Scholars' Corner
God, Man and History:
An Islamic Perspectiveby Professor Sulayman S. Nyang
Howard UniversityA paper presented at Chizuk Amuno Congregation, Baltimore, Maryland, on November 27, 2001, at the invi-tation of the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies.
Dr. Leighton, distinguished religious leaders of the Bal-timore community and beyond, members of the host synagogue, ladies and gentlemen. It is with great pleasure that I come to this religious center, in the holy month of Ramadan, to deliver an address that I hope would constitute one significant brick on the wall of interfaith relations in our region and beyond. I appreciate the moral courage and the farsightedness of the leaders of the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies to extend this invitation to a Muslim scholar and community activ-ist at a critical time in our national history.
The tragedy of September 11 has shaken all of us to our moral foundations. Since then all of us in our different ways have taken time to revisit our scriptures and reflect on how the evil in the human being can bring death and destruction upon fellow human beings. From our three scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam we trace the earliest human manifestation of fratricide in the Cain and Abel story. This biblical narrative could serve as an instructive lesson to human beings all over the world. The ancient Roman adage, homo lupus homini ("man is a wolf to man"), captures the insight conveyed by this biblical story. In our own day the destruction of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon again reminded us that the animality of Man has from time to time made life nasty, brutish and short.
The death and destruction caused by the perpetrators of these misdeeds have frightened all of us, and the sense of community has been disturbed because fear and revenge have now become the two psychological forces controlling the mental state of many if not most of us. In such a climate many would be intimidated to undertake dialogue and to see the common threads that unite us not only within the borders of the United States of America, but at all times and in all places till the end of life in the universe as we know it. Under these trying conditions, as historians do note from time to time, it is men and women of vision and courage who help the weaker spirits to advance the frontiers of moral and material development of humankind. It is against this background and in the full spirit of interfaith dialogue, something I have committed my life to over the last twenty years, that I come to you to present my intellectual and personal understanding of the Islamic perspective on what God requires of us, and I title it here "God, Man and History."
When we look at the Quran and the hadithic literature (for those of you who do understand Islam, the hadithic literature is the collection of statements and deeds at-tributed to the Prophet Muhammad, and it is the second important source for Muslims apart from the Quran) on the nature of Allah and the relationship between Himself and His creation, we find that Allah, God, is seen as the Supreme Being that created everything in the universe. Muslims are told that, though He has opened channels of communication with His human creation through proph-ecy, human beings cannot fathom His nature. Humans, according to the Quran, are created together with the Jinns for the sole purpose of worshiping Him. (In Muslim cosmology there are three categories of being: angels, jinns [demons], and humans.) This Divine Intention to create humans is dramatically presented in the second chapter of the Holy Quran. In that narrative the Creator summoned His angels and Ibliss, the chief of the Jinns, to share with them the news of His latest creation. When Allah told them that He planned to create the human being, the assembly of Divine courtiers warned Him about the danger of creating a being that would shed blood. Allah, according to the Quran, replied, "I know what you do not know." This Divine statement, in my view, is the Great Summary of Human History, for it affirms the Divine Knowledge of and Trust in the moral amelioration of humankind.
The Holy Quran described the human saga in history and the struggle between the forces of evil and good since the days of Adam and Eve. Many themes have emerged from the study and understanding of the Holy Quran. Time and space do not allow me to go into detail here. However, for the purpose of our discussion here, I will identify a few for elaboration. First, the Quran and the hadithic literature teach Muslims that this life is real, but compared to the next life (al-akhira) it pales into insig-nificance. This teaching of Islam makes it categorically clear to all Muslims that the life of this world is real and significant, but it is only a stepping stone to a better, more real and lasting one in Heaven. On this point the Muslims share a common ground with almost all Chris-tians and Jews who believe in a life beyond the grave.
To facilitate the task of knowing His Commandments, according to the Holy Quran, Allah dispatched 124,000 prophets to humankind over the centuries. The first Prophet was Adam, according to Islam, and the last of this long line of prophets was the Holy Prophet Muham-mad. In between the first and the last, you have Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Moses, Solomon, David and Jesus. You can see that the Islamic list of prophets includes persons, some of whom are on the Jewish and Christian lists as prophets, but some others are not. For example, Solomon and David are prophets to Muslims but not to Jews and Christians.
According to Islamic teachings, each of these prophets came purposely to guide humankind along the right path (al-sirat al-mustahim). Being the last of this chain of prophets, the Holy Prophet Muhammad brought the final revelation. The five pillars of Islam are the result of this final message to humankind. The Divine injunction to humankind to encourage the doing of good and the avoidance of evil is to be embodied in the daily acts of prayer and worship. Since human beings are created in the best mould but are capable of becoming the lowest of the low, they have to show their faith in Allah by engaging in acts of worship. Hence the five daily prayers of Islam. Muslims are expected to pray before dawn, in the afternoon when the sun is at its zenith, later in the afternoon, at sunset and later in the night. [Prayer is the second pillar of Islam. The first pillar is the repetition of the Creed: La ilaha illa Allah; Muhammad rasul Allah("There is no god but Allah; and Muhammad is the prophet of Allah").]
The third pillar of Islam is zakat (obligatory charity). This is expected of all believers who are earning a living or have inherited wealth that is subject to this measure. According to the Quran and the hadithic literature, the believers are expected to pay 2.5% to 5% of their total income every year. Besides this obligatory charity, the believers are also expected to give sadakah (optional charity) to the poor, beggarly, homeless and weaker members of society. There are eight categories of bene-ficiaries of the obligatory charity: the poor, the orphans, the widows, the travellers in need, the promoters of the faith, those to be ransomed in war, and the collectors of the zakat themselves.
The fourth pillar is the act of fasting during Ramadan. Muslims are expected to fast for twenty-nine or thirty days, depending on the lunar calendar. The end of the fasting month is marked by celebrations on this day called Idel al-Fitr. The month of Ramadan is charac-terized by greater Muslim sensitivity to the teachings of their faith and the appreciation of the fact that the Holy Quran itself came down to the Prophet Muhammad dur-ing this month. The significance of this month lies not only in the need for greater discipline among Muslims but also in the promise given to Muslims by the Creator that one of the days in the last ten days of the fasting period is the Night of Power (Laylatul Qadr). According to the Quran, this night is better than one thousand months. One can now imagine how and why Muslims would cele-brate this month with great discipline and expectation.
The fifth and last pillar of Islam is the pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca. During this period the Muslim pilgrims converge in Mecca to perform a series of rites and prayers that reenact aspects of the Prophetic and Abrahamic stories as presented in both the Quran and the scriptures of the Jews and Christians. Of course, there are differences in the narratives about Abraham and Ishmael. For Muslims it was Ishmael, not Isaac, who was offered for sacrifice.
The Kaaba becomes a pivotal point during the hajj. Known to Muslims as a place of worship dating back to both Adam and Abraham, this house of worship serves as a spiritual magnet that attracts the hearts and minds of millions of Muslims around the world. Being the focal point (Qiblah: direction of worship) during the five daily prayers, and being the place all able-bodied and financially-solvent Muslims are required to visit at least once in their lifetime, the Kaaba has been the subject of numerous poems and essays among Muslims around the world. It is one of the three holiest religious sites for Muslims. The other two are in Medina, the city of refuge for the Holy Prophet and his Companions, and in Jeru-salem, where the Holy Prophet took off on his celestial journey to Heaven (miraj). Jerusalem was the first focal point of worship for the Muslims during the days in Mecca and in their early days in Medina before Allah's revelation ordered them to shift their direction to Mecca.
After having given this brief summary on the nature of the relationship between God and Man in Islam, let me now tell you about the historical manifestation of Islam since the days of the Holy Prophet. Like all human insti-tutions, beginning with the family and ending with the most successful human civilizations in history, Islam too had its diversity and conflicts over time. Soon after the death of the Prophet, there were challenges to the existing order from two kinds of groups. There were those who wished to revert to the old order of jahilliya (days of ignorance), and others who wished to satisfy personal and group ambitions by negating the universal-izing message of Islam. All of a sudden certain individuals showed up to proclaim themselves prophets in the manner of the Prophet Muhammad. This led to the first battles and wars in Islam. They are known to Muslim historians as the "Riddah Wars." This early conflict between the true followers of the teachings of the Holy Prophet and those who had other ambitions was just the beginning of what Muslim writers of the time would call heresy.
The most significant development that would later define the contours of Muslim thought and practice was the political conflict between the fourth Caliph, Ali Ibn Abu Talib, and Muawiyya, a nephew of the predecessor of Ali and the governor of Syria at the time of the crisis. What is remarkable about this conflict was that it led to the emergence of two currents of thought in Islamic history. The first, the al-Khawarij (the Kharijites), whose legacy is now relevant in light of September 11, 2001, and the Shia, a group whose legacy is now reverberating in the firmaments of our present political debates about Iran and Islamic radicalism. For our purpose here I would like to say that the Kharijites, who are no longer a force in Islamic thought and practice, although aspects of their thought may still exercise some influence among certain religio-political elements in the Muslim World today [i.e., Osama bin Laden], [represented] the first theological break from mainstream Islam. Two things can be said about them. The first deals with their puritanism and egalitarianism, and the second relates to their willing-ness to use violent means to advance their theological objectives. Political terrorism in the name of sectarianism in Islamic history dates back to the Kharijites.
The other instance in history when theological differ-ences took the form of extreme political violence and terrorism was when Hassan Ibn Sabah and his followers unleashed a campaign of terror against the top leaders of the Muslim World of their time. Nicknamed the "Old Man of the Mountain," this mysterious figure indoc-trinated his followers and gave them hashish (opium) before they set out to kill their targets. Muslim historians have documented the misdeeds of this group, and we now know that our English word "assassination" came from the Arabic word for hashish. Their violence was directed at their Muslim enemies and not against non-Muslims. This would differentiate them from the modern-day Islamic groups whose opposition to the ruling orders of the Muslim World is now broadened to embrace West-ern governments and peoples.
One can argue that the expansion of political violence by these latter-day Muslim groups to include non-Muslims is not only unprecedented and misguided, but it is also largely the result of the European colonial experience in the Muslim World, and of the realities of globalization made possible by the science and technology of our age. That is why I have described elsewhere the terroristic acts at the Twin Towers and the Pentagon as "high-tech bestiality." But like the Kharijites, whose grievances lay at the doorstep of the Caliph Ali because of his willingness to negotiate a peaceful resolution of the conflict between himself and his challenger Muawiyya, the latter-day Kharijites like Osama bin Laden see the United States of America as the protector of both the state of Israel and the authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. Manipulating Islamic texts to advance their cause, they too, like their kharijite ancestors, feel that political violence could serve their purposes. Historical evidence, however, has shown this assumption to be incorrect. Neither religious sectarianism nor secular ideological fractionalism have ever changed the course of human history. This is true of Islamic history as well as others.
In describing the evolution of Islamic thought and prac-tice, one should note that the Muslims have generally been divided not only politically but also jurisprudentially. The political extremists of the early post-Prophetic days in Islamic history have already been identified. Let us now discuss briefly and in passing the other forms of Islamic thought and practice that would continue to af-fect the course of Islamic history.
The expansion of Islam into areas that were heretofore the intellectual homes of Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist and Hindu thought brought to the surface of Muslim discourse many ideas and issues that occupied the intellects of these major currents of human thought. By seizing control of the remnants of the Sassanid and Byzantine empires in the Mediterranean world, the Mus-lims found themselves inheritors of all the intellectual and cultural forms of these past civilizations. Like modern-day American civilization, the emerging Islamic civilization of that time found itself challenged by many of the ideas of the ancient Græco-Roman and Hebraic worlds. Being in a dominant position and determined to assert their new role in the regions under their rule, these early Muslims started to consume much of the materials available to them. Though the development of Islamic thought was carefully protected from over-exposure to the ideas of the unbelievers such as the Greeks and the Persians, Muslim thinkers appropriated some of their philosophical concepts, logical methods and administrative strategies and techniques in fashion-ing their own systems of thought and practice. Intellectual historians of the Muslim World and beyond may debate among themselves as to who influenced whom in the early history of Islam, but the fact still remains that Muslims benefitted from the intellectual tools available to preceding civilizations and cultures. The different sects that arose in the first three cen-turies of Islam are the creatures of the interaction between their Islamic cultures and the neighboring Jew-ish, Christian and other cultures.
The mystical groups known as Sufis are a good example of this phenomenon. Though most Sufis would say that their history is totally Islamic and that their roots can be traced back to the Holy Prophet and the Holy Quran, there is evidence that Jewish and Christian mystical sys-tems were not unknown to them. What I am saying here is that cultural borrowing without the sacrifice of non-negotiable principles has been the way of history since the beginning of time. In the cultural landscape of our present-day America, the diversity of Islam is under-scored by the growing presence of all the known Sufi orders from the Muslim World. Not only do we see this Sufi diversity in our midst, but we have also witnessed the emergence of another phenomenon that is peculiarly American. These are Sufi groups I have called elsewhere the "Popcorn Sufis." What differentiates this group of self-proclaimed Muslims of the mystical bent is their lack of orthodox practices and their gravitation towards a New Age approach to Islamic thought and practice. The existence of such groups is largely the result of the First Amendment and the legal and social protections it allows for religious and ideological variations.
Besides the development of Islamic mysticism and the diversity it has brought within the Muslim fold, there is also the diversity that resulted from the development of Islamic law and jurisprudence. Although contemporary Muslims usually identify five legal schools of thought when they speak about the Shariah, the fact remains that the number was much larger. The number fell to five (four Sunni and one Shia) because of intellectual changes and adjustments among the competing schools of thought. The four Sunni legal schools are the Malikis, the Hanafiis, the Shafaiis and the Hambalis. The Shia school of jurisprudence is named after Imam Jafar (hence the appellation "Jafaris"). Within these legal schools of thought there are several subgroups, and their followers are now scattered around the planet. Their distribution within the United States and in other parts of the world is largely the result of migration and successful adoption by the governing powers of the day.
Like Jews and Christians, Muslims also debated among themselves the nature of God and the relationship be-tween Man and the Creator. Historically, the two major groups in Islam that have defined their relationship with God differently were the Sufis and their more orthodox antagonists. For the orthodox Muslims, human beings act on the Divine Command to worship Him when they follow meticulously the example of the Holy Prophet in terms of the five pillars and in the development of their spiritual and moral resources through the submis-sion of their nafs (the appetitive self) to the doing of good and the avoidance of evil. This is what classical historians call the Greater jihad, which the hadithic literature from the Holy Prophet talks about in detail.
According to the Quran, Man is created out of the best mould, but he can also fall to the lowest of the low. In terms of the Islamic conception of spiritual journey, Man potentially can travel from the lowest spiritual depth to the highest attainable level. The first stage is when he has no conscience (Nafsul Amarabisu), and the highest state is when the human being is pleased with God and God is pleased with him. That's the highest level that the human being can aspire to. At that level, what you think, what you say, and what you do are the same. You can put that in a quadratic equation -- x = y = z -- and they are all equal: what you say is what you do, and what you do is what you think. This, I would sug-gest, is very close to the trinitarian concept, one-in-three and three-in-one, when the human being finds that his thought and his word and his deed are the same.
In concluding, what I would like to say is that the acts of September 11 should be seen as the acts of modern-day Kharijites. The Kharijites vented their frustration and their grievances on fellow Muslims. If you look at the historical record, that becomes very evident. The assas-sins also directed their anger at fellow Muslims. They killed Muslim leaders. But then, of course, in Islamic history and in Islamic civilization, the Muslim people have methods of dealing with them: [the Kharijites] were uprooted ruthlessly by the leaders of the time in most cases. They had to go after these people and eliminate them for good. And, of course, the same thing happened to the assassins. When they started assassinating top leaders of the Islamic empire, the Islamic leadership went after them and eliminated them. In modern times, when they direct their anger and their violence at other human beings who are not in their own community, they have to be punished by the international community.
So I think what has to be categorically said to the people here is the fact that the kind of Islam that is being projected by these elements does not correspond with the Islam that is practiced by the majority of Muslims, whether they are Sufis, who are mystical, or whether they are legalistic, orthodox Muslims. And, of course, under these two umbrellas you have so many diversities among Muslims. I wanted to communicate this point, and I hope that many of you who have encoun-tered Muslims will now begin to realize that those people who perpetrated terror at the Twin Towers and the Pen-tagon certainly do not represent the best of Islam.
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