Faith in the future:

Islam after the Enlightenment

First Annual Altaf Gauhar Memorial Lecture
Islamabad, 23 December 2002
Abdal-Hakim Murad, December 2002

Bismillahir-Rahmanir-Rahim
Your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, may I express my warm gratitude to you all for
paying me the compliment of attending today? It is particularly gratifying to me to attend an
event in this country, the only state established in recent history specifically as a homeland
for Muslims. It is also a privilege to be associated with the name of the late and revered Altaf
Gauhar, whose translations from the Quran certainly formed, back in the late 1970s, part of
my own personal journey towards Islam
I want to talk about religion - our religion - and address the question of what exactly is going
on when we speak about the prospects of a mutually helpful engagement between Islam and
Western modernity. I propose to tackle this rather large question by invoking what I take to be
the underlying issue in all religious talk, which is its ability both to propose and to resolve
paradoxes.
We might begin by saying that theology is the most ambitious and fruitful of disciplines
because it is all about the successful squaring of circles. Most obviously, it seeks to capture,
in the limited net of human language, something of the mystery of an infinite God. Most
taxingly, it seeks to demonstrate that an omnipotent God is also absolutely just, and that an
apparently infinite reward or chastisement can attend upon finite human behaviour. Most
scandalously, it holds that we are more than natural philosophy can describe or know, and that
we can achieve states of being in what we call the soul that are as movingly palpable as they
are inexplicable. The Spirit, as the scriptures tell us, is of the command of our Lord, and of
knowledge you have been given but little. (17:85)
So we have a list of imponderables. But to this list the specifically Islamic form of
monotheism adds several additional items. The first of these items is what we call
universalism, that is to say, that Islam does not limit itself to the upliftment of any given
section of humanity, but rather announces a desire to transform the entire human family. This
is, if you like, its Ishmaelite uniqueness: the religions that spring from Isaac (a.s.), are, in our
understanding, an extension of Hebrew and Occidental particularity, while Islam is universal.
Hagar, unlike Sarah, is half-Egyptian, half-Gentile, and it is she who goes forth into the
Gentile world. Rembrandts famous picture of the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael has Sarah
mockingly peering out of a window. She is old, and stays at home; while Hagar is young, and
looks, with her son, towards limitless horizons.
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In the hadith, we learn that Every prophet was sent to his own people; but I am sent to all
mankind (buithtu lil-nasi kaffa). [1] This will demand the squaring of a circle - in fact of
many circles - in a way that is characteristically Islamic. Despite its Arabian origins, Islam is
to be not merely for the nations, but of the nations. No pre-modern civilisation embraced
more cultures than that of Islam - in fact, it was Muslims who invented globalisation. The
many-coloured fabric of the traditional Umma is not merely part of the glory of the Blessed
Prophet, of whom it is said: Truly your adversary is the one cut off. (108:3) It also
demonstrates the divine purpose that this Ishmaelite covenant is to bring a monotheism that
uplifts, rather than devastates cultures. Islam brought immense fertility to the Indian
subcontinent, upgrading architecture, cuisine, music, and languages. Nothing could be more
unfair than the Indian chauvinistic thesis, given its most articulate and insidious voice by V.S.
Naipaul, that Islam is a travelling parochialism, an Arab imperialism. [2]
That, then, has been another circle successfully squared - the bringing to the very different
genius of the Subcontinent an uncompromising monotheism which fertilised, and brought to
the region its highest artistic and literary moments. Mother India was never more fecund than
when she welcomed the virility of Islam. Remember the words of Allama Iqbal:
Behold and see! In Inds domain
Thou shalt not find the like again,
That, though a Brahmans son I be,
Tabriz and Rum stand wide to me. [3]
It is our confidence, moreover, that this triumphant demonstration of Islams universalism has
not come to an end. Perhaps the greatest single issue exercising the world today is the
following: is the engagement of Islamic monotheism with the new capitalist global reality a
challenge that even Islam, with its proven ability to square circles, cannot manage?
As Muslims, of course, we believe that every culture, including the culture of modern
consumer liberalism, stands accountable before the claims of revelation. There must,
therefore, be a mode of behaviour that modernity can adopt that can be meaningfully termed
Islamic, without entailing its transformation into a monochrome Arabness. This is a
consequence of our universalist assumptions, but it is also an extension of our triumphalism,
and our belief that the divine purposes can be read in history. Wa-kalimatuLlahi hiyal-ulya
- Gods word is uppermost. (9:40) The current agreement between zealots on both sides Islamic and unbelieving - that Islam and Western modernity can have no conversation, and
cannot inhabit each other, seems difficult given traditional Islamic assurances about the
universal potential of revelation. The increasing number of individuals who identify
themselves as entirely Western, and entirely Muslim, demonstrate that the arguments against
the continued ability of Islam to be inclusively universal are simply false.
Yet the question, the big new Eastern Question, will not go away this easily. Palpably, there
are millions of Muslims who are at ease somewhere within the spectrum of the diverse
possibilities of Westernness. We need, however, a theory to match this practice. Is the
accommodation real? What is the theological or fiqh status of this claim to an overlap? Can
Islam really square this biggest of all historical circles, or must it now fail, and retreat into
impoverished and hostile marginality, as history passes it by?
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Let us refine this question by asking what, exactly, is the case against Islams contemporary
claim to universal relevance? Some of the most frank arguments have come from right-wing
European politicians, as part of their campaign to reduce Muslim immigration to Europe.
This has, of course, become a prime political issue in the European Union, a local extension
of a currently global argument.
Sometimes one hears the claim that Muslims cannot inhabit the West, or - as successful
participants - the Western-dominated global reality, because Islam has not passed through a
reformation. This is a tiresome and absent-minded claim that I have heard from senior
diplomats who simply cannot be troubled to read their own history, let alone the history of
Islam. A reformation, that is to say, a bypass operation which avoids the clogged arteries of
medieval history and seeks to refresh us with the lifeblood of the scriptures themselves, is
precisely what is today underway among those movements and in those places which the
West finds most intimidating. The Islamic world is now in the throes of its own reformation,
and our Calvins and Cromwells are proving no more tolerant and flexible than their European
predecessors. [4]
A reformation, then, is a bad thing to ask us for, if you would like us to be more pliant. But
there is an apparently more intelligible demand, which is that we must pass through an
Enlightenment. Take, for instance, the late Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. In his book Against
the Islamisation of our Culture, he writes: Christianity and Judaism have gone through the
laundromat of humanism and enlightenment, but that is not the case with Islam. [5]
Fortuyn is not a marginal voice. His funeral at Rotterdam Cathedral, reverently covered by
Dutch television, attracted a vast crowd of mourners. As his coffin passed down the citys
main street, the Coolsingel, so many flowers were thrown that the vehicle itself almost
disappeared from sight, recalling, to many, the scenes attending the funeral of Princess Diana.
The election performance of his party a week later was a posthumous triumph, as his
associate Hilbrand Nawijn was appointed minister for asylum and immigration. Fortuyns
desire to close all Hollands mosques was not put into effect, but a number of new, highlyrestrictive, policies have been implemented. Asylum seekers now have to pay a seven
thousand Euro deposit for compulsory Dutch language and citizenship lessons. A 90 percent
cut in the budget of asylum seeker centres has been approved. An official government enquiry
into the Dutch Muslim community was ordered by the new parliament in July 2002. [6]
I take the case of the Netherlands because it was, until very recently, a model of liberalism
and multiculturalism. Indeed, modern conceptions of religious toleration may be said to have
originated among Dutch intellectuals. Without wishing to sound the alarm, it is evident that if
Holland can adopt an implicitly inquisitorial attitude to Islam, there is no reason why other
states should not do likewise.
But again, the question has not been answered. Fortuyn, a highly-educated and liberal
Islamophobe, was convinced that Islam cannot square the circle. He would say that the past
genius of Islam in adapting itself to cultures from Senegal to Sumatra cannot be extended into
our era, because the rules of that game no longer apply. Success today demands membership
of a global reality, which means signing up to the terms of its philosophy. The alternative is
poverty, failure, and - just possibly - the B52s.
How should Islam answer this charge? The answer is, of course, that Islam cant. The
religions strength stems in large degree from its internal diversity. Different readings of the
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scriptures attract different species of humanity. There will be no unified Islamic voice
answering Fortuyns interrogation. The more useful question is: who should answer the
charge? What sort of Muslim is best equipped to speak for us, and to defeat his logic?
Fortuyns error was to impose a Christian squint on Islam. As a practising Catholic, he
imported assumptions about the nature of religious authority that ignore the multi-centred
reality of Islam. On doctrine, we try to be united - but he is not interested in our doctrine. On
fiqh, we are substantially diverse. Even in the medieval period, one of the great moral and
methodological triumphs of the Muslim mind was the confidence that a variety of madhhabs
could conflict formally, but could all be acceptable to God. In fact, we could propose as the
key distinction between a great religion and a sect the ability of the former to accommodate
and respect substantial diversity. Fortuyn, and other European politicians, seek to build a new
Iron Curtain between Islam and Christendom, on the assumption that Islam is an ideology
functionally akin to communism, or to the traditional churches of Europe.
The great tragedy is that some of our brethren would agree with him. There are many
Muslims who are happy to describe Islam as an ideology. One suspects that they have not
troubled to look the term up, and locate its totalitarian and positivistic undercurrents. It is
impossible to deny that certain formulations of Islam in the twentieth century resembled
European ideologies, with their obsession with the latest certainties of science, their
regimented cellular structure, their utopianism, and their implicit but primary self-definition
as advocates of communalism rather than of metaphysical responsibility. The emergence of
ideological Islam was, particularly in the mid-twentieth century, entirely predictable.
Everything at that time was ideology. Spirituality seemed to have ended, and postmodernism
was not yet a twinkle in a Parisian eye. In fact, the British historian John Gray goes so far as
to describe the process which Washington describes as the war on terror as an internal
Western argument which has nothing to do with traditional Islam. As he puts it: The
ideologues of political Islam are western voices, no less than Marx or Hayek. The struggle
with radical Islam is yet another western family quarrel. [7]
There are, of course, significant oversimplications in this analysis. There are some individuals
in the new movements who do have a substantial grounding in Islamic studies. And the
juxtaposition of political and Islam will always be redundant, given that the Islamic,
Ishmaelite message is inherently liberative, and hence militantly opposed to oppression.
Nonetheless, the irony remains. We are represented by the unrepresentative, and the West
sees in us a mirror image of its less attractive potentialities. Western Muslim theologians such
as myself frequently point out that the movements which seek to represent Islam globally, or
in Western minority situations, are typically movements which arose as reactions against
Western political hegemony that themselves internalised substantial aspects of Western
political method. In Europe, Muslim community leaders who are called upon to justify Islam
in the face of recent terrorist activities are ironically often individuals who subscribe to
ideologised forms of Islam which adopt dimensions of Western modernity in order to secure
an anti-Western profile. It is no surprise that such leaders arouse the suspicion of the likes of
Pim Fortuyn, or, indeed, a remarkably wide spectrum of commentators across the political
spectrum.
Islams universalism, however, is not well-represented by the advocates of movement Islam.
Islamic universalism is represented by the great bulk of ordinary mosque-going Muslims who
around the world live out different degrees of accommodation with the local and global
4

reality. One could argue, against Fortuyn, that Muslim communities are far more open to the
West than vice-versa, and know far more about it. Muslims return from the mosques in Cairo
in time for the latest American soaps. There is no equivalent desire in the West to learn from
and integrate into other cultures. On the ground, the West is keener to export than to import,
to shape, rather than be shaped. As such, its universalism can seem imperial and hierarchical,
driven by corporations and strategic imperatives that owe nothing whatsoever to non-Western
cultures, and acknowledge their existence only where they might turn out to be obstacles.
Likewise, Westerners, when they settle outside their cultural area, almost never assimilate to
the culture which newly surrounds them. Islam, we will therefore insist, is more flexible than
the West. Where they are intelligently applied, our laws and customs, mediated through the
due instruments of ijtihad, have been reshaped substantially by encounter with the Western
juggernaut, through faculties such as the concern for public interest, or urf - customary
legislation. Western law and society, by contrast, have not admitted significant emendation at
the hands of another culture for many centuries.
From our perspective, then, it can seem that it is the West, not the Islamic world, which
stands in need of reform in a more pluralistic direction. It claims to be open, while we are
closed, but in reality, on the ground, seems closed, while we have been open.
*

I think there is force to this defence. But does it help us answer the insistent question of Mr
Fortuyn? Do we have to pass through his laundromat to be made internally white, as it were,
to have an authentic and honoured place of belonging at the table of the modern reality?
Historians would probably argue that since history cannot repeat itself, the demand that Islam
experience an Enlightenment is strange, and that if the task be attempted, it cannot remotely
guarantee an outcome analogous to that experienced by Europe. If honest and erudite enough,
they may also recognise that the Enlightenment possibilities in Europe were themselves the
consequence of a Renaissance humanism which was triggered not by an internal European or
Christian logic, but by the encounter with Islamic thought, and particularly the Islamised
version of Aristotle which, via Ibn Rushd, took fourteenth-century Italy by storm. The stress
on the individual, the reluctance to establish clerical hierarchies which hold sway over earthly
kingdoms, the generalised dislike of superstition, the slowness to persecute for the sake of
credal difference: all these may well be European transformations that were eased, or even
enabled, by the transfusion of a certain kind of Muslim wisdom from Spain.
Nonetheless, it is clear that the Christian and Jewish Enlightenments of the eighteenth century
did not move Europe in a religious, still less an Islamic direction. Instead, they moved outside
the Moorish paradigm to produce a disenchantment, a desacralising of the world which
opened the gates for two enormous transformations in human experience. One of these has
been the subjugation of nature to the will (or more usually the lower desires) of man. The
consequences for the environment, and even for the sustainable habitability of our planet, are
looking increasingly disturbing. There is certainly an oddness about the Western desire to
convert the Third World to a high-consumption market economy, when it is certain that if the
world were to reach American levels of fossil-fuel consumption, global warming would soon
render the planet entirely uninhabitable.

The second dangerous consequence of Enlightenment, as Muslims see it, is the replacement
of religious autocracy and sacred kingship with either a totalitarian political order, or with a
democratic liberal arrangement that has no fail-safe resistance to moving in a totalitarian
direction. Take, for instance, the American Jewish philosopher Peter Ochs, for whom the
Enlightenment did away with Jewish faith in God, while the Holocaust did away with Jewish
faith in humanity. As he writes:
They lost faith in a utopian humanism that promised: Give up your superstitions! Abandon
the ethnic and religious traditions that separate us one from the other! Subject all aspects of
life to rational scrutiny and the disciplines of science! This is how we will be saved. It didnt
work. Not that science and rationality are unworthy; what failed was the effort to abstract
these from their setting in the ethics and wisdoms of received tradition. [8]
Here is another voice from deep in the American Jewish intellectual tradition that many in the
Muslim world assume provides the staunchest advocates of the Enlightenment. This time it is
Irving Greenberg:
The humanistic revolt for the liberation of humankind from centuries of dependence upon
God and nature has been shown to sustain a capacity for demonic evil. Twentieth-century
European civilization, in part the product of the Enlightenment and liberal culture, was a
Frankenstein that authored the German monsters being. [] Moreover, the Holocaust and
the failure to confront it make a repetition more likely - a limit was broken, a control or awe
is gone - and the murder procedure is now better laid out and understood. [9]
The West is loath to refer to this possibility in its makeup, as it urges, in Messianic fashion,
its pattern of life upon the world. It believes that Srebrenica, or Mr Fortuyn, are aberrations,
not a recurrent possibility. Muslims, however, surely have the right to express deep unease
about the demand to submit to an Enlightenment project that seems to have produced so
much darkness as well as light. Iqbal, identifying himself with the character Zinda-Rud in his
Javid-name, declaims, to consummate the final moment of his own version of the Miraj:
Inghelab-i Rus u Alman dide am: I have seen the revolutions of Russia and of Germany!
[10] This in a great, final crying-out to God.
We European Muslims, born already amid the ambiguities of the Enlightenment, have also
wrestled with this legacy. Alija Izetbegovic, the former Bosnian president, has discussed the
relationship in his book Between East and West. A lesser-known voice has been that of the
Swedish theologian Tage Lindbom, who died three years ago. Lindbom is particularly
important to European Muslim thought because of his own personal journey. A founder
member of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, and one of the major theorists of the
Swedish welfare state, Lindbom experienced an almost Ghazalian crisis of doubt, and
repented of his Enlightenment ideology in favour of a kind of Islamic traditionalism. In 1962
he published his book The Windmills of Sancho Panza, which generated enough of a scandal
to force him from his job, and he composed the remainder of his twenty-odd books in
retirement. For Lindbom, the liberation promised by the Enlightenment did not only lead to
the explicit totalitarianisms which ruined most of Europe for much of the twentieth century,
but also to an implicit, hidden totalitarianism, which is hardly less dangerous to human
freedom. We are now increasingly slaves to the self, via the market, and the endlessly
proliferating desires and lifestyles which we take to be the result of our free choice are in fact
designed for us by corporation executives and media moguls.

There can be no brotherhood among human beings, Lindbom insists, unless there is a God
under whom we may be brothers. As he writes: The perennial question is always whether we
humans are to understand our presence on this earth as a vice-regency or trusteeship under
the mandate of Heaven, or whether we must strive to emancipate ourselves from any higher
dominion, with human supremacy as our ultimate aim. [11]
He goes on as follows:
Secularization increasingly becomes identified with two motives: the reduction of human
intelligence to rationalism, and sensual desire; the one is grafted onto the vertebral nervous
system, and the other is a function of the involuntary and subconscious elements of mans
composite nature. Rationalism and sensualism will prove to be the mental currents and the
two forms of consciousness whereby secularization floods the Western world. Human pride,
superbia, the first and greatest of the seven deadly sins, grows unceasingly; and it is during
the eighteenth century that man begins to formulate the notion that he is discovering himself
as the earthly agent of power. [12]
Lindboms works have provoked sharp discussion among Western Muslims in the
universities. Enlightenment leads to sensualism and to rationality. Walter Benjamin has
already seen that it cannot guarantee that these principles will secure a moral consensus, or
protect the weak. It also - and here Lindbom has less to say - yields its own destruction.
Western intellectuals now speak of post-modernism as an end of Enlightenment reason.
Hence the new Muslim question becomes: why jump into the laundromat if European
thinkers have themselves turned it off? Is the Third World to be brought to heel by importing
only Europes yesterdays? [13]
These are troubled waters, and perhaps will carry us too far from our purpose in this lecture.
Let me, however, offer a few reflections on what our prospects might look like if we excuse
ourselves the duty of spinning in Mr Fortuyns machine.
Islam, as I rather conventionally observed a few minutes ago, speaks with many voices.
Fortuyn, and the new groundswell of educated Western Islamophobia, have heard only a few
of them, hearkening as they do to the totalitarian and the extreme. Iqbal, I would suggest, and
Altaf Gauhar, represent a very different tradition. It is a tradition which insists that Islam is
only itself when it recognises that authenticity arises from recognising the versatility of
classical Islam, rather than taking any single reading of the scriptures as uniquely true.
Ijtihad, after all, is scarcely a modern invention.
Iqbal puts it this way:
The ultimate spiritual basis of all life, as conceived by Islam, is eternal and reveals itself in
variety and change. A society based on such a conception of Reality must reconcile in its life
the categories of permanence and change. [14]
In other words, to use my own idiom, it must square the circle to be dynamic. The immutable
Law, to be alive, even to be itself, must engage with the mill-wheel of the transient.
One of Altaf Gauhars intellectual associates, Allahbakhsh Brohi, used the following
metaphor:

We need a bi-focal vision: we must have an eye on the eternal principles sanctioned by the
Quranic view of mans place in the scheme of things, and also have the eye firmly fixed on
the ever-changing concourse of economic-political situation which confronts man from time
to time. [15]
We do indeed need a bi-focal ability. It is, after all, a quality of the Antichrist that he sees
with only one eye. An age of decadence, whether or not framed by an Enlightenment, is an
age of extremes, and the twentieth century was, in Eric Hobsbawms phrase, precisely that.
Islam has been Westernised enough, it sometimes appears, to have joined that logic. We are
either neutralised by a supposedly benign Islamic liberalism that in practice allows nothing
distinctively Islamic to leave the home or the mosque - an Enlightenment-style privatisation
of religion that abandons the world to the morality of the market leaders and the demagogues.
Or we fall back into the sensual embrace of extremism, justifying our refusal to deal with the
real world by dismissing it as absolute evil, as kufr, unworthy of serious attention, which will
disappear if we curse it enough.
Traditional Islam, as is scripturally evident, cannot sanction either policy. Extremism,
however, has been probably the more damaging of the two. Al-Bukhari and Muslim both
narrate from Aisha, (r.a.), the hadith that runs: Allah loves kindness is all matters. Imam
Muslim also narrates from Ibn Masud, (r.a.), that the Prophet (sallaLlahu alayhi wasallam) said: Extremists shall perish (halakal-mutanattiun). Commenting on this, Imam
al-Nawawi defines extremists as fanatical zealots (al-mutaammiqun al-ghalun), who are
simply too intense (al-mushaddidun).
Revelation, as always, requires the middle way. Extremism, in any case, never succeeds even
on its own terms. It usually repels more people from religion than it holds within it. Attempts
to reject all of global modernity simply cannot succeed, and have not succeeded anywhere. A
more sane policy, albeit a more courageous, complex and nuanced one, has to be the
introduction of Islam as a prophetic, dissenting witness within the reality of the modern
world.
It should not be hard to see where we naturally fit. The gaping hole in the Enlightenment,
pointed out by the postmodern theologians and by more sceptical but still anxious minds, was
the Enlightenments inability to form a stable and persuasive ground for virtue and hence for
what it has called citizenship. David Hume expressed the problem as follows:
If the reason be asked of that obedience which we are bound to pay to government, I readily
answer: Because society could not otherwise subsist; and this answer is clear and intelligible
to all mankind. Your answer is, Because we should keep our word. But besides that, nobody,
till trained in a philosophical system, can either comprehend or relish this answer; besides
this, say, you find yourself embarrassed when it is asked, Why we are bound to keep our
word? Nor can you give any answer but what would immediately, without any circuit, have
accounted for our obligation to allegiance. [16]
But why are we bound to keep our word? Why need we respect the moral law? Religion
seems to answer this far more convincingly than any secular ethic. In spite of all stereotypes,
the degree of violence in the Muslim world remains far less than that of Western lands
governed by the hope of a persuasive secular social contract. [17] Perhaps this is inevitable:
the Enlightenment was, after all, nothing but the end of the Delphic principle that to know the
world we must know and refine and uplift ourselves. Before Descartes, Locke and Hume, all
8

the world had taken spirituality to be the precondition of philosophical knowing. Without
love, self-discipline, and care for others, that is to say, without a transformation of the human
subject, there could be no knowledge at all. The Enlightenment, however, as Descartes
foresaw, would propose that the mind is already self-sufficient and that moral and spiritual
growth are not preconditions for intellectual eminence, so that they might function to shape
the nature of its influence upon society. Not only is the precondition of the transformation of
the subject repudiated, but the classical idea, shared by the religions and the Greeks, that
access to truth itself brings about a personal transformation, is dethroned just as insistently.
[18] Relationality is disposable, and the laundromat turns out to be a centrifuge.
Religion offers a solution to this fatal weakness. Applied with wisdom, it provides a fully
adequate reason for virtue and an ability to produce cultural and political leaders who
embody it themselves. Of course, it is all too often applied improperly, and there is something
of the Promethean arrogance and hubris of the philosophes in the radical insistence that the
human subject be enthroned in authority over scriptural interpretation, without a due prelude
of initiation, love, and self-naughting. Yet the failure of the Enlightenment paradigm, as
invoked by the secular elites in the Muslim world, to deliver moral and efficient government
and cultural guidance, indicates that the solution must be religious. Religious aberrations do
not discredit the principle they aberrantly affirm.
What manner of Islam may most safely undertake this task? It is no accident that the
overwhelming majority of Western Muslim thinkers, including Lindbom himself, have been
drawn into the religion by the appeal of Sufism. To us, the ideological redefinitions of Islam
are hardly more impressive than they are to the many European xenophobes who take them
as normative. We need a form of religion that elegantly and persuasively squares the circle,
rather than insisting on a conflictual model that is unlikely to damage the West as much as
Islam. A purely non-spiritual reading of Islam, lacking the vertical dimension, tends to
produce only liberals or zealots; and both have proved irrelevant to our needs.
*

The most recurrent theme of Islamic architecture has been the dome surmounting the cube.
Between the two there are complex arrangements of arabesques and pendentives. Religion is
worth having because, drawing on the infinite and miraculous power of God, it can turn a
circle into a square in a way that delights the eye. Through logic and definition the theologian
seeks to show how the infinite engages with the finite. Imam al-Ghazali, and our tradition
generally, came to the conclusion that the Sufi does the job more elegantly, while not putting
the theologian out of a job. But Sufism also, as Iqbal and the consensus of Muslim
theologians in the West have seen, demonstrates other virtues. Because it has been the
instrument whereby Islam has been embedded in the divergent cultures of the rainbow that is
the traditional Islamic world, we may suppose that it represents the best instrument available
for attempting a dissenting Muslim embedding within todays inexorable global reality. It
insists on the acquisition of compassion and wisdom as a precondition for the exercise of
ijtihad, or of any other mode of knowing. Its emphasis on the potential grandeur of mans
condition, of the one who was taught all the Names, makes it more humane than any secular
humanism. In short, its recognition of the limitations of rational attempts to square the circle
of speaking of the metaphysical and in justifying virtue, can bring us to real, rather than
illusory, enlightenment, to a true ishraq. This is because there is only one Light of the
heavens and the earth. (24:35) Seeking truth in the many, while ignoring the One, is the
cardinal, Luciferian error. Its consequences for recent human history have already been
9

tragic. Its prospects, as it yields more and more methods of destruction, and fewer and fewer
arguments for a universal morality, are surely unnerving. Genetic engineering now threatens
to redefine our very humanity, precisely that principle which the Enlightenment found to be
the basis of truth. In such a world, religion, for all its failings, is likely to be the only force
which can genuinely reconnect us with our humanity, and with our fellow men.
WaLlahul-Mustaan.

NOTES
1. Bukhari, Tayammum, 1.
2. The view is expounded most forcefully in his recent Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions
among the Converted Peoples (London, 1998). For a refutation see T.J. Winter, Some
thoughts on the formation of British Muslim identity, Encounters 8:1 (2002), 3-26.
3. Persian Psalms (Zabur-i Ajam), translated into English verse from the Persian of the late
Sir Muhammad Iqbal by Arthur J. Arberry. (Lahore, 1948), 8.
4. The defining demand of the Reformation was the return to the most literal meaning of
Scripture. Hence Calvin: Let us know, then, that the true meaning of Scripture is the natural
and simple one, and let us embrace and hold it resolutely. Let us not merely neglect as
doubtful, but boldly set aside as deadly corruptions, those pretended expositions which lead
us away from the literal sense. (John Calvin, The Epistles of Paul to the Galatians,
Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians (Edinburgh, 1965), 84-5. Is this what the West is
demanding of us? That a Muslim state should, in consequence, be a city of glass, like
Calvins terrified Geneva?
5. Cited in Angus Roxburgh, Preachers of Hate: The Rise of the Far Right. (London, 2002),
163.
6. Roxburgh, 160, 169, 174.
7. The Independent July 28, 2002.
8. Peter Ochs, The God of Jews and Christians, in Tikva Frymer-Kensky et al.,
Christianity in Jewish Terms (Boulder and Oxford, 2000), 54.
9. Irving Greenberg, Judaism, Christianity and Partnership after the Twentieth Century, in
Frymer-Kensky, op. cit., 26.
10. Iqbal, Javid-Nama, translated from the Persian with introduction and notes, by Arthur J.
Arberry (London, 1966), 140.
11. Tage Lindbom, The Myth of Democracy (Grand Rapids, 1996), 18.
12. Ibid., 22.

10

13. The implications of the collapse of Enlightenment reason for theology have been
sketched out by George Lindbeck in his The Nature of Doctrine: religion and theology in a
postliberal age (London, 1984), and (for a more Islamic turn, because explicitly resistant to
those Renaissance-Aristotelian confidences of Suarez which took Thomism so far from
kalam) in the several works of Jean-Luc Marion. The Asharite resonances are clear enough:
discourse is self-referential unless penetrated by the Word.
14. Iqbal, Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, cited in Allahbakhsh Brohi, Iqbal
and the Concept of Islamic Socialism (Lahore, 1967), 7.
15. Brohi, op. cit., 7.
16. David Hume, Essays (Oxford, 1963), 469.
17. For example, the 2002 World Health Organisation document World Report on Violence
and Health, shows the murder rate in the Eastern Mediterranean region to be less than half
the rate for the Americas. See
http://www5.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/download.cfm?id=0000000559, page 7.
18. This has been discussed with particular clarity by Michel Foucault, LHermeneutique du
sujet: Cours au College de France (1981-2) (Paris, 2001), pp.16-17. Foucaults pessimism
might be further reinforced by considering the corrosive implications of the new biology,
with its anti-egalitarian potential, for secular reasons for conviviality and mutual respect. Cf.
W.D. Hamilton, Narrow Roads of Gene Land, vol. II (Oxford, 2001), for whom evolutionary
theories have the unfortunate property of being solvents of a vital societal glue.

11

UNDERSTANDING THE FOUR

MADHHABS
the problem with anti-madhhabism
[revised edition with footnotes]
Abdal-Hakim Murad

The ummah's greatest achievement over the past millennium has undoubtedly been its
internal intellectual cohesion. From the fifth century of the Hijra almost to the present day,
and despite the outward drama of the clash of dynasties, the Sunni Muslims have maintained
an almost unfailing attitude of religious respect and brotherhood among themselves. It is a
striking fact that virtually no religious wars, riots or persecutions divided them during this
extended period, so difficult in other ways.
The history of religious movements suggests that this is an unusual outcome. The normal
sociological view, as expounded by Max Weber and his disciples, is that religions enjoy an
initial period of unity, and then descend into an increasingly bitter factionalism led by rival
hierarchies. Christianity has furnished the most obvious example of this; but one could add
many others, including secular faiths such as Marxism. On the face of it, Islam's ability to
avoid this fate is astonishing, and demands careful analysis.
There is, of course, a straightforwardly religious explanation. Islam is the final religion, the
last bus home, and as such has been divinely secured from the more terminal forms of decay.
It is true that what Abdul Wadod Shalabi has termed spiritual entropy[1] has been at work
ever since Islam's inauguration, a fact which is well-supported by a number of hadiths.
Nonetheless, Providence has not neglected the ummah. Earlier religions slide gently or
painfully into schism and irrelevance; but Islamic piety, while fading in quality, has been
given mechanisms which allow it to retain much of the sense of unity emphasised in its glory
days. Wherever the antics of the emirs and politicians might lead, the brotherhood of
believers, a reality in the initial career of Christianity and some other faiths, continues,
fourteen hundred years on, to be a compelling principle for most members of the final and
definitive community of revelation in Islam. The reason is simple and unarguable: God has
given us this religion as His last word, and it must therefore endure, with its essentials of
tawhid, worship and ethics intact, until the Last Days.
Such an explanation has obvious merit. But we will still need to explain some painful
exceptions to the rule in the earliest phase of our history. The Prophet himself (pbuh) had told
his Companions, in a hadith narrated by Imam Tirmidhi, that "Whoever among you outlives
me shall see a vast dispute". The initial schisms: the disastrous revolt against Uthman (r.a.)
[2], the clash between Ali (r.a.) and Talha, and then with Mu`awiyah[3], the bloody scissions
of the Kharijites[4] - all these drove knives of discord into the Muslim body politic almost
from the outset. Only the inherent sanity and love of unity among scholars of the ummah
assisted, no doubt, by Providence overcame the early spasms of factionalism, and created a
12

strong and harmonious Sunnism which has, at least on the purely religious plane, united
ninety percent of the ummah for ninety percent of its history.[5]
It will help us greatly to understand our modern, increasingly divided situation if we look
closely at those forces which divided us in the distant past. There were many of these, some
of them very eccentric; but only two took the form of mass popular movements, driven by
religious ideology, and in active rebellion against majoritarian faith and scholarship. For good
reasons, these two acquired the names of Kharijism and Shi'ism. Unlike Sunnism, both were
highly productive of splinter groups and sub-movements; but they nonetheless remained as
recognisable traditions of dissidence because of their ability to express the two great
divergences from mainstream opinion on the key question of the source of religious authority
in Islam.
Confronted with what they saw as moral slippage among early caliphs, posthumous partisans
of Ali (r.a.) developed a theory of religious authority which departed from the older
egalitarian assumptions by vesting it in a charismatic succession of Imams. We need not stop
here to investigate the question of whether this idea was influenced by the Eastern Christian
background of some early converts, who had been nourished on the idea of the mystical
apostolic succession to Christ, a gift which supposedly gave the Church the unique ability to
read his mind for later generations. What needs to be appreciated is that Shi'ism, in its myriad
forms, developed as a response to a widely-sensed lack of definitive religious authority in
early Islamic society. As the age of the Righteous Caliphs came to a close, and the Umayyad
rulers departed ever more conspicuously from the lifestyle expected of them as Commanders
of the Faithful, the sharply-divergent and still nascent schools of fiqh seemed inadequate as
sources of strong and unambiguous authority in religious matters. Hence the often irresistible
seductiveness of the idea of an infallible Imam.[6]
This interpretation of the rise of Imamism also helps to explain the second great phase in Shi'i
expansion. After the success of the fifth-century Sunni revival, when Sunnism seemed at last
to have become a fully coherent system, Shi'ism went into a slow eclipse. Its extreme wing,
as manifested in Ismailism, received a heavy blow at the hands of Imam al-Ghazali, whose
book "Scandals of the Batinites" exposed and refuted their secret doctrines with devastating
force.[7] This decline in Shi'i fortunes was only arrested after the mid-seventh century, once
the Mongol hordes under Genghis Khan had invaded and obliterated the central lands of
Islam. The onslaught was unimaginably harsh: we are told, for instance, that out of a hundred
thousand former inhabitants of the city of Herat, only forty survivors crept out of the smoking
ruins to survey the devastation.[8] In the wake of this tidal wave of mayhem, newlyconverted Turcoman nomads moved in, who, with the Sunni ulama of the cities dead, and a
general atmosphere of fear, turbulence, and Messianic expectation in the air, turned readily to
extremist forms of Shi'i belief.[9] The triumph of Shi'ism in Iran, a country once loyal to
Sunnism, dates back to that painful period.[10]
The other great dissident movement in early Islam was that of the Kharijites, literally, the
seceders, so-called because they seceded from the army of the Caliph Ali when he agreed to
settle his dispute with Muawiyah through arbitration. Calling out the Quranic slogan,
"Judgement is only God's", they fought bitterly against Ali and his army which included
many of the leading Companions, until, in the year 38, Imam Ali defeated them at the Battle
of Nahrawan, where some ten thousand of them perished.[11]

13

Although the first Kharijites were destroyed, Kharijism itself lived on. As it formulated itself,
it turned into the precise opposite of Shi'ism, rejecting any notion of inherited or charismatic
leadership, and stressing that leadership of the community of believers should be decided by
piety alone. This was assessed by very rudimentary criteria: the early Kharijites were known
for extreme toughness in their devotions, and for the harsh doctrine that any Muslim who
commits a major sin is an unbeliever. This notion of takfir (declaring Muslims to be outside
Islam), permitted the Kharijite groups, camping out in remote mountain districts of
Khuzestan, to raid Muslim settlements which had accepted Umayyad authority. Non-Kharijis
were routinely slaughtered in these operations, which brought merciless reprisals from tough
Umayyad generals such as al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf. But despite the apparent hopelessness of their
cause, the Kharijite attacks continued. The Caliph Ali (r.a.) was assassinated by Ibn Muljam,
a survivor of Nahrawan, while the hadith scholar Imam al-Nasai, author of one of the most
respected collections of sunan, was likewise murdered by Kharijite fanatics in Damascus in
303/915.[12]
Like Shi'ism, Kharijism caused much instability in Iraq and Central Asia, and on occasion
elsewhere, until the fourth and fifth centuries of Islam. At that point, something of historic
moment occurred. Sunnism managed to unite itself into a detailed system that was now so
well worked-out, and so obviously the way of the great majority of ulama, that the attraction
of the rival movements diminished sharply.
What happened was this. Sunni Islam, occupying the middle ground between the two
extremes of egalitarian Kharijism and hierarchical Shi'ism, had long been preoccupied with
disputes over its own concept of authority. For the Sunnis, authority was, by definition,
vested in the Quran and Sunnah. But confronted with the enormous body of hadiths, which
had been scattered in various forms and narrations throughout the length and breadth of the
Islamic world following the migrations of the Companions and Followers, the Sunnah
sometimes proved difficult to interpret. Even when the sound hadiths had been sifted out
from this great body of material, which totalled several hundred thousand hadith reports,
there were some hadiths which appeared to conflict with each other, or even with verses of
the Quran. It was obvious that simplistic approaches such as that of the Kharijites, namely,
establishing a small corpus of hadiths and deriving doctrines and law from them directly, was
not going to work. The internal contradictions were too numerous, and the interpretations
placed on them too complex, for the qadis (judges) to be able to dish out judgements simply
by opening the Quran and hadith collections to an appropriate page.
The reasons underlying cases of apparent conflict between various revealed texts were
scrutinised closely by the early ulama, often amid sustained debate between brilliant minds
backed up with the most perfect photographic memories. Much of the science of Islamic
jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh) was developed in order to provide consistent mechanisms for
resolving such conflicts in a way which ensured fidelity to the basic ethos of Islam. The term
taarud al-adilla (mutual contradiction of proof-texts) is familiar to all students of Islamic
jurisprudence as one of the most sensitive and complex of all Muslim legal concepts.[13]
Early scholars such as Ibn Qutayba felt obliged to devote whole books to the subject.[14]
The ulama of usul recognised as their starting assumption that conflicts between the revealed
texts were no more than conflicts of interpretation, and could not reflect inconsistencies in the
Lawgiver's message as conveyed by the Prophet (pbuh). The message of Islam had been
perfectly conveyed before his demise; and the function of subsequent scholars was
exclusively one of interpretation, not of amendment.
14

Armed with this awareness, the Islamic scholar, when examining problematic texts, begins by
attempting a series of preliminary academic tests and methods of resolution. The system
developed by the early ulama was that if two Quranic or hadith texts appeared to contradict
each other, then the scholar must first analyse the texts linguistically, to see if the
contradiction arises from an error in interpreting the Arabic. If the contradiction cannot be
resolved by this method, then he must attempt to determine, on the basis of a range of textual,
legal and historiographic techniques, whether one of them is subject to takhsis, that is,
concerns special circumstances only, and hence forms a specific exception to the more
general principle enunciated in the other text.[15] The jurist must also assess the textual status
of the reports, recalling the principle that a Quranic verse will overrule a hadith related by
only one isnad (the type of hadith known as ahad), as will a hadith supplied by many isnads
(mutawatir or mashhur).[16] If, after applying all these mechanisms, the jurist finds that the
conflict remains, he must then investigate the possibility that one of the texts was subject to
formal abrogation (naskh) by the other.
This principle of naskh is an example of how, when dealing with the delicate matter of taarud
al-adilla, the Sunni ulama founded their approach on textual policies which had already been
recognised many times during the lifetime of the Prophet (pbuh). The Companions knew by
ijma that over the years of the Prophets ministry, as he taught and nurtured them, and brought
them from the wildness of paganism to the sober and compassionate path of monotheism, his
teaching had been divinely shaped to keep pace with their development. The best-known
instance of this was the progressive prohibition of wine, which had been discouraged by an
early Quranic verse, then condemned, and finally prohibited.[17] Another example, touching
an even more basic principle, was the canonical prayer, which the early ummah had been
obliged to say only twice daily, but which, following the Miraj, was increased to five times a
day.[18] Mutah (temporary marriage) had been permitted in the early days of Islam, but was
subsequently prohibited as social conditions developed, respect for women grew, and morals
became firmer.[19] There are several other instances of this, most being datable to the years
immediately following the Hijra, when the circumstances of the young ummah changed in
radical ways.
There are two types of naskh: explicit (sarih) or implicit (dimni).[20] The former is easily
identified, for it involves texts which themselves specify that an earlier ruling is being
changed. For instance, there is the verse in the Quran (2:142) which commands the Muslims
to turn in prayer to the Kaba rather than to Jerusalem.[21] In the hadith literature this is even
more frequently encountered; for example, in a hadith narrated by Imam Muslim we read: "I
used to forbid you to visit graves; but you should now visit them."[22] Commenting on this,
the ulama of hadith explain that in early Islam, when idolatrous practices were still fresh in
peoples memories, visiting graves had been forbidden because of the fear that some new
Muslims might commit shirk. As the Muslims grew stronger in their monotheism, however,
this prohibition was discarded as no longer necessary, so that today it is a recommended
practice for Muslims to go out to visit graves in order to pray for the dead and to be reminded
of the akhira.[23]
The other type of naskh is more subtle, and often taxed the brilliance of the early ulama to the
limit. It involves texts which cancel earlier ones, or modify them substantially, but without
actually stating that this has taken place. The ulama have given many examples of this,
including the two verses in Surat al-Baqarah which give differing instructions as to the
period for which widows should be maintained out of an estate (2:240 and 234).[24] And in
the hadith literature, there is the example of the incident in which the Prophet (pbuh) once
15

told the Companions that when he prayed sitting because he was burdened by some illness,
they should sit behind him. This hadith is given by Imam Muslim. And yet we find another
hadith, also narrated by Muslim, which records an incident in which the Companions prayed
standing while the Prophet (pbuh) was sitting. The apparent contradiction has been resolved
by careful chronological analysis, which shows that the latter incident took place after the
former, and therefore takes precedence over it.[25] This has duly been recorded in the fiqh of
the great scholars.
The techniques of naskh identification have enabled the ulama to resolve most of the
recognised cases of taarud al-adilla. They demand a rigorous and detailed knowledge not just
of the hadith disciplines, but of history, sirah, and of the views held by the Companions and
other scholars on the circumstances surrounding the genesis and exegesis of the hadith in
question. In some cases, hadith scholars would travel throughout the Islamic world to locate
the required information pertinent to a single hadith.[26]
In cases where in spite of all efforts, abrogation cannot be proven, then the ulama of the salaf
recognised the need to apply further tests. Important among these is the analysis of the matn
(the transmitted text rather than the isnad of the hadith).[27] Clear (sarih) statements are
deemed to take precedence over allusive ones (kinayah), and definite (muhkam) words take
precedence over words falling into more ambiguous categories, such as the interpreted
(mufassar), the obscure (khafi) and the problematic (mushkil).[28] It may also be necessary to
look at the position of the narrators of the conflicting hadiths, giving precedence to the report
issuing from the individual who was more directly involved. A famous example of this is the
hadith narrated by Maymunah which states that the Prophet (pbuh) married her when not in a
state of consecration (ihram) for the pilgrimage. Because her report was that of an
eyewitness, her hadith is given precedence over the conflicting report from Ibn Abbas, related
by a similarly sound isnad, which states that the Prophet was in fact in a state of ihram at the
time.[29]
There are many other rules, such as that which states that prohibition takes precedence over
permissibility.[30] Similarly, conflicting hadiths may be resolved by utilising the fatwa of a
Companion, after taking care that all the relevant fatwa are compared and assessed.[31]
Finally, recourse may be had to qiyas (analogy).[32] An example of this is the various reports
about the solar eclipse prayer (salat al-kusuf), which specify different numbers of bowings
and prostrations. The ulama, having investigated the reports meticulously, and having been
unable to resolve the contradiction by any of the mechanisms outlined above, have applied
analogical reasoning by concluding that since the prayer in question is still called salaat, then
the usual form of salaat should be followed, namely, one bowing and two prostrations. The
other hadiths are to be abandoned.[33]
This careful articulation of the methods of resolving conflicting source-texts, so vital to the
accurate derivation of the Shariah from the revealed sources, was primarily the work of Imam
al-Shafi'i. Confronted by the confusion and disagreement among the jurists of his day, and
determined to lay down a consistent methodology which would enable a fiqh to be
established in which the possibility of error was excluded as far as was humanly possible,
Shafi'i wrote his brilliant Risala (Treatise on Islamic jurisprudence). His ideas were soon
taken up, in varying ways, by jurists of the other major traditions of law; and today they are
fundamental to the formal application of the Shariah.[34]

16

Shafi'i's system of minimising mistakes in the derivation of Islamic rulings from the mass of
evidence came to be known as usul al-fiqh (the roots of fiqh). Like most of the other formal
academic disciplines of Islam, this was not an innovation in the negative sense, but a
working-out of principles already discernible in the time of the earliest Muslims. In time,
each of the great interpretative traditions of Sunni Islam codified its own variation on these
roots, thereby yielding in some cases divergent branches (i.e. specific rulings on practice).
Although the debates generated by these divergences could sometimes be energetic,
nonetheless, they were insignificant when compared to the great sectarian and legal
disagreements which had arisen during the first two centuries of Islam before the science of
usul al-fiqh had put a stop to such chaotic discord.
It hardly needs remarking that although the Four Imams, Abu Hanifa, Malik ibn Anas, alShafi'i and Ibn Hanbal, are regarded as the founders of these four great traditions, which, if
we were asked to define them, we might sum up as sophisticated techniques for avoiding
innovation, their traditions were fully systematised only by later generations of scholars. The
Sunni ulama rapidly recognised the brilliance of the Four Imams, and after the late third
century of Islam we find that hardly any scholars adhered to any other approach. The great
hadith specialists, including al-Bukhari and Muslim, were all loyal adherents of one or
another of the madhhabs, particularly that of Imam al-Shafi'i. But within each madhhab,
leading scholars continued to improve and refine the roots and branches of their school. In
some cases, historical conditions made this not only possible, but necessary. For instance,
scholars of the school of Imam Abu Hanifah, which was built on the foundations of the early
legal schools of Kufa and Basra, were wary of some hadiths in circulation in Iraq because of
the prevalence of forgery engendered by the strong sectarian influences there. Later, however,
once the canonical collections of Bukhari, Muslim and others became available, subsequent
generations of Hanafi scholars took the entire corpus of hadiths into account in formulating
and revising their madhhab. This type of process continued for two centuries, until the
Schools reached a condition of maturity in the fourth and fifth centuries of the Hijra.[35]
It was at that time, too, that the attitude of toleration and good opinion between the Schools
became universally accepted. This was formulated by Imam al-Ghazali, himself the author of
four textbooks of Shafi'i fiqh,[36] and also of Al-Mustasfa, widely acclaimed as the most
advanced and careful of all works on usul, usul al-fiqh fil madhhab. With his well-known
concern for sincerity, and his dislike of ostentatious scholarly rivalry, he strongly condemned
what he falled fanatical attachment to a madhhab.[37] While it was necessary for the
Muslim to follow a recognised madhhab in order to avert the lethal danger of misinterpreting
the sources, he must never fall into the trap of considering his own school categorically
superior to the others. With a few insignificant exceptions in the late Ottoman period, the
great scholars of Sunni Islam have followed the ethos outlined by Imam al-Ghazali, and have
been conspicuously respectful of each others madhhab. Anyone who has studied under
traditional ulama will be well-aware of this fact.[38]
The evolution of the Four Schools did not stifle, as some Orientalists have suggested,[39] the
capacity for the refinement or extension of positive law.[40] On the contrary, sophisticated
mechanisms were available which not only permitted qualified individuals to derive the
Shariah from the Quran and Sunnah on their own authority, but actually obliged them to do
this. According to most scholars, an expert who has fully mastered the sources and fulfilled a
variety of necessary scholarly conditions is not permitted to follow the prevalent rulings of
his School, but must derive the rulings himself from the revealed sources. Such an individual
is known as a mujtahid,[41] a term derived from the famous hadith of Muadh ibn Jabal.[42]
17

Few would seriously deny that for a Muslim to venture beyond established expert opinion
and have recourse directly to the Quran and Sunnah, he must be a scholar of great eminence.
The danger of less-qualified individuals misunderstanding the sources and hence damaging
the Shariah is a very real one, as was shown by the discord and strife which afflicted some
early Muslims, and even some of the Companions themselves, in the period which preceded
the establishment of the Orthodox Schools. Prior to Islam, entire religions had been subverted
by inadequate scriptural scholarship, and it was vital that Islam should be secured from a
comparable fate.
In order to protect the Shariah from the danger of innovation and distortion, the great scholars
of usul laid down rigorous conditions which must be fulfilled by anyone wishing to claim the
right of ijtihad for himself.[43] These conditions include:
(a) mastery of the Arabic language, to minimise the possibility of misinterpreting Revelation
on purely linguistic grounds;
(b) a profound knowledge of the Quran and Sunnah and the circumstances surrounding the
revelation of each verse and hadith, together with a full knowledge of the Quranic and hadith
commentaries, and a control of all the interpretative techniques discussed above;
(c) knowledge of the specialised disciplines of hadith, such as the assessment of narrators and
of the matn [text];
(d) knowledge of the views of the Companions, Followers and the great imams, and of the
positions and reasoning expounded in the textbooks of fiqh, combined with the knowledge of
cases where a consensus (ijma) has been reached;
(e) knowledge of the science of juridical analogy (qiyas), its types and conditions;
(f) knowledge of ones own society and of public interest (maslahah);
(g) knowing the general objectives (maqasid) of the Shariah;
(h) a high degree of intelligence and personal piety, combined with the Islamic virtues of
compassion, courtesy, and modesty.
A scholar who has fulfilled these conditions can be considered a mujtahid fil-shar, and is not
obliged, or even permitted, to follow an existing authoritative madhhab.[44] This is what
some of the Imams were saying when they forbade their great disciples from imitating them
uncritically. But for the much greater number of scholars whose expertise has not reached
such dizzying heights, it may be possible to become a mujtahid fil-madhhab, that is, a
scholar who remains broadly convinced of the doctrines of his school, but is qualified to
differ from received opinion within it.[45] There have been a number of examples of such
men, for instance Imam al-Nawawi among the Shafi'is, Qadi Ibn Abd al-Barr among the
Malikis, Ibn Abidin among the Hanafis, and Ibn Qudama among the Hanbalis. All of these
scholars considered themselves followers of the fundamental interpretative principles of their
own madhhabs, but are on record as having exercised their own gifts of scholarship and
judgement in reaching many new verdicts within them.[46] It is to these experts that the
Mujtahid Imams directed their advice concerning ijtihad, such as Imam al-Shafi'i's instruction
that if you find a hadith that contradicts my verdict, then follow the hadith.[47] It is obvious
18

that whatever some writers nowadays like to believe, such counsels were never intended for
use by the Islamically-uneducated masses. Imam al-Shafi`i was not addressing a crowd of
butchers, nightwatchman and donkey-drovers.
Other categories of mujtahids are listed by the usul scholars; but the distinctions between
them are subtle and not relevant to our theme.[48] The remaining categories can in practice
be reduced to two: the muttabi (follower), who follows his madhhab while being aware of the
Quranic and hadith texts and the reasoning, underlying its positions,[49] and secondly the
muqallid (emulator), who simply conforms to the madhhab because of his confidence in its
scholars, and without necessarily knowing the detailed reasoning behind all its thousands of
rulings.[50]
Clearly it is recommended for the muqallid to learn as much as he or she is able of the formal
proofs of the madhhab. But it is equally clear that not every Muslim can be a scholar.
Scholarship takes a lot of time, and for the ummah to function properly most people must
have other employment: as accountants, soldiers, butchers, and so forth.[51] As such, they
cannot reasonably be expected to become great ulama as well, even if we suppose that all of
them have the requisite intelligence. The Holy Quran itself states that less well-informed
believers should have recourse to qualified experts: So ask the people of remembrance, if you
do not know (16:43).[52] (According to the tafsir experts, the people of remembrance are the
ulama.) And in another verse, the Muslims are enjoined to create and maintain a group of
specialists who provide authoritative guidance for non-specialists: A band from each
community should stay behind to gain instruction in religion and to warn the people when
they return to them, so that they may take heed (9:122). Given the depth of scholarship
needed to understand the revealed texts accurately, and the extreme warnings we have been
given against distorting the Revelation, it is obvious that ordinary Muslims are duty bound to
follow expert opinion, rather than rely on their own reasoning and limited knowledge. This
obvious duty was well-known to the early Muslims: the Caliph Umar (r.a.) followed certain
rulings of Abu Bakr (r.a.), saying I would be ashamed before God to differ from the view of
Abu Bakr. And Ibn Masud (r.a.), in turn, despite being a mujtahid in the fullest sense, used in
certain issues to follow Umar (r.a.). According to al-Shabi: Six of the Companions of the
Prophet (pbuh) used to give fatwas to the people: Ibn Masud, Umar ibn al-Khattab, Ali, Zayd
ibn Thabit, Ubayy ibn Kab, and Abu Musa (al-Ashari). And out of these, three would
abandon their own judgements in favour of the judgements of three others: Abdallah (ibn
Masud) would abandon his own judgement for the judgement of Umar, Abu Musa would
abandon his own judgement for the judgement of Ali, and Zayd would abandon his own
judgement for the judgement of Ubayy ibn Kab.[53]
This verdict, namely that one is well-advised to follow a great Imam as ones guide to the
Sunnah, rather than relying on oneself, is particularly binding upon Muslims in countries
such as Britain, among whom only a small percentage is even entitled to have a choice in this
matter. This is for the simple reason that unless one knows Arabic,[54] then even if one
wishes to read all the hadith determining a particular issue, one cannot. For various reasons,
including their great length, no more than ten of the basic hadith collections have been
translated into English. There remain well over three hundred others, including such seminal
works as the Musnad of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal,[55] the Musannaf of Ibn Abi Shayba,[56]
the Sahih of Ibn Khuzayma,[57] the Mustadrak of al-Hakim,[58] and many other multivolume collections, which contain large numbers of sound hadiths which cannot be found in
Bukhari, Muslim, and the other works that have so far been translated. Even if we assume
that the existing translations are entirely accurate, it is obvious that a policy of trying to
19

derive the Shariah directly from the Book and the Sunnah cannot be attempted by those who
have no access to the Arabic. To attempt to discern the Shariah merely on the basis of the
hadiths which have been translated will be to ignore and amputate much of the Sunnah, hence
leading to serious distortions.[59]
Let me give just two examples of this. The Sunni Madhhabs, in their rules for the conduct of
legal cases, lay down the principle that the canonical punishments (hudud) should not be
applied in cases where there is the least ambiguity, and that the qadi should actively strive to
prove that such ambiguities exist. An amateur reading in the Sound Six collections will find
no confirmation of this.[60] But the madhhab ruling is based on a hadith narrated by a sound
chain, and recorded in theMusannaf of Ibn Abi Shayba, the Musnad of al-Harithi, and the
Musnad of Musaddad ibn Musarhad. The text is: "Ward off the hudud by means of
ambiguities."[61] Imam al-Sanani, in his book Al-Ansab, narrates the circumstances of this
hadith: "A man was found drunk, and was brought to Umar, who ordered the hadd of eighty
lashes to be applied. When this had been done, the man said: Umar, you have wronged me! I
am a slave! (Slaves receive only half the punishment.) Umar was grief-stricken at this, and
recited the Prophetic hadith, Ward off the hudud by means of ambiguities."[62]
Another example is provided by the practice of istighfar for others during the Hajj. According
to a hadith, Forgiveness is granted to the Hajji, and to those for whom the Hajji prays. This
hadith is not related in any of the collections so far translated into English; but it is narrated,
by a sound isnad, in many other collections, including al-Mu`jam al-Saghir of al-Tabarani
and the Musnad of al-Bazzar.[63]
Another example pertains to the important practice, recognised by the madhhabs, of
performing sunnah prayers as soon as possible after the end of the Maghrib obligatory prayer.
The hadith runs: Make haste to perform the two rakas after the Maghrib, for they are raised
up (to Heaven) alongside the obligatory prayer. The hadith is narrated by Imam Razin in his
Jami.
Because of the traditional pious fear of distorting the Law of Islam, the overwhelming
majority of the great scholars of the past - certainly well over ninety-nine percent of them have adhered loyally to a madhhab.[64] It is true that in the troubled fourteenth century a
handful of dissenters appeared, such as Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim;[65] but even
these individuals never recommended that semi-educated Muslims should attempt ijtihad
without expert help. And in any case, although these authors have recently been resurrected
and made prominent, their influence on the orthodox scholarship of classical Islam was
negligible, as is suggested by the small number of manuscripts of their works preserved in the
great libraries of the Islamic world.[66]
Nonetheless, social turbulences have in the past century thrown up a number of writers who
have advocated the abandonment of authoritative scholarship. The most prominent figures in
this campaign were Muhammad Abduh and his pupil Muhammad Rashid Rida.[67] Dazzled
by the triumph of the West, and informed in subtle ways by their own well-documented
commitment to Freemasonry, these men urged Muslims to throw off the shackles of taqlid,
and to reject the authority of the Four Schools. Today in some Arab capitals, especially where
the indigenous tradition of orthodox scholarship has been weakened, it is common to see
young Arabs filling their homes with every hadith collection they can lay their hands upon,
and poring over them in the apparent belief that they are less likely to misinterpret this vast
and complex literature than Imam al-Shafi'i, Imam Ahmad, and the other great Imams. This
20

irresponsible approach, although still not widespread, is predictably opening the door to
sharply divergent opinions, which have seriously damaged the unity, credibility and
effectiveness of the Islamic movement, and provoked sharp arguments over issues settled by
the great Imams over a thousand years ago.[68] It is common now to see young activists
prowling the mosques, criticising other worshippers for what they believe to be defects in
their worship, even when their victims are following the verdicts of some of the great Imams
of Islam. The unpleasant, Pharisaic atmosphere generated by this activity has the effect of
discouraging many less committed Muslims from attending the mosque at all. No-one now
recalls the view of the early ulama, which was that Muslims should tolerate divergent
interpretations of the Sunnah as long as these interpretations have been held by reputable
scholars. As Sufyan al-Thawri said: If you see a man doing something over which there is a
debate among the scholars, and which you yourself believe to be forbidden, you should not
forbid him from doing it.[69] The alternative to this policy is, of course, a disunity and
rancour which will poison and cripple the Muslim community from within.[70]
In a Western-influenced global culture in which people are urged from early childhood to
think for themselves and to challenge established authority, it can sometimes be difficult to
muster enough humility to recognise ones own limitations.[71] We are all a little like
Pharaoh: our egos are by nature resistant to the idea that anyone else might be much more
intelligent or learned than ourselves. The belief that ordinary Muslims, even if they know
Arabic, are qualified to derive rulings of the Shariah for themselves, is an example of this
egotism running wild. To young people proud of their own judgement, and unfamiliar with
the complexity of the sources and the brilliance of authentic scholarship, this can be an
effective trap, which ends by luring them away from the orthodox path of Islam and into an
unintentional agenda of provoking deep divisions among the Muslims. The fact that all the
great scholars of the religion, including the hadith experts, themselves belonged to madhhabs,
and required their students to belong to madhhabs, seems to have been forgotten. Self-esteem
has won a major victory here over common sense and Islamic responsibility.[72]
The Holy Quran commands Muslims to use their minds and reflective capacities; and the
issue of following qualified scholarship is an area in which this faculty must be very carefully
deployed. The basic point should be appreciated that no categoric difference exists between
usul al-fiqh and any other specialised science requiring lengthy training. Shaykh Sa`id
Ramadan al-Buti, who has articulated the orthodox response to the anti-Madhhab trend in his
book: Non-Madhhabism: The Greatest Bida Threatening the Islamic Shari`a, likes to
compare the science of deriving rulings to that of medicine. "If ones child is seriously ill", he
asks, "does one look for oneself in the medical textbooks for the proper diagnosis and cure, or
should one go to a trained medical practitioner?" Clearly, sanity dictates the latter option. And
so it is in matters of religion, which are in reality even more important and potentially
hazardous: we would be both foolish and irresponsible to try to look through the sources
ourselves, and become our own muftis. Instead, we should recognise that those who have
spent their entire lives studying the Sunnah and the principles of law are far less likely to be
mistaken than we are.[73]
Another metaphor might be added to this, this time borrowed from astronomy. We might
compare the Quranic verses and the hadiths to the stars. With the naked eye, we are unable to
see many of them clearly; so we need a telescope. If we are foolish, or proud, we may try to
build one ourselves. If we are sensible and modest, however, we will be happy to use one
built for us by Imam al-Shafi'i or Ibn Hanbal, and refined, polished and improved by
generations of great astronomers. A madhhab is, after all, nothing more than a piece of
21

precision equipment enabling us to see Islam with the maximum clarity possible. If we use
our own devices, our amateurish attempts will inevitably distort our vision.
A third image might also be deployed. An ancient building, for instance the Blue Mosque in
Istanbul, might seem imperfect to some who worship in it. Young enthusiasts, burning with a
desire to make the building still more exquisite and well-made (and no doubt more in
conformity with their own time-bound preferences), might gain access to the crypts and
basements which lie under the structure, and, on the basis of their own understanding of the
principles of architecture, try to adjust the foundations and pillars which support the great
edifice above them. They will not, of course, bother to consult professional architects, except
perhaps one or two whose rhetoric pleases them nor will they be guided by the books and
memoirs of those who have maintained the structure over the centuries. Their zeal and pride
leaves them with no time for that. Groping through the basements, they bring out their picks
and drills, and set to work with their usual enthusiasm.
There is a real danger that Sunni Islam is being treated in a similar fashion. The edifice has
stood for centuries, withstanding the most bitter blows of its enemies. Only from within can it
be weakened. No doubt, Islam has its intelligent foes among whom this fact is well-known.
The spectacle of the disunity and fitnas which divided the early Muslims despite their
superior piety, and the solidity and cohesiveness of Sunnism after the final codification of the
Shariah in the four Schools of the great Imams, must have put ideas into many a malevolent
head. This is not to suggest in any way that those who attack the great madhhabs are the
conscious tools of Islams enemies. But it may go some way to explaining why they will
continue to be well-publicised and well-funded, while the orthodox alternative is starved of
resources. With every Muslim now a proud mujtahid, and with taqlid dismissed as a sin
rather than a humble and necessary virtue, the divergent views which caused such pain in our
early history will surely break surface again. Instead of four madhhabs in harmony, we will
have a billion madhhabs in bitter and self-righteous conflict. No more brilliant scheme for the
destruction of Islam could ever have been devised.[74]

Footnotes
[1] Abdul Wadod Shalabi, Islam: Religion of Life (2nd ed., Dorton, 1989), 10. This is the
purport of the famous hadith : The best generation is my own, then that which follows
them, then that which follows them. (Muslim, Fadail al-Sahaba, 210, 211, 212, 214)
[2] The Khalifa was killed by Muslim rebels from Egypt, whose grievances included his
alleged innovation of introducing a standard text of the Holy Koran. (Evidently the belief
among some modern Muslims that there can be no such thing as a good innovation (bid`a
hasana) has a long history!) For the full story, see pages 63-71 of M.A. Shaban, Islamic
History AD 600-750 (AH 132): A New Interpretation (Cambridge, 1971).
[3] Shaban, 73-7.
[4] For the Kharijtes see Imam al-Tabari, History, vol. XVIII, translated by M. Morony (New
York, 1987), 21-31. Their monstrous joy at having assassinated the khalifa `Ali ibn Abi Talib
is recorded on page 22.
22

[5] For an account of the historical development of the fiqh, see Ahmad Hasan, The
Early Development of Islamic Jurisprudence (Islamabad, 1970); Hilmi Ziya Ulken, Islam
Dusuncesi (Istanbul, 1946), 68-100; Omer Nasuhi Bilmen, Hukuki Islamiyye ve Istalahati
Fikhiyye Kamusu (Istanbul, 1949-52), I, 311-338.
[6] For a brief account of Shiism, see C. Glasse, The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam (london,
1989), 364-70.
[7] Fadaih al-Batiniya, ed. `Abd al-Rahman Badawi (Cairo, 1964).
[8] For a detailed but highly readable account of the Mongol onslaught, see B. Spuler,
History of the Mongols, based on Eastern and Western Accounts of the Thirteenth and
Fourteenth Centuries (London, 1972); the best-known account by a Muslim historian is `Ala
al-Din al-Juwayni, Tarikh-i Jihangusha, translated by J.A. Boyle as The History of the WorldConqueror (Manchester, 1958).
[9] For the slaughter of the ulema, see the dramatic account of Ahmad Aflaki, Manaqib
al-`Arifin, ed. Tahsin Tazici (Ankara, 1959-61), I, 21, who states that 50,000 scholars
were killed in the city of Balkh alone.
[10] The critical battle was fought in 873/1469, when the Mongol ruler of Iran was defeated
by the Turkomans of the (Sunni) Ak Koyunlu dynasty, who were in turn defeated by Shah
Isma`il, an extreme Shi`ite, in 906-7/1501, who inaugurated the Safavid rule which turned
Iran into a Shi`i country. (The Cambridge History of Iran, VI, 174-5; 189-350; Sayyid
Muhammad Sabzavari, tr. Sayyid Hasan Amin, Islamic Political and Juridical Thought in
Safavid Iran [Tehran, 1989].)
[11] The Kharijites represent a tendency which has reappeared in some circles in recent
years. Divided into many factions, their principles were never fully codified. They were
textualist, puritanical and anti-intellectual, rejected the condition of Quraishite birth for
their Imam, and declared everyone outside their grouping to be kafir. For some
interesting accounts, see M. Kafafi, The Rise of Kharijism, Bulletin of the Faculty of
Arts of the University of Egypt, XIV (1952), 29-48; Ibn Hazm, al-Fisal fil-milal walnihal (Cairo, 1320), IV, 188-92; Brahim Zerouki, LImamat de Tahart: premier etat
musulman du Maghreb (Paris, 1987).
[12] Probably because he had written a book celebrating the virtues of the caliph `Ali. See
Ibn Hajar al-`Asqalani, Tahdhib al-Tahdhib (Hyderabad, 1325), I, 36-40.
[13] See, for example, Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni, al-Burhan fi usul al-fiqh (Cairo,
1400), 1189-1252.
[14] Ibn Qutayba, Tawil Mukhtalif al-Hadith (Cairo, 1326). Readers of French will benefit
from the translation of G. Lecomte: Le Traite des divergences du hadith dIbn Qutayba
(Damascus, 1962). There is also a useful study by Ishaq al-Husayni: The Life and Works of
Ibn Qutayba (Beirut, 1950). Mention should also be made of a later and inmost respects
similar work, by Imam al-Tahawi (d. 321): Mushkil al-Athar (Hyderabad, 1333), which is
more widely used among the ulema.

23

[15] Imam Abul-Wahid al-Baji (d. 474), Ihkam al-Fusul ila `Ilm al-Usul, ed. A. Turki
(Beirut, 1986/1407), 184-207; Imam Abu Ishaq al-Sirazi (d. 476), al-Luma` fi usual alfiqh (Cairo, 1377), 17-24; Juwayni, 327-52, 1247; Imam al-Shafi`i, tr. Majid
Khadduri, Al-Shafi`is Risala: Treatise on the Foundations of Islamic Jurisprudence
(Cambridge, 1987), 103-8. Shafi`i gives a number of well-known examples of Koranic
texts being subject to takhsis. For instance, the verse As for the thief, male and female,
cut of their hands as a retribution from Allah, (5:42) appears to be unconditional;
however it is subject to takhsis by the hadith which reads Hands should not be cut off
for fruits, nor the spadix of a palm tree, and that the hand should not be cut off unless
the price of the thing stolen is a quarter of a dinar or more. (Malik, Muwatta, Abu
Daud, Sunan; see Shafi`i, Risala, 105.)
[16] Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence (Cambridge, 1991),
356-65. This excellent book by a prominent Afghan scholar is by far the best summary of the
theory of Islamic law, and should be required reading for every Muslim who wishes to raise
questions concerning the Shari`a disciples.
[17] The verses in question were: 2:219, 4:43, and 5:93. See Kamali, 16-17.
[18] Kamali, 150; Ibn Rushd, The Distinguished Jurists Primer, tr. Imran Nyazee and
Muhammad Abdul Rauf (Reading, 1994), 97. This new translation of the great classic
Bidayat al-Mujtahid, only the first volume of which is available at present, is a fascinating
explanation of the basic arguments over the proof texts (adilla) used by the scholars of the
recognized madhhabs. Ibn Rushd was a Maliki qadi, but presents the views of other scholars
with the usual respect and objectivity. The work is the best-known example of a book of the
Shari`a science of `ilm al-khilaf (the Knowledge of Variant Rulings; for a definition of this
science see Imam Hujjat al-Islam al-Ghazali, al-Mustasfa min `ilm al-usul, [Cairo, 1324] I,
5).
[19] Kamali, 150 quoting Shatibi, Muwafaqat, III, 63.
[20] Kamali, 154-160; Baji, 383-450; Shirazi, 30-5; Juwayni, 1412-1454; Ghazali,
Mustasfa, I, 107-129. The problem was first addressed systematically by Imam al-Shafi`i.
There are certain hadiths which agree with one another, and others which are contradictory
to one another; the abrogating and the abrogated hadiths are clearly distinguished [in some of
them]; in others the hadiths which are abrogating and abrogated are not indicated. (Risala,
179.) For cases in which the Holy Koran has abrogated a hadith, or (more rarely) a hadith has
abrogated a Koranic verse, see Ghazali, Mustasfa, I, 124-6; Baji, 429-39; Juwayni, 1440-3.
The sunna is able to abrogate the Koran because it too is a revelation (wahy); as Imam al-Baji
explains it, The Blessed Prophets own sunnas do not in reality abrogate anything
themselves; they only state that Allah has cancelled the ruling of a Koranic passage. Hence
the abrogation, in reality, is from Allah, whether theabrogating passage is in the Koran or the
Sunna. (Baji, 435.)
[21] For this as an instance of abrogation, see Shafi`i, Risala (Khadduri), 133.
[22] Muslim, Janaiz, 100.
[23] Kamali, 154.

24

[24] Kamali, 155; see also Shafi`i, Risala (khadduri), 168.

[25] Sayf ad-Din Ahmed Ibn Muhammad, Al-Albani Unveiled: An Exposition of His
Errors and Other Important Issues (London, 2nd ed., 1415), 49-51; Ibn Rushd, The
Distinguished Jurists Primer, 168-170; Shafi`i, Risala (Khadduri), 199-202.
[26] M.Z. Siddiqi, Hadith Literature, its Origins, Development and Special Features
(Revised ed. Cambridge, 1993), 3, 40, 126.
[27] Defects in the matn can sometimes make a hadith weak even if its isnad is sound
(Siddiqi, 113-6).
[28] Kamali, 361; Bilmen, I, 74-6, 82-4. The classification of revealed texts under these
headings is one of the most sensitive areas of usul al-fiqh.
[29] Kamali, 361.
[30] Kamali, 362.
[31] Kamali, 235-44; Ghazali, Mustasfa, 1, 191,2; Juwayni, 343.
[32] For some expositions of the difficult topic of qiyas, see Kamali, 197-228; Shirazi, 53-63;
Juwayni, 676-95; Imam Sayf al-Din al-Amidi (al-Ihkam fi Usul al-Ahkam, Cairo,
1332/1914), III, 261-437, IV, 1-161.
[33] Kamali, 363-4.
[34] The accessible English translation of his best-known work on legal theory has already
been mentioned above in note 15.
[35] The question is often asked why only four schools should be followed today. The
answer is straightforward: while in theory there is no reason whatsoever why the
number has to be four, the historical fact is that only these four have sufficient detailed
literature to support them. In connection with the hyper-literalist Zahiri madhhab, Ibn
Khaldun writes: Worthless persons occasionally feel obliged to follow the Zahiri school
and study these books in the desire to learn the Zahiri system of jurisprudence from
them, but they get nowhere, and encounter the opposition and disapproval of the great
mass of Muslims. In doing so they often are considered innovators, as they accept
knowledge from books for which no key is provided by teachers. (Muqaddima, tr. F.
Rosenthal [Princeton, 1958], III, 6.)
[36] These are (in order of length, shortest first), al-Khulasa, al-Wajiz, al-Wasit and Basit.
The great Imam penned over a hundred other books, earning him from a grateful Umma the
title Hujjat al-Islam (The Proof of Islam). It is hardly surprising that when the ulema quote
the famous sahih hadith Allah shall raise up for this Umma at the beginning of each century
someone who will renew for it its religion, they cite Imam al-Ghazali as the renewer of the
fifth century of Islam. See for instance Imam Muhammad al-Sakhawi (d. 902AH), alMaqasid al-Hasana fi bayan kathirin min al-ahadith al-mushtahira `ala al-alsina (Beirut,
1405), 203-4, who lists the renewers as follows: `Umar ibn `Abd al-`Aziz, al-Shafi`i, Ibn
Surayj, Abu Hamid al-Isfaraini, Hujjut al-Islam al-Ghazali, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, Ibn Daqaq
25

al-`Id, al-Balqini. Imam Ibn `Asakir (d. 571AH), in his famous work Tabyin Kadhib alMuftari fima nusiba ila al-Imam Abil-Hasan al-Ash`ari, ed. Imam Muhammad Zahid alKawthari (Damascus, 1347, reproduced Beirut, 1404), 52-4, has the following list: `Umar ibn
`Abd al-`Aziz, al-Shafi`i, al-Ash`ari, al-Baqillani, al-Ghazali.
[37] Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ihya `Ulum al-Din (Cairo: Mustafa al-Halibi, 1347),
III, 65.
[38] The most characteristic qualities of the great ulema are dignity and serenity, respect for
other scholars, compassionate concern for the Umma, and following the Prophet, upon whom
be blessings and peace, whose view was always broad, his wisdom perfect, and his toleration
superb. Imam Yusuf al-Dajawi (d. 1365AH), Maqalat wa-Fatawa (Cairo: Majmu` al-Buhuth
al-Islamiya, 1402), II, 583. `True fairness is to regard all the Imams as worthy; whoever
follows the madhhab of a Mujtahid because he has not attained the level of Ijtihad, is not
harmed by the fact that other imams differ from his own. (Shatibi, I`tisam, III, 260.) There
are many examples cited by the scholars to show the respect of the madhhabs for each other.
For instance, Shaykh Ibrahim al-Samadi (d. 1662), a pious scholar of Damascus, once prayed
to be given four sons, so that each might follow one of the recognized madhhabs, thereby
bringing a fourfold blessing to his house. (Muhammad al-Amin al-Muhibbi, Khulasat al-atar
fi a`yan al-qarn al-hadi `ashar [Cairo, 1248], I, 48.) And it was not uncommon for scholars
to be able to give fatwas in more than one madhhab (such a man was known technically as
mufti al-firaq). (Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl Tarikh Dimasq [Beirut, 1908], 311.) Hostility between
the Madhhabs was rare, despite some abuse in the late Ottoman period. Al-Dhahabi counsels
his readers as follows: Do not think that your madhhab is the best, and the one most beloved
by Allah, for you have no proof of this. The Imams, may Allah be pleased with them, all
follow great goodness; when they are right, they receive two rewards, and when they are
wrong, they still receive one reward. (al-Dhahabi, Zaghal al-`Ilm wal-Talab, 15, quoted in
Sa`id Ramadan al-Buti, Al-Lamadhhabiya Akhtar Bid`a tuhaddid al-Shari`a al-Islamiya, 3rd
edition, Beirut, 1404, 81.) The final words here (right reward) are taken from a wellknown hadith to this effect (Bukhari, I`tisam, 21.)
[39] Most notoriously N. Couson, Conflicts and Tensions in Islamic Jurisprudence
(Chicago, 1969), 43, 50, 96; but also I. Goldziher, Louis Ardet and Montgomery Watt.
[40] It will be useful here to refute an accusation made by some Orientalists, and even by
some modern Muslims, who suggest that the scholars were reluctant to challenge the
madhhab system because if they did so they would be out of a job, and lucrative qadi
positions, restricted to followers of the orthodox Schools, would be barred to them. This is a
particularly distasteful example of the modern tendency to slander men whose moral integrity
was no less impressive than their learning: to suggest that the great Ulema of Islam followed
the interpretation of Islam that they did simply for financial reasons is insulting and a
disgraceful form of ghiba (backbiting). In any case, it can be easily refuted. The great ulema
of the past were in almost every case men of independent means, and did not need to earn
from their scholarship. For instance, Imam Ibn Hajar had inherited a fortune from his mother
(al-Sakhawi, al-Daw al-Lami` li-Ahl al-Qarn al-Tasi` (Cairo, 1353-5), II, 36-40). Imam alSuyuti came from a prominent and wealthy family of civil servants (see his own Husn alMuhadara fi akhbar Misr wal-Wahira [Cairo, 1321], I, 153, 203). For examples of scholars
who achieved financial independence see the editors notes to Ibn Jam`as Tadhkirat al-Sami`
fi Adab al-`Alim wal-Muta`allim (Hyderabad, 1353), 210: Imam al-Baji was a craftsman
who made gold leaf: his academic associates recall that he used to go out to see them with
26

his hand sore from the effects of the hammer (Dhahabi, Tadhkira, III, 349-50); while the
Khalil ibn Ishaq, also a Maliki, was a soldier who had taken part in the liberation of
Alexandria from the Crusaders, and often gave his fiqh classes while still wearing his chain
mail and helmet (Suyuti, Husn al-Muhadara, I, 217.) And it was typical for the great scholars
to live lives of great frugality: Imam al-Nawawi, who died at the age of 44, is said to have
damaged his health by his ascetic lifestyle: for instance, he declined to eat of the fruit of
Damascus, where he taught, because it was grown on land whose legal status he regarded as
suspect. (al-Yafi`I, Mirat al-Janan wa-`Ibrat al-Yaqzan [Hyderabad, 1338], IV, 1385.) It is
not easy to see how such men could have allowed motives of financial gain to dictate their
approach to religion.
[41] A mujtahid is a scholar qualified to perform ijtihad, defined as personal effort to
derive a Shari`a ruling of the furu` from the revealed sources. (Bilmen, I, 247.) His chief
task - the actual process of derivation - is called istinbat, originally signifying in Arabic
bringing up water with difficulty from a well. (Bilmen, I, 247.)
[42] When Allahs Messenger, upon him be blessings and peace, wished to send Mu`adh ibn
Jabal to the Yemen, he asked him: How will you judge if an issue is presented to you for
judgement? By what is in Allahs Book, he replied. And if you do not find it in Allahs
Book? Then by the Sunna of Allahs Messenger. And if it is not in the Sunna of Allahs
Messenger? Then I shall strive in my own judgement (ajtahidu rayi). (Abu Daud, Aqdiya,
11.)
[43] Kamali, 366-393, especially 374-7; see also Amidi, IV, 219-11; Shirazi, 71-2; Bilmen,
I, 247, 250, 251-2.
[44] Kamali, 386-8. Examples of such men from the time of the Tabi`un onwards include
Ibrahim al-Nakha`I, Ibn Abi Layla, Ibn Shubruma, Sufyan al-Thawri, al-Hasan ibn Salih, alAwza`i, `Amr ibn al-Harith, al-Layth ibn Sa`d, `Abdullah ibn Abi Ja`far, Ishaq ibn Rahawayh,
Abu `Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Salam, Abu Thawr, Ibn Khuzayma, Ibn Nasr al-Marwazi, Ibn
Mundhir, Daud al-Zahiri, and Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, may Allah show them all His mercy.
(Bilmen, I, 324.) It should be noted that according to some scholars a concession (rukhsa)
exists on the matter of the permissibility of taqlid for mujtahid: Imam al-Baji and Imam alHaramayn, for instance, permit a mujtahid to follow another mujtahid in cases where his own
research to establish a matter would result in dangerous delay to the performance of a
religious duty. (Baji, 783; Juwayni, 1505.)
[45] Kamali, 388; Bilmen, I, 248.
[46] The major followers of the great Imams did not simply imitate them as some have
claimed. We know, for instance, that Abu Yusuf and al-Shaybani frequently dissented from
the position of Abu Hanifa. In fact, it is hard to find a single question of fiqh which is not
surrounded by a debate, in which the independent reasoning and ijtihad of the scholars, and
their determination to locate the precise truth, are very conspicuous. In this way we find
Imam al-Shafi`i determining, in his new madhhab, that the time for Maghrib does not extend
into the late twilight (shafaq); while his followers departed from this position in order to
follow a different proof-text (dalil). Similarly, Ibn `Abd al-Barr and Abu Bakr ibn al-`Arabi
hold many divergent views in the madhhab of Imam Malik. And so on. (Imam al-Dajawi, II,
584.)

27

[47] Whenever a mujtahid reaches a judgement in which he goes against ijma`, or the
basaic principles, or an unambiguous text, or a clear qiyas (al-qiyas al-jali) free of any
proof which contradicts it, his muqallid is not permitted to convey his view to the people
or to give a fatwa in accordance with it however no-one can know whether this has
occurred who has not mastered the principles of jurisprudence, clear qiyas,
unambiguous texts, and anything that could intervene in these things; and to know this
one is obliged to learned usul al-fiqh and immerse oneself in the ocean of fiqh. (Imam
Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi, al-Furuq (Cairo, 1346), II, 109.)
[48] The ulema usually recognize seven different degrees of Muslims from the point of view
of their learning, and for those who are interested they are listed here, in order of scholarly
status. (1,2) The mujtahidun fil-shar` (Mujtahids in the Shari`a) and the mujtahidun filmadhhab (Mujtahids in the Madhhab) have already been mentioned. (3) Mujtahidun filmasail (Mujtahids on Particular Issues) are scholars who remain within a school, but are
competent to exercise ijtihad on certain aspects within it which they know thoroughly. (4)
Ashab al-Takhrij (Resolvers of Ambiguity), who are competent to indicate which view was
preferable in cases of ambiguity, or regarding suitability to prevailing conditions. (5) Ashab
al-Tarjih (People of Assessment) are those competent to make comparisons and distinguish
the correct (sahih) and the preferred (rajih, arjah) and the agreed-upon (mufta biha) views
from the weak ones inside the madhhab. (6) Ashab al-Tashih (People of Correction): those
who could distinguish between the manifest (zahir al-riwaya) and the rare and obscure
(nawadir) views of the schools of their following. (7) Muqallidun: the emulators, including
all non-scholars. (Kamali, 387-9. See also Bilmen, I, 250-1, 324-6.) Of these seven
categories, only the first three are considered to be mujtahids.
[49] This is explained by Imam al-Shatibi in the context of the following passage, all of
which is quoted here to furnish a further summary of the orthodox position on taqlid. A
person obliged to follow the rules of the Shari`a must fall into one of three categories. [I]
He may be a mujtahid, in which case he will practice the legal conclusions to which his
ijtihad leads him. [II] He may be a complete muqallid, unappraised of the knowledge
required. In his case, he must have a guide to lead him, and an arbitrator to give
judgements for him, and a scholar to emulate. Obviously, he follows the guide only in
his capacity as a man possessed of the requisite knowledge. The proof for this is that if
he knows, or even suspects, that he does not in fact possess it, it is not permissible for
him to follow him or to accept his judgement; in fact, no individual, whether educated
or not, should think of following through taqlid someone who he knows is not qualified,
in the way that a sick man should not put himself in the hands of someone whom he
knows is not a doctor. [III] He may not have attained to the level of the Mujtahids, but
he understands the dalil and its context, and is competent to understand it in order to
prefer some rulings over others in certain questions. In his case, one must either
recognize his preferences and views, or not. If they are recognized, then he becomes like
a mujtahid on that issue; if they are not, then he must be classed alone with other
ordinary non-specialist Muslims, who are obliged to follow Mujtahids. (al-I`tisam [Cairo,
1913-4] III, 251-3.)
An equivalent explanation of the status of the muttabi` is given by Amidi, IV, 306-7: If a
non-scholar, not qualified to make ijtihad, has acquired some of the knowledge required
for ijtihad, he must follow the verdicts of the Mujtahids. This is the view of the correct
scholars, although it has been rejected by some of the Mu`tazilites in Baghdad, who
state: "That is not allowable, unless he obtains a clear proof (dalil) of the correctness of
28

the ijtihad he is following." But the correct view is that which we have stated, this being
proved by the Koran, Ijma` and the intellect. The Koranic proof is Allahs statement,
"Ask the people of remembrance if you do not know," which is a general (`amm)
commandment to all. The proof by Ijma` is that ordinary Muslims in the time of the
Companions and the Followers used to ask the mujtahids, and follow them in their
Shari`a judgements, while the learned among them would answer their questions
without indicating the dalil. They would not forbid them from doing this, and this
therefore constitutes Ijma` on the absolute permissibility of an ordinary Muslim
following the rulings of a mujtahid. For Amidis intellectual proof, see note 51 below.
[50] A muqallid is a Muslim who practices taqlid, which is the Shari`a term for the
acceptance by an ordinary person of the judgement of a mufti. (Juwayni, 1545.) The word
mufti here means either a mujtahid or someone who authentically transmits the verdict of a
mujtahid. As for the ordinary person [`ammi], it is obligatory [wajib] upon him to make
taqlid of the ulema. (Baji, 783.) The actual choice of which mujtahid an ordinary Muslim
should follow is clearly a major responsibility. A muqallid may only make taqlid of another
person after carefully examining his credentials, and obtaining reliable third-party testimony
as to his scholarly attainments (Juwayni, 1511). (Imam Ibn Furak, however holds that a
mujtahids own self-testimony is sufficient.) Imam Juwayni goes on to observe (1515) that is
is necessary to follow the best mujtahid available; whichis also the positoin of Imam al-Baji
(794). See also Shirazi (p. 72): It is not permissible for someone asking for a fatwa to ask
just anyone, lest he ask someone who has no knowledge of the fiqh. Instead it is obligatory
(wajib) for him to ascertain the scholars learning and trustworthiness. And Qarafi (II, 110):
The Salaf, may Allah be pleased with them, were intensely reluctant to give fatwas. Imam
Malik said, "A scholar should not give fatwas until he is regarded as competent to do so both
by himself and by others." In other words, the scholars must be satisfied of his qualifications.
Imam Malik did not begin to give fatwas until he had been given permission (ijaza) to do so
by forty turbaned ones [scholars].
[51] The dalil for our position is Allahs commandment: So ask the people of
remembrance, if you do not know. For if we forbade taqlid, everyone would need to
become an advanced scholar, and no-one would be able [have time] to earn anything,
and the earth would lie uncultivated. (Shirazi, 71.) The intellectual proof [of the need
for taqlid] is that if an issue of the furu` arises for someone who does not possess the
qualifications for ijtihad then he will either not adopt an Islamic ruling at all, and this is
a violation of the Ijma`, or, alternatively, he will adopt an Islamic ruling, either by
investigating the proofs involved, or by taqlid. But an adequate investigation of the
proofs is not possible for him, for it would oblige him, and all humanity, fully to
investigate the dalils pertaining to the issues, thereby distracting them from their
sources of income, and leading to the extinction of crafts and the ruin of the world.
(Amidi, Ihkam, IV, 307-8.) One of the dalils for the legitimacy of following the verdicts
of the scholars is our knowledge that anyone who looks into these discussions and seeks
to deduce rulings of the Shari`a will need to have the right tools, namely, the science of
the rulings of the Koran and Sunna and usul al-fiqh, the principles of rhetoric and the
Arabic language, and other sciences which are not easily acquired, and which most
people cannot attain to. And even if some of them do attain to it, they only do so after
long study, investigation and very great effort, which would require that they devote
themselves entirely to this and do nothing else; and if ordinary people were under the
obligation to do this, there would be no cultivation, commerce, or other employments
which are essential for the continuance of humanity - and it is the ijma` of the Umma
29

that this is something which Allah ta`ala has not obliged His slaves to do. There is
therefore no alternative for them to following the ulema. (Baji, 793.)
[52] There is ijma` among the scholars that this verse is a commandment to whoever does
not know a ruling or the dalil for it to follow someone who does. Almost all the scholars of
usul al-fiqh have made this verse their principle dalil that it is obligatory for an ordinary
person to follow a scholar who is a mujtahid. (al-Buti, 71; translated also in Keller, 17.)
[53] See also Dajawi, II, 576: The Companions and Followers used to give fatwas on
legal issues to those who asked for them. At times they would mention the source, if this
was necessary, while at other times they would limit themselves to specifying the ruling.
Al-Ghazali (Mustasfa, II, 385) explains that the existence of taqlid and fatwa among the
Companions is a dalil for the necessity of this fundamental distinction: The proof that
taqlid is obligatory is the ijma` of the Companions. For they used to give fatwas to the
ordinary people and did not command them to acquire the degree of ijtihad for
themselves. This is known necessarily (bil-darura) and by parallel lines of transmission
(tawatur) from both the scholars and the non-scholars among them. See also Ibn
Khaldun, Muqaddima (Bulaq ed., p. 216): Not all the Companions were qualified to
give fatwas, and Islam was not taken from all of them. That privilege was held only by
those who had learnt the Koran, knew what it contained by what of abrogated and
abrogating passages, ambiguous (mutashabih) and perspicuous (muhkam) expressions,
and its other special features. And also Imam al-Baji (793): Ordinary Muslims have
no alternative but to follow the Ulema. One proof of this is the ijma` of the Companions,
for those among them who had not attained the degree of ijtihad used to ask the ulema
of the Companions for the correct ruling on something which happened to them. Not
one of the Companions criticized them for so doing; on the contrary, they gave them
fatwas on the issues they had asked about, without condemning them or telling them to
derive the rulings themselves [from the Koran and Sunna]. See also Imam al-Amidi: in
note 49 above.
A list of the muftis among the Companions is given by Juwayni (1494-9); they include
the Four Khalifas, Talha ibn `Ubaydillah, `Abd al-Rahman ibn `Awf, and Sa`d ibn Abi
Waqqas. Others were not muftis, such as Abu Hurayra, who despite his many
narrations of hadiths was never known for his judgements (1497). Shirazi (p. 52)
confirms the obvious point that some Companions are considered more worthy of being
followed in legal matters than others.
[54] As we have seen above, the ulema regard a mastery of the Arabic language as one of the
essential qualifications for deriving the Shari`a directly from the Koran and Sunna. See
Juwayni, 70-216, where this is stressed. Juwayni records that Imam al-Shafi`i was so
expert in the Arabic language, grammar and rhetoric that at a very young age he was
consulted by the great philologist al-Asma`i, who asked his help in editing some early and
very difficult collections of Arabic poetry. (Juwayni, 1501.) We also learn that Imam `Ibn alMubarak, the famous traditionalist of Merv, spent more money on learning Arabic than on
traditions [hadith], attaching more importance on the former than the latter, and asking the
students of hadith to spent twice as long on Arabic than on hadith al-Asma`i held that
someone who studied hadith without learning grammar was to be categorized with the forgers
of hadith. (Siddiqi, 84-5.)

30

[55] Published in 6 volumes in Cairo in 1313 AH. Another work by him, the Kitab alZuhd (Beirut, 1403), also contains many hadiths.
[56] Published in 13 volumes in Bombay between 1386 and 1390.
[57] Edited by M.M. al-A`zami, Beirut, 1391-97.
[58] This is an important collection of hadiths who accuracy Imam al-Hakim al-Nisaburi
considered to meet the criteria of Imams al-Bukhari and Muslim, but which had not been
included in their collections. Published in four large volumes in Hyderabad between 13341342.
[59] Needless to say, the amateurs who deny taqlid and try to derive the rulings for
themselves are even more ignorant of the derivative sources of Shari`a than they are of
the Koran and Sunna. These other sources do not only include the famous ones such as
ijma` and qiyas. For instance, the fatwas of the Companions are considered by the ulema
to be a further important source of legislation. Imam al-Shafi`i throughout his life
taught that diya (bloodmoney) was increased in cases of crimes committed in the
Haramayn or the Sacred Months, and he had no basis for this other than the statements
of the Companions. (Juwayni, 1001.)
[60] There is a version of this hadith in Tirmidhi (Hudu, 2), but attached to an isnad which
includes Yazid ibn Ziyad, who is weak.
[61] Ibn Abi Shayba, Musannaf, XI, 70.
[62] Sakhawi, 74-5.
[63] Sakhawi, 742.
[64] For a complete list of the most famous scholars of Islam, and the madhhabs to which
they belonged see Sayf al-Din Ahmad, Al-Albani Unveiled, 97-9.
[65] For these writers see Ahmad ibn al-Naqib al-Misri, tr. Nuh Keller, Reliance of the
Traveller (Abu Dhabi, 1991), 1059-60, 1057-9. The attitude of Ibn al-Qayyim is not
consistent on this issue. In some passages of his I`lam al-Muwaqqi`in he seems to suggest
that any Muslim is qualified to derive rulings directly from the Koran and Sunna. But
in other passages he takes a more intelligent view. For instance, he writes: Is it
permissible for a mufti who adheres to the madhhab of his Imam to give a fatwa in
accordance with a different madhhab if that is more correct in his view? [The answer is]
if he is [simply] following the principles of that Imam in procedures of ijtihad and
ascertaining the proof-texts [i.e. is a mujtahid fil-madhhab], then he is permitted to
follow the view of another mujtahid which he considers correct. (I`lam al-Muwaqqi`in,
IV, 237.) This is a broad approach, but is nonetheless very far from the notion of simply
following the dalil every time rather than following a qualified interpreter. This quote
and several others are given by Shaykh al-Buti to show the various opinions held by Ibn
al-Qayyim on this issue, which, according to the Shaykh, reveal remarkable
contradictions. (Al-Buti, 56-60.)

31

[66] Many of Ibn Taymiyas works exist only as single manuscripts; and even the others,
when compared to the works of the great scholars such as al-Suyuti and al-Nawawi, seem to
have been copied only very rarely. See the list of ancient manuscripts of his works given by
C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (2nd. Ed. Leiden, 1943-9), II, 126-7,
Supplement, II, 119-126.
[67] `Abduh, in turn, was influenced by his teacher and collaborator Jamal al-Din alAfghani (1839-97). Afghani was associated with that transitional Young Ottoman
generation which created the likes of Namik Kemal and (somewhat later) Zia Gokalp
and Sati` al-Husari: men deeply traumatized by the success of the Western powers and
the spectacle of Ottoman military failure, and who sought a cultural renewal by
jettisoning historic Muslim culture while maintaining authenticity by retaining a
pristine essence. In this they were inspired, consciously or otherwise, by the wider 19 th
century quest for authenticity: the nationalist philosophers Herder and Le Bon, who
had outlined a similar revivalist-essentialist project for France and Germany based on
the original sources of their national cultures, had been translated and were widely
read in the Muslim world at the time. Afghani was not a profound thinker, but his
pamphlets and articles in the journal which he and `Abduh edited, al-`Urwat al-Wuthqa,
were highly influential. Whether he believed in his own pan-Islamic ideology, or indeed
in his attenuated and anti-historicist version of Islam, is unclear. When writing in
contexts far from his Muslim readership he often showed an extreme scepticism. For
instance, in his debate with Renan concerning the decline of Arab civilization, he wrote
of Islam: It is clear that where-ever it becomes established, this religion tried to stifle
the sciences and it was marvellously served in its designs by despotism. (Reply to
Renan, translated by N. Keddie in An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and
Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968),
183, 187. It is hardly surprising that `Abduh should have worked so hard to suppress
the Arabic translation of this work!
Afghanis reformist ideology led him to found a national political party in Egypt, alHizb al-Watani, including not only Muslims, but in which all Christians and Jews who
lived in the land of Egypt were eligible for membership. (Jamal Ahmed, The
Intellectual Origins of Egyptian Nationalism (London, 1960), 16.) This departure from
traditional Islamic notions of solidarity can be seen as a product of Afghanis specific
attitude to taqlid. But his pupils own fatwas were often far more radical, perhaps
because `Abduhs partiality for the British authority which pursued similar lines of
reform and gave him support (Ahmed, 35). We are not surprised to learn that the
British governor of Egypt, Lord Cromer, wrote: For many years I gave to Mohammed
Abdu all the encouragement in my power (Lord Cromer, Modern Egypt [ New York,
1908], II, 180). An example is the declaration in `Abduhs tafsir (much of which is by
Rida) that the erection of statues is halal. The same argument was being invoked by
Ataturk, who, when asked why he was erecting a statue of himself in Ankara, claimed
that the making of statues is not forbidden today as it was when Muslims were just out
of idolatry, and that it is necessary for the Turks to practice this art, for it is one of the
arts of civilization. (C. Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt [London, 1933], 193-4.)
[68] A poorly-argued but well-financed example of a book in this category is a short text by
the Saudi writer al-Khajnadi, of which an amended version exists in English. This text
aroused considerable concern among the ulema when it first appeared in the 1960s, and
Shaykh Sa`id Ramadan al-Butis book was in fact written specifically in refutation of it. The
32

second and subsequent editions of al-Butis work, which shows how Khajnadi systematically
misquoted and distorted the texts, contain a preface which includes an account of a meeting
between al-Buti and the Albanian writer Nasir al-Din al-Albani, who was associated with
Khajnadis ideas. The three-hour meeting, which was taped, was curious inasmuch as alAlbani denied that Khajnadi was stating that all Muslims can derive rulings directly from the
Koran and Sunna. For instance where Khajnadi makes the apparently misleading statement
that As for the Madhhabs, these are the views and ijtihads of the ulema on certain issues;
and neither Allah nor His messenger have compelled anyone to follow them, Al-Albani
explains that anyone (ahad) here in fact refers to anyone qualified to make ijtihad. (AlButi, 13.) Al-Albani went on to cite several other instances of how readers had unfortunately
misunderstood Khajnadis intention. Shaykh al-Buti, quite reasonably, replied to the Albanian
writer: No scholar would ever use language in such a loose way and make such
generalizations, and intend to say something so different to what he actually and clearly says;
in fact, no-one would understand his words as you have interpreted them. Albanis response
was: The man was of Uzbek origin, and his Arabic was that of a foreigner, so he was not
able to make himself as clear as an Arab would. He is dead now, and we should give him the
benefit of the doubt and impose the best interpretation we can on his words! (al-Buti, 14.)
But al-Albani, despite his protestations, is reliably said to believe even now that taqlid is
unacceptable. Wa-la hawla wa-la quawwata illa biLlah.
[69] The ulema also quote the following guiding principles of Islamic jurisprudence:
That which is wrong (munkar) need not be condemned as [objectively] wrong unless all
scholars agree (in ijma`) that it is so. (Dajawi, II, 583.) Imam al-Dajawi (II, 575) also
makes the following points: The differences of opinion among the ulema are a great
mercy (rahma) upon this Umma. `Umar ibn `Abd al-`Aziz declared: "It would not
please me if the Companions of Muhammad, upon whom be blessings and peace, had
not disagreed, for had they not done so, no mercy would have come down." Yahya ibn
Sa`id, one of the great hadith narrators among the Followers (Tabi`un), said: "The
people of knowledge are a people of broadness (ahl tawsi`a). They continue to give
fatwas which are different from each other, and no scholar reproaches another scholar
for his opinion." However, if ordinary people took their rulings straight from the Koran
and Sunna, as a certain faction desires, their opinions would be far more discordant
than this, and the Four Schools would no longer be four, but thousands. Should that day
come, it will bring disaster upon disaster for the Muslims - may we never live to see it!
One could add that that day seems already to be upon us, and that the resulting
widening of the argument on even the most simple juridical matters is no longer
tempered by the erstwhile principles of politeness and toleration. The fiercely insulting
debate between Nasir al-Din al-Albani and the Saudi writer al-Tuwayjiri is a typical
instance. The former writer, in his book Hijab al-Mara al-Muslima, uses the Koran and
Sunna to defend his views that a woman may expose her face in public; while the latter,
in his al-Sarim al-Mashhur `ala Ahl al-Tabarruj wal- Sufur, attacks Albani in the most
vituperative terms for failing to draw from the revealed sources and supposedly obvious
conclusion that women must always veil their faces from non-mahram men. Other
example of this bitter hatred generation by the non-Madhhab style of discord, based in
attempts at direct istinbat, are unfortunately many. Hardly any mosque or Islamic
organization nowadays seems to be free of them.
The solution is to recall the principle referred to above, namely that two mujtahids can
hold differing opinions on the furu`, and still be rewarded by Allah, while both opinions
33

will constitute legitimate fiqh. (Juwayni, 1455-8; Bilmen, I, 249.) This is clearly
indicated in the Koranic verses: And Daud and Sulayman, when they gave judgement
concerning the field, when peoples sheep had strayed and browsed therein by night; and
We were witness to their judgement. We made Sulayman to understand [the case]; and
unto each of them We gave judgement and knowledge. (21:78-9) The two Prophets, upon
them be peace, had given different fatwas; and Sulaymans was the more correct, but as
Prophets they were infallible (ma`sum), and hence Dauds judgement was acceptable
also.
Understanding this is the key to recreating the spirit of tolerance among Muslims.
Shaykh Omer Bilmen summarizes the jurists position as follows: The fundamentals of
the religion, namely basic doctrine, the obligatory status of the forms of worship, and
the ethical virtues, are the subject of universal agreement, an agreement to which
everyone is religiously obliged to subscribe. Those who diverge from the rulings
accepted by the overwhelming majority of ordinary Muslims are considered to be the
people of bid`a and misguidance, since the dalils (proof-texts) establishing them are
clear. But it is not a violation of any Islamic obligation for differences of opinion to exist
concerning the furu` (branches) and juziyyat (secondary issues) which devolve from
these basic principles. In fact, such differences are a necessary expression of the Divine
wisdom. (Bilmen, I, 329.)
A further point needs elucidating. If the jurists may legitimately disagree, how should
the Islamic state apply a unified legal code throughout its territories? Clearly, the law
must be the same everywhere. Imam al-Qarafi states the answer clearly: The head of
state gives a judgement concerning the [variant rulings which have been reached by]
ijtihad, and this does away with the disagreement, and obliges those who follow ijtihad
verdicts which conflict with the head of states to adopt his verdict. (Qarafi, II, 103;
affirmed also in Amidi, IV, 273-4.) Obviously this is a counsel specifically for qadis, and
applies only to questions of public law, not to rulings on worship.
[70] This was understood as early as the 18th century. Al-Buti quotes Shah Waliullah alDahlawi (Hujjat Allah al-Baligha, I, 132) as observing: The Umma up to the present date
has unanimously agreed that these four recorded madhhabs may be followed by way of
taqlid. In this there are manifest benefits and advantages, especially in these days in which
enthusiasm has dimmed greatly, and souls have been given to drink of their own passions, so
that everyone with an opinion is delighted with his opinion. This reminds us that Islam is not
a totalitarian religion which denies the possibility and legitimacy of variant opinions. The
Muslim scholars are agreed that the mujtahid cannot incur a sin in regard to his legitimate
ijtihad exercised to derive judgements of Shari`a. [Only the likes of] Bishr al-Marisi, Ibn
`Aliyya, Abu Bakr al-Asamm and the deniers of qiyas, such as the Mu`tazilites and the
Twelver Shi`a, believe that there is only one true ruling in each legal issue, so that whoever
does not attain to it is a sinner. (Amidi, IV, 244.) This is of course an aspect of the Divine
mercy, and a token of the sane and generous breadth of Islam. Allah desires ease for you, not
difficulty. (Koran, 2:185) I am sent to make things easy, not to make them more difficult.
(Bukhari, `Ilm, 12.) Never was Allahs Messenger, may blessings and peace be upon him,
given the choice between two options but that he chose the easier of them, unless it was a
sin. (Bukhari, Manaqib, 23.) But the process lamented in Dahlawis day, by which people
simply ignored this Sunna principle, has nowadays become far more poisonous. What is
particularly damaging is that egos have become so powerful that the old Muslim adab of
polite tolerance during debate has been lost in some circles, as people find it hard to accept
34

that other Muslims might hold opinions that differ from their own. It must be realized that if
Allah tells Musa (upon him be peace) to speak gently to Pharoah (20:43), and commands us
not to debate with the People of the Book save in a most excellent way, (29:46) then how
much more important must it be to debate politely with people who are neither Pharoahs nor
Christians, but are of our own religion?
[71] Probably because of an underlying insecurity, many young Muslim activists cannot
bear to admit that they might not know something about their religion. And this despite
the example of Imam Malik, who, when asked forty questions about fiqh, answered I
do not know (la adri) to thirty-six of them. (Amidi, IV, 221; Bilmen, I, 239.) How many
egos nowadays can bear to admit ignorance even once? They should remember the
saying: He who makes most haste to give a fatwa, makes most haste to the Fire.
(Bilmen, I, 255.) Imam al-Subki condemns those who make haste to give fatwas, relying
on the apparent meaning of the [revealed] phrases without thinking deeply about them,
thereby dragging other people into ignorance, and themselves into the agonies of the
Fire. (Taj al-Din al-Subki, Mu`id al-Ni`am wa-Mubid al-Niqam (Brill, 1908), 149. Even
Imam al-Sha`bi (d.103), out of his modesty and adab, and his awareness of the great
complexity of the fiqh, did not consider himself a mufti, only a naqil (transmitter of
texts). (Bilmen, I, 256.)
[72] Cf. Imam al-Dajawi, II, 579: By Allah, this view (that ordinary people should not
follow madhhabs) is nothing less than an attempt to fling the door wide open for peoples
individual preferences, thereby turning the Book and the Sunna into playthings to be
manipulated by those deluded fools, driven by their compounded ignorance and their corrupt
imaginings. It is obvious that personal preferences vary enormously, and that ignorant people
will arrive at their conclusions on the basis of their own emotions and imaginings. So what
will be the result if we put them in authority over the Shari`a, so that they are able to interpret
it in the light of their own opinions, and play with it according to their preferences?
[73] Buti, 107-8. The same image is used by Imran Nyazee: Taqlid, as distinguished
from blind conversatism, is the foundation of all relationships based on trust, like those
between a patient and his doctor, a client and his lawyer, and a business and its
accountant. It is a legal method for ensuring that judges who are not fully-qualified
mujtahids may be able to decide cases in the light of precedents laid down by
independent jurists The system of taqlid implies that as long as the layman does not
get the training for becoming a doctor he cannot practice medicine, for example. In the
case of medicine such a person may be termed a quack and may even be punished
today, but in the case of Islamic law he is assuming a much graver responsibility: he is
claiming that the opinion he is expressing is the law intended by Allah. (Introduction to
The Distinguished Jurists Primer, xxxv.)
[74] It hardly needs adding, as a final observation, that nothing in all the above should be
understood as an objection to the extension and development of the fiqh in response to
modern conditions. Much serious ijtihad is called for; the point being made in this paper is
simply that such ijtihad must be carried out by scholars qualified to do so.

Islamic Spirituality: the forgotten revolution

Abdal-Hakim Murad
35

THE POVERTY OF FANATICISM

'Blood is no argument', as Shakespeare observed. Sadly, Muslim ranks are today swollen with
those who disagree. The World Trade Centre, yesterday's symbol of global finance, has today
become a monument to the failure of global Islam to control those who believe that the West
can be bullied into changing its wayward ways towards the East. There is no real excuse to
hand. It is simply not enough to clamour, as many have done, about 'chickens coming home
to roost', and to protest that Washington's acquiescence in Israeli policies of ethnic cleansing
is the inevitable generator of such hate. It is of course true - as Shabbir Akhtar has noted - that
powerlessness can corrupt as insistently as does power. But to comprehend is not to sanction
or even to empathize. To take innocent life to achieve a goal is the hallmark of the most
extreme secular utilitarian ethic, and stands at the opposite pole of the absolute moral
constraints required by religion.
There was a time, not long ago, when the 'ultras' were few, forming only a tiny wart on the
face of the worldwide attempt to revivify Islam. Sadly, we can no longer enjoy the luxury of
ignoring them. The extreme has broadened, and the middle ground, giving way, is
everywhere dislocated and confused. And this enfeeblement of the middle ground, was what
was enjoined by the Prophetic example, is in turn accelerated by the opprobrium which the
extremists bring not simply upon themselves, but upon committed Muslims everywhere. For
here, as elsewhere, the preferences of the media work firmly against us. David Koresh could
broadcast his fringe Biblical message from Ranch Apocalypse without the image of
Christianity, or even its Adventist wing, being in any way besmirched. But when a fringe
Islamic group bombs Swedish tourists in Cairo, the muck is instantly spread over 'militant
Muslims' everywhere.
If these things go on, the Islamic movement will cease to form an authentic summons to
cultural and spiritual renewal, and will exist as little more than a splintered array of maniacal
factions. The prospect of such an appalling and humiliating end to the story of a religion
which once surpassed all others in its capacity for tolerating debate and dissent is now a real
possibility. The entire experience of Islamic work over the past fifteen years has been one of
increasing radicalization, driven by the perceived failure of the traditional Islamic institutions
and the older Muslim movements to lead the Muslim peoples into the worthy but so far
chimerical promised land of the 'Islamic State.'
If this final catastrophe is to be averted, the mainstream will have to regain the initiative. But
for this to happen, it must begin by confessing that the radical critique of moderation has its
force. The Islamic movement has so far been remarkably unsuccessful. We must ask
ourselves how it is that a man like Nasser, a butcher, a failed soldier and a cynical
demagogue, could have taken over a country as pivotal as Egypt, despite the vacuity of his
beliefs, while the Muslim Brotherhood, with its pullulating millions of members, should have
failed, and failed continuously, for six decades. The radical accusation of a failure in
methodology cannot fail to strike home in such a context of dismal and prolonged
inadequacy.
It is in this context - startlingly, perhaps, but inescapably - that we must present our case for
the revival of the spiritual life within Islam. If it is ever to prosper, the 'Islamic revival' must
36

be made to see that it is in crisis, and that its mental resources are proving insufficient to meet
contemporary needs. The response to this must be grounded in an act of collective muhasaba,
of self-examination, in terms that transcend the ideologised neo-Islam of the revivalists, and
return to a more classical and indigenously Muslim dialectic.
Symptomatic of the disease is the fact that among all the explanations offered for the crisis of
the Islamic movement, the only authentically Muslim interpretation, namely, that God should
not be lending it His support, is conspicuously absent. It is true that we frequently hear the
Quranic verse which states that "God does not change the condition of a people until they
change the condition of their own selves."[1] But never, it seems, is this principle intelligently
grasped. It is assumed that the sacred text is here doing no more than to enjoin individual
moral reform as a precondition for collective societal success. Nothing could be more
hazardous, however, than to measure such moral reform against the yardstick of the fiqh
without giving concern to whether the virtues gained have been acquired through conformity
(a relatively simple task), or proceed spontaneously from a genuine realignment of the soul.
The verse is speaking of a spiritual change, specifically, a transformation of the nafs of the
believers - not a moral one. And as the Blessed Prophet never tired of reminding us, there is
little value in outward conformity to the rules unless this conformity is mirrored and
engendered by an authentically righteous disposition of the heart. 'No-one shall enter the
Garden by his works,' as he expressed it. Meanwhile, the profoundly judgemental and works oriented tenor of modern revivalist Islam (we must shun the problematic buzz-word
'fundamentalism'), fixated on visible manifestations of morality, has failed to address the
underlying question of what revelation is for. For it is theological nonsense to suggest that
God's final concern is with our ability to conform to a complex set of rules. His concern is
rather that we should be restored, through our labours and His grace, to that state of purity
and equilibrium with which we were born. The rules are a vital means to that end, and are
facilitated by it. But they do not take its place.
The Holy Qur'an Sura 13:11.
To make this point, the Holy Quran deploys a striking metaphor. In Sura Ibrahim, verses 24
to 26, we read:
Have you not seen how God coineth a likeness: a goodly word like a goodly tree, the root
whereof is set firm, its branch in the heaven? It bringeth forth its fruit at every time, by the
leave of its Lord. Thus doth God coin likenesses for men, that perhaps they may reflect. And
the likeness of an evil word is that of an evil tree that hath been torn up by the root from upon
the earth, possessed of no stability.
According to the scholars of tafsir (exegesis), the reference here is to the 'words' (kalima) of
faith and unfaith. The former is illustrated as a natural growth, whose florescence of moral
and intellectual achievement is nourished by firm roots, which in turn denote the basis of
faith: the quality of the proofs one has received, and the certainty and sound awareness of
God which alone signify that one is firmly grounded in the reality of existence. The fruits
thus yielded - the palpable benefits of the religious life - are permanent ('at every time'), and
are not man's own accomplishment, for they only come 'by the leave of its Lord'. Thus is the
sound life of faith. The contrast is then drawn with the only alternative: kufr, which is not
grounded in reality but in illusion, and is hence 'possessed of no stability'.[2]
This passage, reminiscent of some of the binary categorisations of human types presented
early on in Surat al-Baqara, precisely encapsulates the relationship between faith and works,
37

the hierarchy which exists between them, and the sustainable balance between nourishment
and fructition, between taking and giving, which true faith must maintain.
It is against this criterion that we must judge the quality of contemporary 'activist' styles of
faith. Is the young 'ultra', with his intense rage which can sometimes render him liable to
nervous disorders, and his fixation on a relatively narrow range of issues and concerns, really
firmly rooted, and fruitful, in the sense described by this Quranic image?
Let me point to the answer with an example drawn from my own experience.
I used to know, quite well, a leader of the radical 'Islamic' group, the Jama'at Islamiya, at the
Egyptian university of Assiut. His name was Hamdi. He grew a luxuriant beard, was
constantly scrubbing his teeth with his miswak, and spent his time preaching hatred of the
Coptic Christians, a number of whom were actually attacked and beaten up as a result of his
khutbas. He had hundreds of followers; in fact, Assiut today remains a citadel of hardline,
Wahhabi-style activism.
The moral of the story is that some five years after this acquaintance, providence again
brought me face to face with Shaikh Hamdi. This time, chancing to see him on a Cairo street,
I almost failed to recognise him. The beard was gone. He was in trousers and a sweater. More
astonishing still was that he was walking with a young Western girl who turned out to be an
Australian, whom, as he sheepishly explained to me, he was intending to marry. I talked to
him, and it became clear that he was no longer even a minimally observant Muslim, no longer
prayed, and that his ambition in life was to leave Egypt, live in Australia, and make money.
What was extraordinary was that his experiences in Islamic activism had made no impression
on him - he was once again the same distracted, ordinary Egyptian youth he had been before
his conversion to 'radical Islam'.
This phenomenon, which we might label 'salafi burnout', is a recognised feature of many
modern Muslim cultures. An initial enthusiasm, gained usually in one's early twenties, loses
steam some seven to ten years later. Prison and torture - the frequent lot of the Islamic radical
- may serve to prolong commitment, but ultimately, a majority of these neo-Muslims relapse,
seemingly no better or worse for their experience in the cult-like universe of the salafi
mindset.
This ephemerality of extremist activism should be as suspicious as its content. Authentic
Muslim faith is simply not supposed to be this fragile; as the Qur'an says, its root is meant to
be 'set firm'. One has to conclude that of the two trees depicted in the Quranic image, salafi
extremism resembles the second rather than the first. After all, the Sahaba were not known
for a transient commitment: their devotion and piety remained incomparably pure until they
died.
What attracts young Muslims to this type of ephemeral but ferocious activism? One does not
have to subscribe to determinist social theories to realise the importance of the almost
universal condition of insecurity which Muslim societies are now experiencing. The Islamic
world is passing through a most devastating period of transition. A history of economic and
scientific change which in Europe took five hundred years, is, in the Muslim world, being
squeezed into a couple of generations. For instance, only thirty-five years ago the capital of
Saudi Arabia was a cluster of mud huts, as it had been for thousands of years. Today's Riyadh
is a hi-tech megacity of glass towers, Coke machines, and gliding Cadillacs. This is an
38

extreme case, but to some extent the dislocations of modernity are common to every Muslim
society, excepting, perhaps, a handful of the most remote tribal peoples.
Such a transition period, with its centrifugal forces which allow nothing to remain constant,
makes human beings very insecure. They look around for something to hold onto, that will
give them an identity. In our case, that something is usually Islam. And because they are
being propelled into it by this psychic sense of insecurity, rather than by the more normal
processes of conversion and faith, they lack some of the natural religious virtues, which are
acquired by contact with a continuous tradition, and can never be learnt from a book.
One easily visualises how this works. A young Arab, part of an oversized family, competing
for scarce jobs, unable to marry because he is poor, perhaps a migrant to a rapidly expanding
city, feels like a man lost in a desert without signposts. One morning he picks up a copy of
Sayyid Qutb from a newsstand, and is 'born-again' on the spot. This is what he needed:
instant certainty, a framework in which to interpret the landscape before him, to resolve the
problems and tensions of his life, and, even more deliciously, a way of feeling superior and in
control. He joins a group, and, anxious to retain his newfound certainty, accepts the usual
proposition that all the other groups are mistaken.
This, of course, is not how Muslim religious conversion is supposed to work. It is meant to be
a process of intellectual maturation, triggered by the presence of a very holy person or place.
Tawba, in its traditional form, yields an outlook of joy, contentment, and a deep affection for
others. The modern type of tawba, however, born of insecurity, often makes Muslims narrow,
intolerant, and exclusivist. Even more noticeably, it produces people whose faith is, despite
its apparent intensity, liable to vanish as suddenly as it came. Deprived of real nourishment,
the activist's soul can only grow hungry and emaciated, until at last it dies.

THE ACTIVISM WITHIN

How should we respond to this disorder? We must begin by remembering what Islam is for.
As we noted earlier, our din is not, ultimately, a manual of rules which, when meticulously
followed, becomes a passport to paradise. Instead, it is a package of social, intellectual and
spiritual technology whose purpose is to cleanse the human heart. In the Qur'an, the Lord
says that on the Day of Judgement, nothing will be of any use to us, except a sound heart
(qalbun salim). [3] And in a famous hadith, the Prophet, upon whom be blessings and peace,
says that
"Verily in the body there is a piece of flesh. If it is sound, the body is all sound. If it is
corrupt, the body is all corrupt. Verily, it is the heart.
Mindful of this commandment, under which all the other commandments of Islam are
subsumed, and which alone gives them meaning, the Islamic scholars have worked out a
science, an ilm (science), of analysing the 'states' of the heart, and the methods of bringing it
into this condition of soundness. In the fullness of time, this science acquired the name
tasawwuf, in English 'Sufism' - a traditional label for what we might nowadays more
intelligibly call 'Islamic psychology.'
At this point, many hackles are raised and well-rehearsed objections voiced. It is vital to
understand that mainstream Sufism is not, and never has been, a doctrinal system, or a school
of thought - a madhhab. It is, instead, a set of insights and practices which operate within the
various Islamic madhhabs; in other words, it is not a madhhab, it is an ilm. And like most of
the other Islamic ulum, it was not known by name, or in its later developed form, in the age of
39

the Prophet (upon him be blessings and peace) or his Companions. This does not make it less
legitimate. There are many Islamic sciences which only took shape many years after the
Prophetic age: usul al-fiqh, for instance, or the innumerable technical disciplines of hadith.
Now this, of course, leads us into the often misunderstood area of sunna and bid'a, two
notions which are wielded as blunt instruments by many contemporary activists, but which
are often grossly misunderstood. The classic Orientalist thesis is of course that Islam, as an
'arid Semitic religion', failed to incorporate mechanisms for its own development, and that it
petrified upon the death of its founder. This, however, is a nonsense rooted in the ethnic
determinism of the nineteenth century historians who had shaped the views of the early
Orientalist synthesizers (Muir, Le Bon, Renan, Caetani). Islam, as the religion designed for
the end of time, has in fact proved itself eminently adaptable to the rapidly changing
conditions which characterise this final and most 'entropic' stage of history.
What is a bid'a, according to the classical definitions of Islamic law? We all know the famous
hadith:
Beware of matters newly begun, for every matter newly begun is innovation, every
innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in Hell. [4]
Does this mean that everything introduced into Islam that was not known to the first
generation of Muslims is to be rejected? The classical ulema do not accept such a literalistic
interpretation.
Let us take a definition from Imam al-Shafi'i, an authority universally accepted in Sunni
Islam. Imam al-Shafi'i writes:
There are two kinds of introduced matters (muhdathat). One is that which contradicts a text
of the Qur'an, or the Sunna, or a report from the early Muslims (athar), or the consensus
(ijma') of the Muslims: this is an 'innovation of misguidance' (bid'at dalala). The second kind
is that which is in itself good and entails no contradiction of any of these authorities: this is a
'non-reprehensible innovation' (bid'a ghayr madhmuma). [5]
This basic distinction between acceptable and unacceptable forms of bid'a is recognised by
the overwhelming majority of classical ulema. Among some, for instance al-Izz ibn Abd alSalam (one of the half-dozen or so great mujtahids of Islamic history), innovations fall under
the five axiological headings of the Shari'a: the obligatory (wajib), the recommended
(mandub), the permissible (mubah), the offensive (makruh), and the forbidden (haram).[6]
Under the category of 'obligatory innovation', Ibn Abd al-Salam gives the following
examples: recording the Qur'an and the laws of Islam in writing at a time when it was feared
that they would be lost, studying Arabic grammar in order to resolve controversies over the
Qur'an, and developing philosophical theology (kalam) to refute the claims of the
Mu'tazilites.
Category two is 'recommended innovation'. Under this heading the ulema list such activities
as building madrasas, writing books on beneficial Islamic subjects, and in-depth studies of
Arabic linguistics.
Category three is 'permissible', or 'neutral innovation', including worldly activities such as
sifting flour, and constructing houses in various styles not known in Medina.
40

Category four is the 'reprehensible innovation'. This includes such misdemeanours as

overdecorating mosques or the Qur'an.
Category five is the 'forbidden innovation'. This includes unlawful taxes, giving judgeships to
those unqualified to hold them, and sectarian beliefs and practices that explicitly contravene
the known principles of the Qur'an and the Sunna.
The above classification of bid'a types is normal in classical Shari'a literature, being accepted
by the four schools of orthodox fiqh. There have been only two significant exceptions to this
understanding in the history of Islamic thought: the Zahiri school as articulated by Ibn Hazm,
and one wing of the Hanbali madhhab, represented by Ibn Taymiya, who goes against the
classical ijma' on this issue, and claims that all forms of innovation, good or bad, are unIslamic.
Why is it, then, that so many Muslims now believe that innovation in any form is
unacceptable in Islam? One factor has already been touched on: the mental complexes thrown
up by insecurity, which incline people to find comfort in absolutist and literalist
interpretations. Another lies in the influence of the well-financed neo-Hanbali madhhab
called Wahhabism, whose leaders are famous for their rejection of all possibility of
development.
In any case, armed with this more sophisticated and classical awareness of Islam's ability to
acknowledge and assimilate novelty, we can understand how Muslim civilisation was able so
quickly to produce novel academic disciplines to deal with new problems as these arose.
Islamic psychology is characteristic of the new ulum which, although present in latent and
implicit form in the Quran, were first systematized in Islamic culture during the early
Abbasid period. Given the importance that the Quran attaches to obtaining a 'sound heart', we
are not surprised to find that the influence of Islamic psychology has been massive and allpervasive. In the formative first four centuries of Islam, the time when the great works of
tafsir, hadith, grammar, and so forth were laid down, the ulema also applied their minds to
this problem of al-qalb al-salim. This was first visible when, following the example of the
Tabi'in, many of the early ascetics, such as Sufyan ibn Uyayna, Sufyan al-Thawri, and
Abdallah ibn al-Mubarak, had focussed their concerns explicitly on the art of purifying the
heart. The methods they recommended were frequent fasting and night prayer, periodic
retreats, and a preoccupation with murabata: service as volunteer fighters in the border
castles of Asia Minor.
This type of pietist orientation was not in the least systematic during this period. It was a
loose category embracing all Muslims who sought salvation through the Prophetic virtues of
renunciation, sincerity, and deep devotion to the revelation. These men and women were
variously referred to as al-bakka'un: 'the weepers', because of their fear of the Day of
Judgement, or as zuhhad, ascetics, or ubbad, 'unceasing worshippers'.
By the third century, however, we start to find writings which can be understood as belonging
to a distinct devotional school. The increasing luxury and materialism of Abbasid urban
society spurred many Muslims to campaign for a restoration of the simplicity of the Prophetic
age. Purity of heart, compassion for others, and a constant recollection of God were the
defining features of this trend. We find references to the method of muhasaba: selfexamination to detect impurities of intention. Also stressed was riyada: self-discipline.
41

By this time, too, the main outlines of Quranic psychology had been worked out. The human
creature, it was realised, was made up of four constituent parts: the body (jism), the mind
(aql), the spirit (ruh), and the self (nafs). The first two need little comment. Less familiar (at
least to people of a modern education) are the third and fourth categories.
The spirit is the ruh, that underlying essence of the human individual which survives death. It
is hard to comprehend rationally, being in part of Divine inspiration, as the Quran says:
"And they ask you about the spirit; say, the spirit is of the command of my Lord. And you
have been given of knowledge only a little."[7]
According to the early Islamic psychologists, the ruh is a non-material reality which pervades
the entire human body, but is centred on the heart, the qalb. It represents that part of man
which is not of this world, and which connects him with his Creator, and which, if he is
fortunate, enables him to see God in the next world. When we are born, this ruh is intact and
pure. As we are initiated into the distractions of the world, however, it is covered over with
the 'rust' (ran) of which the Quran speaks. This rust is made up of two things: sin and
distraction. When, through the process of self-discipline, these are banished, so that the
worshipper is preserved from sin and is focussing entirely on the immediate presence and
reality of God, the rust is dissolved, and the ruh once again is free. The heart is sound; and
salvation, and closeness to God, are achieved.
This sounds simple enough. However, the early Muslims taught that such precious things
come only at an appropriate price. Cleaning up the Augean stables of the heart is a most
excruciating challenge. Outward conformity to the rules of religion is simple enough; but it is
only the first step. Much more demanding is the policy known as mujahada: the daily combat
against the lower self, the nafs. As the Quran says:
'As for him that fears the standing before his Lord, and forbids his nafs its desires, for him,
Heaven shall be his place of resort.'[8]
Hence the Sufi commandment:
'Slaughter your ego with the knives of mujahada.' [9]
Once the nafs is controlled, then the heart is clear, and the virtues proceed from it easily and
naturally.
Because its objective is nothing less than salvation, this vital Islamic science has been
consistently expounded by the great scholars of classical Islam. While today there are many
Muslims, influenced by either Wahhabi or Orientalist agendas, who believe that Sufism has
always led a somewhat marginal existence in Islam, the reality is that the overwhelming
majority of the classical scholars were actively involved in Sufism.
The early Shafi'i scholars of Khurasan: al-Hakim al-Nisaburi, Ibn Furak, al-Qushayri and alBayhaqi, were all Sufis who formed links in the richest academic tradition of Abbasid Islam,
which culminated in the achievement of Imam Hujjat al-Islam al-Ghazali. Ghazali himself,
author of some three hundred books, including the definitive rebuttals of Arab philosophy and
the Ismailis, three large textbooks of Shafi'i fiqh, the best-known tract of usul al-fiqh, two
works on logic, and several theological treatises, also left us with the classic statement of
orthodox Sufism: the Ihya Ulum al-Din, a book of which Imam Nawawi remarked:

42

"Were the books of Islam all to be lost, excepting only the Ihya', it would suffice to replace
them all." [10]
Imam Nawawi himself wrote two books which record his debt to Sufism, one called the
Bustan al-Arifin ('Garden of the Gnostics', and another called the al-Maqasid (recently
published in English translation, Sunna Books, Evanston Il. trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller).
Among the Malikis, too, Sufism was popular. Al-Sawi, al-Dardir, al-Laqqani and Abd alWahhab al-Baghdadi were all exponents of Sufism. The Maliki jurist of Cairo, Abd alWahhab al-Sha'rani defines Sufism as follows:
'The path of the Sufis is built on the Quran and the Sunna, and is based on living according to
the morals of the prophets and the purified ones. It may not be blamed, unless it violates an
explicit statement from the Quran, sunna, or ijma. If it does not contravene any of these
sources, then no pretext remains for condemning it, except one's own low opinion of others,
or interpreting what they do as ostentation, which is unlawful. No-one denies the states of the
Sufis except someone ignorant of the way they are.'[11]
For Hanbali Sufism one has to look no further than the revered figures of Abdallah Ansari,
Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, Ibn al-Jawzi, and Ibn Rajab.
In fact, virtually all the great luminaries of medieval Islam: al-Suyuti, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani,
al-Ayni, Ibn Khaldun, al-Subki, Ibn Hajar al-Haytami; tafsir writers like Baydawi, al-Sawi,
Abu'l-Su'ud, al-Baghawi, and Ibn Kathir[12] ; aqida writers such as Taftazani, al-Nasafi, alRazi: all wrote in support of Sufism. Many, indeed, composed independent works of Sufi
inspiration. The ulema of the great dynasties of Islamic history, including the Ottomans and
the Moghuls, were deeply infused with the Sufi outlook, regarding it as one of the most
central and indispensable of Islamic sciences.
Further confirmation of the Islamic legitimacy of Sufism is supplied by the enthusiasm of its
exponents for carrying Islam beyond the boundaries of the Islamic world. The Islamization
process in India, Black Africa, and South-East Asia was carried out largely at the hands of
wandering Sufi teachers. Likewise, the Islamic obligation of jihad has been borne with
especial zeal by the Sufi orders. All the great nineteenth century jihadists: Uthman dan Fodio
(Hausaland), al-Sanousi (Libya), Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri (Algeria), Imam Shamil
(Daghestan) and the leaders of the Padre Rebellion (Sumatra) were active practitioners of
Sufism, writing extensively on it while on their campaigns. Nothing is further from reality, in
fact, than the claim that Sufism represents a quietist and non-militant form of Islam.
With all this, we confront a paradox. Why is it, if Sufism has been so respected a part of
Muslim intellectual and political life throughout our history, that there are, nowadays, angry
voices raised against it? There are two fundamental reasons here.
Firstly, there is again the pervasive influence of Orientalist scholarship, which, at least before
1922 when Massignon wrote his Essai sur les origines de la lexique technique, was of the
opinion that something so fertile and profound as Sufism could never have grown from the
essentially 'barren and legalistic' soil of Islam. Orientalist works translated into Muslim
languages were influential upon key Muslim modernists - such as Muhammad Abduh in his
later writings - who began to question the centrality, or even the legitimacy, of Sufi discourse
in Islam.

43

Secondly, there is the emergence of the Wahhabi da'wa. When Muhammad ibn Abd alWahhab, some two hundred years ago, teamed up with the Saudi tribe and attacked the
neighbouring clans, he was doing so under the sign of an essentially neo-Kharijite version of
Islam. Although he invoked Ibn Taymiya, he had reservations even about him. For Ibn
Taymiya himself, although critical of the excesses of certain Sufi groups, had been committed
to a branch of mainstream Sufism. This is clear, for instance, in Ibn Taymiya's work Sharh
Futuh al-Ghayb, a commentary on some technical points in the Revelations of the Unseen, a
key work by the sixth-century saint of Baghdad, Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani. Throughout the work
Ibn Taymiya shows himself to be a loyal disciple of al-Jilani, whom he always refers to as
shaykhuna ('our teacher'). This Qadiri affiliation is confirmed in the later literature of the
Qadiri tariqa, which records Ibn Taymiya as a key link in the silsila, the chain of transmission
of Qadiri teachings.[13]
Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, however, went far beyond this. Raised in the wastelands of Najd in
Central Arabia, he had little access to mainstream Muslim scholarship. In fact, when his
da'wa appeared and became notorious, the scholars and muftis of the day applied to it the
famous Hadith of Najd:
Ibn Umar reported the Prophet (upon whom be blessings and peace) as saying: "Oh God,
bless us in our Syria; O God, bless us in our Yemen." Those present said: "And in our Najd, O
Messenger of God!" but he said, "O God, bless us in our Syria; O God, bless us in our
Yemen." Those present said, "And in our Najd, O Messenger of God!". Ibn Umar said that he
thought that he said on the third occasion: "Earthquakes and dissensions (fitna) are there, and
there shall arise the horn of the devil."[14]
And it is significant that almost uniquely among the lands of Islam, Najd has never produced
scholars of any repute.
The Najd-based da'wa of the Wahhabis, however, began to be heard more loudly following
the explosion of Saudi oil wealth. Many, even most, Islamic publishing houses in Cairo and
Beirut are now subsidised by Wahhabi organisations, which prevent them from publishing
traditional works on Sufism, and remove passages in other works considered unacceptable to
Wahhabist doctrine.
The neo-Kharijite nature of Wahhabism makes it intolerant of all other forms of Islamic
expression. However, because it has no coherent fiqh of its own - it rejects the orthodox
madhhabs - and has only the most basic and primitively anthropomorphic aqida, it has a
fluid, amoebalike tendency to produce divisions and subdivisions among those who profess
it. No longer are the Islamic groups essentially united by a consistent madhhab and the
Ash'ari [or Maturidi] aqida. Instead, they are all trying to derive the shari'a and the aqida
from the Quran and the Sunna by themselves. The result is the appalling state of division and
conflict which disfigures the modern salafi condition.
At this critical moment in our history, the umma has only one realistic hope for survival, and
that is to restore the 'middle way', defined by that sophisticated classical consensus which was
worked out over painful centuries of debate and scholarship. That consensus alone has the
demonstrable ability to provide a basis for unity. But it can only be retrieved when we
improve the state of our hearts, and fill them with the Islamic virtues of affection, respect,
tolerance and reconciliation. This inner reform, which is the traditional competence of
Sufism, is a precondition for the restoration of unity in the Islamic movement. The alternative
is likely to be continued, and agonising, failure.
44

NOTES
1. Sura 13:11.
2. For a further analysis of this passage, see Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad, Key to the
Garden (Quilliam Press, London 1990 CE), 78-81.
3. Sura 26:89. The archetype is Abrahamic: see Sura 37:84.
4. This hadith is in fact an instance of takhsis al-amm: a frequent procedure of usul al-fiqh by
which an apparently unqualified statement is qualified to avoid the contradiction of another
necessary principle. See Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, tr. Nuh Ha
Mim Keller (Abu Dhabi, 1991 CE), 907-8 for some further examples.
5. Ibn Asakir, Tabyin Kadhib al-Muftari (Damascus, 1347), 97.
6. Cited in Muhammad al-Jurdani, al-Jawahir al-lu'lu'iyya fi sharh al-Arba'in al-Nawawiya
(Damascus, 1328), 220-1.
7. 17:85.
8. 79:40.
9. al-Qushayri, al-Risala (Cairo, n.d.), I, 393.
10. al-Zabidi, Ithaf al-sada al-muttaqin (Cairo, 1311), I, 27.
11. Sha'rani, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra (Cairo, 1374), I, 4.
12. It is true that Ibn Kathir in his Bidaya is critical of some later Sufis. Nonetheless, in his
Mawlid, which he asked his pupils to recite on the occasion of the Blessed Prophet's birthday
each year, he makes his personal debt to a conservative and sober Sufism quite clear.
13. See G. Makdisi's article 'Ibn Taymiyya: A Sufi of the Qadiriya Order' in the American
Journal of Arabic Studies, 1973.
14. Narrated by Bukhari. The translation is from J. Robson, Mishkat al-Masabih (Lahore,
1970), II, 1380.

Can Liberalism Tolerate Islam?

Oslo Litteraturhuset, 20 March 2011

45

 Abdal-Hakim Murad
Must one be liberal to belong to the West? For all the polite multiculturalist denials, this
question is being put to us more and more insistently. The European Union, as it struggles to
articulate a common cultural as well as economic vision, regularly toys with grand statements
about Europe as a vision of human community, whose success underpins the universal model
now being urged upon the rest of humanity. European liberals, with their Enlightenment, civil
society, democratic institutions, and human rights codes, sometimes seem to self-define as a
secular Messiah, willing and ready to save the world. To resist is, by implication, to align
oneself with an unregenerate, sinful humanity.
Yet we Europeans are in fact in the middle of a difficult argument. We are constantly
quarrelling with ourselves over definitions of belonging. We can unite to build an Airbus, but
will we really unite around a moral or cultural ideal? What, after all, are the exact historic
grounds for European cultural unity? And this now looks like the continents greatest
concern - how can Muslims fit in?
Perhaps it helps if we look at Europes distant roots. Homer, long ago, told us how Europa,
the daughter of the King of Phoenicia, was abducted by Zeus, duly ravished, and borne off to
the island of Crete, where she gave birth to the Europeans. There is something emblematic
and transgressive about this myth of origin: a Lebanese maiden torn from the breast of Asia
and deposited in a corner of the continent which eventually bore her name. The beginning of
our story is a violent European raid upon Asia, an unhappy immigration, and a confiscation of
identity.
Perhaps we can trace back this far and Europes literature in fact begins with Homer
Europes ambiguity about its self and its values. But Europa only finds herself, and discovers
the limits of her soul and body, long after this classical prologue. For the Romans, it was the
Mediterranean which defined the core of their terrain and their commercial and religious life.
Rome equally embraced the European, African and Asian shores of the Middle Sea. But while
it saw itself as superior, it rarely sought to impose its philosophy or social values on others.
So we will hesitate to accept the common clich that in our time, ancient history has been
reborn: America is Rome, Europe is Athens, while Islam is an endlessly troublesome Judea.
Ancient Rome and Athens had no systematic programme of universalizing their values, even
within the bounds of their political sway, and still less did they encourage other nations to
accept their social beliefs.
When Islam appeared in the seventh century, the African and Asian shores were lost. Thrown
back on its own resources, Europe sought to define itself, then as now, as the prolongation of
the rather small remnant of antiquity that the Saracens missed. From that time on, it
developed ideas of its unique and universal social rightness.
The historian Fernand Braudel insists that it was the electric shock of the Battle of Poitiers in
732, when the Arab and Berber advance into France was finally stemmed, which gave the
Franks and hence the Europeans their sense of self. Charlemagnes capital of Aachen seemed
symbolically to straddle both banks of the Rhine, making a nonsense of the old Roman
borders. The German barbarians who brought down Rome, and who now ruled in France and
Germany as they had ruled in Italy and Spain, now claimed to be heirs of the imperium. The
46

almost obsessive cult of the Latin language and classical mythology which characterised
European education until well into the twentieth century shows how anxious the Germanic
and other European peoples were to see themselves, rather than the Saracens who controlled
most of the Mediterranean, as heirs to the Roman Empire. When the Ottomans captured and
sacked Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmet II claimed the title of Roman emperor, but
Europe rejected this absolutely. Rather as the Bible rejects Ishmael in favour of Isaac, so
Europe has been united in nothing so much as its rejection of Islams claims to legitimate
participation in the blessings bestowed by antiquity, and by those other patriarchs, Plato and
Aristotle.
As a matter of fact and this is not widely noticed by liberal advocates of European
uniqueness Islam was for much of its history the principal heir of Hellenism,
geographically and intellectually. Yet Europe will no more see Islam as a rightful inheritor of
Athens than it will allow Ishmael legitimate authority over Jerusalem. The reason was
Christianity. Christian monks saw themselves as the true interpreters of Hellenism, for all
their borrowings from Ibn Rushd and Ghazali. Rome, the only remaining Christian
metropolis of the classical world, was assumed to be the inheritor of that worlds riches,
which had moved West, rather than remaining in their place of origin in Antioch, Ephesus,
Cyrene and Alexandria. The Saracen was an interloper, an upstart. Thanks to the same furor
Teutonicus which baffled and brought down Rome, the Franks kept the false inheritors at bay,
and even, during the Crusades, found themselves united as Europeans in a counter-attack that
brought Jerusalem again into Christian hands. From that time until the present, Europe,
followed by its children in the ethnically-cleansed Americas, has been sure of its sole proper
possession not only of ancient Semitic prophecy, but also of the legacy of Athens with which
it coexisted in such a complex and often unstable marriage.
An older Orientalism will claim that Islam, the major Semitism, sniffed briefly at Greece but
then turned away from it. This is the notion of the theologian al-Ghazali sounding the deathknell of Greek philosophy in the world of Islam. Hellenism, according to the likes of Leo
Strauss, could only find room in the European inn; Islam, with its burden of scriptural
literalism, treated it as a resident alien at best. This applies not only to metaphysics, but also
to political theory Platos brief Muslim apotheosis on the pages of al-Farabi. Strauss has
had many admirers: ominously, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz were among them,
together with various thinkers on Europes new Islamophobic right. And Pope Benedicts
famous 2007 lecture at Regensburg likewise seemed to present the Muslims as improper heirs
to the classical legacy of rationality and rights which, according to this heir of the Holy
Office, is Europes alone. But the best recent scholarship, such as the work of Robert
Wisnovsky, has blown this apart: we are now more likely to see Juwayni, Ghazali and Razi as
the great advocates of a selective but profound internalising of Greek reason. Greek ethics
lives on powerfully on the pages of Miskawayh, al-Raghib al-Isfahani, and al-Ghazali. In
political thought, particularly, the old themes also lived on in manuals of statecraft studied
carefully by Ottoman, Safavid and Moghul emperors and their grand viziers. And if Plato was
modified drastically by the Sira, that was no bad thing, given that Plato has so often been an
enemy of the open society.
The internalising of ancient philosophy, including those strands from which modern liberal
thinking ultimately takes its origin, did happen differently in Islam and in the Western world.
That is one reason why Athens, in Europe, finally defeated Jerusalem, and philosophy of an
increasingly secular bent defeated theology. Aquinas, whose Summa Contra Gentiles was
written to help secure Christian theology in lands conquered from Muslims, proposed a
47

symbiosis of philosophy and scripture which has, for most Europeans, now outlived its
credibility. The same Christian interval in Europe which laid claim to the classical age by
virtue, strangely perhaps, of the overlaps visible in the Greek New Testament, has faltered, to
be replaced by vibrant paganisms, or an often militant secular officialdom. Hence the
decision by the drafters of the European Constitution to include a mention of Thucydides, and
to pass over the Christian centuries in silence.
A new class of triumphalist atheists Richard Dawkins, Anthony Grayling and others - now
assails faith for its inability to deliver a peaceful and just society. Ethical liberal arguments
against religion are now much more commonly heard than older objections to faith grounded
in the problem of evil, or the improbability of the Book of Genesis. Probably this began in the
late 19th century, when all reasonable people seemed to oppose Pope Pius the Ninths
Syllabus of Errors, which anathematised the Enlightenment notions of religious freedom and
the separation of church from state. As article 80 of the Syllabus proclaims, one may be
excommunicated for holding that the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself,
and come to terms with, progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.
Since the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, such anathemas are hard to imagine, and even
the Vatican is reinventing itself as an advocate of precisely the liberal opinions or many of
them that a century ago would have resulted in the withholding of the sacraments and hence
a sentence of eternal damnation. Its opposition to the death penalty, and its support for
religious freedom, are two iconic examples. Liberalisms triumph is so complete that many
today can hardly recall the old and fierce Christian opposition to it.
Thanks to such capitulations, the Europe that historically made itself a unit by keeping
Muslims at bay, or by expelling them, in Spain, France, Sicily and the Balkans, has now
substantially let go of the distinctiveness of the religious vision of society that allowed that to
happen. Liberalism, whose crooked genealogy stretches back to distant concerns in ancient
Athens, and whose Biblical tributaries, claimed by some Americans, are perhaps only
imaginary, has replaced the older theocratic thinking, which lingers on only in fringe
rightwing and royalist circles. Secularity is largely the invention of the continent which was
the cradle of Christian monarchism; today, indeed, in a world where there may be secularism
abroad, but not secularity, it is almost a European monopoly. Gods continent has been
transformed into the crucible of an increasingly assertive materialism.
Partly for this reason, as the desk pilots in Brussels think ahead, they know that the future
expansion of their Union must always be to the East, not the South. The drang nach Osten of
Euroland may within thirty years bring Europe, intelligibly enough, to Vladivostok, but
Tangiers, only twenty miles across the sea which in classical times was a thoroughfare and
not a barrier, is generally admitted to be psychologically a far foreign land. Hence we find
that today, as regularly in the Christian past, Europes arguments about itself, whether rightwing or libertarian, usually end in terms of its relationship with its significant Other, the
Saracen and Turkish realm.
Following Europes breaking of its own bounds after the great geographical discoveries, the
Islamic world was progressively made to submit to European patterns of government and
economic interest. Today, the elites in the postcolonial Muslim world are, substantially,
Europeans themselves, rather than adherents of local values. Sometimes their fervent dislike
of the indigenous makes them seem more royal than the king. With such converts Brussels
has no significant quarrel, although it regularly puzzles over the deep corruption and often the
48

cruelty of the westernised classes in the former colonies. But dealing with those regimes is no
more than a human rights issue. The elites must adhere to the constitutional norms, as well as
the secular forms, of Europe. Yet as the Eurocrat is nervously aware, and as current events
show, those elites can resemble a fragile skin stretched over a sea of cultural difference. The
Muslim world, perhaps the non-Western world, can look like a geologists model of the Earth.
The planet, not far down, is alive and moving, a mass of liquid magma; but on the surface,
plates of congealed rock uneasily coexist. Tensions between, say, Morocco and Algeria, are
tensions between the cold, Europeanised classes, not the often passionately religious
populations beneath, for whom the boundaries drawn by past generations of colonial
mapmakers do not correspond at all to local linguistic and ethnic difference. Secular elites,
claiming liberal values, hold down a mass of illiberal religious sentiment. The holding-down
can be so violent that on occasion traumatised terrorists can emerge to horrify the world, and
to confirm liberals in their uneasy support for the regimes.
This tension, between the autocratic elites supported by European liberal governments, and
the still substantially religious masses with their desire to enter the public square, has now
become so intense that the lava is emerging in very many Muslim states. The result is often a
type of crisis for the liberal conscience, or a sudden and carefully-timed volte face: as we saw
when on January 14 of this year, the French president offered President Ben Ali of Tunisia a
contingent of riot police to shore up his rule, while the next day, when it became clear that the
popular uprising had triumphed, France refused Ben Ali the right even to enter its airspace.
Des quon a des ennuis, elle nest plus votre amie
As they panic over demography and immigration, Europes theorists are well aware of this.
Hence the difficulty of, for instance, the current European debate over Turkish membership of
the European Union. The Erdogan government presents liberals with a paradox. Less secular
than its predecessors, it is more committed to human rights and democratic pluralism, and is
keen to curb the militarys projection in the political realm. The generals, with their tightlipped laicism, claim to be the guardians of Ataturks project to recreate Turkey in Europes
image; yet Europe is no longer the nationalist, often fascistic continent it was in the 1920s
and 1930s when Kemalism took shape. Hence the conundrum for the Eurocrats. Many
European liberal statesmen, particularly in the core Charlemagne states of France and
Germany, oppose Turkish membership on grounds that are clearly to do with Europes
ancient habit of self-definition as something that, ultimately, is not Muslim. Europe may be
economically inclusive, and passionately liberal and libertarian, but ultimately, to be itself, it
must be exclusive of non-Christians, and of Muslims above all. The old Crusading cry of
Christians are right, and pagans are wrong, has been modified by replacing the Christians
with gay activists and human rights commissioners.
It is not impossible that Turkey will be admitted, perhaps after two or more decades. Yet the
current proposals envisage Turkeys exclusion from the Amsterdam Treaty in respect of
Turkeys Muslim population. EU citizens will be able to live in Turkey, but to allow Turks to
emigrate freely to Europe would be too much for electorates to contemplate. This, currently,
seems the kind of compromise that Ankara will be compelled to accept. Other arrangements
with Muslim areas such as Albania, Bosnia, and perhaps Azerbaijan, may well impose the
same condition. A Europe increasingly at ease with minaret and niqab bans will be happy to
see such odd-handedness as right and proper.
Having thus charted our odd situation, let us deal with the question. To be Europeans, must
we be liberals? Does liberal Europes insistence when drawing its outer borders on the partial
49

or total exclusion of Islam have implications for internal definitions of belonging? If we

bother to look at the bland Euro banknotes, the product of extended searches in the 90s for a
shared European symbol, we find that the key symbol that was finally used is the outline of
the continent itself, which blurs into nothingness wherever it reaches places inhabited by
Muslims. The vague bridge symbols are drawn from seven ages of European culture and
design, but naturally there was no risk of annoying Europeans with any trace of a Moorish
arch. For Brussels officialdom, there is implicitly no more appropriate symbol of Europe than
one which indicates non-Muslimness. What, therefore, does a European Muslim think about
himself or herself when using this currency? Does a conscious exclusion at the frontiers on
religious grounds have implications for internal solidarity and belonging? Must liberal
Europe create an internal firewall against Muslim migrants and their bafflingly religious
progeny?
Despite all the brave talk of European unity, the reassuring reality on the ground is that there
is no consensus at all. The French model, rooted in Enlightenment anticlericalism, is
absolutely exclusive of religious affiliation of any kind from its sense of belonging. This is
not just about Islam: it was made clear more than a century ago in the Republics response to
the Syllabus of Errors: a law was passed preventing priests from mentioning the Popes
document from the pulpits. Thus was a process established whereby liberal secularity could
win victories over freedom of speech. And Catholicism, though the victim of deep
anticlericalism, was at least seen as indigenous. In the republics more recent travails with
Islam, memories of Crusades and the dirty war in Algeria have made the exclusion of
Muslimness in the name of Republican laicity particularly easy and emphatic. The broadbased consensus among liberals that women who wear the niqab should be arrested by the
police is only the most recent example of this.
In fact, it is probably the case that the so-called far-right parties, such as Mirine Le Pens
Fronte Nationale, are in fact not far to the right of the political spectrum at all. They are best
seen as coercive liberal parties, their social and fiscal policies placing them somewhere in the
centre-right of the political spectrum, but so passionate about the unique truth of liberalism
that they seek to punish those who fail to comply with present liberal social beliefs. An
example would be Geert Wilders, perhaps Hollands most popular politician. Wilders is in
most key respects somewhat to the left of centre politically. But so passionate is he about
liberalism that he wishes to impose a 1000 euro annual tax on hijab wearers, ban the sale of
the Quran, and forbid the construction of new mosques. In Switzerland, too, surveys indicate
that the current ban on minaret construction is more likely to be supported by left-leaning
voters, than by voters on the traditional right.
It may turn out that just as Europe defines its natural boundaries as coterminous with the
frontier with Islam, that its emerging definitions of citizenship, and the various tests applied
to those seeking citizenship, will engage primarily with Islam as the significant alternative, as
the model for what is un-European and unacceptable. A good example is the 76-page manual
which guides officialdom in assessing applications for German citizenship. Formal
citizenship tests in Germany include questions about freedom of religion, sexual orientation,
and the status of women, to allow officials to exclude individuals whose social beliefs are
considered to conflict with the liberal mainstream. In some provinces, such as Hesse, the
Muslim-specific questions are very insistent. For instance: Should a woman be allowed to
appear in public without a male relative? And a question in Baden-Wurttemberg asks:
Imagine that your adult son comes to you and says he is homosexual and plans to live with
another man. How do you react? Another, predictably, asks: What do you think if a man is
50

married to two women at the same time? And again: In Germany, sport and swim classes
are part of the normal school curriculum. Would you allow your daughter to participate?
The regulations give officials the right even to revoke citizenship if a very conservative
religious orientation is suspected, or if a citizens subsequent opinions or behaviour indicate
that he or she lied when taking the test. No conservatives will be allowed to get in under the
radar; if they do, their passports may be confiscated and they will be deported. According to
Eren Unsal, of the Turkish Union, these tests are presupposing, negative, and anti-Islamic.
Were seeing a more restrictive immigration policy whose face is anti-Muslim. And another
Muslim representative even says, The constitutional assumption of innocence no longer
applies to Muslims.
Such Muslim objections were generally brushed aside by German commentators, until the
newspaper Sddeutsche Zeitung published a leaked internal memo from the Interior Ministry
sent to immigration officials. According to this document, immigration authorities should
have what it calls general suspicion about the loyalty of Muslims to Germany. It goes on to
explain that inner devotion to Germany should automatically be doubted in the case of
Muslim applicants for citizenship. The leaked government guidelines then go on to say:
Europeans, Americans and citizens of other countries who are otherwise free from suspicion
should not come into contact with the test.
A further example of liberal intervention is provided by the German governments attempts to
create a class of Muslim religious leaders whose values conform to those of the countrys
liberal majority. The government set up the countrys first imam training programme at the
University of Mnster, to promote this liberal agenda, but appointed as the programmes
director the historian Sven Kalisch, whose books claim that the Prophet Muhammad did not
exist. The four main Muslim organisations in Germany withdrew from the programme in
protest, drawing criticism from the government for alleged conservative-fundamentalist
tendencies. In this case, however, some liberals did agree that to appoint a man who did not
believe in the existence of the Prophet to the directorship of an imam-training programme
was probably a misjudgement on the part of the authorities. As with the Muslim-test, the
Mnster experiment generated not only resentment, but a good deal of mirth at the expense of
liberal interventionists.
Overall, in Germany, deep volkisch impulses are quietly being reignited, dressed up in the
language of liberalism, rather as Nazism in the 1930s justified itself to the unobservant as a
kind of socialism. Just as the debates which led to the Nuremberg laws were preceded by
passionate debates about true and pure Germanness, so too the far-right assumptions are
percolating into the mainstream. In March 2011, the Interior Minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich
announced: To say that Islam belongs in Germany is not a fact supported by history, thereby
invoking perhaps the most ancient theme in German self-understanding. The old Semite
within, obliterated under the Third Reich, has now been replaced by the ancient Semite ante
portas, who has now acquired citizenship, but can, in Friedrichs view, never belong.
In France, as Muslims generally know, the liberal campaign to restrict Islamic practice,
sometimes supported and sometimes opposed by the right wing, has generated an interesting
paradox no less informative than that produced by bungling Germans. Vehemently defending
the right, in 1989, of a publisher to print a French translation of Salman Rushdies novel the
Satanic Verses, in 1994 the French government enforced a series of interdictions which
threaten with imprisonment anyone found in possession of the booklets of the South African
51

writer Ahmed Deedat. Those who have read his pamphlets may find this strange, since he
never advocates violence of any kind; but liberal France is clear: the law of 31 May 1994
described his book Jesus in Islam as likely to produce des dangers pour lordre public,
because of their violently anti-Western tone and their incitement to racial hatred. Muslims
timidly pointed out the contradiction, but the liberal establishment was clear: Deedat is
dangerous, and Muslims who own his booklets must be punished.
The United Kingdom, which would not dream of banning Deedat, is generally more cautious
in its attempts to encourage liberal beliefs among its minorities. But the recent British Ofsted
assessment of the poor quality of citizenship training in faith-based secondary schools may
indicate the shape of things to come. Even without the Muslims, Ofsted has its work cut out
for it. Citizenship has been part of the National Curriculum for only ten years, and Ofsted
confirms that teaching of this rather numinous subject is extremely patchy across the board;
in fact, it is said to be the worst-taught subject in the nations schools. So bad is the situation
that one in ten pupils in Britain apparently do not even know what citizenship classes are,
even though they have attended them. Few engage actively with the liberal issues raised in
citizenship training. The reason seems to be the general apathy towards politics and ideology
current among many teenagers, the result, perhaps, of the escapist content of mass youth
entertainment, together with larger social perceptions that old definitions of sovereignty and
national selfhood are being inexorably eroded by globalisation and the Internet. Only 64
percent of pupils nationwide identify themselves as British.
In the Muslim schools, where citizenship training is apparently in even greater disarray, Ofted
says: We must not allow recognition of diversity to become apathy in the face of any
challenge to our coherence as a nation. We must be intolerant of intolerance.
Here, I think, the official finger rests on the Achilles heel of secular liberal ethics. If we must
be intolerant of intolerance, then can liberalism tolerate anything other than itself? If Europe
defines citizenship in terms of adherence to a set moral template, with all else defined as
intolerable, how can Europe ever positively experience real difference, which more often than
not is bound up with good, or bad, religion?
An icon of European exclusiveness was supplied in 2004 when the Italian politician Rocco
Buttiglione was forced to resign as a European commissioner when it emerged that he
supported the Vaticans line on homosexuality. Despite his insistence that his belief in the
sinfulness of the practice would not affect the decisions he took in public life, the consensus
of European officialdom obliged him to resign. The Italian Justice Minister, Roberto Castelli,
objected in a futile way, by calling the ban a decision which shows the real face of Europe, a
face which we do not like. Its fundamentalist, which is absolutely not on. But his view
provoked only frowns.
Muslims have watched with concern this striking proof of how categorically Europe has
walked away from its traditional Christian values and authorities. It is interesting, also, as
proof that European citizenship appears to be a matter of conformity to certain sacrosanct
social beliefs, in this case, the historically anti-Christian belief that conscientious opposition
to homosexual practice is so wicked that those who hold such beliefs must be excluded from
public office. As Buttiglione himself remarked, The new soft totalitarianism which is
advancing wants to be a state religion. It is an atheistic, nihilistic religion, but it is a religion
that is obligatory for all.

52

It is possible that this imposition of social beliefs will become more intense, despite its
apparent clash with principles of freedom of conscience. In 2009, Nick Clegg (now the
British Deputy Prime Minister), said that children attending faith schools should be taught
that homosexuality is normal and harmless. Special lessons, he opined, should be required
of such schools to encourage tolerance for this practice.
It seems reasonable to predict that the concretisation of such social beliefs and their
imposition through law and a media monoculture will continue. Many will recognise in this a
reversion to historic European norms, alien to Islam, of imposing a standard belief pattern on
the kings subjects. Cuius regio, eius religio. Liberalism of a particular socially prescriptive
kind seems to be filling the void left by religion, and, Europe being the historic land of the
divine right of kings, religion here is often more closely bound up with politics than in
traditional Muslim states. In this case, the condemnation of sodomy functions as a blasphemy,
or a speech violation. Other blasphemies include, for instance, the idea that men and women
are suited for different tasks, that the death penalty is a just punishment for murder, that
parents may use corporal punishment to discipline their children, and that unbelievers are less
pleasing to God than believers. The list is quite a long one, and it seems to be growing.
Societies hate value-vacuums. After the Second World War, Europe and America went very
different ways regarding truth: Europe lapsed into what the philosopher Heidegger called
gelassenheit just letting things be, a mood which eased the transition to postmodernism.
America, whose heartland did not suffer RAF bombings or Nazi death camps, remained
confident, in a rather simple way, about God and family values, allowing a continuing
religious alternative to the secular monoculture. But as the European continent increasingly
defines itself not as the splintered wreckage of war, but as a potentially mighty unit, it needs
shared values. Like America, it has fixed on Islam as its significant Other, but while
Americas foreign wars are religiously driven, Europe is preoccupied with internal cohesion,
framing laws that in America would be strange: to shut the hijab out of sight, to ban minarets,
and to prohibit in general the public expression of conservative morality. In other words, the
federal and racial unity which in America is brought by external wars against Muslims, is
possible in a less jingoistic Europe only by putting Muslims at the centre of an internal war
of values.
On both sides of the Atlantic, liberal or religious intolerance of Muslims has now risen to
worrying levels, and further restrictive legislation seems possible in many places. 9/11
intensified this atmosphere of inquisition. In the United States, a Cornell University survey
concludes that 44% of Americans now support a selective abolition of civil rights for Muslim
citizens, and the King Enquiry now underway in Washington may make some
recommendations in this regard. Significantly, some liberal and neo-liberal public
intellectuals, welcoming the results of this survey, denounce the current American mood of
regret over the concentration of Japanese-Americans in camps during the Second World War.
If Europe is once again finding a kind of unity in its allergy to Muslimness, can Muslims find
any allies in this landscape? Tariq Ramadan, in his book To be a European Muslim, implies
that a marriage is possible with environmentalist and left-wing groups who are dismayed by
the rise of anti-immigrant feeling. Pim Fortuyns assassin was, after all, a militant left-wing
vegetarian who wished to defend Hollands Muslims from Fortuyns plans for a liberal
persecution. And many of the emerging British and European Muslim organisations seem to
sympathise with Ramadans approach. After all, when marching against the invasion of Iraq,
or campaigning against arms sales to brutal elites in the Middle East, one usually finds
53

oneself sharing an umbrella with Fabian or CND types, not the Young Conservatives. Hence
the popularity of the likes of George Galloway among Muslims.
Such an alliance, however, is likely to be, at best, a tempestuous marriage of convenience.
Muslims and the left may converge on Iraq, or Israel, or globalisation, but on domestic
matters they stand at opposite poles. The Green movement, and virtually all on the Left, are
fiercely pro-homosexual and feminist. It seems clear, then, that European Muslims are
unlikely to forge a stable relationship with the Left. Similarly with the environmentalists:
Muslims are often forgetful that the roots of the green lobby in Europe are not monotheistic,
but often implicitly or explicitly pagan. Nazism was very keen on the environment: Sigrid
Hunke, the German feminist and green theorist of the 1930s who is still viewed as a founder
of the green movement, was revered by several Nazi ideologues.
Many Muslims, from their vantage-point in Europes ghettoes, intuit this correctly. But they
then conclude that the true believers by definition have no allies. Some Salafist perspectives,
in particular, seem unable to accept the possibility of partnership with non-Muslims. One
recalls the embarrassing cases of Shaykh Faisal in Britain, and Anwar al-Awlaki in the United
States; whose followers, mesmerised by the slogan of Back to the Quran, had to spring
back in dismay when the political views of these preachers reached the media. Yet such
paranoia and xenophobia seem both scripturally unnecessary and practically unwise. If
Europe continues to secularise, while Europes mosques remain full, then Islam is likely,
without any planning or even forethought, to become the principal monotheistic energy
through much of the continent, a kind of leaven in Europes stodgy dough.
Yet we should note that the pressure being brought to bear on Muslim communities relates to
social, not doctrinal, beliefs. No-one in Brussels is greatly concerned about Muslim doctrines
of the divine attributes, or prophetic intercession; but they do care about whether or not
Muslims believe in feminism. This places Muslim believers in a historically new position. It
should be possible to forge close friendships with other Europeans who also have the courage
to blaspheme against the Brussels magisterium. We may differ with conservative Catholics
and Jews over doctrine, but we are all facing very similar challenges to our social vision.
Signor Buttiglione could easily have been a Muslim, not a Catholic, martyr.
Here, I believe, a burden of responsibility rests upon the shoulders of Muslim leaders. It is in
our interests to seek and hold friends. We are not alone in our conscientious rejection of many
liberal orthodoxies. The statement by Bishop Michel Santer of the French church
condemning the official punishments imposed on women who wear the niqab is an important
sign of the possibility of cooperation. The challenge is going to be for Muslim, Christian and
Jewish conservatives to set aside their strong traditional hesitations about other faith
communities, and to discover the multitude of things they hold in common. To date, clearly,
the interfaith industry has failed to catalyse this, partly because it tends to be directed by
liberal religionists. We are more and more willing, it seems, to discuss less and less, and to
conform more and more to the moral consensus of a secular and individualistic world.
However an alliance sacre between orthodox believers in different religions would, I think,
deflate the potentially xenophobic and Islamophobic possibilities implicit in the process of
European self-definition. If Europe defines itself constitutionally, as I believe it should, as
either an essentially Christian entity, or as one which is at least founded in belief in God, then
the fact of Muslim support for core principles of Christian ethics will give Islam a vital and
appreciated place. But a purely secular Europe will always see Muslim values as problems on
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the margin, to be tolerated or punished according to the whims of the currently elected
politicians. The relationship with European Jews is no less critical. If Orthodox Jewry
currently gaining in strength can make common cause with Islam over core moral issues,
chauvinisms and suspicions which currently exist on both sides will be seen as self-defeating.
Abdal Hakim Murad
mishkatmedia.com/travellinglight/about/series1.html

Recapturing Islam From the Terrorists

Abdal-Hakim Murad

As New York turns its gap-toothed face to the sky, wondering if the worst is yet to come,
Muslims, largely unheeded by the wider world, are counting the cost of the suicide bombings.
The backlash against mosques and hijabs has been met by statements from Muslim
communities around the globe, some stilted, but others which have clearly found an articulate
and passionate voice for the first time. In comparison with the pathetic near-silence that
hovered around mosques and major organisations during the Rushdie and Gulf War debacles,
the communities now seem alert to their cultural situation and its potential precariousness.
Many of the condemnations have been more impressive than those of the American President,
who seems unable to rise above clichs.
The motives are twofold. Firstly, and most patently, Sunni Muslims have been brought up in a
universe of faith that renders the taking of innocent lives unimaginable. By condemning the
attacks, we know that we defend the indispensable essence of Islam. Secondly, Muslims as
well as others have died in large numbers. The Friday Prayers in the World Trade Centre
always attracted more than 1,500 worshippers from the office community, many of whom
have now surely died. The tourists, who spent their last moments choking on the observation
deck, waiting for the helicopters that never came, no doubt included many Muslim parents
and their children.
But the Western powers and their fearful Muslim minorities, both battered so grievously by
recent events, now need to think beyond press-releases and ritual cursings. We need to
recognise, firstly, that there has been a steady 'mission-creep' in terrorist attacks over the past
twenty years. Hijackings for ransom money gave way to parcel bombs, then to suicide
bombs, and now to kiloton-range urban mayhem. It is not at all clear that this escalation will
be terminated by further anti-terrorist legislation, further billions for the FBI, or retina scans
at Terminal Three. Americas tendency to assume that money can buy or destroy any possible
obstacle to its will now stands under a dark shadow. Far from being a climax and the catalyst
for a hi-tech military solution, the attacks may be of more historical significance as an
announcement to the militant subculture that a Star-Wars superpower is utterly vulnerable to
a handful of lightly-armed young men. There could well be more and worse to come.
Sobered by this, the State Department is likely to come under pressure from business interests
to ask the question it never seems to notice. Why is there so much hatred of the United States,
55

and so much yearning to poke it in the eye? Are the architects of policy sane in their certainty
that America can enrage large numbers of people, but contain that rage forever through
satellite technology and intrepid double-agents? Businessmen and bankers will now start to
read carefully enough to discern that it is not US national interest, but the power of the
American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, that tends to drive Washingtons policy in the
worlds greatest troublespot. Threatened with disaster, corporate America may just prove
powerful enough to face AIPAC down, and suggest, firmly, that the next time Israel asks
Washington to veto the UNs desire to send observers to Hebron, it pauses to consider where
its own interests might lie.
Among Muslims, the longer-term aftershock will surely take the form of a crisis among
moderate Wahhabis. Even if a Middle-Eastern connection is somehow disproved, they
cannot deny forever that doctrinal extremism can lead to political extremism. They must
realise that it is traditional Islam, the only possible alternative to their position, which owns
rich resources for the respectful acknowledgement of difference within itself, and with
unbelievers. The lava-stream that flows from Ibn Taymiyya, whose fierce xenophobia
mirrored his sense of the imminent Mongol threat to Islam, has a habit of closing minds and
hardening hearts. It is true that not every committed Wahhabi is willing to kill civilians to
make a political point. However it is also true that no orthodox Sunni has ever been willing to
do so. One of the unseen, unsung triumphs of true Islam in the modern world is its complete
freedom from any terroristic involvement. Maliki ulama do not become suicide-bombers. Noone has ever heard of Sufi terrorism. Everyone, enemies included, knows that the very idea is
absurd.
Two years ago, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, warned
of the dangers of mass terrorism to American cities; and he was brushed aside as a dangerous
alarmist. Muslim organisations are no doubt beginning to regret their treatment of him. The
movement for traditional Islam will, we hope, become enormously strengthened in the
aftermath of the recent events, accompanied by a mass exodus from Wahhabism, leaving
behind only a merciless hardcore of well-financed zealots. Those who have tried to take over
the controls of Islam, after reading books from we-know-where, will have to relinquish them,
because we now know their destination.
When that happens, or perhaps even sooner, mainstream Islam will be able to make the loud
declaration in public that it already feels in its heart: that terrorists are not Muslims. Targeting
civilians is a negation of every possible school of Sunni Islam. Suicide bombing is so foreign
to the Quranic ethos that the Prophet Samson is entirely absent from our scriptures. Islam is a
great world religion that has produced much of the worlds most sensitive art, architecture
and literature, and has a rich life of ethics, missionary work, and spirituality. Such are the
real, and historically-successful, weapons of Islam, because they are the instruments that
make friends of our neighbours, instead of enemies fit for burning alive. Those that refuse
them, out of cultural impotence or impatience, will in the longer term be perceived as so
radical in their denial of what is necessarily known to be part of Islam, that the authorities of
the religion are likely to declare them to be beyond its reach. If that takes place, then future
catastrophes by Wahhabi ultras will have little impact on the image of communities, whose
spokesmen can simply say that Muslims were not implicated. This is the approach taken by
Christian churches when confronted by, say, the Reverend Jim Joness suicide cult, or the
Branch Davidians at Waco. Only a radical amputation of this kind will save Islams name,
and the physical safety of Muslims, particularly women, as they live and work in Western
cities.
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To conclude: there is much despair, but there are also grounds for hope. The controls of two
great vehicles, the State Department, and Islam, need to be reclaimed in the name of sanity
and humanity. It is always hard to accept that good might come out of evil; but perhaps only a
catastrophe on this scale, so desolating, and so seemingly hopeless, could provide the motive
and the space for such a reclamation.

Addendum
Although the response from Muslims in the UK seems to have been very favourable to my
essay, with one or two requests that it be sent to national newspapers for reprinting on their
pages, it is inevitable that under pressure from real or potential rioters and cross-burners,
some Muslims consider premature any attempt to begin a debate among ourselves about the
cultural and doctrinal foundations of extremism.
It is true that no convictions have been secured, and that in the Shari'a suspects are innocent
until proven guilty. However it is also regrettably the case that these suspects will not be tried
under Shari'a law, and that we need, in the absence of a traditional framework of accusation
and assessment, to hold our own discussions. This is particularly urgent in this case, since the
damage to the honour of Islam, and the physical safety of innocent Muslims, in the West and
in Central Asia and elsewhere, is very considerable. We Muslims are now at 'ground zero'. As
such, we cannot simply ignore the duty to ask each other what has caused the attitudes that
probably, but not indisputably, lie at the root of these events.
My essay, which endeavoured to kick-start this debate, takes its cue primarily from the UK
situation, which is no doubt less intense than in the US, but is nonetheless serious. In
particular I am concerned to insist that Muslims distance themselves from, for instance, the
janaza prayer for the hijackers that was held two days ago at a London Wahhabi mosque (the
term Wahhabi is more useful, since 'Salafi' can also refer to the Abduh-Rida reformism and is
hence confusing). Having spoken to the editor of one of this country's major Muslim
magazines, it is clear that the small minority of voices which have been raised in support of
the terrorist act were in every case of the Wahhabi persuasion. Clearly, we cannot simply
ignore this on grounds of 'Muslim unity', since those people appear so determined to destroy
Muslim unity, and endanger the security of our community.
I hope that the recent events will spur Muslims to consider the implications for the wider
ethos in which we understand our religion of the shift which we have witnessed over the past
twenty years or so away from accommodationist and tolerant forms of Islam, and towards
narrowmindedness. Al-Ghazali recommends a tolerant view of non-Muslims, and is prepared
to grant that many of them may be saved in the next world; Ibn Taymiya, as Muhammad
Memon has shown in his book on him, is vehement and adversarial. In our communities in
the West, and indeed worldwide, we surely need the Ghazalian approach, not the rigorism of
Ibn Taymiya. Not just because we need to reassure our neighbours, but also because we need
to reassure those very many born Muslims who are made unsure about their attachment to
Islam by events such as this that they can belong to the religion without being harsh and
narrow-minded. Extremism can drive people right out of Islam. In 1999 the Conference of
French Catholic bishops announced that 300 Algerians were among the year's Easter
baptisms. Noting that ten years earlier Muslims never converted at all, they reported that the
change was the result of the spread of extreme forms of Islam in Algeria.
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In Afghanistan, too, there are now Christians for the first time ever, and I have heard from
one ex-Taliban member that this is because of the extremism with which Islam is imposed on
the people. The shift away from traditional Islam, and towards Ibn Taymiya's position, has
been widely documented, for instance by Ahmad Rashid, in his chapter 'Challenging Islam',
in his book on the Taliban. The Saudi-Wahhabi connection has been very conspicuous.
We must ask Allah to open the hearts of the Muslims everywhere to recognise that
narrowmindedness and mutual anathema will lead us nowhere, and that only through
spirituality, toleration and wisdom will we be granted success.
The most appropriate du'a' for our situation would seem to be: 'Ya Hayyu Ya Qayyum, birahmatika astaghiith', which is recommended in a hadith in cases of fear and misfortune. It
means: 'O Living, O Self-Subsistent; by Your mercy I seek help.'

Diana and Dionysus

Abdal-Hakim Murad

It was a catharsis that failed. Whole classes and provinces turned out to say a tearful farewell
to their "Rose without Thorns", splashing out on carnations, inscribing their names in blackedged tomes, and filling Hyde Park beyond its capacity, yet it was clear that this was a wound
that only time could deal with. Spectacularly displayed as they were, the nation's rituals of
bereavement, some official, others hesitant and impromptu, seemed obscurely unsatisfying.
The funeral itself was thankfully restrained. The dreadful "celebration of the life of" type of
exhibitionism was ruled out, no doubt to the sorrow of many members of Di's partytime
generation. Some of the old must have winced as the Abbey echoed to the mawkish croonings
of Reg from Pinner, the homosexual divorcee. But a genuine reminiscence of what was once
the sober and dignified Anglican rite for the dead was preserved. A few prayers were said, not
enough of course; but the Church knows that the new Britain is ill at ease when the Almighty
is mentioned. Still, the prayers were there, sounding above the din.
And yet the diffuse anthology of performances: Verdi's histrionics, Pachelbel's splendid
Canon, and the rchauff medievalism of Taverner, hinted at a profound disjuncture between
rite and audience. Embedded in these cameos attentive listeners could detect muffled residues
of outlandish beliefs that had echoed down the centuries from Chalcedon through Cranmer,
only to fade away before reaching the ears of the tragic queen who never was. Archbishop
Carey stood as a lonely, defiant figure, speaking of his triune God, and assuring the deceased
that God Himself had been crucified for her sins. Few of the assembled young can have
registered his beliefs with anything but discomfort and a sense of strangeness.
The archbishop knows well enough that the Sloane species, and indeed the rest of the restless
Princess Feelgood generation, is not in tune with Trinities, Vicarious Atonements, or Dual
Natures. The Britain which displayed its mourning so conspicuously was declaring its
preference for the very different worldview which Diana, and in his alternate, more
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introverted fashion, her ex-husband, were palpably and sometimes controversially seeking.
The rituals at the Abbey were a posthumous bid to claim the Dionysiac, indulgent, tarot-card
Princess for an older and more Christian generation; yet the presence of the crowds outside
mutely affirmed her modernity. Simple beliefs, simple goodness, and simple spirituality were
the values she was believed to have upheld, in opposition to the now largely uncomprehended
complexities of Trinitarian ritual and belief.
Rooted in Roman mortuary custom, the Christian obsequies which enshrine these notions are
protracted and often agonising. Grieving relatives must display themselves, and be
scrutinised by the prurient public eye during a lengthy and deliberately tear-jerking ceremony.
Other religions, almost without exception, regard this dirgelike and spun-out style of
valediction as disturbingly lacking in compassion, and also as morbidly insistent on the
physical presence of the deceased. In Muslim communities, things are done fast: the body is
washed by relations, as a moving physical sign of farewell; and is then prayed over in the
mosque in a ceremony which requires no more than two minutes. The deceased, carried in
turn by members of the family and by friends and wellwishers, is then walked to the
cemetery. The voyage from death to dust takes less than a day, after which the family can
retreat into private grief and prayers, unburdened by plans for the coming week. The healing
is supplied by the confidence that "nothing will befall us save what God has inscribed", and
by the balm of the Revelation, with its soaring, dignified cadences which remind all humans
that their mortality in this world is as sure as their immortality in the next.
The princess's companion, the Fayed heir, thus endured less, and his family could begin to
reconstruct their lives quickly, privately, and with less distraction. Yet although tradition
parted them in death, the affianced pair perished together, blood conmingled, in a poignant
union of love and death which Orientals are already prizing as a latter-day romance of Layla
and Majnun, or Ferhad and Shirin. The British public will not accept this motif, of course,
since the blonde princess's lover was an Arab, and the gossip-columnists who had shaken
their heads over Dodi's "unsuitability" were transparently and by public consent alluding to
his race and religion. The disclosure that her suitor had given her a ring hours before their
death, and reports of her own joyous proclamations of having been happier in his company
than ever before in her life, must needs be passed over in puzzled silence by White England.
The idea of the nation's Rose surrendering to the embraces of a brown, Arab, non-Christian
Egyptian, of contemplating a future as Mrs Diana Al-Fayed, will forever be too much for our
country to contemplate. There can be no doubt that had Dodi been of approved genetic and
spiritual inheritance, Di's funeral would have been as romantic as her wedding.
But our England will have none of this, and they lie apart in the very different worlds of
Woking and the island in the Spencer estate near Northampton. Dodi, the public has
concluded, was simply a confusing annoyance, a walk-on part. He is written out of this
Shakespearian tragedy whose audience will tolerate no subplots, and only one moral to the
story, now that the grand denouement has been written.
But the morals of this story are legion, and they cut to the core of our modern anxieties. The
millions who followed her funeral were not just mourning a posh odalisque, they were
propelled onto the streets by a mute desire for answers to deep and frightening questions.
Confronted by the sudden, irrevocable extinction of the world's best-known woman, who had
revelled in her role as an incarnation of the zeitgeist, the masses were unpleasantly faced with
their own mortality. If Diana is not divine, then, perhaps, neither are we. We are all tagging
along after her cortege, and all our ambitions, disappointments and pleasures will end up in a
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muddy hole. "Wherever you may be, death with catch you up, even if you be in lofty
citadels," insists the Book; for "every soul will taste of death." The Grand Leveller who is
insistently and so successfully veiled by a modern generation which has no time to reflect,
still awaits us all, not, as we vaguely assume, as a distant liberator from senescence, but as an
ever-threatening extinguisher of all our pleasures.
The crowds sensed something else. Just as Diana was mortal, so too are the institutions she
did so much both to represent and to injure. The Union Flag flapping uncomfortably at halfmast over the Palace seemed like the augury of a dynasty's future. The tabloids, obsequiously
voicing the inchoate passions of the masses, demanded that the thunderstruck Royals perform
in public, and in the same clipped, hectoring sentences promised to respect their privacy more
fully. Even reigning monarchs cannot now transcend the empire of the media: their worth for
the ephemeral politicians who can decide their fate is measured not by the tables in Debretts
but by the opinion polls; and now that their lives are not clearly distinguished in the popular
consciousness from the melodramas of Brookside, the House of Windsor may be abolished
altogether with a simple collective click on the TV switch. Thus the Prince's remarriage
prospects, already complicated by religious strictures, now seem hopeless, his dignified or
floundering responses to a soundbite age send his popularity plummeting ever further; and
England may well surrender to the mediocrity of republicanism before it has another queen,
or even a princess consort.
Diana incarnated for the masses their confusion about the Royal Family, but also held up a
mirror to their nervousness about modern family life in a more general way. She had inflicted
much damage on her own marriage through her erratic craving for self-esteem which, as the
Morton revelations documented, made her manipulative enough to set her own happiness
firmly before that of her family and the constitutional security of the nation. Part of the blame
for this must be carried by feminism, which has diminished the self-esteem available to wives
seeking fulfilment in traditional roles. But there is another culprit to be fingered. Traumatised
at six by a mother who ran off with another man, Diana revealed to the public a fact it
suppresses and yearns to deny: the depth and permanence of the wound that divorce inflicts.
"Divorce shakes the throne of God", a hadith affirms, and Diana showed how it could shake
temporal thrones just as thoroughly. Her own divorce, adding to the tide of misery now
flooding through the courts each year, seemed to personify the public fear that the most basic
of all our institutions is under threat.
The princess also captured the public's imagination in her pursuit of the traditional noblesse
oblige charity work expected of women in her position. She was not exceptional in this,
despite the media hype: Princess Alexandra and Queen Mary had been no less indefatigable
in their support for good causes. But Diana's chosen charities showed how intimately she
shared the nervousness of the world beyond the palace gates: homelessness, AIDS, toddlers
maimed by British landmines, modern casualties of every sort were embraced by Diana, and
the public embraced them through her arms, as though to dissipate some fraction of its guilt.
Diana hence becomes a true icon of modernity. The cultish reactions to her death well define
the quality of our contemporary mood, which cannot imagine a saint who negates self, and
can only venerate those who fall prey to vice, and who then publicly, for our entertainment
and vicarious delectation, wrestle with the consequences. Yet she knew, as do we all, that the
new sanctity does not liberate. Every time she hurled herself down an Adams staircase, or
starved herself almost to death, she discovered the child's bitter lesson that the relief and
attention brought by crying never lasts. But her world failed to teach her the alternative,
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which is to be noticed not by mortals but by God, and to draw strength and consolation from
private prayer. Her mother-in-law no doubt tried to explain this to her, but the babble of the
age drowned out all such counsels. The tristesse which follows each brief bout of enjoyment
demands either penitence, or further indulgence. In the end, her commitment to the latter,
Dionysiac choice of her world made her a martyr to the modern jet-set trinity of cognac, cars
and recurrent priapic consolations. King Priapus, tirelessly working to unseat the House of
Windsor, and busy too in Washington, usually wins in the end. The only enemy that has ever
chained him is religion, and religion is old here, and has grown feeble.
Diana was her own victim, certainly. More self-restraint and wifely acquiescence in her
husband would have ensured that she would now be at Balmoral with her children. But hers
was not an independent mind, she merely followed the instincts of her class, and those
instincts are ultimately self-destructive. Ill-prepared for life amid the staid but genuinely selfabnegating Windsors, she threw herself downstairs. She was not pushed.
As for the nation's mourning, this can only be interpreted as guilt. We are responsible for the
ethos that killed the Princess. We did not shout with disgust at her adulteries; we sniggered,
and asked for more pictures. We did not express our misgivings at her involvement with the
airheaded and abjectly materialistic international set. She heard our lack of protests, and
pressed on to destruction. We are all instrumental in her demise; hence the raw sharpness of
the nation's grief, and the disturbing failure of its rituals. The orgiastic and shallow world that
we have shaped in defiance of God has claimed another soul - and each one of us will be
judged.

The Sunna as Primordiality

Abdal Hakim Murad(April 1999)
Twentieth-century Western art is not a subject for which we Muslims have much time. The
alert among us are conscious that it neatly represents the decline of the Western Christian
worldview and its replacement first with the titanic fantasies of the Renaissance, those absurd
nude figures urging us to consider the human creature as sufficient unto himself; and then,
when two world wars convinced the Western elite that the human creature left to his own
devices was unlikely to create his own paradise on earth, the grotesqueries of the modern
period. Today, one of the best-known of British artists is Damien Hurst, famous for exhibiting
a sheep floating in formaldehyde. Hardly less famous are Gilbert and George, two middle61

aged homosexuals in grey Marks and Spencers suits, who paint vast canvases using their own
body fluids. The winner of the 1998 Turner Prize, the most prestigious gong in the British art
world, was painted with the excrement of an elephant. Perhaps this is why we Muslims find
modern Western art particularly disagreeable and resistant to our contemplation: if art is the
crystallisation of a civilisation, then to amble along the corridors of the Tate Gallery is to be
confronted with a disturbing realisation. Christianity, when it was taken seriously by the
cultural elite, produced significant works, which Muslims can recognise as beautiful, despite
the inherent dangers of its love of the graven image. Christianity was sapped by the so-called
enlightenment; and now that the enlightenment itself has run its course, the Western soul, as
articulated by its most intelligent and most respected artistic representatives, has shifted its
concerns to the human entrails. From the spirit, to the mind, to the body - and now to its
waste products: a depressing trajectory, and one from which we avert our gaze. But it is
immensely instructive, nonetheless, to visit art galleries just to observe the consistency of the
decline. It serves as a reminder not only that we dislike the modern world, but also that we
dont like disliking it. We would rather feel that there existed some authentic connection
between our worldview and that of the Western elite: but such a link appears no longer to
exist. It is not that we are extreme. It is not we who destroyed the bridge. We are simply
holding to the norms generally recognised by our species for 99% of its history. It is the West
that is extreme, that has grown strange, that seems to have gone mad.
And yet amidst this hideous visual cacophony, occasional insights can be observed; and these
can be of an almost revelatory intensity. Almost all 20th century Western artists have been
well aware of their cultural situation, as wreckers of a religious view of the world, and as the
depictors of its chaotic, formless, ugly successor. A few, however, have recognised the
persuasiveness of the alternatives. And a very few, those who have escaped the besetting
racism and Islamophobia of European culture, have acknowledged the beauty and depth of
Islam.
One such artist was the Russian, Kasimir Malevich. Malevich lived and worked around the
time of the Russian Revolution, a time of the concatenation of the thousands of rival
movements, religious, mystical, atheistic, or aesthetic, which collided in the early 1920s, only
for the satanic force of Josef Stalin to emerge from the ruins. It was, for a few brief and heady
seasons, a time when the dead weight of the countrys inherited hierarchies, both religious
and royal, seemed to have been removed to make way for a vision that was not only more
just, but also more spiritually sighted.
One manifestation of this was the demand by the young artists of the Left that the authorities
abolish all representational forms of painting. Figurative art, they rightly pointed out, is
inherently oppressive. It privileges youth over age; wealth over poverty. In its religious
modes it attributes gender and race to the divine. Hence the revolutionary slogan:
A White Army officer
when you catch him
you beat him
and what about Raphael
its time to make
museum walls a target
let the mouths of big guns
shoot the old rags of the past!

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The Bolsheviks themselves were horrified by this. For them, representational art provided the
foundation for all mass propaganda. And in due time, Stalin and his successors patronised and
enforced the crude style of Socialist Realism, images of muscular peasant men and women
gazing up at the new socialist dawn. The titanism and human-worship of the Renaissance had
been restored; only the desire for greater freedom was removed.
But in the white-hot heat of the moment, when the old was crashing down with the Winter
Palace and the Kazan Cathedral, and the new, in the form of Soviet gigantism had not yet had
its triumph, a crack in European culture appeared that for a brief but remarkable instant
admitted the light of Islam.
Most of Russia, of course, is built on the ruins of Muslim civilisations. More than any other
European people, not excepting the Serbs, the Russians have seen themselves as holy
warriors against Islam. In the early 16th century, almost all of what is today Ukraine was
Muslim, ruled by the Kasimov emirs with their splendid capital to the south of Moscow. The
Crimea, one of the most densely populated and prosperous regions on earth, was a Muslim
state in alliance with the Ottoman caliphate. The steppeland between the Black and Caspian
Seas had been Muslim for centuries, growing rich on the silk and carpet trade between Iran
and Europe. To the east of Moscow, Muslim cities adorned the banks of the Volga river,
culminating in their capital Kazan, a city perhaps twenty times the size of Moscow itself. In
1555 Ivan the Terrible, taking advantage of divisions between these European Muslim
empires, invaded and sacked Kazan. The great White Mosque of Kul Sherif, with its eight
minarets, was torn down, and its rubble used to build St Basils Cathedral in Moscow.
Although the Kazan khans had always permitted the practice of Christianity, the Russian
conquerors prohibited Islam, and forcibly baptised the remaining population. The Cossacks
were let loose on the Muslim countryside, young men from the frozen north who captured
and enslaved Muslim women, breeding from them a new type of crusading zealot. So strong
was the sense of confrontation with the more civilised world of Islam that until the eighteenth
century it was common for drums in the Russian army to be made from the skins of captured
Muslims.
This legacy of hatred is the bedrock of Russian culture. Before Ivan the Terrible, about half of
the land-mass of Europe was Muslim. And the Russian tsars saw themselves as the ethnic
cleansers under whose hammer blows the surviving Muslims would bow their knees at the
cross.
The Russian Revolution, and the years immediately preceding and following it, challenged
every assumption of the traditional Russian mind; including the most fundamental
assumption of all: the unworthiness of Islam. Intellectuals and poets begin to respect Muslim
culture. Architects, bored and disgusted by the flamboyant rococo splendour of St Petersburg,
turned their eyes to the architecture of Muslim Bukhara and Samarkand. Here, they thought,
was a harmony of man and nature, a celebration of beauty that was not titanic, but
contemplative. The blue tiles of the Friday Mosque and the Shah-i Zindeh tombs of
Samarqand seemed not to raise up a fist of defiance to the skies, as did the art of Europe; but
to call down something of the peace of heaven onto the earth. Russian architects such as
Melnikov incorporated Uzbek themes into their houses. A spectacular example is Melnikovs
design for the Soviet pavilion at the 1925 International Exposition in Paris, which borrows
from the design of Central Asian Islamic tomb towers. Through works such as these, Western
architects such as Le Corbusier introduced Islamic themes into their own design.

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In the visual arts, this influence is also marked. There were other, often quite demented
movements in the air also, of course: Acmeism, Cubism, Constructivism, and the rest. But
among some artists, those with an eye still on the spiritual, the attractions of the Islamic sense
of beauty proved too radiant to resist. As one architect, Andrei Burov noted of his generation:
There was a strong Mohammedan influence; and orthodox Mohammedanism at that.
At this point, Kasimir Malevich steps in. Malevich was a contemplative and a mystic, who
found European representational painting to be little more than a crude and loathsome
conjuring with flabby pink limbs against heroic landscapes.
Malevichs greatest work is a painting called Black Square. This is a square, painted
completely in black, against a white border. He called it his absolute symbol of modernity, a
modernity which he hoped would be pure and spiritual, as opposed to the congealed
decadence of 19th-century Western materialism.
He chose the image of a Black Square because it is the total inversion of the Western tradition
of recording the writhing diversity of the manifest world. He wrote, later, that when painting
it he felt black nights within, and a timidity bordering on fear, but when he neared
completion he experienced a blissful sensation of being drawn into a desert where nothing is
real but feeling, and feeling became the substance of my life.
What on earth could this mean? The modern British writer Bruce Chatwin, who knew Islam
well, commented as follows:
This is not the language of a good Marxist, but of Meister Eckhart - or, for that
matter, of Mohammed. Malevichs Black Square, his absolute symbol of modernity,
is the equivalent
in painting of the black-draped Kaba at Mecca, the shrine in a valley of sterile soil
where
all men are equal before God.
Here we have the key to understanding Malevichs achievement. In this painting, which for
Muslims must be the most significant work of 20th century art, a cultured Russian finally
breaks through the carapace of solidified reality, and intuits the nature of truth. Simplicity is
beauty. And it is depth, instilling awe, and an authentic rather than sentimental emotion.
Malevich, in a moment of cultural turmoil, and of intense, blazing realisation, had stumbled
upon the principle of pure beauty. Only the Real is real; manifestation and its diversities are
chimera. The line between the two is razor-sharp: Qul ja al-Haqq wa-zahaqal-batil, innalbatila kana zahuqa. Say: Reality has come, and falsehood has vanished; falsehood was ever
evanescent. This was, after all, the aya recited by the Prophet (s) as he rode around the
Kaba, pointing with his stick to each of the 360 idols in turn, upon which they fell over into
the dust.
Malevich died, and Socialist Realism ruled triumphant. But for a second in Europes history,
the truth had been glimpsed.
At the centre of the Islamic religion lies the Kaba. Uniting the aspects of the divine beauty
and the divine majesty, it is a place of resort and safety for human beings. It lies in a city
protected by the prayer of Ibrahim al-Khalil, alayhil-salam: My Lord, make this land a
sanctuary.
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The Kaba has many meanings. One of these pertains to the Black Stone, which is the point at
which the pilgrims come closest to its mystery.
Ali ibn Abi Talib narrated that when God took the Covenant, He recorded it in
writing
and fed it to the Black Stone, and this is the meaning of the saying of those who
touch
the Black Stone during the circumambulation of the Ancient House: O God! This is
believing in You, fulfilling our pledge to You, and declaring the truth of Your record.
The Kaba therefore, while it is nothing of itself - a cube of stones and mortar - represents
and reminds its pilgrims of the primordial moment of our kind. Allah speaks of a time before
the creation of the world:
when your Lord brought forth from the Children of Adam, from their reins, their
seed,
and made them testify of themselves, He said: Am I not your Lord? They said,
Yea!
We testify! That was lest you should say on the Day of Arising: Of this we were
unaware. (7:171)
When we visit the House, we are therefore invited to remember the Great Covenant: that
forgotten moment when we committed ourselves to our Maker, acknowleding Him as the
source of our being. The Black Stone itself is, according to a hadith which Imam Tirmidhi
declares to be sound, yaqutatun min yawaqit al-janna - a gemstone from Paradise itself.
The Kaba functions, in the imagination of those who visit it on Hajj, or turn towards it in
Salat, as the centre and point of origin of all diverse things on earth. It is oriented towards the
four cardinal points of the compass. Its blackness recalls the blackness of the night sky, of the
heavens, and hence the pure presence of the Creator. Allah tells us that there are signs for us
in the heavens and the earth; and recent astronomy affirms that the spiral galaxies are
revolving around black holes. A powerful symbol, written into the magnificence of space, of
the spiritual vortex which beckons us to spiral into the unknown, where quantum mechanics
fail, where time and space are no more.
The yearning for the Kaba which sincere Muslims feel whenever they think of it is therefore
not, in fact, a yearning for the building. In itself it is no less part of the created order than
anything else in creation. The yearning is, instead, a fragment, a breath of the nostalgia for
our point of origin, for that glorious time out of time when we were in our Makers presence.
That yearning is the central emotion of Islam. It is of the heart: the heart knows the Kabas
splendour; the mind cannot understand it: it is, after all, only a cube 12 metres high. Hence
Jalal al-Din Rumi says:
The intellect declares: The six directions are limits, and there is no way out.
Love says: There is a way, and I have travelled it many times.
And later he says:
By the time the intellect has found a camel for the hajj, love has circled the Kaba.
This fundamental emotion of the Islamic religion, which is in fact part of the fitra - the
primordial human nature, the state of grace into which we were born - is love, mahabba, a
painful desire to return to the beloved. Walladhina amanu ashaddu hubban liLlah. Those
who have faith, as the Qur'an insists, have the greatest love for God. (2:165) To know ones
origin is to love it.
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This nostalgic yearning to return, to circle back to the point of origin, for which the Kaba is
no more than the earthly symbol and reminder, is the most common theme in the splendid and
subtle poetic tradition of Islam. Here, for instance, is a poem by the 13th century Turkish poet
and lover of Allah, Yunus Emre:
We need to serve a King who never may be driven from His throne
To rest within a place which we may ever feel to be our own.
A bird we need to be, to fly, to reach the very rim of things,
To drink that cordial whose joy we never may disown.
We need to be a diving bird, to plunge into the waters flow;
We need a gemstone to recover such as jewellers cannot know.
To enter in a garden, there to dwell in contentments shade;
To pass the summer as a rose - a rose whose petals never fade.
Mankind must lover be, must ever search to find the true Beloved;
Must burn within the flame of Love - nor burn in any other flame.
Islam is hence the religion of the Alastu bi-rabbikum: Am I not your Lord?. We follow the
Great Covenant, unlike adherents of previous religions who follow lesser, local, ethnic
covenants. The Kaba represents our way of centring ourselves directly on the divine
presence, the origin of all manifestation.
We need to ponder the divine wisdom in this. Islam appeared in a time and place where there
was no civilisation. If a Quraishite Arab had travelled five hundred miles north, south, east or
west, he would have found a developed culture. But Arabia was a pocket of primordial
simplicity. And Allah subhanahu wa-taala chose this vacuum for His final message, the one
that would end all previous covenants with Him, and gather the nations of the earth to the
restored Great Covenant itself.
One deep wisdom to be gained from this is the fact of Islams simplicity. Our doctrine could
not be more straightforward. The most pure, exalted, uncompromising monotheism: the
clearest idea of God there has ever been. A system of worship that requires no paraphernalia:
no crosses, confessionals, priests or pews. Just the human creature, and its Lord. The Hajj and
Umra also take us back to an ancient time, as we wear the simplest of garments, and perform
primordial rites that reconnect us with the symbolic centre, around the purest building there
has ever been. The fast of Ramadan is also timeless: bringing us into contact and continuity
with one of the oldest of all religious devotions. In fact, some ulema say that fasting is the
oldest religious commandment of all: for in the Garden, the grandfather and grandmother of
humanity were under only one instruction: to refrain from eating from a particular tree.
By stepping inside the protecting circle of Islam, the human creature is thus reconnected to
the ancient simplicity and dignity of the human condition. Islam allows us to reclaim our
status as khalifas: Allahs deputies on earth.
But this is not limited to the pattern of worship alone. To worship according to one vision of
man, and to live according to another, will inevitably provoke conflict in the soul. Some
religions today allow their followers to live a fully mainstream, 20th century lifestyle outside
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the place of worship. But Islam knows that this is absurd. The focussing on the divine
presence during Salat relativises and transforms our vision of everything else. When we turn
away from the Kaba again, we say, to right and left, al-Salaamu alaykum. The reconnection
with the exquisite and ancient sacred centre brings a new attitude to the rest of our lives. The
salat bars us from corruption and ugly behaviour. That is, if it is done well, with hudur presence of mind and spirit - then the rest of our behaviour will be refined. Poor manners,
crude language, lack of compassion for others, are all sure signs that we are offering salat
incorrectly.
This means that Islam does not distinguish between our lives of worship, and anything else in
our lifestyle. And it means that the starting point for putting our communities right, is the
establishment of the prayer, which redirects us to the point on which we are all united. Not
only through public observance in the mosque. It is possible to go through the motions of the
prayer, and pay no attention; and this is almost worthless. The hadith says, The worshipper
in salat is credited only with that of which he was conscious. And al-Hasan al-Basri said:
Every prayer in which the heart is not attentive is nearer to punishment than it is to reward.
A besetting problem we face, which symbolises all our other spiritual problems, is that of the
mechanical prayer: we proclaim Allahu akbar, but immediately show that we dont know
what Allahu akbar means. We turn on a kind of autopilot, awakening from a vague
somnolence some minutes later with the salaam.
This is no good. Moving the body, and letting the tongue dance cleverly around the palate,
are of no help to us. The very word salat signifies connection. There is little point in having a
lamp if we dont switch on the electricity: and the electricity comes through khushu attentive humility, an awareness of the majesty and nearness of our Lord, and all the divine
beauty and rigour of which the Holy Kaba is the emblem.
The act of salat brings us home: to the earth. The name of Adam, alayhissalaam, is said to be
derived from adim - earth, dust. And Allah says that He created him of dust. By pressing the
forehead to the ground we recall our created and fleeting lives. From it did We create you, to
it do We return you, and from it shall We bring you out one more time. Three encounters
with the earth - and we can escape none of them.
The slave is closest to his Lord while he prostrates. This is a hadith. We are truly Allahs
khulafa - His deputies and representatives on this earth - when our foreheads, the symbol of
Pharaonic pride and defiance, are pressed firmly down; when the heart is higher than the
head.
No umma on the planet has a more intimate relationship with Allahs creation than do we
Muslims. We know it as a universe of signs, which revelation teaches us to read.
Truly in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the succession of night
and day are signs for people of inner understanding. Those who make dhikr,
who recall, Allah standing, and sitting, and upon their sides, and think about the
way in which the heavens and the earth have been made. (3:190, 191)
Salat is a form of dhikr. Allah commands sayyidina Musa alayhisalam, And establish the
Prayer for My dhikr, My remembrance. (20:14) And remembrance of Allah is the
recollection of that original source and direction of humanity, at the Great Covenant, and the
Assembly of Am I Not your Lord - the bezm-i alast. Hence our physical turning to the Kaba,
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which is pure beauty, represents and recalls our acknowledgement of our primordial home,
and our affirmation, again, of our loyalty to that promise which we all have made.
Hence the beauty, and the dignity, and the timeless poise of the Salat. By the salat, we affirm
the glory of our Lord, through tasbih and bowing and prostrating. By the salat we affirm the
pledge which we have made to Him. And by the salat we acknowledge that we do this only
because sayyidina Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi wa-sallam, taught us how to pray. The
prayer thus becomes the culmination of the sunna. It is the pillar of religion - whoever tears it
down, has demolished the religion. Without it our recollection of our primordial source and
origin has no meaning, and no sign.
The prayer, of course, was gifted to humanity on the Night of the Miraj. This was the
culminating event of Rasulullahs prophetic story: his greatest glory, as he rose into the very
presence of his Lord in order to behold His greatest signs.
In the divine presence, the Prophet (s.w.s.) was offered a choice. He was brought wine, and
he was brought milk. As he chooses the milk, Gabriel, upon him be peace, says, Hudiyta lilfitra - you have been guided to the fitra - the primordial, pure, natural disposition of man.
This extraordinary event deserves careful consideration. At the summit of his prophetic
career, and hence at the summit of humanitys history of relating to Allah, a lesson is given
about the fitra; and we are shown that this is part of, and indeed the essence of, the Sunna.
The choice between wine and milk is the choice between corruption and purity. Milk is
described in the Quran as khalisan - pure. Wine, by the very process which produces it, is at
one remove from nature. It is a natural fluid, but in a state of corruption. It is interesting that
in the modern world, consumers are very reluctant to eat food that has rotted, but are only too
happy to consume fluids that are rotted and corrupt. And the process of fermentation is
nothing other than a process of rotting. Bottles of wine rarely advertise a sell-by date.
So: hudiyta lil-fitra. The prophetic figure of the Miraj is told by the angel that the fitra is
one of his traits. And this, by extension, becomes the nature of his sunna, in which we must
all try to partake.
The picture is a little clearer now. Rasulullah (s.w.s.) is born in Makka, a city of ancient
desert simplicity. He migrates to Madina, a city of ancient agricultural, peasant simplicity.
The rites of his religion, culminating in the salat, breathe something of that purity and ancient
humanity. They are not of our time: they make the habits of our time seem puny and
undignified.
The modern world is in a panic about its departure from nature. The seas, air and rivers are
rendered impure by industries which are the expression of human greed and the hatred of
simplicity. Alzheimers disease, asthma, AIDS and male infertility are spiralling hints of the
collapse of the species. The Rio conference urged a reduction in emissions, and hence of
certain forms of production, but failed to explain how the forgotten virtue of zuhd might be
made attractive again to people whose religion has lost its appeal, and who hence worship
their pleasures and themselves. Ordinary people indicate their unease by buying organic
produce, using aloe-vera shampoo, and shunning the synthetic wherever they can. And yet
this is a return to form, not to content. It is idle to recommend a natural lifestyle if one
adopts it only as a style rather than as a significant affirmation of a cosmos that has a source
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and a destiny, and has been created to support humanity in its life of worship and affirmation
of the Real. As Muslims, we affirm a natural lifestyle: and this is no mere pose. The retrieval
of the Great Covenant demands that we live in accordance with the created norm of our kind.
Shah WaliAllah observes that God has appointed a sharia for every species. And every
species, when not oppressed by modern man, remains faithful to that sharia. But humanity is
capable of forgetting, and of violating the message of his genes, his hormones, his gender,
and his innate yearning for his source. This dysfunctionality is the essence of kufr, the
process by which we hide our true natures from ourselves.
The road to the reclamation of our natural norm is open only in the form of the Sunna. Only
the Muslims worship as did the founder of their religion. Prophetic Madina was a primordial
city; and by following the pattern of life exampled by its luminous inhabitants we can
genuinely retrieve our essence. The sunna is hence a lifeboat which allows us to move safely
through the toxic sea of modernity, while sustaining ourselves from provisions which were
laid down in an age before such pollution occurred.
Let us remind ourselves of the lifestyle of the Prophet (s). We live in a time of lifestyle
choices; but for us, in fact, there is only one appealing lifestyle choice. Modernity holds up
to us a range of ideal types to imitate: we can be like Peter Tatchell, or Monica Lewinsky, or
Alan Clarke, or Michael Jackson. There is a long menu of alternatives. But when set beside
the radiant humanity of Rasulullah (s.w.s.), there is no contest at all. For the Prophet is
humanity itself, in its Adamic perfection. In him, and in his style of life, the highest
possibilities of our condition are realised and revealed. And this is beauty itself: the word
jamil, beautiful, which is one of his names, refers also to virtue. Ihsan, the Prophetic state of
harmony with God, means the engendering of husn, or beauty.
Here is a condensed recollection, a kind of verbal icon, of that Prophetic beauty. It is
paraphrased from a passage by Imam al-Ghazali, in Book 19 of his Revival of the Religious
Sciences, Ihya Ulum al-Din.
The Messenger of God (s) was the mildest of men, but also the bravest and most just of men.
He was the most restrained of people; never touching the hand of a woman over whom he did
not have rights, or who was not his mahram. He was the most generous of men, so that never
did a gold or silver coin spend the night in his house. If something remained at the end of the
day, because he had not found someone to give it to, and night descended, he would go out,
and not return home until he had given it to someone in need. From what Allah gave him [...]
he would take only the simplest and easiest foods: dates and barley, giving anything else
away in the path of Allah. Never did he refuse a gift for which he was asked. He used to
mend his own sandals, and patch his own clothes, and serve his family, and help them to cut
meat. He was the shyest of men, so that his gaze would never remain long in the face of
anyone else. He would accept the invitation of a freeman or a slave, and accept a gift, even if
it were no more than a gulp of milk, or the thigh of a rabbit, and offer something in return. He
never consumed anything given in sadaqa. He was not too proud to reply to a slave-girl, or a
pauper in rags. He would become angered for his Lord, never for himself; he would cause
truth and justice to prevail even if this led to discomfort to himself or to his companions.
He used to bind a stone around his waist out of hunger. He would eat what was brought, and
would not refuse any permissible food. If there was dates without bread, he would eat, if
there was roast meat, he would eat; if there was rough barley bread, he would eat it; if there

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was honey or something sweet, he would eat it; if there was only yogurt without even bread,
he would be quite satisfied with that.
He was not sated, even with barley-bread, for three consecutive days, until the day he met
his Lord, not because of poverty, or avarice, but because he always preferred others over
himself.
He would attend weddings, and visit the sick, and attend funerals, and would often walk
among his enemies without a guard. He was the most humble of men, and the most serene,
without arrogance. He was the most eloquent of men, without ever speaking for too long. He
was the most cheerful of men. He was afraid of nothing in the dunya. He would wear a rough
Yemeni cloak, or a woolen tunic; whatever was lawful and was to hand, that he would wear.
He would ride whatever was to hand: sometimes a horse, sometimes a camel, sometimes a
mule, sometimes a donkey. And at times he would walk barefoot, without an upper garment
or a turban or a cap. He would visit the sick even if they were in the furthest part of Madina.
He loved perfumes, and disliked foul smells.
He maintained affectionate and loyal ties with his relatives, but without preferring them to
anyone who was superior to them. He never snubbed anyone. He accepted the excuse of
anyone who made an excuse. He would joke, but would never say anything that was not true.
He would laugh, but not uproarously. He would watch permissible games and sports, and
would not criticise them. He ran races with his wives. Voices would be raised around him,
and he would be patient. He kept a sheep, from which he would draw milk for his family. He
would walk among the fields of his companions. He never despised any pauper for his
poverty or illness; neither did he hold any king in awe simply because he was a king. He
would call rich and poor to Allah, without distinction.
In him, Allah combined all noble traits of character; although he neither read nor wrote,
having grown up in a land of ignorance and deserts in poverty, as a shepherd, and as an
orphan with neither father nor mother. But Allah Himself taught him all the excellent
qualities of character, and praiseworthy ways, and the stories of the early and the later
prophets, and the way to salvation and triumph in the Akhira, and to joy and detachment in
the dunya, and how to hold fast to duty, and to avoid the unnecessary. May Allah give us
success in obeying him, and in following his sunna. Amin ya rabb al-alamin.
This moving portrait by Imam al-Ghazali depicts our role model, and simultaneously our
ideal of humanity lived in the form of absolute beauty. His was a life lived in fullness. There
was no aspect of human perfection that he did not know and manifest. And his perfection also
indicates the nature of specifically masculine perfection. He was a great warrior; a sound
hadith narrated by Imam al-Darimi tells us, on the authority of Ali, that
On the day of Badr I was present, and we sought refuge in the Prophet (s.w.s.),
who was the closest of us all to the enemy. On that day he was the most powerful
of all the combatants who fought.
One of the Companions described him riding his horse, wearing a red turban and holding his
sword, and said later that never in his life had he seen a sight more beautiful.
In 23 years he became undisputed ruler of Arabia. Through his genius and charisma, and the
attractive force of his personality, he united the Arabian tribes for the first time in their
history. He took his people from the depths of idolatry into the purest form of monotheism.
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He gave them a law for the first time. He laid down, in his mosque in Madina, a system of
worship, self-restraint and spiritual fruitfulness that provided the inspiration and the
precedent for countless generations of later worshippers and saints. In affirming the Kaba, he
affirmed beauty; so that all else that he did was beautiful.
And in all this, he attributed his success only to Allah. He was, as Imam al-Ghazali records,
the most humble of men. He was forbearing, polite, courteous, and mild. He paid no attention
to peoples outward form, but assessed and responded to their spirits. He forgave constantly.
He was indulgent with the simple Bedouin of Central Arabia, the roughest people on earth.
When one of them. who wanted money, pulled his cloak so violently that it left a mark, he
merely smiled, and ordered that the man be given what he wanted.
All of this came about through his detachment. The veil of self and distraction was gone: he
saw by the Truth. He knew his own prophetic status, but was not made proud by this. He said:
I am the first around whom the earth shall split open at the Resurrection - and I do not
boast. He knew his worth, but because he knew his Lord, he was not proud.
His sunna entailed living in the world, not running away from it. After the overwhelming
experience of revelation on Mount Hira, facing the Kaba, he went down again into Meccan
society. He had his solitary times with his Lord, in the long watches of the night, forms of
tahajjud so long and exacting that he forbade his companions to imitate him. He fasted in
rigourous ways that he would not allow to others. He was detached, and yet in his world, and,
in the end, commanding his world. He was truly the khalifa: the one who has no ego, and
hence speaks, and acts, and rules, by and for Allah alone.
Living the sunna therefore means emulating his inner as well as his outer perfection. The
sunna has to come easily and naturally to us, as the normal lifestyle of our species. Not one
of you has iman, he insisted, until his desire, his personal preference, his hawa, is in
accordance with what I have brought.
Today, among our Muslim communities, there are many who have not learnt this lesson.
There are some misguided fools who imagine that one can achieve spiritual excellence
without adhering to the Sunna. This notion, that there can be ihsan without islam, is a
falsehood, repudiated by all the Muslims and the Sufis, since the beginning of Islam. For
instance, Imam Jalal al-Din Rumi says:
I am the servant of the Quran, for as long as I have a soul.
I am the dust on the road of Muhammad, the Chosen One.
If someone interprets my words in any other way,
That person I deplore, and I deplore his words.
Conversely, we can make no claim to be following the outward sunna, unless we have some
share in emulating his inner perfection also. There are many Muslims whose body language
and manners betray their ignorance of this insight. To pray, fast, eat halal, and observe the
other aspects of the outward sunna, will produce only a lopsided, partial type of Muslim,
unless we have been working on our inward lives. We need to watch the nafs, the ego, like a
cat watching a mousehole. We need to grind it down, so that we become like light.
The Sahaba converted millions of men and women, most of them devout Christians,
Buddhists, Jews and Zoroastrians, even without speaking to them. The Quran was not
translated, and few of them learnt the local languages. But the sheer radiance of their
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presence, and the natural beauty of the sunna, with its graciousness, dignity and poise, won
over the hearts of those who saw them.
Today it is possible to meet Muslims who follow the outward aspects of the Sunna, and yet
do not cause hearts to incline towards them; but to be repelled. Had you been rough and hard
of heart, they would have scattered from around you. (3:159) We seem to have edited that
verse out of the Holy Quran. If some of our activists, with their flak jackets, their Doc
Marten boots, and their aggressive demeanour, could be taken back to the seventh century, it
is unlikely that the Christians, Buddhists and others would have found them very impressive.
They, and the Sahaba themselves, would have regarded them as religious failures, driven by
anger and a sense of marginalisation into a religious form marked by aggressiveness, not the
hilm, the gracious clemency which was the hallmark of the Prophet (s.w.s.), and without
which he could never have won so many hearts.
The conclusion, then, is very simple. Islam is very simple. It is the religion which reunites us
to nature and to God. It celebrates rather than represses human nature. It discloses the
splendour of our Adamic potential.
Those of us who have lived far from nature, and far from beauty, and far from the saints,
often have anger, and darkness, and confusion in our hearts. But this is not the Sunna. The
sunna is about detachment, about the confidence that however seemingly black the situation
of the world, however great the oppression, no leaf falls without the will of Allah. Ultimately,
all is well. The cosmos, and history, are in good hands.
That was the confidence of Rasulullah (s.w.s.). It has to be our confidence as well. There is
too much depression among us, which leads either to demoralisation and immorality, or to
panic, and meaningless, ugly forms of extremism, which have nothing to do with the serenity
and beauty to which the Kaba summons us. But Islam commands wisdom, and balance. It is
the middle way. And for us, whatever our situation, it is always available, and can always be
put into practice. We are the fortunate umma in todays world. Fortunate, because unlike
Westerners, we are still centred on beauty. In other words, we still know what we are, and
what we are called to be.

America as a Jihad State:

Middle Eastern perceptions of modern American
theopolitics
Abdal-Hakim Murad, 2013

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I love America, such a wonderful country such a shame to see it taken over by religious
fundamentalists.
(Iranian diplomat, cited in 2011)[1]
The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities provides a helpful opportunity to consider recent
evolutions in Muslim perceptions of Western religious intention. The rhetoric and
dichotomies of the immediate aftermath have receded, and the more recent years have
seemed to initiate some possible resolutions of the polarity which look beyond the faltering
and controversial security agenda. The publication in 2007 of the Common Word marked
perhaps the clearest and most remarkable sign of this, a genuine shift in the Muslim-Christian
equation: David Burrell, one of the most seasoned Catholic scholars of Islam, wrote of a
dramatic turn-about unparalleled in the recent history of the relationship.[2] More recently, the
fall of the Bush administration seemed to permit a more measured and less histrionic
assessment of Americas travails with political Islam and political Christianity over the years
since 2001. The Obama victory was followed within days by the death of Samuel Huntington,
most notorious of advocates of the thesis of the mutual allergy of Islam and Christendom. It
is a good time to take stock.
In this essay I propose to examine one of the less frequently-noted of post-9/11 developments
by attempting a survey of changing Middle Eastern perceptions of America following the
increased visibility of so-called theocon tendencies in Washington under George Bush Jr. I
will then move on to some more general reflections on the issue of scripturally-based political
xenophobia as a strand in the mutual regard or disregard of what remains of Christian and
Muslim civilisation, and its implications for the wider atmosphere in which the MuslimChristian engagement is conducted.
The approach is necessarily imprecise. Determining a generic Muslim view of this (or of
most things) is hardly possible: regional, sectarian and educational variables see to that.
Muslim elites which conform to the emerging global monoculture have often been resistant to
the idea that religion might be a factor in the politics of a country which is such a leading
icon of modernity, while Islamists, by contrast, may exaggerate US official religiosity in
order to appeal to audiences who think in religious terms, or, on occasion, to bolster a
polemic against the secular discourse of the regimes. A further difficulty is that Muslim elites
attracted to the monoculture may not have access to the books and media reports written in
local languages which should form the basis of our survey. Increasingly such elites read only
in English and French, and a survey of regional newspapers and vernacular TV channels is
unlikely to provide sure clues to their perceptions of the world. As a final complication, their
subject populations are typically consumers of mass media over which they exert only a very
limited influence, and which are shaped by the censorship which is still normal in most
Muslim states. Hence the Middle Eastern media coverage of American fundamentalism has
been extremely erratic, and our conclusions can be no more than tentative.
But for all the measurement problems, the transformation of Muslim perceptions of America
has been considerable. In 2009, at the edge of the Tanezrouft desert near Timbuktu, the
present writer listened to a traditional Sufi shaykh expounding the view that Americas
violence towards Muslims (itida alal-muslimin) is the consequence of a sahwa
masihiyya, a Christian revival. He seemed well-aware of the role of the Christian Coalition in
the run-up to the Iraq war, despite living in a region where I saw no newspapers, and where
internet access is almost impossible. Yet he was familiar with the names of Franklin Graham,
Pat Robertson, and other icons of the Christian Right. For him, Alan Greenspans explanation
73

of the Iraq invasion in terms of Americas need for oil was entirely unpersuasive:[3] Bush and
his team were crusaders (salibiyyin), servants of Israel (awan Israil), and madcap
harbingers of the violent Second Coming of Christ.
Here is another anecdotal sign, this time from the opposite end of the cultural spectrum. In
November of 2005, a very different group of Muslims gathered in Casablanca for the second
symposium of an Arab-American Dialogue. The sponsor was a neoliberal American trust,
and the subject was the familiar one of the relationship between religion and state in the Arab
and American contexts. The American team presented a critique of Arab society based on an
apparent assumption that its political processes were rooted either in medieval Islamic
thought (essentially Mawardis model), or in modern radical Islamism, with its Salafite
doctrine of tawhid al-hakimiyya (the monopolising of sovereignty by God). The Arab team,
mainly composed of secular intellectuals, attempted to explain that most modern Arab
regimes, as nationalist autocracies, do not see themselves as standing in continuity with either
tradition. They added that for Muslims, political thought lies largely in the ijtihadi category
of rulings, and is hence one of those branches of the Sharia which are more readily
susceptible to change.
At this point the discussion grew more stimulating. Some of the Arab thinkers present raised
the issue of American theopolitics, citing Tocquevilles well-known observations about the
coexistence of American official laicism with popular religiosity, and pointing out that many
modern Muslim jurisdictions preside over a broadly similar separation. But as in the world of
Islam, where popular religious convictions can still influence the decision-making of the
officially secular elites, American politicians cannot and do not ignore the hundred million or
so voters who grade politicians for their correctness on faith-specific issues. The report in alSharq al-Awsat continued: our American colleagues (some of whom play an influential role
in the American decision-making process) failed to respond objectively and precisely to the
fears of their Arab partners concerning the role of Christian fundamentalism in American
political decision-making.[4]
In the early years of the decade, a major concern of Muslim commentators seemed to be
Christian Zionism. The Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram and the Lebanese-rooted al-H{ayat ran
a number of op-ed pieces interpreting the apparent indulgence shown towards Israel by the
Bush presidency in terms of the influence of pro-Israel evangelicals. On occasion, the Iraq
invasion was glossed in the context of end-time persuasions attributed to some members of
the White House staff and the Pentagon. For instance, a 2003 article by Jafar Hadi Hasan in
al-Hayat urged readers to broaden their understanding of US objectives in the region to
include the chiliastic. For Hasan, Bushs core electorate are expecting the parousia in their
lifetime, and as he writes: they believe that occupying Iraq confirms the predictions of the
Bible; it is one incident in a series of events before the return of the awaited Christ. Hasan
offers an outline of the history of Christian dispensationalism, summarising its schema of
seven ages of the world, and explains how many Bush voters believe themselves to stand at
the threshold of the seventh age: Christs millennial reign. Hasan then goes on to identify
dispensationalist decision-makers in the Bush team, including Commerce Secretary Donald
Evans, a disciple of Billy Graham, and discusses Grahams son Franklin in his role as the
Presidents personal religious mentor.
Hasan then summarises the core passages of the Book of Revelation which are central to the
world-view of many so-called theocons. Much of Revelation, he writes, is ambiguous, but
the role of Iraq in the end-time scenario is clear: Iraq, or Babylon, will fill the nations with
74

impurity; and an angel of Gods wrath will bring it to destruction, and it will be divided into
three parts: exactly what America has achieved.
When that takes place, Jerusalem, the city of true belief and the polar opposite of Babylon,
will hear the four angels liberated by the fall of the false city. They will proclaim the
imminence of a great battle, and then the reappearance of Jesus. Thus the next stage in the
theocon plan will be the destruction of the Dome of the Rock and the rebuilding of Solomons
Temple, where Christ himself will preside over the sacrificial rituals in order to symbolise the
restoration of Gods order on earth.
Hasan concludes with some reflections on right-wing American policies, attempting to fit
them all into his interpretation. Pat Robertson, he reports, preaches to the Christian world on
the inexorable disappearance of virtue, the spread of abortion and sodomy, and the forgetting
of God. The environmental crisis is a positive sign that the present world is coming to an end.
[5]
Peacemaking is an illusion, even a demonic subversion, since conflict can only come to an
end with Christs millennial reign. [6]
Hasans article may be fairly typical of the growing Muslim concern over the influence of
Americas religious right. Baffled by what appears to regional commentators to be the
foolhardiness of the Iraq invasion, and by the administrations perceived maximalist support
for Israel, such Arab journalists have sought a master explanation in the Bible-time beliefs of
key Bush decisionmakers.[7] Instead of a clash of civilizations, one journalist concludes, we
are witnessing a clash of religions.[8]
As Hasan indicates, this interpretation of American actions is new. And it will be helpful to
trace the conduits by which, in a highly-censored media environment not particularly open to
innovation, such a sea-change in understanding has taken place.
One key channel has been provided by Christian Arab journalists, whose greater cultural
familiarity with the Bible and with Christian eschatology has allowed them to unravel the socalled double-coding in presidential speeches, in which apparently innocuous phrases turn
out to trigger specific Biblical resonances important to the religious electorate. Particularly
impressive was al-Hayats coverage from Washington during the 2008 elections. Its
correspondent, Joyce Karam, showed a close awareness of the evangelical hesitations over
John McCain. Conservative evangelicals will almost invariably vote Republican, she
observes, despite McCains uneven record on abortion, but some moderate evangelicals, less
convinced that religion requires a state of endless Middle Eastern war, had been seduced by
the Obama camp, which had adroitly revived the memory of the Carter years. Karam then
accounts for the last-minute appointment of Sarah Palin as McCains running-mate.
Altogether, she presents a persuasive account to her Arab readers of the issues surrounding
Barack Obamas rise to power: religious politics, as well as the economy or a general postconflict tristesse, are a significant hermeneutic key.[9]
If there is an interpretation, or an explaining-away, of the embarrassing to Christian Arab
nationalists notion of a religious driver to American policy in the Near East, then it seems to
have been articulated most typically by the Israeli Arab writer and former Knesset member,
Azmi Bishara. In a characteristically outspoken article in al-Ahram, this left-wing secular
Christian explains the theocon phenomenon by outlining its historic roots in Americas
Puritan heritage. For Bishara, the New Testament does not provide guidance, other than a
universal message of love and understanding. The Puritans, however, stressed the moral
75

code expressed in the Old Testament. Apparently revisiting perhaps the oldest trope of
Christian anti-Judaism, the law-versus-spirit dichotomy, Bishara concludes that this is a
Judaizing Christianity, which turns the Gospels into a simple extension of what is, by
implication, the unpleasant, lawbound violence of the Hebrew Bible.[10]
Bisharas view is one that may also be heard from Orthodox church leaders in the Middle
East. The theocons are a reversion to an older, Jewish type of political religion, and have
failed to notice that St Paul proclaims the radical inferiority of Judaism and its law. As for the
theocon preoccupation with the seer of Patmos, this is also, by implication, a sort of
Judaizing. However the true meaning of Revelation is the eschatological disclosure of
transformed life which is the Church. This was Augustines conviction; but not every
Protestant has been so happy to explain away the evident violence and retributive quality of
the text. Fifty-nine percent of Americans, according to a recent poll, affirm its literal truth.[11]
Another view was offered by the Lebanese-American writer Ghassan Rubeiz, who as the
former secretary for the Middle East of the World Council of Churches is also active in the
Arab media. Rubeiz, evidently more aware of modern sensitivities, chooses not to adopt the
old theme of a Judaizing Christianity, but offers a more sociological account. He asks why
the religious right now appears to be the prevalent form of religion in America, with
conservative megachurches experiencing boom times while older, soi-disant mainline
denominations face economic and numerical decline. His interpretation is sociological and
somewhat moralising: Americas ever-increasing social mobility and rootlessness, set against
the background of an unstable job market and the rise in divorce and remarriage, allow
fundamentalist preachers to offer a simple explanation of an otherwise confusing world. On
the basis of this interpretation the map divides into Christendom and the lands of darkness,
while history is interpreted as a series of Biblically-foretold signs which culminate in the
imminent and longed-for end of ambiguity and doubt at the Rapture and the Second Coming.
[12]

Another Christian writer has been the Egyptian Samir Murqus. A sociologist of religion who
founded a Coptic Centre for Social Studies and has been active in Muslim-Christian dialogue,
Murqus published, in 2001, a popular but careful book on the role of Protestant
fundamentalism in American foreign policy.[13] In the wake of the 9/11 attacks he went on to
publish American Imperialism: The Triad of Wealth, Faith and Power,[14] in which he seeks to
challenge the widespread Arab perception that current American policies reflect the
pragmatic post-Soviet world of sole-superpower status, rather than a much older
configuration of faith, money and power. On his view, the processes whereby missionary,
soldier and trader worked together in conquering the New World reasserted themselves in the
twentieth century, until they finally became the prevalent paradigm during the Bush
administration, their relationship taking a contemporary shape relevant to globalisation but
still recognisably rooted in the original pattern of American religious conquest.[15] The book is
based on a wide range of Western academic studies, enriched by the authors own daily
scrutiny of President Bushs faith-oriented pronouncements. On the basis of these and other
books on American political religion[16] Murqus has also contributed a number of articles to
the Arab press.
Turning now to Islamic and Islamist mass media a small part of the whole in the Middle
East we encounter a slowly increasing sophistication and level of awareness. While takfiri
Salafi formations such as those which self-identify as al-Qaida are content to use generic
terms such as crusading to account for American interventions in the Muslim world, and
76

offer simple accounts of the power of the Jewish lobby over Christians paralyzed with guilt
over the Holocaust, moderate Islamism appears able to adopt a slightly more informed view.
One example would be the coverage by the Turkish religious newspaper Zaman (associated
with the movement of Fethullah Glen) of President Bushs apparently enthusiastic reading
of the memoirs of Oswald Chambers, a Baptist missionary who accompanied the British
invasion of Ottoman Palestine in 1917, and whose crusading manual is apparently still
popular as inspirational reading for advocates of faith-based war.[17]
A further case of this was Islamist coverage of the role of Blackwater, the security firm
engaged by the Pentagon in conflict zones such as Iraq. Exempted by Paul Bremers
Immunity Order No.17 from prosecution by Iraqi authorities, Blackwater operatives were
accused of a range of abuses against Iraqi civilians, including the Nisour Square incident late
in 2007.
At least two major sources of Islamist knowledge about the alleged religious agenda of
Blackwater can be identified. Firstly, there is a European Parliament report written by
Giovanni Claudio Fava, which details the connections between Blackwater and the Knights
of Malta, a sovereign fraternity of Catholic military elites answerable directly to the Pope.
The occasion for the European Parliaments inquiry was the claim that two Blackwater
subsidiaries were involved in US special rendition flights. Fava confirmed the connection
with the Knights of Malta, and indicated that Malta was one of Blackwaters primary
operational bases. Its vice-president, Cofer Black, had been the CIA officer responsible for
special renditions of detainees to pro-Western regimes which employed torture as an
interrogation technique.
The second source is a popular book on Blackwater by the American journalist Jeremy
Scahill. Meticulously referenced, this book convinced many in the West that the leadership of
Blackwater was driven by a hardline Christian agenda championed by, as Scahill puts it,
extreme religious zealots.[18] Scahill records that its head, former Department of Defence
Inspector General Joseph Schmitz, is himself a Knight of Malta. He is portrayed as an
energetic preacher on behalf of a crusading ideology for our time, his recurrent theme being
the rule of law under God. Americas role in the world is to bring Gods law to all humanity,
in what Scahill terms a vision of Christian supremacy.
Scahills book appeared in March 2007, and became a world bestseller, following already
intense speculation about private armies and their role in the Pentagons new wars in the
Islamic world. A month later, even before the Arabic translation was published,[19] a review
appeared on a website connected to the Muslim Brotherhood leader Shaykh Yusuf alQardawi.[20] The review homed in on the religious ideology of the Blackwater leadership, and
particularly on Erik Prince, the founder-chairman, a figure already known to the Arab press.
Prince, the review believes, is a secretive, neo-crusader mega-millionaire [] a major
bankroller of President George Bush. On Scahills account, with his connections to rightwing Catholic groups Prince believes that Blackwater is an important vehicle for ensuring the
central role of Christianity in US foreign policy. As Prince says: Everybody carries guns, just
like the Prophet Jeremiah rebuilding the temple in Israel a sword in one hand and a trowel
in the other.
Media reports on Blackwaters apparent right-wing Catholic affiliations had several
consequences, most notably an instruction purporting to be from al-Qaida summoning

77

Muslims to attack the Cairo embassy of the Knights of Malta. (In the event, nobody
bothered.)
From a different ideological base, Jordanian MP Jamal Muhammad A<bida<t wrote in the
Abu Dhabi newspaper al-Bayan that the revelations about the religious motivations of the
Blackwater management shed new and disturbing light on American intentions:
The painful saga of modern Arab-Muslim history evokes the battles fought in the Crusades of
the eleventh century, when the Knights of Malta began their operations as a Christian militia
whose mission it was to defend the land conquered by the Crusaders. These memories return
violently to mind with the discovery of links between the so-called security firms in Iraq such
as Blackwater which have historic links with the Knights of Malta. You cannot exaggerate it.
The Order of Malta is a hidden government, or the most mysterious government in the world.
[21]

In 2009, a book on the Knights of Malta appeared from the prolific pen of Mansur Abd alH{akim. Entitled The State of the Knights of Malta and the Iraq Invasion, its more lurid
subtitle ran The Military Wing of the Antichrist, Masonic Knights Templars, Soldiers of
Darkness.[22] Abd al-Hakim, an Egyptian lawyer and journalist, is one of the regions most
popular religious writers on current affairs. Many of his hundred-odd books reveal a strong
predilection for conspiracy theories. Sources for his long account of the Knights of Malta
include, as well as Scahills book, an eclectic mixture of Ibn Kathir, Robert Fisk, Dan Brown,
and David Icke, indicating the success of a new genre of apocalypticism which mingles
Islamic with popular Western lore (another of his best-selling works offers an Islamic reading
of the predictions of Nostradamus). In their fondness for doom-laden prophecies, particularly
in the post-9/11 age, some modern Middle Eastern readers have tastes intriguingly similar to
their American counterparts.
Through investigative journalism popularised by mass-circulation screeds, the notion of the
worlds largest mercenary army, accused of arbitrary and excessive violence in Iraq, being led
by soldiers who take a direct oath of obedience to a Pope who had already caused controversy
with his comments on Islam, seems to have entered a wide circulation. It was reinforced by
the American journalist Seymour Hirsh, who in a speech in Doha on 17 January 2011 alleged
that Knights of Malta and other Christian militants exercised increasing influence in the US
military. Were going to change mosques into cathedrals [] thats an attitude that pervades,
Im here to say, a large percentage of the Special Operations Command.[23]
The practice of rendition also triggered Arab media concern with the interrogation style and
cultural policies applied to Muslim suspects in American custody. While it has not been
possible for the media, including Arab media, to know precisely what procedures have been
used at the various black sites around the globe, there has been extensive public-domain
documentation of American practices at the Guantnamo Bay facility. The various methods of
detainee control were deployed by interrogators schooled in what they took to be the cultural
vulnerabilities of Arabs and Muslims. The use of methods such as the playing of loud rock
music, insults to female family members, nudity, comparing prisoners to rats and dogs, and
requiring detainees to wear female clothing, has been familiar in the Muslim world since, in
June 2005, Time magazine published classified logs recording the interrogation of the Saudi
prisoner Muhammad al-Qahtani.[24]

78

Culturally-specific interrogation techniques designed to cause maximum distress to Muslim

detainees were, of course, likely to cause maximum outrage to Muslim public opinion.[25]
Best-known were the instances of Quran abuse by camp guards; but the use of Christian
imagery to humiliate prisoners is also documented, such as the use of crosses to which
prisoners pointed or reached to indicate that they were ready to talk. An example is the poem
by Mohammed El-Gharani, a fourteen year-old Chadian taken to Guantnamo (since
released):
We saw such insults from them,
Not even the book of God was protected.
Along with their malice, they were foolish.
Tribulations, then hitting and imbecility.
For they are a people without reasonable minds,
Due to their supply of alcoholic drinks.
The Greasy arrived, in our state of need,
On the condition that we raise the card with a cross.
If you want dignity and protection,
Then raise the cross for protection.
All of us threw the card away,
Intent that our spirits be redeemed in sacrifice.[26]
Also popular among Muslim readers is the memoir of the former Muslim chaplain at
Guantnamo, James Yee, who was arrested in 2003 on charges which were subsequently
dropped.[27] He describes the curiously religious atmosphere on the base, with camp
commander Major-General Geoffrey Miller appearing at the forefront of morning prayers
with his guards and interrogators before they dispersed to their tasks.[28] To his recollection,
religiously-specific forms of abuse, such as desecration, appeared to be woven into the
system;[29] Gitmos secret weapon, he writes, was the use of religion against the
prisoners.[30] The evangelical Miller, shortly afterwards, departed for Iraq with a brief to
Gitmoize the prison facility at Abu Ghraib. He was sent there by General William Boykin,
deputy undersecretary of defence for intelligence, himself a committed evangelical known for
regularly preaching in uniform, claiming to his congregations that Satan wants to destroy us
as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army; however they will only be
defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus.[31] Through reports by Yee and
others, perceived evangelical control of the major detention facilities in the War on Terror
again appears to have had a significant impact on Muslim public opinion.
A further conduit through which information on US theopolitics has reached the Middle East
has been the translation of Kimberly Blakers collection of essays by academics, first
published as The Fundamentals of Extremism in 2003. In 2006, an Arabic translation, Usul
al-Tatarruf, appeared with the Cairo-based publishing house al-Shuruq, whose managing
director A<dil al-Muallim has taken a close interest in the rise of American theopolitics.
This is a careful and responsible translation of an important text, perhaps, along with Chris
Hedges book American Fascists and Kevin Phillips American Theocracy, the most serious
study of American religious radicalism yet to appear.[32]
Through all of these channels, then, the perception of the leading Western nation as
profoundly driven by Christian evangelicalism and dispensationalism has taken root in the
Middle East. The consequence has been far-reaching: whereas ten years ago Muslims tended
to view America as a secular republic containing many religious Christians, the perception is
79

now gaining ground that America is a specifically Christian entity, whose policies on Israel,
and whose otherwise mystifying violence against Muslims, whether in occupied countries or
in detention, can usefully be explained with reference to the Bible.
Commentary
Reflecting on this transformation, it may be appropriate to begin with some remarks on the
irony of this mutual regard. Superficially, the dispensationalist and dominionist ethos
regularly noted during the Bush years appears as a mirror image of takfiri Salafism; the
parallel has been drawn by, amongst others, the Turkish theology graduate Sule Albayrak in
her 2007 work on Christian extremism,[33] and by the Egyptian Majdi Kamil in a book
equating Christian and Islamic radicalism which appeared in the same year. [34] In the vision
of some Pentagon generals prosecuting the hunt for Bin Laden, the world seemed to divide
into an abode of peace, freedom and love, presided over by Americas believing army; and an
abode of war, a Muslim Babylon, the necessary object of invasion and subsequent economic
and cultural control. For Albayrak, this is premised on a kind of moral Manicheanism.[35]
Evangelical leaders are the equivalent of rogue mullahs, issuing fatwas which sanctify wars
which devastate whole nations. The enemy is Satan himself, opposed by self-appointed
Hegelian heroes: Boykin, Ashcroft, Miller. Scripture supplies values and law; secularity is
Godless hubris and the reign of darkness, which allows and is assisted by the growth of false
religions. Each side figures itself primarily as the virtuous opposite of the Other: Boykin was
raised by God to challenge Bin Laden, rather as Charles Martel existed because of al-Ghafiqi.
Rights are easily suspended: Islamists kill noncombatants by opportunistically invoking
maslaha (public interest) and the principle of takfir; while Washington is seen as rendering
and killing suspects in the spirit of Tocqueville himself, who had supported the total abolition
of human rights in order to suppress the 1848 Paris revolution. Both seem to call for a utopia
established through drastic constraint. Both, finally, are erastian in their constitutional
thinking: the established religious leaders (the derided moderates) are to be bypassed as
false mediators, in favour of a divine sovereignty exercised by a righteous prince alone. Such
warriors are clear that they take their orders directly from God.[36] (President Bush himself
said: I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldnt do my job.[37] )
Such a mirroring is easily claimed; but historians of religion will be suspicious of so neat a
schema. In a simple way members of each culture seem to believe that they can lessen their
own burden of guilt by pointing to reciprocities on the other side; and at times Albayrak and
Kamil seem to do this, as do other Muslims keen to echo William Arkins denunciation of the
Pentagons Christian jihad.[38] More taxingly, the discourse of a clear mirroring implies that
the internal differentia of Christianity and Islam have only insignificant entailments today,
which, again, is hardly likely.
What is odd-handed (Kenneth Craggs phrase) about this clash of fundamentalisms? There
are asymmetries which demand to be listed prominently. One of these, noted by Muhammad
Arif, is that they have distinct sociologies and histories. For Arif, the Islamic world has
spent the past century moving from a religious towards a secular frame of reference, but
while Ataturk was secularising Turkey, fundamentalists were laying the foundations for a
theocratic order in America.[39]
Arif also points out the connection between wealth and evangelicalism, something normally
absent in the Islamic case.[40] In fact, one needs no Marxian baggage to observe that Islamic
civilisation, with minor Gulf exceptions, is presently a Lazarus at the gate of Dives.
Christianity, which emerged pace the prosperity-gospellers as a discourse of the poor, has
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become the favoured sacred space of the wealthiest and most competitive economic culture
that has ever evolved. For many theocons this is not a paradox but a sign of Gods grace.
Takfiri Islamism, however, exists in part in order to refute this discourse. Despite its
abhorrence of Sufi asceticism, and its hyperconservative social ethos, it often takes itself to
be a site of resistance to wealth and privilege. It is not Babylon that was the self-serving
laicity of Saddam and the Bathist nomenklatura but Ishmael. Like the dispensationalist, the
Islamist seems unnerved by the strange inactivity of God the deus absconditus who because
of the sins of the faithful has allowed the rise of liberal secularity, the growth of vice and the
atrophy of faith. Yet the usual Islamist response has been precisely the ancient trope of Gods
preference for the underdog, the mustadaf. For Boykin, God is with America, and this is
shown by Americas economic and martial prowess; for the Islamist, God is with Ishmael, as
is shown, again, by Americas economic and martial prowess. Attorney-General John
Ashcroft had himself anointed with holy oil,[41] denounced church-state separation as a wall
of religious oppression, [42] and strove to implement Gods law. Islamists behave in a roughly
analogous way. Yet theirs is taken to be a site of resistance, on behalf of Ishmaels black
house in Mecca, against the evangelical White House in the city of Masonic symbolism,
seen as the nerve-centre of wealth and Pharaonic evil. This is not the pacifism and political
indifferentism of the Gospels, nor a Baptist joy in Gods empowerment of His covenant
people; it is more akin to Amoss prophecy of the uprising of the poor. Much of its appeal
derives from this sense of moral drama.
Hence instead of a simple symmetry we might prefer to diagnose a resuscitation of the
ancient theme of Rome and Jerusalem, beloved of Tacitus, and present in its most iconic
form in Josephus. On this view, Hamas are the sicarii, the assassins of occupied Judea, who
gave their lives in suicidal missions against their Herodian and Roman overlords. So Hamass
struggle has included assassinations of local collaborators and quislings, who have failed to
observe that Gods law alone applies, and that the civic space of Rome, now the global
empire of the monoculture, has its foundations in anthropolatry: public sports, the shameless
cult of the body, the greed of the forum. Rome, in contempt at the rebels, deploys its Herod,
whose name may not only be Mahmud Abbas, but is also Asif Zardari and H{usni Mubarak,
and many others besides, as the loyal tribune of a world empire in which exotic local deities
may be tolerated only in the private space. The public square is ruled only by the emperor and
his deputies.
Such a historical analogy might help us to parse the optimism of the apocalyptic Islamist.
Even utter defeat at Masada is reckoned a victory for the Zealot martyr, who, therefore, is
invincible. Guantnamo turned into the zealots triumph: during six excruciating years,
several camp guards converted to Islam, but not a single inmate reached for the Cross.[43]
Under the unblinking eye of the evangelical in Ray-Bans and crew-cut, the detainee may lose
his sanity, or attempt suicide, but he is not defeated. Rome, he knows, will fall in the end;
God is with the tormented.
So the cage, the great panopticon in the sun, inverts its creators purpose. It was built, it now
seems, not to extract confessions since the more significant suspects mostly remained out of
view in the black sites but as a therapeutic exhibition akin to the victory parades of
Caesar, who had Vercingetorix placed in a cage and displayed to the citizens of Rome. The
American soul was wounded on 9/11, and the parade of humiliated men in beards at Camp XRay was an icon which it could contemplate, and in which it could find healing. Jesus himself
will stare, with eyes of fire, at the sinners, before consigning them to the lake of torment; and
81

the Cuban cages seemed to serve as a proleptic anticipation of the vengeance of Christ
promised in the Book of Revelation. Yet still the icon failed. In the world of Islam it was
experienced not as a healing but as a kind of auto-da-f, in which internees whose crimes
seemed always doubtful, but whose Muslimness was certain, were tormented by Christian
inquisitors. For many in the world of Islam it also seemed to represent, in the most public
way, the private habits of the local Herods, whose cages were also well-stocked with the
same kind of zealots.
Rome may torment the body, and Herod is even keener to do so. But as the cage suggests, her
main instrument of pain is psychological. In the mid-19th century, American penal reformers
invented a Philadelphia System, following the scientific British innovations at Pentonville.
For the most enlightened reasons, physical abuse was reduced or abolished as a relic of the
medieval past, to be replaced by modern and hygienic methods of intangible pressure.
Prisoners were to be referred to only by numbers. They would be permitted no visitors and no
letters, and would wear black hoods whenever taken from their cells. Silence was universally
imposed. In the penitentiary, the sense of criminal community was voided: all other
prisoners were silent, invisible abstractions to the man in his solitary cell. The republic of
crime was vaporized, and all social sense along with it, leaving only a disoriented, passive
obedience.[44]
Charles Dickens, visiting Philadelphias new Eastern Penitentiary, was terrified by this
enlightened Benthamite machine:
I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and
agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts [] There is a depth of
terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers can fathom. I hold this slow and daily
tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the
body; and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of
touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface [] therefore the
more I denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to
stay.[45]
No less Benthamite was the new willingness to abandon ancient precedent and to convict on
the basis of alleged intention. The Kafaesque trial of Jose Padilla, driven to the brink of
insanity by his experience in custody, has been only the most notorious case of this.[46] The
panopticon will not allow even the mind to be a private space.
Here we might learn from Slavoj Zizeks division of violence into three kinds: subjective,
symbolic, and systemic. This violence against the subject, recently curtailed in President
Obamas directives, was more than replicated not only by Herod, in the prisons of Egypt or
Tunisia, but by the zealots themselves: whatever their liberative cast of mind, the zealots have
not hesitated to use forms of physical pain immeasurably greater than those documented at
Guantnamo. This has been the pattern of much Islamist revolt since the time when the
enrags of the Iranian revolution, moralising about the Shahs secret police, quickly brought
in Ayat Allah Khalkhali as their own Robespierre.
But more substantial, Zizek claims, is symbolic violence embodied in language and its
forms, what Heidegger would call our house of being. [47] By this he means the
monocultures imposition of a certain universe of meaning:

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In our secular, choice-based societies, people who maintain a substantial religious belonging
are in a subordinate position. Even if they are allowed to maintain their belief, this belief is
tolerated as their idiosyncratic personal choice or opinion. The moment they present it
publicly as what it is for them, say a matter of substantial belonging, they are accused of
fundamentalism. What this means is that the subject of free choice in the Western
tolerant multicultural sense can emerge only as the result of an extremely violent process of
being torn out of a particular lifeworld, of being cut off from ones roots.[48]
For Zizek, then, religion is always oppressed by the monoculture. An example would be the
latters insistence that freedom of expression, although in practice favouring those with
access to media and money, is always a precondition for human dignity. If remnants of nonmonocultural worlds complain, as they do, that they prefer to suffer physical over symbolic
violence, the monoculture appears to have no reply. The Muslim who says she would rather
be physically tortured than hear her Prophet insulted or see the Quran abused is, from the
perspective of the monoculture, simply living in the wrong world. The post-9/11 world, of a
passionate susurration of anti-Muslim sentiment, is the only world that exists. Those who
experience it as violent must learn to experience it differently.
Zizeks third category, systemic violence, takes us back to Ishmael and his casting-out into
the desert by the privileged forms of modern Biblicism. Zizek, of course, prefers to think in
terms of Marx. For him, turbo-capitalism, on trial since 2008, is straightforwardly at fault for
the infant mortality rate in Mali. It is also the dynamo of terrorism. He writes of the
hypocrisy of those who, while combating subjective violence, commit systemic violence that
generates the very phenomena they abhor;[49] a view likely to resonate with much Muslim
criticism.
What was notable, for Islamist observers, in the experiment with radical Christianity during
the Bush years, was not so much the presence of an adjustment in Christendoms systemic
violence towards the East, which they regard as a historic constant. What they seem to find
refreshing is that the core religious differentials, once politely or even sincerely buried away,
are now in the foreground. Both Islam and Christianity claim to be reverting to themselves
(for Islamists, this is the rhetoric of asala). Yet historians are likely to demur: the processes of
identity-retrieval in fact tend to yield a growing distance from historic mainstreams.[50] In the
former world, kalam, Sufism, and classical legal and political thought are giving way to an
insistence on building a scriptural commonwealth which champions the rights of the
righteous, and in which the classical Islamic denial of legislative powers to the state is
replaced by a totalitarian etatism. In Christendom, some forty percent of Americans now
believe that the Antichrist is already on the earth;[51] and nine percent would like to see the
Bible become the only source of legislation.[52] Europeans may shrug, but even in the UK,
the number of worshippers at one Pentecostal church in Walthamstow one Easter Sunday was
more than double the congregations at St Pauls and Westminster Abbey combined,[53] and the
presiding pastor, an advocate of the prosperity gospel, is very clear that Israel is Isaac, while
the Arabs are Ishmael, the outcast.[54] In both worlds there has been a steady growth in
ideological, dichotomising religion, whose provocative conspicuousness tends to feed the
growth of its rivals, producing a vicious circle.
No doubt this tendency will be seen in simple terms as a decadence. As Cardinal Newman put
it, the nation drags down its Church to its own level. But it is a protest against decadence as
well. If the modern world is experienced as a kind of Mardi Gras, all differences levelled in
the pursuit of pleasure and the right to pleasure, and if mainline denominations have
83

substantively acceded to monocultural values and ideologies of progress, then the

fundamentalist fight for difference, including a difference that can only exist by
discriminating against increasingly ideologized Others, can to some extent claim to be a site
of real resistance and a genuine awakening (sahwa). Milan Kundera said that the struggle
of men against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.[55] The end of history at
the hands of liberal consumerism finds it hard not to comprise an amnesia, an end of memory
and therefore of the authentic self: Foucaults end of man. However an age of drowsy
comforts craves a stimulant. Fifty years ago, during another era of polarities, Arthur
Schlesinger wrote that self-satisfied Western man was in crisis; casting around for a catharsis
he decided that the Cold War ought to be used as an opportunity to wake him up. [56]
Tocqueville thought that Frances invasion of Algeria would resuscitate it from postNapoleonic torpor. Hannah Arendt, reflecting on both Nazism and Communism, concluded
that the content of ideology tends to be less attractive than the invigorating fact of belonging
to it, of being steered in a rudderless world.[57] Even further back, militant Puritans believed
that the worlds peace is the keenest war against God,[58] because it led to complacency and
the stagnation of the spirit. As at Guantnamo, morality is not the core issue, what matters is
the symbolism of belonging, animated by a sense of destiny.
These examples, drawn from Corey Robins recent study of political fear, are linked by the
idea that it is lack of direction which drives people into the arms of apparently absurd
conflictual certainties, so that their selfhood is reborn in the refiners fire of a perpetual state
of alarm. Today, the Saudification of Islam, or the Southernization of American Christianity,
are both strengthened by their claim to resolve our modern anomie. Earlier ages suffered such
temptations, but it is possible that we are endangered by them far more, since we are that
much further from tradition, identity, and consensual truths. What is after post-modernity?
When it arrives, whatever it is, can it possibly allow the puer aeternus (Jungs contemptuous
diagnosis of our post-sacred condition, now exacerbated by media dumbing-down) once
more to achieve anything resembling adulthood? If scientists are now writing books like
Daniel Wegners The Illusion of Conscious Will,[59] if we are told that what we do simply
happens to us, then how likely are we to find any true humanism outside the imaginative
world of theism? Put in Asharite terms, can we look for any values in a secular world which
denies our own acquisition, kasb, of our actions? Zizek should not assume so quickly that the
believers cynicism about secular ethics cannot be accompanied by an ethical alternative.
For Zizek, the two mutually parasitic fundamentalisms will only be neutralised when the
world appreciates the value of a public neutrality, thus resurrecting the central energies of the
Enlightenment and supplying an alternative and more tolerant awakening. His prescription
and prediction, then, are startlingly conservative, converging with the polemics of Roger
Scruton: one recalls the way in which al-Qaida has reconciled the Hitchens brothers. As in
the time of Charlemagne, the West will be united by Islam, but whereas for American
believers this will happen beneath the banner of political Christianity, Zizek still yearns for a
secular revival.
Where mainline belief continues to be full of passionate conviction, it will probably prefer
enlightenment in the form of better education. In an era of connectivity, few seem to
sufficiently informed: Muslims shopping for books in Cairo may learn the names of Pat
Robertson and John Hagee, but are likely to ignore the existence of the archbishop of
Chicago. Reciprocally, it appears that few in Christendom can yet name a single mainstream
Muslim thinker. This was brought home in an absolute way in 2008, when two magazines,
Foreign Affairs and Prospect, sponsored a global survey to identify the worlds hundred most
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influential public intellectuals. The overall winner was Fethullah Glen, a fact that surprised
few in the Muslim world, but which baffled Westerners familiar only with the names of
radicals.[60]
This aporia has had practical consequences for the mutual regard of Christianity and Islam.
America seems increasingly to figure itself as what-is-not-Muslim, or even, for some, as the
worlds leading Bible-reading crusader state;[60] while the Islamists, no better informed,
consider themselves to be under a generic military and cultural attack from Christians (and
from their allies the Jews).[62] Everywhere this polarity is strengthened by the sense that the
moderates have not done enough to denounce the extremists; as Jan Linn says: The virtual
silence within the Christian community about the rise of the Christian Right is partly
responsible for its gaining mainstream status.[63]
I began by suggesting that we are now in what feels like an aftermath, following the closure
of the Bush parenthesis. Obama feels like Charles the Second: after a decade of Puritan
discourses on sin and redemption, divine immanentism, providence, and the special destiny
of the people, [64] the population has grown tired, and the flags have begun to disappear from
the churches. The mutedness of religious slogans during the recent Arab Spring suggests
that the Islamists, too, are losing the initiative.
Perhaps one sign of this is the prospering of the Common Word, a document which in many
ways may be seen as a product of the later post-9/11 environment (several of its authors and
signatories had clearly been concerned by the biblicising of American discourse towards the
Islamic world). Where the fundamentalists take scripture to be the site of the most irreducible
Christian-Muslim differences, and the symbol and engine of the Others revanchism, the
Common Words use of Quran and Bible seeks to indicate the possibility of a new and more
conciliatory discursive relationship. In 2008 the Common Word process reached Yale Divinity
School, which had already coordinated an endorsement of the document by three hundred
evangelical leaders; the ensuing conference saw evangelicals and Muslims adopting language
about a common Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheistic heritage.[65] The decade closed with
several substantial publications by Muslim and Christian theologians seeking ways in which
the two scriptures, even on very classical readings, could facilitate positive theological,
political and social engagement between monotheists.[66] While less conspicuous than the
growth of the theocon agenda or its Muslim epigones, this too has increasingly formed part
of the evolution of the Muslim-Christian regard in the last decade.
A generation or two ago, writers on international affairs would have ridiculed the idea that
ancient eschatologies could become factors in 21st-century politics. This is, however, our
situation. Holy books, and the mood of their interpreters, are bound up with the worlds
current polarities. It is likely that exegetes, of whatever stamp, will do much to shape the
future of countries like Egypt and Turkey as they move towards full democracy, and decide
whether to maintain their recent secular patterns, or to learn from the American model of a
complex symbiosis of faith and power. Conversely, some Americans may find the experience
of Islamism a helpful reminder of the dangers attendant upon reading Gods word as the
manifesto of a utopian political ideology.

Endnotes
85

1. Prospect (January 2011), 35-6.

2. David Burrell, Christians and Muslims Breathe a New Spirit, in Lejla Demiri (ed.),
A Common Word: Text and Reflections (Cambridge: Muslim Academic Trust, 2011),
51-64.
3. Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (London:
Penguin, 2008), p.463: the Iraq war is largely about oil.
4. al-Sharq al-Awsat, 20.11.05; cf. al-Bayan, 13.11.05.
5. For the theocons and the environment see Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: the
peril and politics of radical religion, oil, and borrowed money in the 21st century
(London and New York: Penguin, 2006), 237-9.
6. al-Hayat, 24.10.03. That peacemakers, particular those who seek to reconcile Arabs
and Israelis, are unwitting agents of Antichrist, is implicit in much evangelical
rhetoric; as in the Left Behind novels of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, and the film
The Omega Code (1999). For an Arab commentary on the role of the Left Behind
novels in the Christian Zionist movement see Jihad al-Khazin in al-Hayat, 05.01.05.
7. See also the review by David Tresilian, a lecturer at the American University in Cairo,
of Kenneth Browns LIrak de la crise au chaos (Paris: Ibis, 2004) in the English
version of al-Ahram (Al-Ahram Weekly, 30 March 5 April 2006); citing William
Polk, Brown outlines the hidden agenda determining American relations with Iraq:
the new strategic conception of American world domination; the messianic faith in
Christian fundamentalism; and the connection between Christian fundamentalism and
Zionism.
8. See an article making this claim by Wafa al-Rashid, al-Hayat, 28.4.09.
9. al-Hayat, 28.10.08.
10. al-Ahram (English edition), 24-30.11.02.
11. The Independent, 17.12.06.
12. Daily News (Egypt), 6.4.07.
13. Samir Murqus, al-Usuliyya al-Brutistantiyya wal-siyasa al-kharijiyya al-amrikiyya
(Cairo: Maktabat al-Shuruq al-Dawliyya, 2001).
14. Samir Murqus, al-Imbaraturiyya al-Amrikiyya: thulathiyyat al-tharwa, al-din, alquwwa, min al-harb al-ahliyya ila ma bada 11 Sabtambar (Cairo: Maktabat alShuruq al-Dawliyya, 2003).
15. Murqus, al-Imbaraturiyya, 96.
16. Notably al-Himaya wal-iqab: al-Gharb wal-masalat al-diniyya fil-sharq al-awsat
(Cairo: Mirit, 2000), in which he details the role of the Christian Right in promoting
86

the (Clinton-era) International Religious Freedom Act (1998), which he sees as a key
statutory legitimiser of faith-based interventionist politics in the Arab world.
17. Zaman, 4.3.03. See also the coverage in another Turkish daily, Sabah (7.3.2004).
18. Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: the rise of the worlds most powerful mercenary army
(London: Serpents Tail, 2007), 443.
19. Entitled Blakwatar: akhtar munaz}zama sirriyya fil-alam (Beirut, 2008).
20. www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?
c=Article_C&cid=1177156137661&pagename=Zone-English-News%2FNWELayout
(accessed 02.01.11).
21. Cited by Pamela Hansen, Malta Today, 13.01.08; see, for a more lurid treatment,
aftermathnews.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/blackwater-knights-of-malta-in-iraq
(accessed 29.12.10).
22. Mansur Abd al-Hakim, Dawlat fursan Malta wa-ghazw al-Iraq: al-janah al-askari
lil-masih al-dajjal, junud al-haykal al-masuni al-muqaddas, juyush al-zalam
(Damascus and Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, 2009).
23. www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/22/transcript_the_obamabush_foreign_polici
es_why_cant_america_change (accessed 12.3.11).
24. Time, 12.06.05.
25. For a good example see Abd al-Wahhab Badarkhan, writing in al-Hayat, 28.4.09.
26. Mohammed El Gharani, First Poem of my Life, in Marc Falkoff, Poems from
Guantanamo: the detainees speak (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2007), 39.
27. See for instance Yees 2007 interview on Syrian television, in which he discusses the
practice of Quran abuse: www.memritv.org/clip/en/1610.htm (accessed 2.2.11).
28. James Yee, For God and Country: faith and patriotism under fire (New York: Public
Affairs, 2005), 84, 124-5.
29. Yee, 111.
30. humanrights.ucdavis.edu/events/the-davis-enterprise-may-7-2006 (accessed 2.2.11).
31. The Guardian, 20.05.04; for more on Boykin as Christian warrior see Jan G. Linn,
Whats Wrong with the Christian Right (Boca Raton: BrownWalker Press, 2004), 613.
32. Kimberly Blaker (ed.), tr. Hiba Rauf and Tamir Abd al-Wahhab, Us}ul al-tatarruf
(Cairo: Maktabat al-Shuruq al-Dawliyya, 2006).

87

33. Sule Akbulut Albayrak, Hristiyan Fundamentalizmi (Istanbul: Etkilesim, 2007), 4962.
34. Majdi Kamil, al-Misihiyyat al-Sihyuniyya, al-tatarruf al-Islami, was-sinariyu alkarithi (Damascus and Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, 2007).
35. Albayrak, 35. The same description of US policy as Manichean may be found
elsewhere; e.g. Murqus, Imbaraturiyya, 113.
36. Scahill, 377.
37. Cited in Phillips, 208; cf. Kamil, 174-5.
38. Scahill, 377.
39. Muhammad Arif, tr. Raniya Khallaf, S{uud al-brutistantiyya al-ifanjilikiyya fi
Amrika wa-tathiruhu ala al-alam al-Islami (Cairo: Maktabat al-Shuruq alDawliyya, 2006/1427, 217.>
40. Arif, 218.
41. Phillips, 118.
42. Phillips, 233.
43. Moazzem Begg, Enemy Combatant (London: Pocket Books, 2007), 220; Newsweek,
21.03.09.
44. Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: a history of the transportation of convicts to
Australia, 1787-1868 (London: Vintage, 2003), 520.
45. Charles Dickens, cited in Hughes, 520.
46. www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts219.html; for the legal issues see Darren A.
Wheeler, Presidential Power in Action: Implementing Supreme Court Detainee
Decisions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 53-84.
47. Slavoj Zizek, Violence (London: Profile Books, 2009), 1.
48. Zizek, 123-4.
49. Zizek, 174.
50. Humeira Iqtidar, Secularizing Islamists? Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-ud-Dawa in
Urban Pakistan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); John Gray, Al-Qaeda
and What it Means to be Modern (London: Faber and Faber, 2003).
51. Phillips, 260.

88

52. www.gallup.com/poll/28762/Majorities-Muslims-Americans-See-Religion-LawCompatible.aspx accessed 3.2.11.

53. The Guardian, 11.04.09.
54. Nigeria World, 02.06.02.
55. Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (London: Faber, 1982), 3.
56. Corey Robin, Fear: the history of a political idea (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2006), 13.
57. Robin, 103.
58. Cited in Robin, 37.
59. Daniel M. Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will (Boston: MIT Press, 2002).
60. Zaman, 26.6.2008.
61. Phillips, 103.
62. For a representative example of the genre of a monomaniac Western assault on Islam
stretching down the centuries see al-Husayni al-Husayni Madi, Hurub al-Gharb alMuqaddasa alal-Islam: wathaiq al-muamara wal-idana (Damascus and Cairo:
Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, 2007).
63. Linn, 2, cf. p.50.
64. Cf. John Morrill, The Puritan Revolution, pp. 67-88 of John Coffey and Paul C.H.
Lim (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), see pp.84-5.
65. Paragraph One of the joint final declaration of the Yale Common Word Conference.
66. Waleed El-Ansary and David K. Linnan (eds.), Muslim and Christian Understanding:
Theory and Application of A Common Word (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010);
Miroslav Volf and G. Talal (eds.), A Common Word: Muslims and Christians on
Loving God and Neighbor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010).

89