Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith

President's Essay — From the 2001 Annual Report

by Vartan Gregorian

Although more than a year has passed since the attacks of September 11, 2001, most Americans still have such a sketchy knowledge of Islam that we probably need to keep ourselves focused on President George W. Bush’s repeated reminders that terrorists, not Muslims or Arabs, are the enemy. That reasoned message, however, is often drowned out by noisy ones from some Muslim clerics who call America the “Great Satan” and some political theorists who interpret the war cries of some militant Islamists as the start of a “clash of civilizations.”¹ Provocative messages always gain a disproportionate amount of public attention, but they must be carefully considered and put in context, especially in the aftermath of September 11.

It will surprise many Americans that Islam is the world’s and America’s fastest-growing religion. It continues to grow at a rate faster than that of the world’s population. If current trends continue, according to some estimates, it will have more adherents by the year 2023 than any other.

Most Americans tend to think of Islam as exclusively a religion of Arabs. But Muslims are as diverse as humanity itself, representing one in five people in the world. Only 15 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims are Arabs, while nearly one in three Muslims lives on the Indian subcontinent. The largest Muslim nation is Indonesia, with 160 million Muslims among its 200 million people. Muslims represent the majority population in more than 50 nations, and they also constitute important minorities in many other countries. Muslims comprise at least 10 percent of the Russian Federation’s population, 3 percent of China’s population and 3 to 4 percent of Europe’s population. Islam is the second largest religion in France and the third largest in both Germany and Great Britain. Although estimates vary widely, Muslims represent 1 or 2 percent of the United States population, and some say there are more Muslims than Jews or Episcopalians in America. Religious, cultural and population centers for Muslims, then, are no longer limited to such places as Mecca, Cairo, Baghdad, Teheran, Islamabad, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Fez and Damascus—they also include Paris, Berlin, London and now New York, Detroit, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.²

Many Americans do not know that there are Christian Arabs as well as Muslim Arabs. Indeed, some of the oldest Christian churches—including the Coptic Orthodox, Jacobite and Maronite churches—rose, functioned, and still do, in Arab countries.

Given America’s role as a magnet for immigrants, it is not surprising that the United States is one of the best reflections of Muslim diversity. “It is of the greatest interest and significance that the Muslim umma, or community, of North America is as nearly a microcosm of the global umma as has ever occurred since Islam became a major religion,” writes Lawrence H. Mamiya.³ American Muslims bring a rich ethnic heritage from South Asian countries such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan; Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines; all Arab nations, Iran and Turkey. American Muslims also add their African, Caribbean and European heritage to the nation’s mix.⁴

With the United States currently being the world’s sole military and economic superpower, I believe that we as a society have a responsibility—for our own sake as well as for others’—to know the complex nature of the world, its incredibly rich variety of races, nations, tribes, languages, economies, cultures and religions. Today, of course, Islam has become one of the major topics of discussion and controversy in the United States and elsewhere. Yet there is a disconnection between our passions about Islam and our knowledge of it.

It has become essential for us to understand Islam as a religion, its unity, diversity and culture—and to appreciate the legacy of Islamic civilizations, their role in the development of modern civilizations, the roles of Muslim nations and the challenges they face, and their future place and role in the world. Of course, this is much easier said than done, especially because in America today there is unfortunately no deep national commitment to history and heritage—not our own, and certainly not that of the world at large.

A Survey of Islam

To understand Islam, one has to appreciate the central role of Prophet Muhammad ibn Abdallah (570–632) in the formation and propagation of Islam as a religion. Muhammad was an Arab merchant, respected and wealthy, who belonged to the Qureish tribe in Mecca, then a great trading and religious center of pagan Arabia. His father had died before his birth, and his mother died in his early childhood. He was brought up by his grandfather and, after his death, by his uncle, Abu Talib, whose son Ali ibn Abi Talib became the Prophet’s first disciple and later his son-in-law.

Muslims believe that Muhammad, following God’s instructions through the Archangel Gabriel, called humanity to a faith acknowledging Allah. Contrary to what many believe, Allah was not a new god, but simply the Arabic word for God—the God of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad brought a message of continuity with Judaism and Christianity to the polytheistic tribes of Arabia. His message was an uncompromising, non-idolatrous monotheism. The faith was Islam, the Arabic verb meaning “surrender” or “submission,” as in surrendering to God’s will. (Qur’an: “With God, the religion is Islam” and “It is a cult of your father, Abraham. He was the one who named you Muslims.”)⁵ Muslim is the active participle of the verb islam, meaning “I surrender.”

In 622, having challenged the polytheist practices in Mecca, Muhammad fled for safety to Yatrib, subsequently named Medina, the City of the Prophet. This event, called the Hijra, marks the start of the Islamic era and of the Islamic calendar—2002 a.d. is 1423 a.h. or Anno Hegirae, the Year of the Hijra.^I

Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, is a prophetic religion. It, too, emphasizes God’s relationship to humanity and reveals God’s will through the medium of prophets—with warnings of punishment that will befall those who reject the divine message or are guilty of the cardinal sin of idolatry. (The Qur’an: “Say ye: we believe in Allah, and the revelation given to us, and to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and all the tribes. And, to that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to [all] prophets from their Lord. We make no difference between one and another of them.”)⁶

Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad received divine revelations from 610, starting in the ninth lunar month, Ramadan, until his death in 632 and that these oracles were transcribed during his lifetime and, within subsequent decades, were officially collected in the Qur’an, from the Arabic verb qara’a, meaning to recite, read or transmit. The Qur’an, which Muslims consider to be a supernatural text, has 114 chapters, suras, of varying lengths, from 3 to 286 lines, and they are arranged not in chronological or narrative order, but rather by their length, with the longest chapter near the beginning and the shortest chapter last.⁷ Many non-Muslims will be surprised, on reading the Qur’an, to see the numerous references to biblical stories and figures. Writing about the universality of the Qur’an, the scholar Mohamed Talbi refers to a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad that the Qur’an is “God’s Banquet,” to which everyone is invited, but not obligated to attend—people should come to him out of love, not compulsion.II Muslims consider the Qur’an to be the revealed and eternal Word of God and believe that the Qur’an “completes and perfects” the revelations given to earlier prophets, including Moses and Jesus. Muslims maintain that Muhammad was the greatest prophet and that he was the last one.

Muslims also believe that since God spoke to Muhammad through the Archangel Gabriel in Arabic, translations of the Qur’an are hence considered to be mere “interpretations.” Even though the vast majority of Muslims do not understand Arabic, only the original Arabic is used in Muslim prayers in the belief that the faithful can experience the presence of God by reading the Qur’an aloud. Some of the oldest surviving copies of the Qur’an apparently date from the start of the eighth century, but more than a thousand years passed before questions of spelling, structure of the text and rules for reading were finally formalized with its publication in Cairo between 1919 and 1928.⁸

The fundamental principles of Islam are Towhid, unity of God; Nowbowat, belief in the prophetic mission of Muhammad; and Ma’ad, belief in the day of judgment and resurrection. In addition, Islam has five cardinal tenets, called the Pillars of Faith, which all Muslims must observe. They must:

• bear witness, Shihada, that “there is no God but God, and Muhammad is his Prophet.”
• pray five times a day as a regular reminder of their commitment to Islam. To symbolize the unity of the faithful, the earliest Muslims oriented their prayers toward Jerusalem and, later on, toward Mecca. Muslims must prostrate themselves in prayer, repeatedly touching their foreheads to the ground, to dispel arrogance and promote humility.
• give a portion of their income as tax, zakat, and one-fifth of their income, khoums, to the poor. The zakat, meaning “purification,” is based on the concept that a society cannot be pure as long as there is hunger and misery.
• fast during the day for the whole month of Ramadan to experience hunger—that most visceral suffering of the poor.
• make at least one pilgrimage to Mecca, if physically and financially able.

In addition to the Qur’an and its Five Pillars, the study of Prophet Muhammad’s life, known as the sunna, became a part of the Islamic faith, law and theology. This occurred because Muhammad was considered to be the Perfect Man, and though he was not deemed divine, his life eventually became a source of inspiration and a guide to practicing Muslims. “By imitating the smallest details of his external life and by reproducing the way he ate, washed, loved, spoke and prayed, Muslims hoped to be able to acquire his interior attitude of perfect surrender to God,” writes Karen Armstrong.⁹

The sunna, the oral history of the Prophet, is the second most important source of Islamic law, after the Qur’an. The third source is the hadith, which consists of thousands of references to Prophet Muhammad’s sayings and teachings that are documented through a reconstructed, uninterrupted chain of people, traced to his immediate family and entourage. The entire body of Islamic law is called the Sharia, or “the straight path to God.” The Sharia has five main sources: the Qur’an, the sunna, the hadith, legal analogies based on the Qur’an and the hadith, and legal decisions that arise from consensus, in the belief that God would not allow the whole community to go astray.¹⁰(Some strict schools of Islamic law do not accord the latter two sources or even the hadith much weight.)

The Qur’an singles out Jews and Christians as “People of the Book” and sets them apart from non-believers. After all, Jews and Christians, like Muslims, worshiped the transcendent God of Abraham. But the “Book” mentioned is not the Bible; it refers to a heavenly text, written by God, of which the Qur’an, according to Muslims, is the only perfect manifestation.¹¹

As in Judaism and Christianity, Abraham, Ibrahim, occupies a central place in Islam. Abraham is at the root of all three religions: just as Jews trace their lineage to Abraham and his wife, Sarah, through their son, Isaac, the Arabs trace their genealogy to Abraham and Hagar—Sarah’s Egyptian maid—through their son, Ishmael.¹² In the Qur’an, Abraham is recognized as the first Muslim because he surrendered to God rather than accept the idolatrous religion of his parents. There are more than 60 references to Abraham in the Qur’an, and he is called Hanif, a “True Monotheist,” Khalil, a “Friend of God,” and even Umma, “Muslim community,” for initially he was the entire faith community. In every Muslim prayer, Ibrahim is mentioned.¹³ Muslims believe that it was Abraham and Ishmael, Ismail, who rebuilt Islam’s holiest shrine in Mecca—the Kaaba, believed to be the oldest monotheistic temple, which some Muslim traditions trace to Adam. The cube-shaped Kaaba is made of stone and marble, and its interior contains pillars and silver and gold lamps; it is entered only twice a year for a ritual cleansing ceremony.¹⁴

Moses is also considered to be a great prophet. His confrontation with the Egyptian pharaoh, his miracles in the desert and his ascension to the mountain to receive God’s commandments are all acknowledged in the Qur’an.¹⁵

For Muslims, Jesus, Isa, is a great prophet and messenger of God—the promised Messiah who brought “the Word of God and Spirit from Him.” Jesus is considered the son of the “sinless” Virgin Mary, Maryam, who is mentioned more often in the Qur’an than in the Bible.¹⁶ Muslims believe that Jesus preached the Word of God and worked miracles; but like Jews, Muslims reject the Christian concept of Jesus as the divine son of God. Muslims consider that blasphemy, for they believe there is only one divinity, God. The crucifixion of Christ is mentioned in passing only, and the Qur’an states that Jesus did not die, but was rescued by God and taken to heaven.¹⁷ In the end, Jesus and other prophets will descend to be at the final judgment. Muslims also believe that Jesus’ true message had to have been distorted by his followers and that the Prophet Muhammad was sent to bring the definitive message of God.¹⁸

Of course, there are many important similarities and differences among the religions. To mention just a few more: Jews don’t accept the New Testament, but Muslims do. The miracles of Jesus, his virgin birth and his second coming are accepted in Islam, but not in Judaism. Both Judaism and Islam put great importance on living according to a system of law—for Jews, the law is the Halakhah; for Muslims it is the Sharia.¹⁹ In Christianity, which has the concept of original sin, humans are born as sinners; but in both Judaism and Islam, sin is not present at birth and accrues only through sinful activity. Both Judaism and Islam share similar dietary restrictions, including bans on eating pork or blood, though the Islamic rules are generally less restrictive than Judaism’s.²⁰ And, as with Christian and Jewish children, Muslim children are freely given biblical names: Solomons and Sulaimans, Sarahs and Sirahs, Josephs and Yusufs, Marys and Maryams, Jesuses and Isas, Johns and Yahyas, and Davids and Davuds, to cite a few.

The Phenomenal Spread of Islam

The early spread of Islam is one of the most dramatic chapters in all history. By 632, when Islam was only decades old and just solidifying into a religion, almost all the tribes of Arabia had converted to Islam or joined Prophet Muhammad’s confederacy. Within less than a century of Islam’s birth, the Muslim community had grown by conquest into one of the largest empires—one that lasted longer and, indeed, was bigger than the Roman Empire.^III By 712, Muslim conquests extended from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas,²¹ from the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Indus Valley and Central Asia in the east. ²² Muslims advanced into Europe until stopped in 732 by Charles Martel, king of the Franks, in the Battle of Poitiers in western France.²³

Historians point out that Islam arose at the right time and place. In the sixth and early seventh centuries, a power vacuum emerged after protracted wars between the Persian and Byzantine empires had weakened both. As Muslims conquered Palestine, Syria, Egypt and Armenia, they promoted conversion to Islam in several ways. They gave polytheists the option of conversion or death (the Qur’an: “Slay the polytheists wherever you find them. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way; God is all-forgiving, all-compassionate”).²⁴ Jews and Christians were not required to become Muslims; however, if they did not convert, they were tolerated as subjects but not given equality and were required to pay a burdensome tax, jizya, ostensibly to pay for Muslim protection. There were also voluntary conversions not only for religious reasons, but also for the practical reasons of securing social and economic advantages in an Islamic society. For many converts, Islam might have had a comforting familiarity, embracing as it did monotheism and biblical messages that Judaism and Christianity had spread for many centuries before Muhammad began preaching around 610. St. John of Damascus, who first chronicled Islam in the eighth century, regarded Islam not as a new religion, but as a branch of Christianity.²⁵

Historians emphasize that Islam also spread rapidly because of its extraordinary acceptance of diversity from the beginning—reminding us that Islam grew organically and not as an inflexible religion. In some conquered lands of the Byzantine empire, we know that the inhabitants had been persecuted, sometimes oppressed and heavily taxed by Christian rulers, and some minorities naturally welcomed the new Muslim rulers with their relatively tolerant religious policies. Islam also appeared to be far more accommodating than Christianity to other cultures—so accommodating, in fact, that apart from the Five Pillars, the practice of Islam varied enormously from place to place and often included practices and beliefs that were not consistent with the Qur’an.^IV The rich legacy of Islamic civilizations, historians argue, is due in part to its exceptional absorptive quality and relative tolerance for different cultures and ethnic traditions of civilizations from southern Europe to Central Asia.

Early Divisions in Islam

Unlike Christians, who consider the Church to be the mystical body of Christ, Islam did not sustain a centralized organization. Instead, Prophet Muhammad’s khulafah, Caliphs or successors, provided leadership, but succession disputes frequently arose and divided—and redivided—the faithful. Religious authority became increasingly dispersed among the ulama, scholars and clerics, in numerous Islamic denominations spread throughout Muslim realms.

The debate over succession began immediately after Prophet Muhammad’s death, for he had left no indisputable instructions about the rules of succession or whether spiritual leaders were political leaders as well. Since Muhammad did not have a son, one faction wanted the Caliph to be elected from the ranks of respected leaders in the umma, the Muslim community. A rival group contended that the leadership should be confined to the Prophet’s immediate family and descendants. His closest surviving male relative was Ali ibn Abi Talib, who was both a cousin and the husband of his daughter, Fatima, as well as the father of two of Muhammad’s grandchildren, Hasan and Husayn.²⁶

We know from history that, in this instance, election won out over heredity. But before the century was over, much Muslim blood was to be spilled in civil wars tied to the widening rifts over succession and legitimacy. Muhammad’s first successor was Abu Bakr, a compromise candidate because he was an honored leader as well as one of Muhammad’s fathers-in-law. Abu Bakr was the first of the four “Rightly Guided Caliphs,” as the first leaders are known. All four had been close companions of the Prophet and were considered authoritative sources of information about the Prophet’s life and teachings.²⁷ Abu Bakr died a natural death, but the next three Rightly Guided Caliphs were all assassinated: Umar ibn al-Khattab in 644; Uthman ibn Affan in 656; and Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad’s son-in-law, in 661. These assassinations sparked violent conflicts or outright wars.

Indeed, the theological and political consequences of these struggles over succession were far-reaching. After Ali’s assassination, Shiat Ali, the Party of Ali, created its own Shii branch of Islam. Initially, the break was over the succession dispute, with the Shii favoring a succession based on blood ties to the Prophet. Muslims who favored an elective system came to be known as Sunni, taking their name from sunna, which in this context refers to the customs, actions and sayings attributed to the Prophet and the first four Caliphs.²⁸ (Otherwise, sunna refers only to the Prophet’s sayings and deeds.)²⁹ Early divisions in Islam ultimately resulted in scores of Muslim denominations.³⁰

But calling this break a dispute over succession does not nearly tell the whole story. In his recent book, Khalid Durán notes, “The conflict between Sunnism and Shi‘ism resembles that between Judaism and Christianity. Just as Christians have held Jews responsible for the killing of Christ, Shi‘is hold Sunnis responsible for the killing of ‘Alî and his sons, Hasan and [Husayn].” ‘Âshûrâ’, for example, is a religious holiday for both Shii and Sunni, but while the Shii mourn the anniversary of Husayn’s assassination, the Sunni have joyful celebrations commemorating God’s mercy in delivering the Israelites from Egyptian bondage—Passover in Judaism.³¹

Islam also developed a mystical component, called Sufism, that drew followers—as well as fierce and sometimes violent adversaries—from both Shii and Sunni Muslims. Sufism is named after the coarse shirts of wool, souf, worn by early ascetics who were reformers and, according to some mainstream Muslims, heretics.³²

Even a thumbnail sketch of each of the three main Muslim denominations conveys a sense of Islam’s complexity as a religion:

Sunni Muslims

The Sunni represent the overwhelming majority of Muslims, but Sunni doctrine has long been a source of dispute. In the eighth and ninth centuries, there was a major theological conflict among the Sunni that has echoed throughout Islamic history. On one side, some schools of theology were led by Mu‘tazilite scholars in Basra and Baghdad. They used rational proofs for God and the universe, as they sought to harmonize reason with Muslim scriptures, proclaiming—blasphemously, to some—that the Qur’an was man-made and was not an eternal truth revealed by God.^V The Mu‘tazilite scholars called for a rational theology, arguing that God has a rational nature and that moral laws and free will were part of the unchangeable essence of reason. The movement was the result of the encounter of Islam with earlier civilizations—Persian and Greco-Roman—and especially with the traditions of Greek philosophy.

A few early Caliphs tried to enforce this rational approach as the exclusive interpretation of Islam. Had they been successful, they would also have solidified their authority not only as political leaders, but also as the final arbiters of religious law. But in 848, after several decades of Mu‘tazilism being the Caliphate’s official doctrine, Caliph al-Mutawakkil succumbed to widespread opposition from the ulama, the religious establishment. As the Caliphate saw its religious authority chipped away, the Caliphs’ claim to rule as successors of the Prophet came under increasing attack from the ulama. The resulting loss of a central religious authority meant that, for Sunni Muslims, there would be many interpreters within the ulama at many theological centers in many regions.

Shii Muslims

Shii believe that Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law, was divinely inspired and infallible in his interpretations of the Qur’an and the Prophet’s teachings and that only his descendants possessed the sacred blood ties and religious knowledge to qualify as Imams, the Shii’s exemplary leaders.

Hence, according to Shii theology, called Imami, the line of succession passed through Ali and Fatima; and the Imam could be any male descendant of their sons, Hasan and Husayn. Difficulties arose after Ali and Fatima’s elder son, Hasan, died in 669, and their second son, Husayn, along with relatives and friends, was assassinated in 680 in the Battle of Karbala, after challenging the authority of Caliph Yazid ibn Muawiyyah to rule and asserting his right to the Prophet’s succession. Ali’s third son (with another wife), Hanafiyya, died in 700. Shii sects developed around each son, the Hanafids, the Husaynids and the Hasanids. Other denominations also emerged around other branches of the Prophet’s clan.

Succession disputes were intensified when there was more than one male descendant; in one instance, Muhammad al-Baqir, the fifth Imam, denied his brother’s claim to be Imam by asserting that he, like prior Imams, had a mystical ability to interpret the Qur’an and had also been anointed by his father. His brother, Zayd ibn Ali, challenged that view and developed his own following.³³ The Zaydis are one of three major Shii sects:

The Zaydis. They believed that the Imam could be any male descendant of Ali and Fatima’s sons, Hasan and Husayn. The Imam was also expected to be a learned man, namely an expert in Islamic law, as well as an able warrior. But unlike some other sects, they did not believe the Imam was infallible. More than one Imam can be present, in different territories, and an Imam can be deposed if deemed sinful. During times when there was no Imam—as is the case now in Yemen, where most Zaydis live—spiritual leadership was vested in Zaydi scholars until a new Imam arrived.

The Ismailis. In the eighth century, there was a Shii conflict over which son of Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq should succeed him: Ismail ibn Ja‘far or his younger brother, Musa al-Kazim. Each brother developed his own following. Ismail’s followers—Ismailis—revere him as the last of Ali and Fatima’s descendants. The Ismailis, unlike the Zaydis, consider the Imam infallible. Another major succession dispute, also between two brothers, arose in the 11th century and split the Ismailis into two major denominations—one led today by the Aga Khan and another denomination known as the Buhura Ismailis.³⁴ Many smaller Ismaili sects appeared as well.^VI

The Twelvers. While the Ismailis followed Ismail ibn Ja‘far and his descendants, the Twelver Shii followed the lineage of his brother, Musa al-Kazim. The Twelver Shii had many conflicts with Sunni Muslims, who kept several of the Twelver Imams under house arrest. Many Imams were apparently poisoned as well, including the 11th Imam. The 12th Imam, a young boy, disappeared in 874. Followers of the 12th Imam—hence, Twelvers—believe that God rescued him, that he was “occluded,” taken up, and that he will return as a messiah to restore peace and justice in the world. Until he returns, political and religious authority are exercised, fallibly, by the clergy; in order of rising rank, they include mujtahids, hujjatu-l-islam, ayatullah, ayatullah ‘uzma and, the highest rank, marja‘-e-taqlîd, the one who sets the norms to be followed. Ayatullah, meaning “sign of God,” is used only among Shii in Iran; it first appeared in the 18th century, invented by a king who, like monarchs everywhere then, coined and sold titles, including ayatullah.³⁵ (Ayatullah ‘Uzma Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the 1979 revolution in Iran, was often called “Imam.” This was an innovation because, unlike in Sunni Islam, in Twelver Shii Islam the term Imam refers only to the twelve Imams. Ayatullah Khomeini stressed the point that he was imam only in the sense of prayer leader and spiritual guide and nothing more.)³⁶

The Shii, and especially the Twelvers, have developed a vast and complex religious hierarchy that may be comparable, in some ways, to the structure of Christian churches. In this regard, the Shii are also very different from the Sunni, who, somewhat inconsistently, have many religious leaders but no religious hierarchy of such complexity; they consider Islam to be a decentralized religion.³⁷ Indeed, it is this decentralization that gives rise to persistent questions about who has authority to speak for Islam.

Twelvers believed that religious principles could be found through use of God-given reason, though these principles could not contradict the Qur’an or sayings of the Prophet or the twelve Imams—for these sacred texts were believed to contain all the rules of reason. The Twelver legal school was developed by Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq, the sixth Imam—hence the name Ja‘fari for the law school. The Ja‘fari accorded equal weight to the behavior and sayings of the infallible Imams and to those of the Prophet. In addition, other ulama advocated varying levels of independent reason as acceptable in applying the hadith and Qur’an to issues of the day. On one side, the Usulis felt free to use analogies and rationality in interpreting the sacred texts; at the other end of the spectrum, the Akhbaris insisted on a strict, literal reading. The Twelver denomination has about 140 million members in more than a dozen nations today. Twelver Shiism became the official religion of Iranians during the Safavid empire in the early 16th century. Currently, there are also Twelvers in Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other oil-rich countries.³⁸

Sufi Muslims

Within its many denominations, Sufism developed in the 10th century as an early effort to reform Islam, in part by emphasizing spiritual rewards in the afterlife rather than material gains in this life, and in part by challenging literal, legalistic approaches to Islam and the Qur’an. Sufis seek to commune directly with God through meditation, ritual chanting and even dance (the Mevlavi Sufis were famously known as the whirling dervishes). Some Sufis even worshiped Jesus and others worshiped Muhammad—practices considered polytheistic and blasphemous to mainstream Muslims, who sometimes persecuted the Sufis.³⁹ Yet Sufis often served as Islam’s most energetic missionaries in addition to their many contributions to Muslim literature, especially love poetry, in Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Urdu.⁴⁰ Khalid Durán calls Sufism Islam’s “counterculture.”⁴¹

This cursory description of Islam’s denominations illustrates the wide and deep theological divisions within what might appear from the outside as a monolithic religion. These divisions, in turn, led to extremely complex and varied theological and political differences even within mainstream Sunni Islam.

Stopping New Efforts to Interpret the Qur’an and Hadith

The efforts of the ulama to formalize Islamic doctrine for mainstream Sunni Muslims led to the emergence of four prominent schools of Islamic law in the eighth and ninth centuries. The four Sunni schools made a religious science out of hadith by checking the authenticity of each link in the chain of sources of oral history and by resolving discrepancies in reports on the Prophet’s words and deeds.^VII The schools, still influential today, are the Hanafi (named after Abu Hanifah, who was born in Central Asia), which is now followed in parts of South Asia, Turkey, the Russian Federation with the exception of the North Caucasus, southeastern Europe, China, Central and West Asia and parts of the Middle East; Maliki (named after Malik ibn Anas), which is followed in North and West Africa and in some southern parts of the Middle East; Shafi (named after Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi), which is followed in the coastal areas of South Asia, East Africa, East Asia, Egypt and some parts of the Middle East; and Hanbali (named after Ahmad ibn Hanbal), which is followed mostly in Saudi Arabia.

The schools varied in their amount of leeway in interpreting Sharia, Islamic law, and whether those interpretations could be made by individual scholars or had to be endorsed by a consensus of scholars.⁴² The Malikis and the Hanbalis read the scripture and hadith quite literally, scorning the use of human reason as it was employed by the other two, more interpretative schools. The Hanafis used analogy and reason, especially in untangling conflicting statements attributed to the Prophet. The Shafis sought to concentrate on the most authentic oral reports and looked to find a consensus among scholars on interpretive rulings.⁴³ The issue was—and still is—extremely important, because such interpretations became part of the Sharia, which Muslims consider to be the divinely revealed law of Islam.

In the 10th century, orthodox Sunni ulama argued that there had been enough of this independent reasoning and warned that it could not continue without distorting Islam. They maintained that the Sharia was completely and finally assembled within three centuries of Muhammad’s death and it was time to “close the gates of ijtihad,” or rational interpretation. This argument gained ground and was finally formalized in the 14th century when Sunni ulama agreed that contemporary questions could be answered only by a literal reading of the Sharia and not by new interpretation.⁴⁴

But many Muslim reformers, from the 11th century on, objected to such a “mechanistic,” literal approach to scripture and argued that the schools of law were too rigid in defining Sharia. Much debate has centered around the hadith, with reformers questioning the vast number of oral histories, the often conflicting interpretations of the hadith and the ulama’s ability to verify the Prophet’s sayings as they were passed down through the ages by his friends, family and community members. Reformers in the past, and especially in the 19th century, attempted to portray the hadith as parables, not to be construed as religious doctrine or law—and certainly not to be used to diminish the exercise of God-given reason in addressing contemporary challenges. Different approaches to Sharia not only divided Sunni, but also sharpened the divisions and struggles between Sunni and Shii.^VIII That is because the Sunni believe the Sharia is complete, while the Shii consider it to be evolving jurisprudence.⁴⁵

Muslim Empires and the Golden Age of Islam

The early formative period of the Muslim empire was followed by the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258), named after Caliph Abu al-Abbas al-Saffah,⁴⁶ who claimed descent from an uncle of Muhammad’s.⁴⁷ He transferred the seat of power from Damascus to Baghdad and inaugurated what is known as the Golden Age of Islamic civilization. This Golden Age is no mere footnote in Islamic history, for, arguably, “Islamic” civilization was essentially human civilization—one that, like prior Greek and Roman civilizations, embraced and thrived on all human achievement. As such, we are just beginning to recognize the enormous influence that Islam’s Golden Age had on Western Christendom, as W. Montgomery Watt reminds us:

It is clear that the influence of Islam on Western Christendom is greater than is usually realized. Not only did Islam share with Western Europe many material products and technological discoveries; not only did it stimulate Europe intellectually in the fields of science and philosophy; but it provoked Europe into forming a new image of itself. Because Europe was reacting against Islam, it belittled the influence [of Muslim scholarship].... So today, an important task for our Western Europeans, as we move into the era of the one world, is to correct this false emphasis and to acknowledge fully our debt to the Arab and Islamic world.⁴⁸

During those five “golden” centuries, Muslim realms became the world’s unrivaled intellectual centers of science, medicine, philosophy and education. The Abbasids championed the role of knowledge and are renowned for such enlightened achievements as creating a “House of Wisdom” in Baghdad, the city they built on the banks of the Tigris River. At this Abbasid institute, Muslim and non-Muslim scholars⁴⁹—including Nestorian Christians and star-worshiping Sabians—sought to translate all the world’s knowledge into Arabic. Classic works by Aristotle, Archimedes, Euclid, Hypocrites, Plutarch, Ptolemy and others were translated. Christian monks translated the Bible into Arabic, and many Jewish philosophers wrote in Arabic.

Without these Arabic translations, it is interesting to note, many classic works of antiquity would have been lost. Furthermore, from the 11th to the 13th centuries, many Arabic translations of classic works were, in turn, translated into Turkish, Persian, Hebrew and Latin. The 13th-century Catholic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, apparently made his famous integration of faith and reason after reading Aristotle’s philosophy in a translation by Abbasid scholars, including Abu Ali ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna.⁵⁰ Avicenna was an 11th-century philosopher and physician who wrote an encyclopedia of philosophy and some 200 influential treatises on medicine, including one on ethics, which were widely read in Europe. Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd, better known in the West as Averroës, was a preeminent authority on Aristotle as well as a judge and a physician. This 12th-century philosopher is also known for having synthesized Greek and Arabic philosophies. Meanwhile, al-Farabi tried to show that the ideal political system envisaged in Plato’s utopia and in the divine law of Islam were one and the same.

Not merely translators, the Abbasids collected, synthesized and advanced knowledge, building their own civilization from intellectual gifts from many cultures, including the Chinese, Indian, Iranian, Egyptian, North African, Greek, Spanish, Sicilian and Byzantine. This Islamic period was indeed a cauldron of cultures, religions, learning and knowledge—one that created great civilizations and influenced others from Africa to China. This Golden Age has been hailed for its open embrace of a universal science, no matter the source—believing that there was not a “Christian science,” “Jewish science,” “Muslim science,” “Zoroastrian science” or “Hindu science.” There was just one science for the Abbasids, who were apparently influenced by numerous Qur’anic references to learning about the wonders of the universe as a way to honor God. Thus, reason and faith, both being God-given, were combined, mutually inclusive and supportive. Islam was anything but isolationist, and Abbasids connected to all cultural traditions, believing as they did that learning was universal, and not confined to their own domain. Non-Muslims—as well as today’s doctrinaire Muslims who preach against “Western” values and “Western” science—may be shocked by the Abbasids’ receptiveness to science and philosophies that challenged orthodoxy.

According to Ismail Serageldin, “The search for Knowledge (‘Ilm) and Truth (Haq) are an integral and undeniable part of the Muslim tradition. The pursuit of knowledge is the single most striking feature in a system of great revelation such as Islam. The word ‘Ilm (knowledge) and its derivatives occur 880 times in the [Qur’an]. But knowledge is not perceived as neutral. It is the basis for better appreciating truth (Haq), which is revealed but which can be ‘seen’ by the knowledgeable in the world around them. Indeed, believers are enjoined to look around and to learn the truth. The Prophet exhorted his followers to seek knowledge as far as China, then considered to be the end of the earth. Scientists are held in high esteem: the Prophet said that the ink of scientists is equal to the blood of martyrs.”⁵¹

The Abbasids were not alone in the Islamic pursuit of knowledge. Rival Muslim dynasties known as Fatimids in Egypt and Umayyads in al-Andalus, or Islamic Spain, were also intellectual and cultural centers during parts of this period.⁵² Al-Andalus, captured from its Gothic rulers, became part of the Islamic empire in 714 and rivaled Baghdad and Cairo in scholarship. Córdoba, Andalus’s capital, is believed to have had 70 libraries, including one in the Alcázar with 400,000 volumes. Religious freedom, although limited, helped attract Jewish and Christian intellectuals and, interestingly, spawned the greatest period of creativity in philosophy during the Middle Ages as 11th- and 12th-century networks of Muslim, Jewish and Christian philosophers interacted.⁵³ Andalus was a great literary center, and its poetry about courtly, chaste and chivalrous relationships has even been credited with helping shape European ideas about romantic love.⁵⁴

Together, Abbasid, Fatimid and Andalusi scholars opened up new fields of study and significantly advanced the knowledge of astronomy, architecture, art, botany, ethics, geography, history, literature, mathematics, music, mechanics, medicine, mineralogy, philosophy, physics and even veterinary medicine and zoology. During the Abbasid period, mathematicians pioneered integral calculus and spherical trigonometry, promoted the use of the “Arabic numerals” 0 through 9, and gave the world al-jabr, our algebra. In science, the Abbasids revised Ptolemaic astronomy, named stars, developed al-kemia, our chemistry, and demonstrated that science was, well, a science. Some may also thank, or damn, Abbasids for al-kuhl, our alcohol, which they learned to distill but were subsequently forbidden to drink.

Education was a high priority in Muslim empires during this period. By the 10th century, there were thousands of schools at mosques, places for kneeling, including 300 in Baghdad alone. A number of libraries gathered manuscripts from around the world, and schools that would become universities were established. Under the Fatimids, a Cairo mosque that opened for prayers in 972 eventually grew into the University of Al-Azhar, the oldest university in the Mediterranean.⁵⁵

The Abbasids’ great learning centers were not confined to Medina, Basra, Kufa and Damascus—and while Baghdad remained the cultural capital of Islamic realms from the 11th century to the middle of the 13th century, we see the proliferation of cultural and intellectual centers in such cities as Jerusalem, Cairo, Kairouan, Fez, Córdoba, Toledo and Seville—as well as in many cities of Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia, such as Nishapur, Merv, Bukhara, Samarkand, Balkh, Herat, Ghazna, Rayy, Shiraz, Hamadan and Isfahan. In other words, Islam never organized itself for action as a civilization except, perhaps, in its formative period.

Fragmentation of Political Power

But even in Islam’s Golden Age, we witness fragmentation of political power. For there was not one, but three Caliphates—Abbasids, Fatimids and Umayyads in Spain—that ruled Muslim societies.