knowledge and sustained intellecual effort

3. The Rightly-Guided Caliphs (al-Khulafa ar rashidun)

1. Abu Bakr
2. Umar
3. Othman
4. Ali

sect rivalry -- massacre at Kerbala established the Shi'a as the 2nd major sect

Sunnis believe in elections; Shias believe in hereditary leadership

4. Expansion and the Empires

Umayyad dynasty

then Abbasids -- moved the capital from Damascus to the newly created city of Baghdad in 752 -- science, philosophy, medicine and education flourished under the Abbasids, who synthezied Persian learning with greek heritage to fashion a unique Muslim culture

overthrown by the Mongol invasion of 1258

Ottoman Emperors used the title Caliph

The Ottoman Caliphate was ended by Turkish modernizer Kemal Attaturk in 1924

Battle of Talas river in 751 -- only battle with Chinese -- didn't move into china but captured some artisans making paper -- Smarkand became a noted centre of paper-making and export -- Baghdad became famous for its large publications industry

westernmost province of China mostly Muslim (from trade not conquest)

in India Mughal Empire arose in 15th century

5. Civilization and learning

madrassa was higher education -- students expected already to havstered fundamentals of the Qur'an and Sunnah -- now went on to logic, rhetoric, law, mathematics, grammar, literature, history, medicine, agronomy

above madraasas were universities (jamia) -- oldest univ in the world still in operation is the al-Azhar University in Cairo (founded in 970)

translations of Greek philosophers in the 700s

the House of Wisdom founded in Baghdad in 830

6. Islam and the West

presented west with 3 problems:

• the purpose of new revelations 600 yrs after crucifixion
• strong military presence on borders of Europe
• scholarly achievements (partic under Abbasids)

response was Crusades (in 11th to 13th Centuries)

colonialism -- reconquista -- rolling back Muslim territoiral control in Portugal & Spain

but in 1453 Constantinope fell to the Ottomans

intolerance -- 1492 Columbus set sail for America -- next day all Jews were expelled from Spain and property and lands confiscated -- 1502 same fate befell Spain's remaining Muslim population

"the ideology of colonialism that grew out of the crusading ethos was rooted in the perception of Muslim civilization as barbaric, tyrannical, inimical to Western civilization and implacable hostile"

"despite the fact that, objectively, Europe was at least no more sophisticated, learned or technologically endowed than the Muslim world, the notion of Muslim civilization as decadent, mired in superstition, a faded glory and with a particular problem in its treatment of women became a recurrent theme in european literature of the 16th and 17rh centuries"

Orientalism -- term used by (who just died of leukemia in Sep/04) in his book Orientalism in 1978 -- but term existed before

• John of Damascus (748AD), a Christian scholar who declared Islam to be a pagan cult and described M as a corrupt and licentious man
• Orientalist writers during the Crusades systematically represent Muslims as militant, barbaric fanatics, corrupt, effet sensualists, decisively inferior to the West
• scholars who specialized in Islam gave intellectual respectability to racist ideas about Muslims -- Edward Pocock, Simon Ialkley, George Searle (one of the earliest English translators of the Qur'an) ,li>same venom also demonstrated by Voltaire, Montesquieu, Pacal, Hegel, Spengler, Karl Marx -- and painters: Ingres, Delacroiz -- placing barbaric Muslim men and sensuous, inviting and submissive Muslim women -- also mentions and condemns T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)
• not based solely on ignorance -- was 'knowledgeable ignorance' ,li>"we see Orientalism in action in films like Executive Decision and Rules of Engagement which present Muslims not just as terrorists but totally devoid of any kind of humanity -- and refers to Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses--

but also some Collaboration:

• during the 1st renaissance in the 12th & 13th centuries, the times of St. Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon, transfer of knowledge, literature and culture solely in one direction: from Islam to europe -- European students wen to Muslim seats of learning to acquire higher education -- just as Muslim students today come to Euroe and the US to pursue higher studies
• began translation of Arabic works: Muslim thinkers including ibn Rushd, ibn Sina, and Haytham -- Greek philosophy, experimental method, much of mathematics, how to establish universities, publis libraries, hospitals, etc.
• best example was Spain; Cordoba, Granada, Seville
• Jewish philosopher Moshe ben Maimon (= Maimonides) born in Cordoba in 1135 -- codified Jewish doctrine in his Mishneh Torah and his Guide to the Perplexed, writtin in Arabic
• Jewish scholar Bahya ibn Pakuda, 11th C, was deeply influenced by Sufi thought -- his Guide to the Duties of the Heart (also written in Arabic) was an outcome of this encounter ,li>coexistence of Muslims, Jews, Christians in Spain called convivencia -- an experiment in collaboration that lasted over 800 yrs

7. Reform movements

decline of Muslim civilizn and onslaught of Eur colonialism led to self-examination amongst Muslims and the emergence of a host of revivalist and reformist movements

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Whhab (1703-87) united warring peoples of the Arabian Peninsula and preached a return to the basic purity of Islam -- a bit like John Calvin in Europe's Reformation

led to Saudi Arabia where Wahhabism is the sole creed

many other reforms are listed -- some calling for jihad against the West

8. Contemporary Issues

some political: struggle for a viable Palestinian state, civil war in the Sudan, reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq

most of world's refudees are Muslims -- victims of civil wars, political suppressions and the 'war on terrorism'

but greatest challenges are internal to Islam: issues of democracy, women's rights, Islamic law, and the rise and spread of fundamentalism

now 57 Muslim countries and 1.3 bln Muslims worldwide -- but in almost every Muslim country, militant fundamentalists are making their presence felt and calling for the establishment of an 'Islamic State' and for hatred of the West

20th Century reform movements shared a common theme in stressing need for a return to ijtihad -- sustained reasoned struggle to accommodate Islam with modernity

in contrast, 21st Century fundamentalist movements are led by an entrenched class of religious scholares whose outlook is based on the fear of bida, or innovation -- but doesn't mean based on classical Muslim tradition -- in fact, it has no historical precedence -- "it is a concocted, modern dogma" -- 2 basic elements:

1. fundamentalists confusing believing in the truth of Islam with possessing the Truth -- this their interpretation is the only true one and all others are not true Muslims
2. idea of a modern nation-state is fundamental -- can't have one without the other (despite the fact Islam categorically rejects the idea of geographical boundaries and sees nationalism as anathema!)

Islamic law

• wherever fundamentalists have acquired power, their first act has been to establish sharia
• sharia, as it is understood and practiced today, owes very little to the Qur'an
• Qur'an has remarkably few rules and regulations
• sharia is therefore mostly fiqu, classical jurisprudence, formulated in the Abbasid period when Muslim was in expansionist phase -- incorporates the logic of Muslim imperialism of 8th & 9th Centuries-- hence the black and white division of the world into 'the abode of Islam' and 'the abode of war' -- this leads to the ruling on apostasy which, contrary to the unequivocal declaration of the Qur'an that 'there is no compulsion in religion', equates apostasy with treason against the state -- and the dictate that says non-Muslims should be humiliated and cannot give evidence ina Muslim court
• fundamentalists have obsessions with extreme punishments -- whereas M discouraged extreme punishments and said should only be given in a perfect and just society (i.e., where there is not economic motivation to steal, then cutting off the hand can be applied)
• the problem is the definition of sharia -- difficult for Muslims to oppose since akin to inviting them to vote for sin
• says the woman's testimony worth 1/2 man's is not in Qur'an -- [RJA comment: but it is in mine!! 2:282]
• sometimes raped women are stoned for adultery -- though no stoning in the Qur'an
• says Qur'an is silent on homosexuality but 10 Muslim states have capital punishment for homosexuality

Democracy

• nothing inherently inimical about Islam and democracy -- only when democracy is wedded to atheistic humanism etc.
• but Muslim states, by and large, have chosen not to take this course
• Muslim thinkers have tended to reject democracy based on 2 dubious arguments:
  1. argues that Islam and democracy are incompatible because Islam requires acceptance of unquestionable basic tenets and democracy insists on ceaseless debates & questions -- e.g., in Islam sovereignty belongs to God (theocracy) but in democracy to the people -- but assumes Islam is a blind, unquesitoning creed (contrary to the Qur'anic description of Islam) and assumes politics is about relations between people and God not between people and people
  2. argues that democracy is a Western construction and so has nothing to do with Islam and should be rejected
• for democracy to work has to be possible to lose election and still survive -- in Pakistan the leadership of the major losing party has ended up in prison or exile after every election
• there is not a single Arab state with even a modicum of democracy -- violations of human rights are common in despotic and authoritative regimes (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran)
• however, a few success sotries: democratic experiments in Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Tunisia demonstrate that democracy can come to the Muslim world

9. Beyond the Impasse

"The spirit of Islam is seriously at odds with the contemporary practice of Islam. This musch is obvious. Islam perceives itself as a liberating force; a dynamic social, cultural and intellectual worldview based on equality, justice and universal values. But in the hands of its most pious and puritan followers, it often turns out to be an oppressive and obscurantist enterprise, hell-bent on dragging society back to medieval times. Indeed, many observers ccan be forgiven for thinking Islam seems to acquired a pathological strain."

many legitimate complaints against West: colonialism, support of despotic regimes, oppressive economic policies, Orientalism

but can't blame everything on this

must move into 21st Century not back to Middle Ages -- must not resist serious attempt at ijtihad, a reasoned struggle and rethinking

problem is that attempts to reform sharia law are seen as attacks on Islam itself

the guardians of the sharia, the religious scholars who were responsible for 'closing the gates of ijtihad' several centuries ago, have been particularly clever in declaring sharia to be totally Divine and equating religion with law. By collapsing law with religion, any effort to reform the law looks like an attempt to change the religion."

"Unless Islam is reformed, authoritarianism, oppression of women and minorities, obscurantism and nostalgia for medieval times will continue to reign supreme in the Muslim world."

10. More on the decline and 'closing the gates of Ijtihad'

• Dr. Ritchie had told us that this book discusses the decline of Islam from its 'Golden Age' and that it was not solely due to the crusades and the Mongol invasion -- and, true enough, there is this discussion -- but it's mostly in the Foreword -- and the Foreword talks a lot about the 'closing of the gates' of Ijtihad (innovative rational thinking)
  
  
• this general explanation occurs in many different sources -- so there's little doubt that this is a well-accepted description of what happened -- [RJA comment: but it leaves me wondering precisely why, at a certain point of time, the gates of Ijtihad WERE closed -- if you have the same question, read on]
  
  
• of course, Irshad Manji discusses the phenomenon to some extent in her amazing book The Trouble with Islam
  • her third chapter is "When Did We Stop Thinking"
  • of course, she talks about the amazing flowering during the 'Golden Age' -- about the Jewish Cordoba-born philosopher, rabbi, and physician Moses ben Mamon (Maimonides or, in Arabic, Abu Amran Musa, -- whose Gude for the Perplexed has been an aid to perplexed students everywhere) -- and she talks about the Cordoba-born Muslim philosopher, physician, mathematician Ibn Rushd (often known by his Latin name Averroes) who "championed the freedom to reason"
  • what happened to this flowering? -- according to Manji, the Muslim governor of Seville needed to fortify his pincipality against Alphonso, the menacing Christian king of Castile and to keep Alphons at bay al-Mutamid "solicited the help of some iron-fisted Muslims from Morocco, the Almoravids -- they took care of Alphonso but went on to launch a rampage of theological purity" -- Manji says they "hated the liberties of Muslim Spain, which they viewed as the result of unholy creative license -- they despised Jews, deplored women, abhorred debate, and assumed a maniacal missionary position"
  • so Manji says while the Christians picked up the pieces later, the main reason for the decline of Muslim Spain was the martial law and bludgeoning of freedom by the Almoravids
  • Manji then switches her focus to Baghdad -- she explains that the Sunni-Shia split simmered for about 275 years but then "flared up with a vengeance in 909 C.E. -- in the period of chaos that followed "the regime in Baghdad closed ranks" -- "In the guise of protecting the worldwide Muslim nation from disunity (known as fitna and considered a crime), Baghdad-approved scholars formed a consensus to freeze debate within Islam (the 'closing of the gates of Ijtihad') -- Manji again: "we live with the consequences of this thousand-year old strategy. They did it to keep the Islamic empire from imploding -- they thought all this dissent and disagreement would lead us to fall apart. But I've got news for you: The Islamic empire no longer exists, and our minds still remain closed."
  
  
  
• one writer on the Internet has advanced a complementary theory involving geography, trade, and sea travel:
  • "I think the 'freezing of Islamic thought' in the Twelfth Century is only part of it. Their great disaster was the Discovery of America and the route found by da Gama around the Cape to Asia.
  • "Those two events cast them into poverty as the silk roads and overland spice routes fell into disuse. They always bled that east-west trade for their sustenance as they had almost nothing to sell themselves. When the West took to the sea as its primary route to Asia (and eventually to the Americas) the Islamic World was plunged into destitution. That destitution helped solidify their bizarre mind set.
  • "Of course several of their despotic rulers had the good fortune of an oil boom in the early Twentieth Century, but the wealth thus obtained has served few and only resulted in an increase in their populations, so the end of petrol as their income source would propel them into a more devastating poverty.
  • "Most of the Islamic World is dry, lacking sufficient water to develop agriculture enough to feed their present population. They also don't have enough water for heavy industry. Oil artificially enables them to feed themselves by importing food. End their oil boom and they will be in deep doo-doo."
  
  
  
• but there continues also to be a strange, alternate view: that it was the very tolerance of the Golden Age that led to its downfall
  • one report on this: "Writing in Foreign Policy, Pakistani columnist Husain Haqqani suggests that Muslim extremists are learning some worrisome lessons from history. Since the 13th century, Islamic theologians have argued that military defeat at the hands of unbelievers results when Muslims embrace pluralism and worldly knowledge. The Ottoman Empire fell in 1918 for the same reason Muslims lost Baghdad in 1258: The rulers and their people had gone soft, approaching religion with tolerance and accommodation rather than viewing civilization as divided between Islam and infidels."
  • as background on this, Haqqani notes: "The last time infidels conquered the City of Peace was in 1258, when the Mongol horde, led by Genghis Khan's grandson Hulegu, defeated the Arab Abbasid caliphate that had ruled for more than five centuries. And if the ripple effects of that episode through Islam's history are any guide, the latest invasion of Iraq will unleash a new cycle of hatred-unless the United States can find ways to bolster the credibility of moderate Islamic thinkers.
  • Haqqani adds a concluding thought: "Fundamentalists believe they have every reason to anticipate victory in this battle, because the story of the Mongol conquest of Baghdad didn't end in 1258. The Egyptian Mamluks were able to halt the tide of Mongol victories in the Battle of Ayn Jalut in Palestine two years later. In less than a century, the Mongol conquerors themselves converted to Islam, and Islamic power resurged in Turkey and India after being dislodged from the Arabian heartland. The lesson, according to Islamists, is that even the defeat of Muslims has a place in God's scheme for Islam's eventual supremacy in the world." (the foregoing taken from this Foreign Policy website on "The American Mongols")
  
  
  
• another discussion of the reasons for the non-revival of ijtihad can be found on this punjabilok.com website:
  • It is true that the 'Ulama, after the fall of Baghdad, felt acutely insecure and closed the gates of ijtihad but this may not fully explain the causes of abandoning the concept of ijtihad in Islam. Ijtihad, as pointed out above, has been very central to the very process of compilation of the Shari'ah rules. One may also point out that after the disappearance of the Abbasid empire and fall of Baghdad, other Muslims empires like the Turkish empire, Safavid empire in Iran and the Mughal empire in India came into existence and these empires were quite powerful ones. Why then the process of ijtihad did not revive?
  • Firstly, because all these empires did not have the legitimacy which the Abbasid empire had, the Abbasid empire being conceived as the 'core Islamic empire' and the other later empires being thought as the outer peripheral empires. . . .
  • It was the later generation of 'Ulama who while accepting the principle of ijtihad in theory de-emphasised it in practice. They evolved the concept of taqlid (unthinking imitation) in its place though they cannot quote any hadith from the Prophet in its favour. Taqlid, in stagnant Islamic societies, thus became a widely accepted principle, as pointed out above. However, today all Islamic societies are experiencing fundamental social changes and rethinking on many issues has become very vital.
  • The conservative 'Ulama point out that though ijtihad is an accepted principle in Islam there are no qualified people to indulge in it. They feel and rightly so that one intending to resort to ijtihad should have thorough knowledge of the Qur'an and the Sunnah and also of what is known as usul al-fiqh i.e. principles of jurisprudence. They feel no one, including themselves, have these qualifications. However, this is not true. There are many among the 'Ulama, as well as the modern scholars of Islam, who are qualified to do ijtihad. It is rather fear of consequences or conservatism, rather than lack of qualification, which deters them from undertaking ijtihad.
  
  
  
• and here is an extract of a very relevant discussion of the closing of ijtihad by the Stockholm University political science professor Ishtiaq Ahmed
  
  
• and finally, an extract from Chapter 9 of Abdus Sattar Ghazali's on-line book Islam in the Post-Cold War Era -- in this chapter ("An analysis of the problems faced by the Islamic World and the role of Islam in the new millennium") he discusses the views of Dr. Fazlur Rahman (an eminent Pakistani scholar, who died in 1988)