Ismail Faruqi Online

Month: January 2007

  • Review of “Islam and Other Faiths” by Isma’il Raji Al-Faruqi

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    Islam and Other Faiths

    Ataullah Siddiqui (ed.), “Islam and Other Faiths” by Isma’il Raji Al-Faruqi.
    Leicester: The Islamic Foundation and IIIT, 1999, ISBN: 8603-7276-6
    Review by Anne Sofie Roald

    The very first glimpse of “Islam and Other Faiths” by the late Isma’il Raji Faruqi filled me with excitement and curiosity. Here was an outstanding Muslim scholar venturing into a field that is at once virgin and full of intellectual promise. I had read only two books by him before: “Tawhid: Its Relevance for Thought and Life” and “The Islamization of Knowledge”. The contents of the former are in tune with the tenor of the papers which comprise the present book, being, inter alia, a philosophical statements of the unity of God and its implications. The Muslims in the western countries are truly in great need of studies such as the present one that would help them deconstruct and subsequently reconstruct the role they should play as minorities.

    My study of the present collection of papers, which have been painstakingly selected and edited by Ataullah Siddiqui, reinforced the already positive impression that I had of the author. Faruqi stands out as one of the very few Muslim philosophers and scholars who earnestly attempted to interact with Islam’s two sister faiths, Judaism and Christianity, and articulated the theoretical foundations of such interaction.

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  • Islam and the Problem of Israel: The Three-Cornered Nature of the Problem

    Reading Time: 7 minutes

    From Chapter 1: “The Three-Cornered Nature of the Problem” in Ismail Raji al Faruqi, “Islam and the Problem of Israel”, Islamic Council of Europe (1980)

    A. Historical Preview

    The problem of Israel confronting the Muslim World today has neither precedent nor parallel in Islamic history. The Muslim World has tended to regard it as another instance of Modern colonialism, or at best, as a repetition of the Crusades. The difference is not that Israel is neither one of these; but that it is both and more, much more. Unfortunately, there is no Islamic literature on the subject. The need for this analysis of the problem is, therefore, as great as the present moment which calls upon the Arab World in particular and the Muslim World in general to accept Israel as an integral member of a world-of Muslim-nations in Asia-Africa.

    The “Problem of Israel” is a three-cornered affair, involving the Muslim World, Western Christendom and the Jews. The first two have been locked in struggle ever since the rise of the Islamic state in Madinah in 622. Indeed, even earlier. Christian commercial interest had pushed Abyssinia into launching a colonialist venture in South Arabia in 560 A. C. and an attempt to destroy the power of Makkah in the “Year of the Elephant,” or 570 A. C., the year of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad (salla Allahu `alayhi wa sallam). Even as early as that time, Western Christendom saw fit to use the religious zeal of Eastern Christians in order to exploit both them and the pre-Islamic Arabs for commercial profit.

    Pre-Islamic Arabia was a religious vacuum at the time, and the Christians of the West who held the reins of power in their hand were not concerned with preaching the faith. Rather, they were immersed in political struggles on the internal front, and economic and military struggle on the external. Arabia had no significance for them except as a trade route. When the new Islamic state began to raise its head following the integration of Makkah and most of the tribes of Western and South Arabia, Byzantium saw fit to mobilize its puppet armies in South Palestine and Jordan, a move which brought about the first military encounter between Islam and Christendom, the Campaign of Mu’tah (9 A.H./631 A. C.).

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  • Review of “Islam and the Problem of Israel” by Isma’il Raji al-Faruqi

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Islam and the Problem of Israel

    “Islam and the Problem of Israel” by Isma’il Raji al-Faruqi
    Review by Haniffah Abdul Gafoor

    The issue of Israel is an emotive one, irrespective of individuals’ affiliations (‘neutrals’ included). Bearing in mind the misrepresentation and misinterpretation of Islam today, a work analysing the two (Islam and Israel) has the potential of being an explosive read.

    This new edition of Islam and the Problem of Israel is a succinct and thoughtfully organised reader. The author, though Palestinian himself, offers a reasonably fair appraisal of the issue at hand from a Muslim’s perspective. Some readers might find the strong vocabulary makes the read challenging, and this may sometimes be burdensome. The topic is approached in an organised and sequential manner. The historical, religious and political perspectives of the state of Israel are described before the relationship between Israel, Judaism, Zionism (all quite distinct entities) and Islam is discussed. The author briefly clarifies the distinction between Judaism as a religion, Zionism as a political concept of statehood (for a given race), Israel as nation-state, and the Jews as a race. He describes the problem as three-cornered, involving the Muslim world, Western Christendom, and the Jews.

    The book begins with a brief historical discourse on the Jews, touching on their persecution by the Christians, their community living in ghettos, their emancipation (with the French revolution) allowing the Jews equality in European society, the assimilation of Jews in Europe, and the birth of Reform Judaism as a liberated sect of Judaism (which, among other things, legitimised liturgical use of the vernacular language instead of Hebrew, and allowed choirs and musical instruments in synagogues).

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  • Review of “Islam in the Modern National State” by Erwin I. J. Rosenthal

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Islam in the Modern National State by Erwin I. J. Rosenthal.
    Cambridge: The University Press, 1965. pp. 416. $10.50
    Review by Isma’il Raji al-Faruqi

    The problem of the relationship of Islam to the national state and the confrontation of its Law with modernity have been the subject of much controversy. Many books have appeared which seek to define the problems and evaluate tha solutions possible or proposed. This work is perhaps one of the most comprehensive. It surveys classical political thought in Islam as well as its gradual dislodgement from the centers of Muslim political power; it analyzes constitutional theories, contemporary reforms and the role of education in a number of Muslim states. The amount of information Dr. Rosenthal collected is quite impressive; and, where it is purely repetitive, the book undoubtedly takes its place among the best in the field.

    The book jacket announces that the author “writes always as a detached observer. He does not apply the categories of the West to what is essentially Muslim dilemma and problems.” This notwithstanding, it asserts “There has been no counterpart in Islam of the Reformation in the West and so [sic!], in the absence of radical reform, a vulnerable religious and political system has capitulated stop by step to a secular nationalism.” In Chapter I, entitled “The Hum Situation”, where the author analyzes the nature of the problem, he writes: “From Descartes on, philosophy and science in the West have been based on a new attitude toward God and the Universe…Nor must we forget the…principle of freedom of conscience which was first established in the realm of religion by Luther and his Reformation. This new spirit…produced the political philosophy of Hobbes and Locke, which in turn..triggered off the French Revolution…directed equally against political and ecclesiastical tyranny. There evolved a new concept of state and nation which…can easily be reconciled with deism, but not so easily with the God of revelation, the creator and ruler of the wilverse. Hence [sic!] Muslims must either choose between the sovereignty of God and the sovereignty of the people…” (p. 6). It is nothing short of amazing how — even when he expressly plans and commits himself to be objective, whén try as he may — the Western Islamicist is incapable of putting his own cultural predilections and prejudices in enoche. That Islam did not have “the Reformation”, “Descartes”, “Locke”, “Luther” and “the French Revolution” is neither a critique, nor a description, nor an understanding of Islam but a shallow piece of Westernism. One does not understand America by saying of it that it did not have a Genghis Khan!

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  • Da’wah in the West: Promise and Trial

    Reading Time: 38 minutes

    I. The Marvel of the Spread of Islam

    Nobody who observed the spread of Islam in the non-Muslim World, especially in the West, and still more especially in America, the United Kingdom and Western Europe during the last thirty years, can fail to wonder at the marvel, or to discern the hand of the Almighty (may He be Glorified and Exalted) at work, The configuration of so many diverse forces, arising in such disparate corners of the earth, determined by such varied chains of historical conditions, all focusing upon the aforesaid Western countries is too much for any kind of planning except the divine. The causes of Muslim immigration up to that time are themselves the result of a tremendously complex development within the Muslim World. But, had these causes been restricted to the Muslim World, the Muslims seeking to immigrate world never have arrived in the West. They were inextricably interwoven with the relations those Muslims had with the West (colonialism, studentship and training, tourism, visits to relatives, fortune-seeking) , as well as dependent upon the West’s rise as industrial and political world leader, relating itself to the Muslim world in a variety of ways.

    On the other hand, the causes of the conversion of native Westerners to Islam have to do with the whole intellectual and spiritual development of the West, a development which in the last three or four decades seems to have prepared large segments of the population to be receptive to the Islamic message. The erosion of religious feeling, whether Christian or Jewish, the rise of the sciences of nature and technology under the aegis of a philosophy defiant of God and of everything supernatural; and the nihilism to which industry, urbanism and the whole structure of modern life had led all these seem like the unfolding of real salvation plans for a Heilsgeschichte aimed at the West. Another “fullness of time” seems to be in full bloom before our eyes, awaiting only the disposition of Islam to bring it to fulfillment. That is exactly the sort of grand design which only the divine Designer can bring about.

    Two main forces are jointly responsible for this marvelous spread of Islam in the West: the spiritual bankruptcy of the west and Muslim hijrah or emigration.

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  • Role of the Family in the Spread of Islam

    Reading Time: 17 minutes

    The family, is indeed, the best tool for Islamic Da’wah in the West. There is no institution, there is no mechanism that I know of, that can convey Islam as well as the living example of an Islamic family in the West. The Islamic family, if it is rightly Islamic, is the very ideal to which Western people today aspire. In other words, the reality of Western people today stands diametrically opposite; if they can say that they can stand at the bottom of human, social and ethical development, because of what we see happening around us in their midst, the Islamic family with its ideals, with its norms and standards, stands at the opposite highest, and therefore, there can be no better way of convincing Western man, the non-Muslim man or woman, of the value of Islam, of the greatness of Islam, than to invite them to visit a Muslim family. But then, the Muslim family must be a good one. In other words, it must be truly Islamic and it must live up to the standards expected of an Islamic family. And now as to the dialectic of this relationship.

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