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DIVERSITY IN ISLAM

Presented by

Michael G. Knapp

17 February 2004

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BISMILLAH AL-RAHMAN AL-RAHIM BISMILLAH AL-RAHMAN AL-RAHIM (the Basmallah: “In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate”) AS SALAAMU ALEIKUMAS SALAAMU ALEIKUM (“Peace be unto you”)(“Peace be unto you”)

WAWA ALEIKUM AS SALAAMALEIKUM AS SALAAM (“And unto you the peace”)(“And unto you the peace”) ASHAHADU AN LA ILAHA ILL ALLAH WA ASHAHADU ANNA MUHAMMADAR RASUL ALLAH (the Shahada: “I declare there is no god except God, and I declare that Muhammad is the Messenger of God”)

The Language of IslamThe Language of Islam

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A Diverse FaithA Diverse Faith

Second-largest faith worldwide (one-fifth of mankind) and Second-largest faith worldwide (one-fifth of mankind) and fastest growing, but still misunderstood in the Westfastest growing, but still misunderstood in the West Most Muslims (80%) live outside the Arab world, with Most Muslims (80%) live outside the Arab world, with many in Southeast and South Asia, Africamany in Southeast and South Asia, Africa Two main branches, but divisions within each; also Two main branches, but divisions within each; also includes mystics, opposition movements, reformers, includes mystics, opposition movements, reformers, modernists and fundamentalistsmodernists and fundamentalists Has small proportion of extremists, but most Muslims Has small proportion of extremists, but most Muslims

disagree withdisagree with violence, intolerance toward othersviolence, intolerance toward others Not monolithic: many Muslim interpretations of Islam, in Not monolithic: many Muslim interpretations of Islam, in spite of its commonalitiesspite of its commonalities

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Common Beliefs & Practices Five pillars (personal rituals):

- Shahada (testimony of faith)

- Salat (prayer, five times daily)

- Zakat (charity; annual religious payment to needy)

- Saum (fasting during the month of Ramadan)

- Hajj (once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca) Three duties (communal):

- Jihad (primarily individual, spiritual struggle to lead a good life; secondarily communal defense of faith)

- Da’wah (spreading the faith to others)

- Encouraging good and forbidding evil

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Beliefs and Practices (2) Seven beliefs: - Oneness of God (tawhid): He has no partners or

son, and is all-powerful, all-seeing and all-knowing - Angels: “intelligent robots” made of light energy

who can assume physical form to carry out God’s will -- 4 top: Gabriel (brings revelations), Azra’il (angel

of death), Michael (controls the weather), and Israfil (blows the horn signaling the end of the universe)

-- Each person has two angels, one at each shoulder, to record good and bad deeds

-- Also jinn – unseen spirits made of smoke who cause mischief

- Revealed books of God: all have been changed or corrupted except for the Qur’an (Koran)

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Beliefs and Practices (3) Prophets: Many have been sent by God to all

peoples, but their teachings have mostly been ignored by other faiths; Muhammad is the last and greatest of these prophets

Day of Judgment: God tests us in our beliefs and actions, and all our good and bad deeds are recorded through life; we are confronted with this book on the Last Day, when witnesses are called and we must repay all injustices to others

Divine measurement: On the Last Day, we are held accountable as our good and bad deeds are weighed against each other; finally the verdict is given and our souls are sent to heaven or hell

There is life after death

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Islam’s Two Branches

SUNNI: 85-90% of Muslims Leadership by consensus (of

Muhammad’s followers) No organized clergy; author-

ity from below to above Literal interpretation of the

Qur’an (apparent meaning) Majority status throughout

duration of the caliphate

SHI’ITE (SHI’A): 10-15% of Muslims Leaders only descended

from family of Muhammad Authoritarian: guidance from

Imams (above) to below Leadership determines

(hidden) meaning of Qur’an Oppressed, tragic minority:

greater emphasis on martyrdom, and use of dissimulation (taqiyyah)

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The Great Split

Resulted partly from pre-Islamic tribal customs: age and wisdom respected, leaders chosen by shura

Muhammad died in 632 A.D. without a male heir or a designated successor

Abu Bakr’s selection as first caliph by Prophet’s small inner circle went against tribal consensus, alienated Ali’s followers

Uthman’s selection as third caliph after Umar reflected ongoing Mecca-Medina tribal rivalry

Ali eventually becomes fourth (and last rightly-guided) caliph, but challenged by Mu’awiyah and assassinated by Kharijites

Death of Ali and his son Hasan leads to transfer of caliphate to Damascus, start of first Muslim dynasty (Umayyads)

Tragedy of Yazid’s massacre of Ali’s son Husayn at Karbala in 680 A.D. marks beginning of Shi’ism as a religio-political movement

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Divisions Within SunnismFour schools of Islamic law (madhhab): Hanafi: oldest, most liberal and flexible of the schools; founded in Iraq;

introduced legal opinion based on analogy (qiyas); concentrates more on juridical opinion and less on tradition; its 400 million adherents are concentrated in Central/South/Southeast Asia and Turkey

Maliki: founded in Medina; produced the first law manual; focuses on ahadith and emphasizes “living” legal tradition; its 50 million followers located mainly in North and West Africa, Persian Gulf, Upper Egypt

Shafi’i: founded in Iraq, this school concentrates on the scientific interpretation of law; defined community consensus (ijma) as the strongest of the four roots of law, since it determines how other three are used; 100 million adherents are in the Levant, SE Asia, E. Africa

Hanbali: smallest and strictest, most conservative of the four schools; rejects consensus and only follows the Qur’an and tradition; basis of reforms by Ibn Taymiyya and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and still influences Salafis and radical Islamist movements today; its 12 million followers are the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia and Qatar

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Divisions Within Shi’ismDifferences over hereditary succession of Imams: Zaydis (“Fivers”): differed with most Shi’a in that any descendant of Ali

could become imam, not just descendants of Ali by Fatimah (Prophet’s daughter); named for Zayd bin Ali, grandson of Husayn; closest to Sunnis since they do not regard their imams as more than human

Ismaelis (“Seveners”): recognize an unbroken chain of imams down to present, but focus adoration on seventh in the line, Ismail (not recognized by majority as an imam); early Ismaelis were revolutionaries who attacked, assassinated Sunni political and religious leaders

Druze (“Unitarians”): offshoot from Ismaelis centered on the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, who believed he was a divine incarnation and cosmic intellect; followers believe al-Hakim went into seclusion to test their faith, return to restore justice in the world; have own scripture and law

Ithna-Asharis (“Twelvers” or Imamis): Majority of Shi’ite community, believe that imamate succession ended in 874 A.D. when 12th Imam went into seclusion; he will return as a messianic figure (the Mahdi) at the end of the world to restore the Shi’ite community to its rightful place, usher in a perfect Islamic society where truth and justice prevail

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Sufis – the Mystics of Islam

Not a sect, but a spiritual orientation in both branches Adherents are introspective, gentle, highly spiritual people who

seek to attain inner ecstasy, self-enlightenment, and emulate the Prophet’s own example of frugality and self-discipline

Arose in opposition to social trends in the early expanding Muslim empire such as opulence, overindulgence in worldly pleasures, excessive emphasis on legalism, and pageantry

Faith in God experienced through meditation, chanting, selfless love for others, self-denial, and pilgrimage to shrines of past Sufi masters

Were not respected by many traditional ulema (Islamic scholars), and reformers such as Wahhabis/Salafis still consider them to be outside the Muslim faith

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Other Opposition Movements

Kharijites (“Seceders”):

- resulted from Ali’s submission to arbitration with rebellious governor Mu’awiyah

- first radical dissenters and extremists: exclusivist view that any deviation from Islamic principles rendered a person a non-Muslim (apostate) subject to excommunication (takfir), warfare and death if no repentence

- divided the world neatly into realms of belief and unbelief

- combined puritanism and religious fundamentalism in literal interpretation of the Qur’an and hadith

- separated themselves (hijra) then conducted revolts and guerilla warfare against the early Islamic caliphates

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Opposition Movements (2)

Mu’tazilites (“Moderate withdrawers”):

- established middle position between Kharijites and feuding companions of the Prophet: a sinning Muslim was merely a hypocrite, not an apostate

- blended Greek philosophy and logical argumentation with traditional Islamic learning; introduced theological science of kalam (didactic discourse) that helped to explain issues such as faith vs. reason, God’s power vs. mankind’s freedom of action

- strict, militant movement which sought to force its beliefs on other Muslims; even instigated an inquisition in Iraq where they tortured and executed Muslim religious experts and jurists who didn’t agree with their views

- finally defeated and declared heretical during the Abbasid caliphate

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Opposition Movements (3)

Ahmadiya:

- messianic movement founded in British India in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad

- core belief is prophetology, which postulates an uninterrupted succession of non-legislative prophets following Muhammad

- Ahmad claimed both messianic and prophetic status

- has aroused the fierce opposition of Sunni Muslims, especially in Pakistan and India

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Reform Movements in Islam Islah (reform): Qur’anic concept of a return to the fundamentals

of Islam, and reform preached by the prophets to warn their sinful communities to return to God’s path by living within shari’a norms

Tajdid (renewal): Hadith that states that God will send a renewer (mujaddid) at the beginning of each century to restore true Islamic practice, regenerate the ummah (which strays off the path over time)

Key features of renewal: - removal of foreign (un-Islamic) historical accretions or

unwarranted innovations (bid’ah) that have corrupted the community; and

- critique of established institutions, especially the religious establishment’s interpretations of Islam

Goal was not to accommodate new ideas, but to get back to or re-appropriate the unique and complete vision of Islam from its revealed sources

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Reform Movements (2)

Revivalism not an attempt to reestablish the early community in a literal sense, but to reapply the Qur’an and hadith more rigorously to existing conditions

Prominent renewers/revivalists such as Ibn Taymiyya and Abd al-Wahhab claimed the right to act as mujtahids to reinterpret Islam to purify and revitalize their societies

Wahhabism (Muwahiddun, or “Unitarians”): - compared Islamic community of the 18th century to pre-Islamic

Arabia: appalled by newer form of jahiliyya, and “pagan superstitions” such as Sufi veneration of saints

- political weakness of the community and its moral decline were due to deviation from the straight path; must repeat Islam’s first reformation

- destroyed sacred tombs, including those of the Prophet and his companions in Mecca and Medina, Husayn’s at Karbala

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Islamic Modernism Response to threats from European colonialism in late 19th,

early 20th centuries Consisted of legal, educational and social reforms aimed at

rescuing Muslim societies from their decline and demonstrating the compatibility of Islam with modern Western thoughts and values

Used by Muslim governments to justify unpopular and misunderstood reform measures

Reactions to this “Westernizing” of Islam led to the formation of modern Islamist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood (Middle East) and Jama’at-i-Islami (Pakistan)

Catalyst for modern Islamic reform: Jamal al-Din al-Afghani - traveled throughout the Muslim world calling for internal reform

to defend, strengthen Islam and drive out the West - Muslims required to reclaim reason, science and technology to

reassert Islamic identity and solidarity

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Islamic Modernism (2) Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida: - great synthesizers of modern Islam, built on Afghani’s efforts - religion, reason and science are complementary; Islam’s decline due

to un-Islamic religious practices, spread of Sufi passivity and fatalism, rigid views of scholars

- regulations governing worship are immutable, but regulations on social affairs are open to change

- true Islamic governments are required to implement Islamic law, pan-Islamic unity needed to restore the caliphate

- shifted position of the Salafiyya movement to more critical of the West: its secular nationalism and capitalist exploitation are political and religious threats

Muhammad Iqbal: - Muslims must return to the past for principles and values that can be

used to construct a modern Islamic society - nationalism is a tool used by the colonialists to dismember the Islamic

world; the trans-national Muslim community needs pan-Islamism tempered by political realism to unify against such threats

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Rise of the Fundamentalists Original thinkers build on the ideas of Ibn Taymiyya and Abd al-

Wahhab (1920s-1960s): Abul a’la Mawdudi, Hasan al-Banna, and Sayyid Qutb

Charismatic “publicists” apply, expand on and redirect earlier radical Islamist thought (1980s to present): Muhammad abd al-Salam Faraj, Abdullah Azzam, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Osama bin Laden

Instigating events – 1979 was a key year: - Iranian revolution brings Khomeini’s militant theocracy to

power, gives hope to Shi’a and Sunni Islamists everywhere - Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ignites regional jihad and plants

the seeds for its global expansion Dispersion of mujahidin, durability of madrassas, and

widespread receptivity to radicals’ distortions of the faith will ensure that anti-Western intolerance and violence continue

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What Can We Do?

Encourage reform efforts of friendly Muslim governments – apply commitment, resources to help solve enduring problems

Approach all players in the Middle East (and South Asia) in a more balanced and fair way

Realize that what we do is more important than what we say, and that we are being carefully and constantly scrutinized

Attempt to better understand Islam’s cultures and the variety in its religious beliefs and practices

Realize that Islam (like Judaism and Christianity) is not monolithic, and that most Muslims are not extremists