Contra Voegelin: Getting Islam Straight - Charles E. Butterworth

GETTING ISLAM STRAIGHT

Charles E. ButterworthUniversity of Maryland

Prepared for delivery at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,

August 28 - August 31, 2003

INTRODUCTION

About half a century ago, two relatively unknown scholars

delivered a series of lectures under the auspices of the Charles

R. Walgreen Foundation at the University of Chicago, one within

two years of the other. They had much in common: country of

birth, ethnicity, educational formation, flight from persecution

by tyrannic forces that brought them to asylum of sorts in the

US, and a desire to explain contemporary politics as well as

political thought by seeking its antecedents in the history of

political philosophy. The books resulting from the lectures and

appearing in inverse order one and three years after their

delivery are so well-known that the mention of their titles

immediately suffices to identify their authors and the multiple

controversies associated with their approaches: The New Science

of Politics and Natural Right and History.

Both Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin voice dismay over the way

positivism has affected clear thinking about politics as well as

about the moral and rational qualities needed for political life

to flourish. Strauss goes further and castigates historicism,

especially radical historicism, for the impetus it gives to moral

Charles E. Butterworth Getting Islam Straight2

myopia and relativism. He then turns to a careful examination of

classical and early modern political philosophy in order to show

that while ancient rationalism was decisively rejected at the

onset of the modern age, it was never adequately refuted. After

a thorough-going critique of historicism as presented in the

work of Martin Heidegger and a detailed refutation of the social

science positivism that can be traced to the influence of Max

Weber, he turns to a new account of ancient political philosophy

and of early modern political philosophy. Natural Right and

History stands on its own, to be sure, but it also serves as the

grounding for Strauss’s subsequent interpretations of political

philosophy within the Western tradition.

Voegelin, persuaded that “the existence of man in political

society is historical existence,” strives for “a theory of

politics” that “penetrates to principles” and is, consequently,

“a theory of history” (Voegelin, 1952; 1). He therefore views

the task of the political scientist to be that of building a new

political theory, perhaps even a new science of politics:

Much can be learned, to be sure, from the earlierphilosophers concerning the range of problems, as well asconcerning their theoretical treatment; but the veryhistoricity of human existence, that is, the unfolding ofthe typical in meaningful concreteness, precludes a validreformulation of principles through return to a formerconcreteness. Hence, political science cannot be restoredto the dignity of a theoretical science in the strict senseby means of a literary renaissance of philosophicalachievements of the past; the principles must be regained bya work of theoretization which starts from the concrete,historical situation of the age, taking into account the


full amplitude of our empirical knowledge. (Voegelin, 1952;2-3.)

This line of reasoning does not bring Voegelin to embrace Weber’s

“value-free” science. To the contrary, he adamantly rejects that

attempt to move “religion and metaphysics into the realm of the

‘irrational’” (Voegelin, 1952; 22). For him, the restoration of

first philosophy – metaphysics – is of utmost importance, and he

strives to accomplish that goal through a reinterpretation of

rationalism. That reinterpretation is driven by the assumption

that one must link metaphysics, beginning with Greek metaphysics,

to “the religious experiences of the philosophers who developed

it” and then continue with medieval metaphysics and the

corresponding dominant religion, Christianity (Voegelin, 1952;

24-26).

For Voegelin, such a line of inquiry leads to the discovery

of Gnosticism and its growth as well as to recognizing that the

break between ancient and modern thought needs to be moved back

from the sixteenth to somewhere near the ninth century, that is,

from the renaissance and reformation to the middle ages. He

views Gnosticism as the attempt to found a society that will last

forever and to replace the mysteriousness of human existence by

knowledge – the “immanentization of the eschaton” in his

formulation. There is, of course, nothing surprising about that.

It is a tendency common to human beings, especially to the

culture that grows up within human social and political


associations. Elements of Gnostic thought from medieval to

modern times are ready to hand, according to Voegelin. They

originate with Joachim of Flora, pass through Thomas Hobbes to

Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach and Karl Marx, to culminate with Georg

Wilhelm Hegel.

Yet, at least in this book, Voegelin has no solution to this

crisis in modern thought. He is content to have identified it

and to have shown how it is inextricably tied to human history.

In the end, he can only hope that civilizing elements will allow

mankind to resist its appeal (Voegelin, 1952; 133, 166, and 187-

189).

Leo Strauss focuses on ideas and on the arguments set forth

by those who expound the ideas, not on the historical events that

surround them or to which they give rise. Nor does Strauss think

there is any meaning in history per se, no more at least than the

consequences of ideas that capture the popular will from time to

time. Thus it is by examining the reasons for historicism put

forth by its proponents that he discovers it to be untenable on

logical and practical grounds (Strauss, 1953; 19-20, 20-21, 23-

24, and 24-25). For him, the goal is to achieve clarity about

the dominant opinions of the day and their shortcomings. His

success in that endeavor owes much to what he learned about

revelation and philosophy from two great medieval philosophers,

Alfarabi and Maimonides. Even so, he attributes no special power


to religion. It remains for him an alternative, albeit a

powerful and frequently hostile alternative, to the rationalism

pursued by philosophers.

With one exception, no attention is paid to Islam or to

thinkers within the Islamic tradition by either Voegelin or

Strauss in these lectures. The exception is Averroes, a pseudo-

Averroes for Voegelin and an Averroes filtered through Christian

and Jewish Aristotelians for Strauss (Voegelin, 1952; 142-143 and

Strauss, 1953; 158-159). Voegelin’s account of Averroes and

Islam is as erroneous and limited as the source from which he

draws. Though Strauss is correct in what he says about Averroes,

it tells the reader nothing about Islam. Indeed, Strauss never

does speak about Islam in any of his writings. It is a topic of

discussion for him only insofar as it sheds light on the question

of divine law and the way philosophers within the tradition of

Islam explain that law and the prophetic mission. Voegelin,

however, returns to Islam in the work whose title gives the theme

to this panel, The Ecumenic Age.

THE ECUMENIC AGE, AN OVERVIEW

The Ecumenic Age, volume four of the series entitled Order

and History, fits into a larger program or project. It was meant

to illustrate the principle that “the order of history emerges

from the history of order.” Accordingly, “history was conceived


as a process of increasingly differentiated insight into the

order of being in which man participates by his existence.”

Moreover, “such order as can be discerned in the process,

including digressions and regressions from the increasing

differentiation, would emerge, if the principal types of man’s

existence in society, as well as the corresponding symbolisms of

order, were presented in their historical succession.”

Voegelin was of the opinion that the types of order were

five: “the imperial organizations of the Ancient Near East,”

“the revelatory form of existence in history,” “the polis,” “the

multi-civilizational empires since Alexander,” and “the modern

national state.” To each of these corresponds a particular kind

of thought that shapes the way it comes into being and functions,

namely, “the cosmological myth,” revelation as “developed by

Moses and the prophets of the Chosen People,” “the Hellenic myth,

and the development of philosophy as the symbolism of order,”

Christianity, and, finally, “modern Gnosticism.” As is generally

known, the first three types along with their corresponding myths

or founding representations were discussed in the first three

volumes of Order and History, namely, Israel and Revelation, The

World of the Polis, and Plato and Aristotle.

Originally, Voegelin had planned to discuss the other two

types – multi-civilizational empires and the modern nation state

in three subsequent volumes that would have carried the titles


Empire and Christianity, The Protestant Centuries, and The Crisis

of Western Civilization. Now, however, Voegelin confesses to

having discerned that the “structures that emerged from the

historical orders and their symbolization” were “more

complicated” than he supposed (Voegelin, 1974; 1-2). So we have

this volume. It is followed by In Search of Order, the work that

puts a seal upon his attempts to elucidate how transcendental

experiences enter and influence human history.

In The Ecumenic Age, Voegelin sets out to write a history of

history while avoiding the errors of Jaspers and Toynbee, neither

of whom pays sufficient attention to the sacred and the influence

it has upon human awareness through time. Central for Voegelin

is the assumption that the influence of the sacred lets “man

become conscious of his humanity as existence in tension toward

divine reality” or differently stated, that there is a kind of

religious progress with Christianity marking the highest point.

In this sense, “history is not a stream of human beings and their

actions in time, but the process of man’s participation in a flux

of divine presence that has eschatological direction” (Voegelin,

1974; 5-6). Somehow, it now appears that even this assumption

has been called into question:

If the puzzle of the symbolism is solved, however, themystery of the process itself becomes even more awesome. For the spiritual outbursts are widely scattered in time andspace over concrete human beings in concrete societies. Theevents, though they constitute structures of meaning inhistory, do not themselves fall readily into a pattern that


could be understood as meaningful. Some of the structuresconstituted, such as the advances from compact todifferentiated consciousness, bring the time-dimension inthe flux of divine presence to attention; others, such asthe cluster of events in the crosscut under discussion,appear to accentuate the process in its broadness, as itaffects mankind in the spatial-dimension of existence. Butin either case, the emergent meanings remain open toward thefuture of the process in time, as well as toward itseschatological fulfillment. I had to conclude: The processof history, and such order as can be discerned in it, is nota story to be told from the beginning to its happy, orunhappy, end; it is a mystery in process of revelation. (Voegelin, 1974; 6.)

Differently stated, history has no over-arching meaning as such

or at least none that has yet been perceived. To be sure, human

beings strive to make sense of events as members of a particular

political group and culture. The endeavor is manifested in the

various interpretations of existence put forth by these groups.

Voegelin’s effort to survey such interpretations broadly and

deeply alerts him to common features that point to a kind of

unity without, however, culminating in a final, clear vision of

order and meaning in time. For him to obtain such a vision seems

to be as impossible as it was for Moses to see God face to face.

Notwithstanding, Voegelin perseveres and tries here to apply

his new understanding of historical analysis to what he terms the

"ecumenic age," namely, the period reaching from the rise of the

Persian empire to the fall of the Roman. He assigns no precise

dates to these events, but casual remarks suggest that he puts

the beginning point at about 550 B.C.E. and the end at about 650

C.E. (Voegelin, 1974; 118 and 142). He perceives the age as


marked by a new political unit, the ecumenic empire. This empire

comes about by a totally new means of destruction plus a novel

kind of spiritual creativity. The latter gives rise to great

ecumenic religions. Christianity is one, and Voegelin dwells at

length on its ecumenic manifestations. Islam is another, but it

receives scant attention in this work.

Now Islam is nothing if it is not ecumenic. A saying that

is widespread within the Islamic tradition identifies the Prophet

Muhammad as having been sent to the “red and the black,” that is,

to all people. The history of the early years of Islam, as the

faithful burst out of Arabia and carried their message as well as

their dominion across the countries of the Middle East to the

borders of China in one direction and across North Africa up

through Spain to the gates of Poitiers in another, demonstrates

how ecumenic an entity it was in the common sense understanding

of the term. Still, Voegelin views Islam quite differently and

thus denies that it is truly ecumenic.

Three considerations prompt that denial. Though distinct,

all three have in common Voegelin’s sense that Islam is flawed as

a religion.

First, his reading of the history of thought and action is

that it points to a true perception of God: “The ecumenic was

the age in which the great religions had their origin, and above

all Christianity” (Voegelin, 1974; 134). That “above all” means,


1 See also, ibid., pp. 178, 209-210, 251-254, and 331.

inter alia, and not Islam (Voegelin, 1974; 12-13). Judaism leads

to Christianity which, as religion and as political movement,

represents the fullest expression of the divine:

A critical episode in the struggle for finding the balanceof consciousness in the ecumenic society was the encounterof Judaism with philosophy in Alexandria, culminating in thework of Philo, the older contemporary of Christ. (Voegelin,1974; 29.)1

Voegelin’s focus on Philo is so exclusive that he cites none of

the philosophers within the Islamic tradition who also turned to

the Alexandrian school and its offshoots – Alkindi, Alrazi,

Alfarabi, Avicenna, Ibn B~jjah, Ibn T.ufayl, Averroes, and Ibn

Khaldãn. Yet any single one of these thinkers must be deemed as

important a thinker and exegete of Greek philosophy, not to speak

of the relationship between revelation and human wisdom, as

Philo. Nor does Voegelin mention any of the Muslim theologians

and jurists who, having taken due note of Greek philosophy and

the influence it seemed to have among learned Muslims, spoke for

the faith and against such foreign influences. Even more

surprising, he says nothing at all of the Jewish thinker who most

clearly pointed to the benefits faithful Jews could gain from the

study of Greek philosophy and Judaism: Maimonides.

Second, Voegelin ascribes to the Prophet Muhammad imperial

ambitions, then faults him for failing to bring a viable empire

into being:


2 See also the George F. Nafziger and Mark W. Waltonexchange with Antony T. Sullivan (Nafziger, 2003 and Sullivan,2003) as well as Antony Black, The History of Islamic PoliticalThought: From the Prophet to the Present (Black, 2001) and myreview of it (Butterworth, 2002).

The Byzantine and Sassanian models of an ecumenism whichcombined empire and church formed the horizon in whichMohammed conceived the new religion that would support itsecumenic ambition with the simultaneous development ofimperial power. The case is of special interest as therecan be no doubt that Islam was primarily an ecumenicreligion and only secondarily an empire. Hence it revealsin its extreme form the danger which beset all of thereligions of the Ecumenic Age, the danger of impairing theiruniversality by letting their ecumenic mission slide overinto the acquisition of world-immanent, pragmatic power overa multitude of men which, however numerous, could never bemankind past, present, and future. (Voegelin, 1974; 142-143.)

This criticism, all too indirect and brief, assumes that Islam

gave rise to the dynastic form of rule that arose some three

decades after the death of Muhammad. At the same time, it views

Muhammad’s revelation as different in kind and aspiration from

that of Moses. It implies, in addition, that Muhammad is the one

who formed the new religion, not the one who was called by the

divinity to do so. A fuller account of the caliphate – such as

that carried out by Ibn Khaldãn (1858), Marshall Hodgson (1974),

or Albert Hourani (1991) – reveals the shortcoming of the

assumption.2 The other two inferences forsake the realm of

scholarship for that of theological dogmatics.

Voegelin’s third criticism of Islam has to do with its

scriptures. His survey of the Quran leads him to the conclusion


3 See Quran 3.78 and 2, 10.38, 33.40, and 7.157-158.

that it is as flawed in its approach to the world as were those

of the Manicheans:

A selection of pertinent passages from the Koran will bestelucidate the problem of ecumenism as it appeared toMohammed. His conception of spiritual history and itsfinality was on the whole the same as Mani’s. (Voegelin,1974; 143; see also 143-145 and 138-142.)

To illustrate this point, Voegelin quotes about seventeen verses

from seven different Suras: Sura 3, }l �Imr~n (The Family of

�Imr~n); Sura 7, al-A�r~f (The Heights); Sura 8, al-Anf~l (The

Spoils); Sura 10, Yãnus (Jonah); Sura 21, al-Anbiy~� (The

Prophets); Sura 33, al-Sajda (Adoration); and Sura 48, al-

J~thiyya (Bending the Knee). Six verses from Suras 3, 10, 33,

and 7 (in that order) are cited to show how Muhammad viewed

himself and his message in relation to other prophets and other

books of revelation. Indeed, these verses are often cited in

order to indicate that Muhammad was not merely one among other

messengers or prophets, but the last in a series of messengers

and prophets, and that his message or book is superior to all

others.3 As evidence that Muhammad views the world as locked in

mortal combat between the forces of good and evil as well as that

Islam merely appeals to human desire for gain, Voegelin cites

eleven verses from Suras 10, 21, 48, and 8 (again, in that

order). One might also say, however, that these verses explain

why it is the prophet’s duty to help truth prevail and, if


4 Ibid., 10.4; 21.16-18; 48.29; 8.40-41, 57, 59, 62, and78.

5 Here and in what follows, translations from the Quran aremy own.

necessary, to resort to force in pursuit of that goal.4

As must be evident from these explanations, Voegelin reads

the Quran selectively and interprets it in an unsympathetic,

almost contemptuous, manner. He makes no attempt to read the

Quran as a book and discern its parts or to ask about how Suras

as a whole present particular issues. He does not, in other

words, interpret it from the perspective of an intelligent,

believing member of the faith – from a perspective similar to the

one he adopts when reading and interpreting the Hebrew scriptures

and the New Testament. His dismissive account of Sura 8, verse

42 stands out most egregiously. The whole Sura, which serves as

a critique of the way Muslims conducted themselves during and

after the Battle of Badr, sets forth principles for equity and

valor in warfare and in the subsequent division of war booty. In

its entirety, the verse reads:

Know that of what comes to you, one-fifth is for God and theMessenger, for close relatives, orphans, the needy, and thewayfarer. [This,] if you believe in Allah and what we havesent down to Our Servant about the Criterion Day and the Dayof Assembly. Now Allah is capable of all things.5

To dismiss it with the following comment clearly does no justice

to the text, much less the context:

That rule, however, was probably seen by the faithful in the


light of a welcome tax reduction, since under the pre-Islamic custom the chieftain was entitled to one-fourth ofthe loot. (Voegelin, 1974; 145.)

GETTING ISLAM STRAIGHT

Today, more than ever before, it is necessary to have an

accurate perspective about Islam, the religion and the culture

arising from it. But is it possible to speak about Islam in such

a sweeping manner? Is there some entity that can be denoted as

Islam, or are there merely multiple manifestations of Islam such

that one risks falling into an essentialist fallacy by speaking

so broadly of Islam? Perhaps. Yet it cannot be denied that

Muslims the world over agree with fellow Muslims about opinions

they hold and actions they perform that identify them as Muslims

and set them apart from those who are not Muslims. It is that

common core to which appeal must be made when speaking about

Islam, above all when speaking about it as distinct from Judaism

and Christianity.

It is necessary to begin where Voegelin began, with the

revelation of Muhammad as it has been passed down in the Quran.

Rather than selecting verses here and there to show how they

point to some preconceived notions of Muhammad’s mission and the

appeal he made to his contemporaries, pagans as they were, a

better task would be to search for the plan of this highly

revered book. Whatever claims Muhammad might make about his own


person and goal, speaking for himself or giving voice to divine

directives, one must not fail to notice the very simple depiction

of the world – or, more accurately, of the world’s dual nature,

one before our eyes and the one awaiting us after death – made in

the very first Sura of the Quran. This Sura that is so direct,

so full of promise, and so pregnant with demands upon the

faithful is the one Muslims recite to one another in any number

of circumstance – happy and sad – to give common voice to the

beliefs they share. It, along with the ubiquitous description of

God as merciful and compassionate, must be the beginning point

for any account of Islam:

In the name of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate.Praise be to Allah, Lord of the two worlds.The merciful, the compassionate.King of the day of judgment.You we worship and You we call upon.Guide us along the straight path.The path of those to whom You have given grace,Not those deserving anger nor those who have gone

astray.

Subsequently, it is necessary to ask about the different Suras

and their relationship to one another. What might those who

assembled this work, whoever they were, have intended by this

mingling of chapters about rules of conduct with others about

past battles, trails and tribulations of the early Muslims, and

even betrayals? Simply put, the Quran deserves as careful and

unbiased a reading as any other set of scripture.

Here, to digress for a moment and return to the parallel


evoked in the introduction, is another way in which Leo Strauss

and Eric Voegelin differ. Strauss reads texts – all texts,

revealed or not – with painstaking care and strives to ferret out

the author’s intention, then presents the fruits of that reading

along with the detailed steps he took to reach them. Voegelin

reads just as widely and probably with as much care, but utilizes

only snippets of any text or author to illustrate his point. He

is less concerned with how the author arrives at and defends an

argument than with how that argument fits into a broader

historical pattern, one the author does not necessarily serve in

a conscious manner. Voegelin, persuaded that there is an order

in history, strives to see how it comes to light through the

study of large bodies of discrete phenomena. Despite his claim

to the contrary, it is difficult to escape the impression that

for him this order indicates progress. Strauss, focused above

all on the perennial tension existing between religion and reason

or between the conflicting claims of the two to discern the truth

of things, sees neither order nor progress in history beyond the

obvious technological advances.

But to return to the main argument, in order to get Islam

straight, more attention must be paid to those who have sought to

explain the religion, the culture, and the history of Muslims.

The writings of key historians, jurists, and theologians are only

now being discovered in the West, even though they have long been


very well known in the Arab Middle East. Ibn Khaldãn, for

example, sought to distinguish between Islamic civilization along

with its political manifestations and the Islamic religion. He

contended that forces other than religion – whatever the status

of a particular religion – accounted for the way a given

civilization or human social association developed politically,

for the way it came into being, developed, and eventually

disintegrated. Ibn Khaldãn, in other words, has a perception of

civilization quite opposed to that set forth in The Ecumenic Age.

As noted, some contemporary scholars – those with the deepest

grasp of Islamic culture in all of its linguistic manifestations

– have followed Ibn Khaldãn’s lead and are to be emulated

precisely because they eschew facile generalizations. Finally,

due attention must be paid to those who toiled to show that human

beings are similar in spite of their particular opinions and

actions – the philosophers who carefully explored the features

common to law-giving and law-givers, ancient and medieval, while

beholden to reason alone and laying claim to no sort of

superhuman insight.

Were such a course to be pursued, it is more than likely

that Islam in all of its manifestations would come to light as an

equal partner with Christianity and Judaism in the ecumenic age.

It is possible after all that the features held in common by

Judaism and Islam have been unduly neglected more because the


6 In his Treatise on the Art of Logic, Maimonides notedplaintively how religious law tends to affect reflection onpolitical matters: “In these times all that – I mean, theregimes and the nomoi – has been dispensed with, and people aregoverned by divine commands” (Maimonides,1983; 161).

children of Israel were deprived of political rule until quite

recently than because there is any major difference between the

two revelations.6 Followers of both revelations are equally

strong proponents of the contemporary password: rule of law. By

“law,” however, both groups understand the same thing – divine or

revealed law.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Black, Antony. 2001. The History of Islamic Political Thought: From the Prophet to the Present. Edinburgh: EdinburghUniversity Press.

Butterworth, Charles E. 2002. “Review of Antony Black, TheHistory of Islamic Political Thought: From the Prophet tothe Present.” In Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. Volume 13, Number 4. Pp. 492-493.

Hodgson, Marshall G.S. 1974. The Venture of Islam: Conscienceand History in a World Civilization. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press. 3 volumes.

Hourani, Albert. 1991. A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of the Harvard UniversityPress.

Khaldãn, �Abd al-Rah.m~n Ibn. 1858. Muqaddimat Ibn Khaldãn,Prolégomènes d’Ebn-Khaldoun, Texte Arabe, Publié, D’Aprèsles Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Impériale. Edited by M.Quatremère. Paris: Benjamin Duprat. Reprint; Beirut: Maktaba Lubn~n, 1970. 3 volumes.

_____. 1958. The Muqaddimah, An Introduction to History. Translated, Franz Rosenthal. Bollingen Series XLIII; NewYork: Pantheon Books. 3 volumes.

Maimonides, Moses. 1983. Treatise on the Art of Logic. InEthical Writings of Maimonides. Trans. and ed. withintroduction, Raymond L. Weiss with Charles E. Butterworth. New York: Dover Publications (paperback edition);originally published, New York: NYU Press, l975.

Nafziger, George F. and Walton, Mark W. 2003. “The MilitaryRoots of Islam.” In Historically Speaking: The Bulletin ofthe Historical Society. Volume IV, Number 5. Pp. 31-32.

Strauss, Leo. 1953. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. The Charles R. WalgreenFoundation Lectures, 1949.

Sullivan, Antony T. 2003. “Understanding Jihad and Terrorism.” In Historically Speaking: The Bulletin of the HistoricalSociety. Volume IV, Number 5. Pp. 33-35.


Voegelin, Eric. 1952. The New Science of Politics: AnIntroduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. TheCharles R. Walgreen Foundation Lectures, 1951.

_____. 1974. Order and History, Volume Four: The Ecumenic Age. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.

_____. 2000a. Order and History, Volume Two: The World of thePolis. Edited with an Introduction by Athanasios Moulakis.Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.

_____. 2000b. Order and History, Volume Three: Plato andAristotle. Edited with an Introduction by Dante Germino. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.

_____. 2000c. Order and History, Volume Five: In Search ofOrder. Edited with an Introduction by Ellis Sandoz. Columbia,MO: University of Missouri Press.

_____. 2001. Order and History, Volume One: Israel andRevelation. Edited with an Introduction by Maurice P. Hogan. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.

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