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Islam is a great spiritual tradition that, in the wake of Sept. 11, has become enormously unpopular and suspect among some Westerners, particularly in the U.S. It's a credit to America's heritage of religious tolerance that, according to recent polls, the vast majority of Americans still view Islam favorably, despite its image as a religion at war with Christians and Jews. That image has very little to do with the theology or practices of Islam, and everything to do with political realities, such as the lack of democratic governments in the Middle East, some of which are nonetheless supported by the United States.
It may be more helpful for non-Muslims to view Islam as its followers themselves see it: as the third and final revelation in Western religion that began with Judaism and Christianity. Muslims do not regard these as three separate religions but as one continuously unfolding historical tradition that is rooted in the Middle East, although there are now many more Muslims in other parts of the world, notably Indonesia and South Asia. The God of Islam, called Allah, is absolutely identical with the God of Abraham. He announces Himself in the Muslim holy book called the Quran as the same God who sent His message to the world through Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. The Quran frequently repeats (with God speaking in the royal plural) the concept of a continuum of revelation:
We have sent revelations to you as We sent
revelations to Noah and the prophets
(who came) after him;
and we sent revelations to Abraham
and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob, and their offspring . . .
and to Jonah and Aaron and Solomon,
and to David we gave the Book of Psalms. . . .
Then in their train we sent Our apostles,
and succeeding them Jesus, son of Mary,
and gave him the Gospel, and put into the hearts
of his followers compassion and kindness.1
(Quran, 4:163-4, 57:27)
The Prophet Muhammad, who received the Quran as revelation from God through the Angel Gabriel, saw himself in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets. His revelation included elements that would sound familiar to most Christians: the Last Day, the Resurrection of the Dead, Final Judgment, the rewards of Paradise and the punishments of Hell, and the Second Coming of Jesus. Muhammad himself proclaimed that the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus, is "the highest of the women of the people of Paradise," and the Quran affirms the doctrine of the Virgin Birth of Jesus.
Muslims believe that God revealed the same message anew to successive prophets with the aim of reforming a stumbling humanity, but that each message was gradually distorted by the people who received it.
There are over a billion Muslims in the world today, including about seven million in the U.S., making it the second most populous religion on earth after Christianity. According to some estimates, Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world. Although it encompasses most of the Middle East, that region accounts for only about 20 percent of the world's Muslims. The rest are spread throughout Africa and Western Asia, especially Indonesia (except for the islands of Bali and Lompok, which are largely Hindu), Pakistan, Malaysia, and parts of India.
1. Ahmed Ali, Al-Qur'an: A Contemporary Translation, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988.
As with any religion, in order to understand Islam fully we need to know something about the cultural and historical context in which it was founded. While Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism, and many indigenous and shamanic traditions from northern Russia to Africa and South America took shape over centuries, Islam, like Christianity and Buddhism, was the offspring of one charismatic figure. In the 7th century, Arabia was just beginning to catch up to the rest of the civilized world in wealth and productivity. Because of the harsh desert climate, for many centuries the Arabs had been unable to generate the agricultural abundance that could produce the kind of wealth that had allowed other regions in the world to progress economically and culturally.
The tribe to which Muhammad belonged, called the Quraysh, based in Mecca, had grown especially wealthy from trade. With their newfound wealth, however, many Arabs began to be aware of severe social inequities that had developed within their desert society. Money and resources were concentrated in the hands of a few powerful clans, and those outside were no longer taken care of as they had been in the older nomadic society.
Muhammad, who had worked as a young man on the caravans that plied the trade routes of Arabia, was aware that his people needed a religion that would offer alternatives to the idolatry, drunkenness, and blood feuds, and the harsh treatment of women, orphans, and the poor that characterized Arabian society at the time. He was confronting many of the same issues that the ancient Hebrews had begun to address almost 2000 before, and that Jesus had re-emphasized in his brief ministry almost 600 years before Muhammad. The renowned scholar of Islam Karen Armstrong writes, "Muhammad did not think he was founding a new religion, but that he was merely bringing the old faith in the One God to the Arabs, who had never had a prophet before. It was wrong, he insisted, to build a private fortune, but good to share wealth and create a society where the weak and vulnerable were treated with respect. If the Quraysh did not mend their ways, their society would collapse (as had other unjust societies in the past) because they were violating the fundamental laws of existence."1
Through the Quran, Muhammad would convey to the Arabs their own equivalent of the Torah and the Gospels; their Sabbath would be on Friday rather than Saturday or Sunday; and in place of the synagogue and church, Islam would offer the mosque, combining the teaching and praying functions of both.
1. Karen Armstrong, Islam: A Short History, New York: Modern Library, 2000.
Note: Islam from a Non-Muslim Perspective
When speaking about Islam from a Non-Muslim perspective, as when describing Judiasm or Christianity from outside those traditions, it's important to note that Muslims would not necessarily agree with the assessment that Muhammad was "influenced" by Christian and Jewish scripture or by the monks and rabbis he met in the deserts of Arabia, or that he saw a need to correct social problems of his time and place. Muslims simply believe that God -- Allah -- revealed these things to Muhammad through the medium of the angel Gabriel, and charged Muhammad with the task of conveying His revelation and implementing it on earth. For Muslims, the main goal of life is to discern God's will as it is expressly stated in the Quran, and to live life accordingly.
Muslims revere Abraham as the father of the Arab people through Ishmael, the son born to him by his wife Sarah's Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar. According to the Hebrew Bible, Hagar and Ishmael were forced to leave Abraham after Sarah finally bore him a son of her own, although the Lord did promise Hagar that her son, too, would be the father of a great people. They settled in the Becca Valley, along the "incense road" near Mecca in modern-day Saudi Arabia, but Ishmael later returned to the land of Canaan to help Isaac bury their father at Hebron. Local tradition in Muhammad's time and place held that Abraham had accompanied Ishmael to Mecca and that together they rebuilt the Kaaba, the black, cube-shaped monument that was a center of worship long before Muhammad was born. (Today the Kaaba is the focus of the annual pilgrimage, or hajj, in which millions of Muslims participate from all over the world.)
At the time of Muhammad's birth, the area around Mecca was occupied by the Quraysh, a powerful tribe of Arab clans descended from Ishmael. Abd al-Muttalib, Muhammad's grandfather, had rediscovered the ancient well of Zamzam, from which Hagar and Ishmael were believed to have drawn water, earning for his family the lucrative honor of distributing its sacred water. The Kabah itself was a popular pilgrimage site, a source of both great prestige and considerable commerce from the large numbers of pilgrims who came each year.
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Like many of the details of Muhammad's early life, the exact date of his birth is not known for certain, but he is believed to have been born around the year 571. His father, Abdallah, died before Muhammad was born, and his mother, Amina, died when he was only six. The boy was taken into the family of his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib and wife Fatima, and when when he, too, died Muhammad's uncle Abu Talib became his guardian. |
Muhammad spent much of his youth working the caravans as far north as Syria, talking along the way with the hermits, Christian monks, and gnostic Jewish practitioners who lived in desert caves and remote communities. Although Muhammad disapproved in principle of monastic asceticism and celibacy, he admired the humility of the monks and anchorites he met in the desert. Unlettered but gifted with a retentive memory, he absorbed vast chunks of Jewish and Christian scripture and lore.
At age 25, Muhammad married a wealthy merchant named Khadija, who was 15 years his senior, and they produced four daughters and two sons, both of whom died in infancy. By all accounts, Muhammad was an upright and moral person in the eyes of his countrymen before he began his mission to the world. Because of his integrity, he was entrusted with storing the possessions of other Meccans, earning him the nickname of al-Amin ("the Trustworthy"). For the next 15 years, he managed Khadija's estate and lived a prosperous Arab life, surrounded by family and friends.
In Muhammad's day, desert-dwelling contemplatives, or hanifs, already worshiped the One Creator God exclusively, his name Allah meaning in Arabic "the God." Although neither Christians nor Jews, they were monotheists profoundly influenced by Judaism and Christianity, and in his early days Muhammad could be considered a hanif. But then he began to have visions in his sleep, "like the breaking of the light of dawn." As a result, he sought solitude in a cave in Mount Hira. He was about 40 when, in the Arabic month of Ramadan, an angel appeared to him in human form in the cave and commanded, "Recite!" Muhammad replied, "I am not a reciter," perhaps meaning that he could not read, but the angel embraced him and repeated the command three times until he recited as told. As he fled the cave in awe, Muhammad heard a voice telling him, "You are the Messenger of Allah, and I am Gabriel."
The revelations continued, sometimes in the form of the reverberations of a bell, sometimes as a man speaking to him. Gabriel (Jibril in Arabic) showed Muhammad the ritual ablution with water before worship and the prayer postures which are now part of Muslim practice: standing, inclining, prostrating, sitting. Ramadan was already the traditional Arabic month of retreat, but with divine guidance Muhammad instituted the practice of fasting from before sunrise to sunset. Two major Divine Names were revealed early on: ar-Rahman ("Infinitely Good") and ar-Rahim ("All-Merciful"). Arqam the Makhzumite, one of the earliest converts to Islam, first pronounced the two testifications that are now the core of Islamic truth: la ilaha illallah ("There is no god but God") and Muhammadun rasulullah ("Muhammad is the Messenger of God").
Muhammad began by teaching his wife and family the revelations he was receiving from Allah. But his contemporaries and fellow Quraysh opposed his new teaching, fearing it would discourage other Arabs from visiting the Kaaba and might reduce their wealth. Some Meccans came secretly to Islam, not wanting to arouse the anger of parents or clan members, as socially unprotected followers were often ridiculed, threatened, and tortured by politically powerful antagonists. Finally the enraged Quraysh forced Muhammad to seek refuge in the mountain fortress of his uncle and protector, Abu Talib, where he became a virtual prisoner because of threats against his life. While he was sequestered there, he suffered the deaths, only a few days apart, of Abu Talib and Khadija.
Then aged 50, Muhammad married again, this time exercising the Arab option of taking several wives, which he had not done while married to Khadija. While still in Mecca he wed the widow Sawdah and was engaged to Aishah, the six-year-old daughter of Abu Bakr. He later married her in Medina at age nine, although the marriage was not consummated until she reached the age of womanhood in Arabic culture. He took 12 wives in all, although the precise number is sometimes disputed.
All attempts by the Quraysh to suppress the growing community of Islam having failed, the clans planned to assassinate the Prophet. In 622, fearing for his life in Mecca, Muhammad and his closest Companion, Abu Bakr, escaped in the dead of night and journeyed north by camel to the oasis of Yathrib. The most heavily populated part of the oasis was known as "the city" -- in Arabic al-Madinah, or Medina, and according to tradition he arrived there on September 27, 622. The journey of emigration was called the Hijra ("breaking bonds"). A number of Muhammad's followers had preceded him to Yathrib beginning on July 16 of that year, which later under the Caliph Umar became day one of the Muslim calendar. The year 622 became known as AH 1, or Anno Hegirae (Year of the Hegira ).
In Medina, Muhammad was able openly to invite people to Islam and establish a fairly safe base of operations. He made compacts with the Jewish tribes living there, and asked his followers to adopt the Jewish practice of circumcision, still a mandatory part of Islamic custom even if not mentioned in the Quran. He continued to receive Quranic revelations, which prescribed regular almsgiving and fasting during the lunar month of Ramadan, among other duties. Following a Divine command, Muhammad initiated the practice of turning to face the Kaaba in Mecca during ritual prayer and other rites; previously in Mecca, the faithful had faced Jerusalem as the sacred center of the prophetic tradition.
On the more mundane side, Muhammad was especially sensitive to odor, and on at least one occasion refused to eat food that was cooked with an abundance of garlic. He also insisted on the practice of cleaning the teeth with a tooth stick. It was perhaps the last action he performed for himself before dying, and has become a popular practice among Muslims. As happened with Moses, Muhammad began to spend much of his time in Medina adjudicating legal and familial disputes. He arranged numerous marriages among his followers, some of which were politically valuable.
Short of money and supplies after their emigration, the Medinan Muslims took to raiding caravans of the Quraysh bound for Mecca, which Muslim scholars argue was legitimate because Muhammad was in a state of war with the Meccans. After half a dozen unsuccessful attempts, his men finally captured a caravan, but through a misunderstanding they murdered an escort during the sacred months when combat was traditionally forbidden among all Arabs. This prompted a new revelation that concluded, "idolatry is worse than killing," providing the rationale for future battles on behalf of Islam. Based on revelations he received, Muhammad promised entry into Paradise to any Muslim killed in fighting the holy war, or jihad; those who died came to be called shahada, "witnesses" or martyrs. In the broader sense, though, jihad -- a word that literally means "struggle" or "effort" -- refers to striving against evil spiritually and physically. According to a famous hadith, on returning to Medina from successful battles in Mecca and Hunayn, Muhammad exclaimed, "We return from the lesser holy war (jihad) to wage the greater holy war (mujahada)," which he explained as "the war against the soul," the struggle against the limited self or separative ego. Many modern Islamic scholars of jurisprudence think that the only true jihads were those engaged in by the Prophet and his Companions; and all Muslims admit that compulsion in religion goes against the Quran (2:257). Beginning with Muhammad, Islam accepted Christians and Jews because they were "People of the Book," possessing an authentic holy scripture -- and, no doubt, because they also accepted the teaching of the One God. Later Muslims accepted religions as apparently polytheistic as Zoroastrianism and Hinduism for the same reason. Despite Islam's reputation as an intolerant religion, the teachings of the Quran are very clear on the subject of other religions (as opposed to idolatry): "We make no distinction between any of his Messengers." (2:285)
After a series of military encounters in which Muhammad prevailed despite being outnumbered, he succeeded in decisively defeating the main Meccan force. He entered Mecca and took it almost without resistance and with few deaths. Another important victory followed at Hudayn, and Islam was on its way to becoming the religion of all Arabia. Contrary to the traditions of Arabian warfare, the Prophet did not take murderous revenge on his former enemies, and this compassion moved many of them to come to Islam voluntarily. Muhammad was an extremely gifted leader with an intuitive grasp of personality and human psychology. Full of spiritual charisma, he was also imbued with the compassion and common sense to offer reconciliation to idolaters when they finally did embrace Islam, even as his own forces were calling for retribution.
Because of its history of military conquests and of offering the conquered the choice of conversion to Islam or death, Islam has unfairly gained the reputation of being the religion of the sword. In this context it may help to recall that the Middle Eastern custom of warfare generally offered no choice at all -- the vanquished were either killed outright, enslaved, or at best held for ransom. Triumphant Islamic generals offered the further choice to the conquered of paying a tribute rather than converting. Christian rulers, on the other hand, frequently offered the limited options of death or conversion to Jews and Muslims already living peaceably within their own boundaries. Muslim scholars point to Muhammad's 13 years of non-violent struggle in Mecca -- where he "turned the other cheek," as it were -- and the defensive nature of most of his battles, as proof that he was a reluctant warrior. Ultimately, they argue, Muhammad was a pragmatist in his spirituality; his compassion and sense of justice by all reports far outweighed his fierceness as fighter and moral reformer.
Like Jesus and Moses before him, Muhammad was as much or perhaps more a social reformer than a theologian. Islam is a supremely practical religion that has never embraced celibacy or a priestly class. The imams who lead Friday prayers at the mosque are drawn from the local population, although they are expected to have a thorough knowledge of Islamic law and tradition.
The Quran makes frequent reference to zakat, the requirement to give a fixed portion of one's annual income to the poor, and this became a cornerstone of Islam. Addressing the atrocious treatment of women in Arab culture at the time, Muhammad prohibited female infanticide and the prostitution of slave-women, introduced the right of women to inherit a half-share of their estate, where before they got nothing. He insisted that married couples have reciprocal duties and rights, and that women should be educated, and limited the number of wives a man may lawfully have to four (although he himself had more).
In 632, Muhammad died in Medina, in the hut of Aisha, his favorite wife. He had made no formal nomination of a successor, but he had appointed Abu Bakr to lead the prayers in the Mosque and, by implication, to become the next leader of Islam. However, the actual selection of Abu Bakr was made by a consultation of elders and Companions, establishing that the caliphate was not hereditary. Bakr's original title was Khalifat Rasul Allah ("Successor of the Messenger of God"), later shortened to Khalifa, or caliph, and he and succeeding caliphs were deemed the rightful successors of Muhammad and true guides of Islam.
The issue of Muhammad's successor led Islam to divide into what are now its two largest sects, Sunnis and Shi'ites (or Shia). Shi'ites were supporters of Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad's son-in-law (the word Shia means "partisans"). The Shi'ites contended that Ali should have been chosen to succeed Muhammad immediately, arguing that Muhammad had implied in various hadiths, accepted even by Sunni scholars, that Ali was to succeed him. They point additionally to the fact that Ali was the second person, after Khadija, to accept Muhammad's teachings, that he was the prophet's cousin and son-in-law (by marriage to Muhammad's daughter Fatima), and that his sons, Hasan and Hussein, were the only grandchildren of the Prophet to survive into adulthood. And yet, in the communal negotiations following the death of the Prophet, Ali was passed over.
And so, Shi'ites disagree over the succession of the caliphs, whom they prefer to call Imams. This dispute more than any other has fueled the modern antagonism between Iraq, predominantly Sunni, and Iran, where Shi'ite beliefs have formed the official religion since the 16th century. To the Shi'ites, the Imam is a spiritual leader directly descended from Ali and a completely holy figure, infallible and without sin, who plays a more powerful spiritual role than the Sunni caliph. His decree, or fatwa, takes on the import of a divine command. Sunnis also honor Ali, but do not venerate their Imams as divine intercessors. (The Shi'ite use of the title Imam should not be confused with the more common imam, a local spiritual guide who, among other things, leads the regular prayers at a mosque, including the Friday sermon.)
Shia hierarchy includes the mullah (preacher), mujtahid (one allowed to render independent legal and theological opinions), Ayatollah ("Sign of God"), and Ayatollah al-Uzma, or Supreme Ayatollah -- the rank held by the late Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-89). The last two are somewhat questionable 20th century titles accorded by a combination of popular sentiment and the approval of high-ranking Iranian theologians and legists. In fact, there may be more than one Ayatollah al-Uzma at a given time, but generally only one is considered the spiritual leader of Iran. Khomeini assumed this role following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which overthrew the Shah and drew him from relative obscurity in France to Time's "Man of the Year" within a span of 12 months. Islam has no central authority figure equivalent to the Pope or the Dalai Lama, but the Supreme Ayatollah comes close among the Shia.
A major difference in custom is the Shia practice of muta, or temporary marriage. An expedient created by the Shia to resolve the tension of momentary lust without resorting to either dishonor or sexual repression, muta may last only a few hours, but it legitimizes any offspring of the union. Sunnis disavow such a concept, even though their treatment of women is considerably less generous than that of the Shi'ites when it comes to family inheritance and participation in religious ritual.
The Shi'ites have divided into a number of sects, most prominently those known as the Twelvers and the Seveners, based on differing understandings of the succession of leaders following Muhammad's death. The Seveners, or Ismailis, hold many doctrines influenced by Hinduism and Neoplatonism, and are still an influential force today, especially in India. Yet because they hold that Muhammad was not the last prophet, but was actually followed by a number of others, they are considered wildly heterodox not only by Sunnis but also by other Shi'ites. The Persian poet Omar Khayyam is thought to have been an Ismaili. Although he is most famous in the West for his Rubbaiyat, Omar was more notable in Persia as an astronomer and mathematician.
If all the trees of the earth were pens, and the seas, replenished by seven more seas, were ink, the words of God could not be finished still.
Quran, 31:27
Muslims believe that Islam's principal holy book, the Quran ("Recitation," sometimes spelled Koran in English) is an Arabic transcription of a heavenly form or archetype. Referring to it as the "eternal book," "imperishable tablet," or "Mother of the Book," they believe that God unveiled this great book through the Angel Gabriel to various prophets on earth whenever needed to guide humanity. The books sent earlier are considered to be superseded by the Quran, whose purpose is to correct the human imperfections that crept into previous books, such as the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament. Muslims respect those other revealed books as legitimate, but believe that the Quran is the final, perfect transmission of the one heavenly book.
Unlike Jewish and Christian Scriptures, which are largely narrative or doctrinal with only occasional quotations from Yahweh or Jesus, the Quran presents itself entirely as the direct words of God, sometimes speaking in the first person (both singular and plural), sometimes in the third, occasionally changing from one to the other in sequential phrases or sentences.
Relatively short (around 400 pages in English translation, a little less than the New Testament), the Quran consists of 114 suras, or chapters, arranged in order of their length rather than in chronological order of transmission. Following the short introductory prayer called al-Fatihah ("the Opening") comes the longest sura, with 285 verses; the shortest suras, with three to six verses, come at the end. Suras are composed of verses called ayats. The Quran contains two of the key prayers of Islam, the al-Fatihah and the Surat al-Ikhlas ("Chapter of Sincerity"), the short 113th sura: "Say: God is One, the Eternal God. He begets none, nor is begotten, and none is like Him." Many of the accounts contained in this scripture should be familiar to anyone conversant with the Bible, e.g., the annunciation of the angel to Mary, informing her that she will bear a child without "knowing" a man (19:16-21). The Arabic Quran also contains the 99 principal names of Allah, most of them describing compassionate qualities, such as the Patient (Sabur), the Loving (Wadud), the Wise (Hakim), the Truth (Haqq), the Light (Nur), the Forgiver (Ghaffar), and most frequently, the Compassionate (Rahman) and the Merciful (Rahim).
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Over a period of about 22 years, beginning around 610, the Quran was revealed to Muhammad. The earlier revelations were received in trance states that caused the Prophet to groan, cry out, and shiver so intensely that he often covered himself with a cloak, and they were frequently accompanied by headaches and severe muscular tension. Later he became more accustomed to these states of deep absorption. His companions committed all of the revelations to memory, and they were eventually written down on whatever was available, including leaves, shards of pottery, and, according to tradition, the shoulder-blades of camels. By the time the Prophet had moved from Mecca to Medina, he was dictating to secretaries, the most prominent of whom was Zayd ibn Tabit. |
After Muhammad's death, Abu Bakr put Zayd in charge of collating the written suras with versions that had been memorized by several of his followers, but his compilation often ignored the order in which they were received. The Caliph Uthman (644-55), a direct companion of the Prophet and his third successor, had a definitive text compiled from copies left with one of Muhammad's widows, Hafsah, and destroyed all the rest. The span of decades and centuries between the revelations of many previous religious founders and their committal to writing was thereby largely avoided in Islam, although some scholars think that certain suras were deleted or altered to serve the purposes of the early caliphs. For example, the Quran's most critical attacks on the Umayyad clans may have been expunged on orders from Uthman, himself an Umayyad. By ordering the destruction of all variant copies of the text, Uthman insured that only his version remains today, although we have no reason to believe that anything essential was left out.
The other major source of Islamic teaching, hadith ("narrative" or "report"), consists of the sayings of Muhammad and his Companions passed down and collected in the centuries immediately following his death. It began as an oral tradition that the Prophet during his lifetime was careful to distinguish from the revealed teachings of the Quran. (A parallel exists in Hinduism between shruti, "that which is revealed," and smriti, "that which is heard.") Six major collections of hadith were eventually compiled by a number of hands during the first 300 years after Muhammad's death, and not all of the sayings are considered to be of equal authenticity. Since so much time elapsed before they were written down, there was room for invention and distortion, a problem recognized by early Muslim scholars. And so no absolutely canonical edition exists, although there is significant agreement about the major collections of hadith. The most important is by Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari (810-70), which is divided by topic into 97 volumes containing 7,300 individual items. Later collections also exist, especially those created by Shi'ite Muslims tracing hadith derived from the Prophet's son-in-law and third caliph, Ali, and his supporters.
The hadith are based on isnads, or chains of authorities; each hadith generally begins with an attestation such as, "Abdallah ibn Jafar records that he heard Ali ibn Abu Talib say that he heard the Prophet remark, 'The best of women [in the world] was Mary. The best of women [of this people] was Khadija.'" Some isnads are considerably longer, linking eight or ten names. Hadiths not only fill in many details of the Prophet's life, but further interpretations were also made of the law stated in the Quran. Their application to the problems of everyday life gives hadith the same practical orientation that the Talmud bears in relation to the Hebrew Bible. For instance, one hadith has Muhammad telling the story of a woman who was cruel to a cat, shutting it in so that it died of hunger, and who was subsequently sent to hell. In another, he tells of a man who saw a dog panting with thirst near a well from which he himself had just drunk. The man climbed down the well and filled his shoe with water, "and taking it in his teeth, he climbed out of the well and gave the water to the dog. God was pleased with this act and granted him pardon (for his sins)." These hadiths are used to support kindness to animals, although there are no specific revelations in the Quran concerning it.
Hadith is not necessarily binding; despite the fact that one hadith has the Prophet saying, "the virgin cannot be given in marriage until her consent has been asked," the right of jabr, or the arranged marriage of minors without their consent, has long been practiced among certain Muslims. Taken as a group, however, hadith along with the Quran form the basis of the sunna -- the way of life of the Prophet which Muslims take as their model or code of Muslim orthodoxy.
The third source of spiritual guidance for Muslims is sira, biography of Muhammad in chronological form. Siras are only somewhat reliable because of a large gap between the death of Muhammad and their composition. The earliest extant and the best is the Sirat-ar-Rasul ("Life of the Prophet") by Ibn Hisham (d. 834), which summarizes an earlier lost work by Ibn Ishaq.
As already mentioned, the Muslim religion shares many of its major tenets with Christianity and Judaism, including the expectation of an end of time followed by a final judgment. According to the Quran, "To Moses [God] gave the Scriptures, a perfect code for the righteous with precepts about all things, a guide and a mercy. . ." (6:154). The Quran also has praise for the Christians, especially their monks and priests (5:85). But it reveals that God is neither begotten nor begets (13:17), rejecting Christian teaching about the Divine Sonship of Jesus. Muhammad had great reverence for the figure of Jesus, and although the Quran acknowledges that a crucifixion had taken place, it adds that another body was substituted for Christ's: "They did not slay Jesus, nor crucify him, only a likeness of it appeared to them" (4:156).
Many verses of the Quran speak of a broad religious tolerance not generally associated with our Western stereotypes of Islam, e.g., "Believers, Jews, Sabaeans and Christians -- whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does what is right -- shall have nothing to fear or to regret" (5:69) (The Sabaeans were an ancient people who flourished in southwestern Arabia around the middle of the first millennium BC, in the kingdom of Saba, called Sheba in the Bible.) On the other hand, the Quran admonishes that the Jewish people "have tampered with words out of their context" and that both Christians and Jews "have forgotten much of what they were enjoined."
All Muslim beliefs rest on what are called the Five Pillars, or obligations, which uphold the very structure of Islam. Their practice is essential. Here they are, with their Arabic names:
Expected of every healthy and solvent adult at least once in a lifetime, except for those who cannot afford the expense of the trip or of supporting their families while away. They may contribute what they can to the expenses of a substitute who represents a number of would-be pilgrims. Aside from its devotional aspects, hajj also causes Muslims of all races, colors, nations, and economic brackets to meet on an equal basis, stripped of the accoutrements of class and status.
Other less formal but nonetheless commonly observed rules regarding diet clearly have a Biblical resonance. Eating pork or the blood of slaughtered animals is forbidden; animals must be slaughtered by cutting their throats while saying a blessing, as in Jewish law. The prohibition against alcohol is more strictly enforced in fundamentalist countries like Saudi Arabia than elsewhere in the Muslim world, but it is generally respected by serious Muslims. Circumcision is widely practiced, although it is not mentioned in the Quran, only in hadith.
Growing out of Islam's struggles against idolaters, the use of pictorial images of God, Muhammad, the caliphs, or anyone at all is technically forbidden, although it is strictly enforced only in mosques. Islamic art does occasionally portray the Prophet and other Muslim notables, but by European and Asian standards, their appearance is relatively rare. Instead, Muslim artists have developed to a high art calligraphy, arabesque, and decorative abstracts using floral designs. Caligraphic icons of Quranic verses and the names of Muhammad and the caliphs are commonly found in both homes and mosques.
Islamic Law
The term for the entire spiritual law of Islam sharia, encompassing not only the Five Pillars, but also sunna, or "custom" -- the sayings and practices of Muhammad as contained in the most authoritative hadiths -- and the revealed word of the Quran. The counterpart of the external law of the sharia is the inner, spiritual reality, or haqiqa. The esoteric path of the mystics is known as the tariqa; by extension, tariqa can refer to a Sufi mystical order.
When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found.
Sufi saying
The image of Sufism as a mystical tradition at odds with orthodox Islam is pretty much a Western invention. What may be true is that Sufism began as a reaction to the sybaritic superficiality of Islam under the caliphs who succeeded Muhammad and his companions and who quickly became more concerned with military victories, amassing wealth, and living a life of great comfort and indulgence than in following the teachings of the Quran. As warriors spread the faith and were rewarded with piles of booty, the ruling elite of Islam grew ever more materialistic and its caliphs began to deviate from the teachings of the Quran and the Prophet.
But Sufis also opposed the increasing literalism of Islamic legal interpretations, challenging the rulers and religious guides of their countries to be true to the essential spirit of that law rather than the letter, always seeking the hidden spiritual significance of the most common ritual or prayer. They sought deeper connections to the mystical core of the other great religious traditions, and so tended to be more tolerant than unreflective Muslims. In most cases, however, they were unable to affect the power of the largely corrupt dynastic caliphs, and so they turned to inner contemplative practices and to elevating the spiritual life of the common people.
Still, the vast majority of Sufis remained first and foremost orthodox Muslims who performed the prayers and followed the sunna. Rather than avoiding the worship practices of orthodox Islam, Sufis must do more of these practices even more carefully than other Muslims -- contrary to the teachings of some American Sufis. Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri, a Sufi born in Iraq and educated in Europe and America, writes that the basic laws of Muslim worship, the Five Pillars, are "although necessary, not sufficient for most of the people who are sick in this vast hospital called the world." According to Fadhlalla, Sufism "starts with following the Islamic Law, . . . with acquiring the knowledge of the outer practices in order to develop, evolve, and enliven the inner awakened state."1
From the beginning, Sufis functioned as missionaries and spiritual masters, adding immeasurably to the richness of Islamic life, even though individual Sufis were sometimes accused of heresy in much the way great Christian mystics like John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart were. Muslims have a tradition based in Quran that about four years before the death of the Prophet, he called together certain of his Companions under a tree to pledge themselves to him on a higher level than when they first joined Islam. Seeking this higher pitch of commitment, Sufis read and interpret the Quran on several levels, finding esoteric, hidden, or subtle truths where the text appears to speak of external, earthly matters. For instance, in the passage containing the above pledge, the Quran promises that those who pledged will receive the spoils of war, then adds, "God knows of other spoils which you have not yet taken, but which God encompasses" (48:21). Sufis interpret this as a reference to the supreme treasure of union with the Infinite.
The term Sufi has been authoritatively traced to the Arabic root suf ("wool"), reflecting the austere garments worn by some of the earliest Sufis, and probably applied by extension to Islamic mystics generally. Wool was traditionally the clothing both of the Prophet and of the Christian hermits whom the early Sufis encountered in the deserts of Syria, Arabia, and Egypt. However, the Christianity that was absorbed by Islam from the desert hermits and communities was less the orthodox religion of Rome than a mystical variant that had been influenced by both Gnosticism and Neoplatonism. Sufi prayer beads or rosaries were adapted from those used by Buddhist monks (and later borrowed by the Catholic Church), along with much of the meditative orientation of the Buddhists and the Christian Desert Fathers.
Sufism was one area in early Islam where women were granted full equality; a woman could become a master teacher, or shaykh (fem. shaykha), teaching in her own home or in a non-monastic convent. The most prominent woman Sufi was Rabia al-Adawiyya (d. 801), the slave-girl of Basra, whose teachings emphasized ecstatic, devotional love of God to the exclusion of all else, including marriage and the material world. Rabia's insistence on worshiping God out of sheer love rather than because of any reward either on earth or in the afterlife, set a standard for all other Sufis. When asked why she often carried a torch and a container of water, she replied, "To burn up Paradise and to quench the fires of Hell."
Although most Sufis consider themselves fully Muslim, their emphasis of the path of love by which the soul makes its journey to God has sometimes put them at odds with orthodox Islam. The search of the soul to return to its ultimate Source is often expressed, particularly in the poems of the Persian mystic Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-73), in the metaphor of a lover seeking out his beloved. Sufi poets also use the metaphor of wine in describing the soul's intoxication with God, as when Rumi sings,
Before garden, vine or grape were in the world Our soul was drunken with immortal wine.
The Sufi shaykh, sometimes called a Murshid, is the individual's spiritual guide on the journey of the soul. Through his intervention, the student in dreams or visions may meet the Pir, usually considered the original founder of a particular Sufi Order. Their conference takes place on the invisible, spiritual level, as do future meetings with the Prophet Muhammad himself and finally with God. The aim is marifa ("knowledge"), an intuitive experience of ultimate Reality reached by passing through various ecstatic states of purification, unification, and illumination. Students must give themselves up to the shaykh and trust him or her implicitly -- the metaphor that was often used, although originally applied to one's surrender to God, is that the student must be in the hands of the shaykh like a corpse in the hands of the person washing it, i.e., provide no resistance, no expression of separative ego.
1. Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri, The Elements of Sufism, Longmead, Great Britain: Element Books, 1990, pp. 36, 3.
Sufism Has spread around the world and is often embraced by Westerners especially more readily than mainstream Islam. The Indian-born Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927), the first major Sufi figure to come to the West, brought his teachings to America in the 1920s. Hazrat later married the niece of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science; the offspring of that union was Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (b. 1916). The formal spiritual successor of his father, Pir Vilayat went on to become a prominent Sufi teacher in America, founding a community known as the Abode of the Message in New Lebanon, New York, in 1974. The Abode is currently the national headquarters of the Sufi Order in the West, Pir Vilayat's universalist vision of Sufism that teaches respect for all the world's great religious traditions. The Sufi Order incorporates songs, chants, and scripture readings taken from different religious traditions. But it does not incorporate orthodox Islamic laws and practices, such as the daily prayers, and so is not considered to be genuine Sufism by many Muslims.
Besides learning Sufism from his father, Pir Vilayat studied with an American Sufi named Samuel Lewis. Heir to the Lee jeans fortune, Lewis had been disowned by his family, traveled the world, and studied Zen and Islam. He received the transmission of Hazrat Inayat Khan while Pir Vilayat was still a small boy, and he later became one of Pir Vilayat's collaborators, ultimately bringing Sufism back to his native San Francisco, where he was known as Sufi Sam (or S.A.M., for Sufi Ahmed Murad, his Sufi name). It was Sam who started the practice of Sufi Dancing, or Dances of Universal Peace, as they were originally known, combining elements of music and chants from various world traditions, including American Indian dances. When Lewis died in 1971, many of his students went with Pir Vilayat as he founded the Abode. Now there are two branches of the Order, one under Sufi Sam's named successor, the American Moineddin Jablonsky, the other under Pir Vilayat. And there are many more Western Sufi branches based on individual teachers, rather than established lineages, which is the traditional form of Sufi transmission.
The Black Muslim movement in the United States was founded by a traveling salesman named Wallace Fard, who arrived from Arabia in 1930 and settled among the black community of Detroit. Fard disappeared in 1934, leaving his right-hand man, Elijah Muhammad (formerly Elijah Poole, 1897-1975), in charge of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, as it was then called. The number of Black Muslims in America soon rose to over a million, or roughly one third of all American Muslims at the time. Elijah Muhammad preached a mixture of unorthodox Islam and black separatism, claiming that blacks were the "original" race and that Caucasians were "white devils" who derived from a botched experiment on subhuman creatures by an evil wizard named Yacub.
Malcolm X (Malcolm Little, 1925-65), for ten years the major spokesman for Elijah Muhammad, became interested in authentic Islam and eventually broke with him after making the the hajj to Mecca, which revolutionized his thinking about the racial separatism espoused by Elijah Muhammad. He took the name al-Hajj Malik Shabaz and was later assassinated by religious rivals. When Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, his seventh son, Warithuddin (Wallace Deen) Muhammad, took charge of the Nation of Islam. Rejecting his father's teachings, he nonviolently returned the Black Muslims to conventional Sunni Islam. In 1985 he formally dissolved the movement, and its members became integrated with mainstream Islam, a continuing process referred to by African-American Muslims as "the change" or "the second experience." Today Wallace Deen Muhammad has upwards of 250,000 followers, to whom he communicates with a weekly television program about Muslim life. He is considered by many as the most prominent and respected indigenous Western Muslim leader. In 1992 he became the first imam ever to give the invocation before the United States Senate.
As Wallace Dean Muhammad was beginning his move to orthodox Islam, a new Nation of Islam was formed under Louis Farrakhan in 1978. Once Malcolm X broke with Elijah Muhammad, Farrakhan, who as Louis X had played a role at a Boston mosque similar to Malcolm's in Harlem, opposed and later replaced Malcolm at his Harlem mosque. He returned to the heterodox teachings of Elijah Muhammad, and neither he nor his splinter group have been acknowledged by orthodox Muslims in the Middle East or elsewhere. He has been widely criticized by non-Muslims for his promotion of racial separatism laced with anti-Semitism, although he has been quicker to advance women to the ministry, something that never occurs in traditional Islamic mosques. Farrakhan has only about 20,000 followers today.
Meanwhile, the hundreds of African-American mosques with no more connection to the Nation of Islam have become a strong presence in inner city communities, openly opposing drug dealers, abstaining from alcohol, tobacco, and gambling, and promoting socially conservative attitudes toward dress, family life, sexual conduct, and religious worship. No longer strictly African-American, these congregations are accepting members of all ethnic communities. The best estimates of Islamic population in the United States range between six and seven million, of whom approximately 25 percent are African-American (the term Black Muslims no longer applies).
Sports figures like Muhammad Ali (formerly Cassius Marcellus Clay) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (formerly Lew Alcindor), are not the only prominent black Americans to have embraced Islam over recent decades. A modest national following has developed around Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, who was known in the 1960s as H. Rap Brown, the civil rights leader and Black Panther. Of more than a dozen significant subgroups of black American Muslims in the country, most are aligned with mainstream Islam, but some theological splinter groups have survived, including the Moorish Science Temple of Noble Drew Ali (Timothy Drew, 1886-1929), founded in Newark, New Jersey, in 1913, and a minor offshoot of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam, called the Five Percenters, which originated in Harlem in the 1960s. They are syncretists who combine an extremist political ideology with esoteric Eastern theology.
