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The Essence of Islamic Civilization

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There can be no doubt that the essence of Islamic civilization is Islam; or that the essence of Islam is tawhid, the act of affirming Allah to be the One, absolute, transcendent Creator, Lord and Master of all that is.

These two fundamental premises are self-evident. They have never been in doubt by those belonging to this civilization or participating in it. Only in recent times have missionaries, Orientalists, and other interpreters of Islam subjected these premises to doubt. Whatever their level of education, Muslims are apodictically certain that Islamic civilization does have an essence, that this essence is knowable and capable of analysis or description, that it is tawhid Analysis of tawhid as essence, as first determining principle of Islamic civilization, is the object of this document.

Tawhid is that which gives Islamic civilization its identity, which binds all its constituents together and thus makes of them an integral, organic body that we call civilization. In binding disparate elements together, the essence of civilization in this case, tawhid impresses them with its own mold. It recasts them so as to harmonize with and mutually support other elements. Without necessarily changing their natures, the essence transforms the elements making up a civilization, giving them their new character as constitutive of that civilization. The range of transformation may vary from slight to radical, depending on how relevant the essence is to the different elements and their functions. This relevance stood out prominently in the minds of Muslim observers of the phenomena of civilization. That is why they took tawhid as title to their most important works, and they pressed all subjects under its aegis. They regarded tawhid as the most fundamental principle that includes or determines all other principles; and they found in it the fountainhead, the primeval source determining all phenomena of Islamic civilization.

Traditionally and simply expressed, tawhid is the conviction and witnessing that, “there is no God but God.” This negative statement, brief to the utmost limits of brevity, carries the greatest and richest meanings in the whole of Islam. Sometimes, a whole culture, a whole civilization, or a whole history lies compressed in one sentence. This certainly is the case of the kalimah (pronouncement) or shahadah (witnessing) of Islam. All the diversity, wealth and history, culture and learning, wisdom and civilization of Islam is compressed in this shortest of sentences “La ilaha illa Allah.”

Tawhid as Worldview

Tawhid is a general view of reality, of truth, of the world, of space and time, of human history. As such it comprehends the following principles:

Duality

Reality is of two generic kinds, God and non-God; Creator and creature. The first order has but one member, Allah, the Absolute and Almighty. He alone is God, eternal, Creator, transcendent. Nothing is like unto Him; He remains forever absolutely unique and devoid of partners or associates. The second is the order of space-time, of experience, of creation. It includes all creatures, the world of things, plants and animals, humans, jinn and angels, heaven and earth, paradise and hell, and all their becoming since they came into being. The two orders of Creator and creation are utterly and absolutely disparate as far as their being, or ontology, as well as their existence and careers are concerned. It is forever impossible that the one be united with, fused, con-fused or diffused into the other. Neither can the Creator be ontologically transformed so as to become the creature, nor can the creature transcend and transfigure itself so as to become in any way or sense the Creator.In this regard, tawhid distinguishes itself from Sufism and some sects of Hinduism, where the reality of the world is dissolved into God, and God becomes the only reality, the only existent. In this view, nothing really exists except God. Everything is an illusion; and its existence is unreal. Tawhid equally contradicts the ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Taoist views that run in a direction diametrically opposed to that of India. In that view, the Creator’s existence is dissolved into that of creation or the world. Whereas Egypt maintained that God is indeed Pharaoh, and the green grass blade rising from earth in the spring, and the Nile River with its water and bed, and the disc of the sun with its warmth and light. Greco-Roman antiquity maintained that God is any aspect of human nature or personality magnified to a degree that places it above nature in one sense but keeps it immanent in nature in another. In either case, the Creator is confused with His creation. Under the influence of its priesthood, Christianity separated itself from tawhid when it claimed that God incarnated Himself in the body of Jesus and asserted that Jesus is God. It is Islam’s unique distinction that it emphasized the ultimate duality and absolute disparity of God and the world, of Creator and creature. By its clear and uncompromising stand in this matter of divine transcendence, Islam became the quintessence of the tradition of Semitic prophecy, occupying the golden mean between Eastern (Indian) exaggerationism, which denies nature, and Western (Greek and Egyptian) exaggerationism, which denies God as other.

Ideationality

The relation between the two orders of reality is ideational in nature. Its point of reference in man is the faculty of understanding. As organ and repository of knowledge, the understanding includes all the gnostic functions of memory, imagination, reasoning, observation, intuition, apprehension, and so on. All humans are endowed with understanding. Their endowment is strong enough to understand the will of God in either or both of the following ways: when that will is expressed in words, directly by God to man, and when the divine will is deducible through observation of creation.This principle points to the absolute ontological separation of God and man, to the impossibility of their union through incarnation, deification or fusion. The principle, however, does not deny the possibility of communication between them. In fact, it is inseparable from prophecy, or the communication by God to man of a commandment which man is expected to obey. Nor does it rule out the possibility of communication through intellect or intuition, as when man observes the creatures, ponders their whither and why, and concludes that they must have a creator, designer, and sustainer Who deserves to be heeded. This is the avenue of ideation or reasoning. In the final analysis, it is this principle of ontic separation of God and the world that distinguishes tawhid from all theories that apotheosize man or humanize God, whether Greek, Roman, Hindu, Buddhist, or Christian.

Teleology

The nature of the cosmos is teleological; that is, purposive, serving a purpose of its Creator, and doing so out of design. The world has not been created in vain, or in sport.As the verses of the Qur’an 3:191 and 23:116 indicate. It is not the work of chance, a happenstance. It was created in perfect condition. Everything that exists does so in a measure proper to it and fulfills a certain universal purpose.As contained in the verses of the Qur’an 7:15; 10:5; 13:9; 15:29; 25:2; 32:9; 38:72; 41:10; 54:49; 65:3; 75:4, 38; 80:19. 82:7; 87:2?3. The world is indeed a “cosmos,” an orderly creation, not “chaos.” In it, the will of the Creator is always realized. His patterns are fulfilled with the necessity of natural law. For they are innate in the very nature of things. No creature other than man acts or exists in a way other than what the Creator has ordained for it.Qur’an 17:77; 33:62; 35:43; 48:23; 65:3. Man is the only creature in which the will of God is actualized not necessarily, but with man’s own personal consent. The physical and psychic functions of man are integral to nature, and as such they obey the laws pertinent to them with the same necessity as all other creatures. But the spiritual functions – namely, understanding and moral action – fall outside the realm of determined nature. They depend upon their subject and follow his determination. Actualization of the divine will by them is of a qualitatively different value than necessary actualization by other creatures. Necessary fulfillment applies only to elemental or utilitarian values; free fulfillment applies to the moral. However, the moral purposes of God, His commandments to man, do have a base in the physical world, and hence there is a utilitarian aspect to them. But this is not what gives them their distinctive quality, that of being moral. It is precisely the commandments’ aspect of being fulfillable in freedom -– that is, with the possibility of being violated – that provides the special dignity we ascribe to things “moral.”Any deed that is done “by nature” is ipso facto amoral, deserving neither reward nor punishment. Examples are breathing, digestion, or an act of charity or injustice entered into under coercion. It is completely otherwise with the act entered into in freedom, with the possibility of its author doing or not doing it, or doing some other act beside it.

Capacity of Man and Malleability of Nature

Since everything was created for a purpose, the realization of that purpose must be possible in space and time.This is attested by the verses that speak of the perfection of God’s creation (see notes 4, 5 above), and those that stress man’s moral obligation and responsibility. The latter are too numerous to count. Otherwise, there is no escape from cynicism. Creation itself and the processes of space and time would lose their meaning and significance. Without this possibility, taklif, or moral obligation, falls to the ground; and with its fall, either God’s purposiveness or His might is destroyed. Realization of the absolute, namely, the divine raison d’etre of creation must be possible in history; that is, within the process of time between creation and the Day of Judgment. As the subject of moral action, man must therefore be capable of changing himself, his fellows or society, nature or his environment, so as to actualize the divine pattern, or commandment, in him as well as in them.This is the meaning implied in the verses that speak of the subservience of creation to man, namely, 13:2; 14:32 ?33; 16:12, 14; 22:36?37, 65; 29:61; 31:20, 29; 35:13; 38:18; 39:5; 43:13; 45:11?12. As the object of moral action, man as well as his fellows and environment must all be capable of receiving the efficacious action of man, the subject. This capacity is the converse of man’s moral capacity for action as subject. Without it, man’s capacity for moral action would be impossible and the purposive nature of the universe would collapse. Again, there would be no recourse from cynicism. For creation to have a purpose — and this is a necessary assumption if God is God and His work is not a meaningless travail de singe — creation must be malleable, transformable, capable of changing its substance, structure, conditions, and relations so as to embody or concretize the human pattern or purpose. This is true of all creation, including man’s physical, psychic, and spiritual nature. All creation is capable of realization of the ought-to-be, the will or pattern of God, the absolute in this space and in this time.As the ubiquitous emphases of moral obligation in the Qur’an indicate.

Responsibility and Judgment

If man stands under the obligation to change himself, his society, and his environment so as to conform to the divine pattern, and is capable of doing so, and if all that is object of his action is malleable and capable of receiving his action and embodying its purpose, then it follows with necessity that he is responsible. Moral obligation is impossible without responsibility or reckoning. Unless man is responsible, and unless he is accountable for his deeds, cynicism becomes once more inevitable.

Judgment, or the consummation of responsibility, is the necessary condition of moral obligation, of moral imperativeness. It flows from the very nature of being “normative”.The verses dealing with the Final judgment are very numerous, and there is no need to cite them all; some examples: man will not be left alone without reckoning (75:36), but will be brought to account by God (88:26, 4:85) It is immaterial whether reckoning takes place in space-time or at the end of it or both, but it must take place. To obey God, that is, to realize His commandments and actualize His pattern, is to achieve falah or success, happiness, and ease. Not to do so, to disobey Him, is to incur punishment, suffering, unhappiness, and the agonies of failure.

Tawhid as an Essence of Civilization

As the essence of Islamic civilization, tawhid has two aspects or dimensions: the methodology and the content. The former determines the forms of application and implementation of the first principles of the civilization; the latter determines the first principles themselves.

The Methodology Dimension

The methodological dimension includes three principles, namely, unity, rationalism, and tolerance. These determine the form of Islamic civilization, a form that pervades every one of its departments.

Unity. There is no civilization without unity. Unless the elements constituting a civilization are united, woven, and harmonized with one another, they constitute not a civilization but a hodgepodge conglomeration. A principle unifying the various elements and comprehending them within its framework is essential. Such a principle would transform the mixture of relations of the elements with one another into an orderly structure in which levels of priority or degrees of importance are perceivable. The civilization of Islam places elements in an orderly structure and governs their existence and relations according to a uniform pattern. In themselves, the elements can be of either native or foreign provenance. Indeed, there is no civilization that has not adopted some elements foreign to it. What is important is that the civilization should digest those elements, that is, it should recast their forms and relations and thus integrate them into its own system. To “in form” them with its own form is in fact to transform them into a new reality where they exist no more in themselves or in their former dependency, but as integral components of the new civilization in which they have been integrated. It is not an argument against any civilization that it contains such elements; but it is a devastating argument against any civilization when it has merely added foreign elements; when it has done so in disjointed manner, without re formation, in formation, or integration. As such, these elements merely co exist with civilization. They do not belong organically to it. But if the civilization has succeeded in transforming them and integrating them into its system, the integrating process becomes its index of vitality, of its dynamism and creativity. In any integral civilization, and certainly in Islam, the constitutive elements, whether material, structural, or relational, are all bound by one supreme principle. In Islamic civilization, this supreme principle is tawhid. It is the ultimate measuring rod of the Muslim, his guide and criterion in his encounter with other religions and civilizations, with new facts or situations. What accords with it is accepted and integrated. What does not is rejected and condemned.

Tawhid, or the doctrine of absolute unity, transcendence, and ultimacy of God, implies that only He is worthy of worship, of service. The obedient person lives his life under this principle. He seeks to have all his acts to conform to the pattern, to actualize the divine purpose. His life must therefore show the unity of his mind and will, the unique object of his service. His life will not be a series of events put together helter skelter, but will be related to a single overarching principle, bound by a single frame that integrates them together into a single unity. His life thus has a single style, an integral form in short, Islam.

Rationalism. As methodological principle, rationalism is constitutive of the essence of Islamic civilization. It consists of three rules or laws: first, rejection of all that does not correspond with reality; second, denial of ultimate contradictories; third, openness to new and/or contrary evidence. The first rule protects the Muslim against opinion, that is, against making any untested, unconfirmed claims to knowledge. The unconfirmed claim, the Qur’an declares, is an instance of zann, or deceptive knowledge, and is prohibited by God, however slight is its object.God prohibited man from doubting his fellows in 4:156; 6:116, 148; 10:26, 66; 49:12; 53:23, 28. The Muslim is definable as the person who claims nothing but the truth. The second rule protects him against simple contradiction on one side, and paradox on the other.This Greek term has no equivalent in Arabic, which illustrates the difference between the minds behind the two languages. The Greek term refers to an irrational dogma adhered to by the Christian. Rationalism does not mean the priority of reason over revelation but the rejection of any ultimate contradiction between them.The philosophers have raised reason above revelation and have given it priority status when judging religious claims. Certainly they are wrong in doing so. The Islamic thinker is certainly capable of defining reason differently and to use his definition as premise of all other claims. The question of validity of either definition may certainly be raised, and we have no doubt regarding the philosophic viability, or reasonableness — nay, superiority! — of the Islamic definition. The definition given here, that rationalism is the rejection of ultimate self contradiction, has, in addition, the value of continuing the tradition of the righteous fathers. Rationalism studies contradictory theses over and over again, assuming that there must be an aspect that had escaped consideration and that, if taken into account, would expose the contradictory relation. Equally, rationalism leads the reader of revelation not revelation itself to another reading, lest an unobvious or unclear meaning may have escaped him that, if reconsidered, would remove the apparent contradiction. Such referral to reason or understanding would have the effect of harmonizing not revelation per se (revelation stands above any manipulation by man!) but the Muslim’s human interpretation or understanding of it. It makes his understanding of revelation agree with the cumulative evidence uncovered by reason. Acceptance of the contradictory or paradoxical, as ultimately valid, appeals only to the weak of mind. The intelligent Muslim is a rationalist as he insists on the unity of the two sources of truth, namely, revelation and reason.

The third rule, openness to new or contrary evidence, protects the Muslim against literalism, fanaticism, and stagnation causing conservatism. It inclines him to intellectual humility. It forces him to append to his affirmations and denials the phrase “Allahu a’lam“(Allah knows better!). For he is convinced that the truth is bigger than can be totally mastered by him.

As the affirmation of the absolute unity of God, tawhid is the affirmation of the unity of truth. For God, in Islam, is the truth. His unity is the unity of the sources of truth. God is the Creator of nature whence man derives his knowledge. The objects of knowledge are the patterns of nature that are the work of God. Certainly God knows them since He is their author; and equally certainly, He is the source of revelation. He gives man of His knowledge; and His knowledge is absolute and universal. God is no trickster, no malevolent agent whose purpose is to misguide and mislead. Nor does He change His judgment as men do when they correct their knowledge, their will, or their decision. God is perfect and omniscient. He makes no mistakes. Otherwise, He would not be the transcendent God of Islam.

Tolerance. As methodological principle, tolerance is the acceptance of the present until its falsehood has been established. Thus, it is relevant to epistemology. It is equally relevant to ethics as the principle of accepting the desired until its undesirability has been established.Evidence for this can be found in the verses questioning arbitrary prohibition, e.g., 5:90; 7:13; 66:1, as well as the usali (juristic) principle agreed upon by all that “Nothing is haram (prohibited) except by a text.” Consider also the verse, “God has indeed detailed for you what He has prohibited” (6:119, 153). The former is called sa’ah, the latter, yusr. Both protect the Muslim from self closure to the world, from deadening conservatism. Both urge him to affirm and say yea to life, to new experience. Both encourage him to address the new data with his scrutinizing reason, his constructive endeavor, and thereby to enrich his experience and life, to move his culture and civilization ever forward.

As methodological principle within the essence of Islamic civilization, tolerance is the conviction that God did not leave people without sending them a messenger from among themselves to teach them that there is no God but God and that they owe Him worship and service,Qur’an 6:42; 12:109; 13:40; 14:4; 15:9; 16:43; 17:77; 21:7, 25; 23:44; 25:20; 30:47; 37:72; 40:70. to warn them against evil and its causes.ibid., 4:162; 35:23. “We have sent before you [Muhammad] no prophet but We revealed to him that there is no God other than Me. Adore and serve Me.” In this regard, tolerance is the certainty that all men are endowed with a sensus communis, which enables them to know the true religion, to recognize God’s will and commandments. Tolerance is the conviction that the diversity of religions is due to history with all its affecting factors, its diverse conditions of space and time, its prejudices, passions, and vested interests. Behind religious diversity stands al din al hanif, the primordial religion of God with which all men are born before acculturation makes them adherents of this or that religion. Tolerance requires the Muslim to undertake a study of the history of religions with a view to discover within each the primeval endowment of God, which He sent all His apostles at all places and times to teach. ibid., 30:30.

In religion and there can hardly be anything more important in human relations tolerance transforms confrontation and reciprocal condemnations between the religions into a cooperative scholarly investigation of the genesis and development of the religions with a view to separating the historical accretions from the original given of revelation. In ethics, the next all-important field, yusr immunizes the Muslim against any life denying tendencies and assures him the minimum measure of optimism required to maintain health, balance, and a sense of proportion, despite all the tragedies and afflictions that befall human life. God has assured His creatures that “with hardship, We have ordained ease [yusr]. “ibid., 94:6. And as He commanded them to examine every claim and make certain before judging, ibid., 49:6. the usuliyyun (doctors of jurisprudence) resorted to experimentation before judging as good and evil anything desired that is not contrary to a clear divine injunction.

Both sa’ah and yusr devolve directly from tawhid as a principle of the metaphysic of ethics. God, who created man that he may prove himself worthy in the deed, has made him free and capable of positive action and affirmative movement in the world. To do so, Islam holds, is indeed man’s raison d’tre.See below.

Tawhid as First Principle of Metaphysics

To witness that there is no God but God is to hold that He alone is the Creator Who gave to everything its being, Who is the ultimate Cause of every event, and the final End of all that is, that He is the First and the Last. To enter into such witnessing in freedom and conviction, in conscious understanding of its content, is to realize that all that surrounds us, whether things or events, all that takes place in the natural, social, or psychic fields, is the action of God, the fulfillment of one or another of His purposes. Once made, such realization becomes second nature to man, inseparable from him during all his waking hours. One then lives all the moments of one’s life under its shadow. And where man recognizes God’s commandment and action in every object and event, he follows the divine initiative because it is God’s. To observe it in nature is to do natural science.The natural sciences did not develop until the principle was accepted that natural events constantly follow the same immutable laws. That is precisely what Islam has contributed for the development of natural science among its adherents. Its insistence on the orderliness of the cosmos under God provided the atmosphere necessary for the growth of the scientific spirit. The opposite faith, namely, that nature has no constancy but is the field of action of arbitrary deities incarnated therein, or of magical forces manipulating it, can lead to no science. For the divine initiative in nature is none other than the immutable laws with which God had endowed nature.Unlike history, which studies a particular event and analyzes it into its individual constituents and establishes their mutual relations, the natural sciences are concerned with the general pattern, the universal law applicable to all particulars of a given class, or to all members of a class, or to all classes. To observe the divine initiative in one’s self or in one’s society is to pursue the humanities and the social sciences.The same is true of the social sciences and the humanities where the object is the establishment of the laws governing or determining human behavior, individual or collective. And if the whole universe itself is really the unfolding or fulfillment of these laws of nature, which are the commandments of God and His will, then the universe is, in the eye of the Muslim, a living theater set in motion by God’s command. The theater itself, as well as all that it includes, is explicable in these terms. The unity of God means therefore that He is the Cause of everything, and that none else is so.

Of necessity, then, tawhid means the elimination of any power operative in nature beside God, whose eternal initiative are the immutable laws of nature. But this is tantamount to denying any initiative in nature by any power other than that which is innate in nature, such as magic, sorcery, spirits, and any theurgical notion of arbitrary interference into the processes of nature by any agency. Therefore, tawhid means the profaning of the realms of nature, their secularization. And that is the absolutely first condition of a science of nature. Through tawhid, therefore, nature was separated from the gods and spirits of primitive religion. Tawhid for the first time made it possible for the religio-mythopoeic mind to outgrow itself, for the sciences of nature and civilization to develop with the blessing of a religious worldview that renounced once and for all any association of the sacred with nature. Tawhid is the opposite of superstition or myth, the enemies of natural science and civilization. Tawhid gathers all the threads of causality and returns them to God rather than to occult forces. In so doing, the causal force operative in any event or object is organized so as to make a continuous thread whose parts are causally — and hence empirically — related to one another. That the thread ultimately refers to God demands that no force outside of it interferes with the discharge of its causal power or efficacy. This in turn presupposes the linkages between the parts to be causal, and subjects them to empirical investigation and establishment. That the laws of nature are the inimitable patterns of God means that God operates the threads of nature through causes. Only causation by another cause that is always the same constitutes a pattern. This constancy of causation is precisely what makes its examination and discovery — and hence, science — possible. Science is none other than the search for such repeated causation in nature, for the causal linkages constitutive of the causal thread are repeated in other threads. Their establishment is the establishment of the laws of nature. It is the prerequisite for subjecting the causal forces of nature to control and engineering, the necessary condition for man’s usufruct of nature.

Tawhid as First Principle of Ethics

Tawhid affirms that the unique God created man in the best of forms to the end of worshipping and serving Him.In accordance with the verse, “And I have not created jinn or humans but to worship and serve Me” (Qur’an 51:56). This means that man’s whole existence on earth has as its purpose the obedience of God, the fulfillment of His command. Tawhid also affirms that this purpose consists in man’s vicegerency for God on earth.As in ibid., 2:30; 6:165; 10:14. For, according to the Qur’an, God has invested man with His trust, a trust which heaven and earth were incapable of carrying and from which they shied away with fear.ibid., 33:72. The divine trust is the fulfillment of the ethical part of the divine will, whose very nature requires that it be realized in freedom, and man is the only creature capable of doing so. Wherever the divine will is realized with the necessity of natural law, the realization is not moral, but elemental or utilitarian. Only man is capable of realizing it under the possibility of doing or not doing so at all, or doing the very opposite or anything in between. It is this exercise of human freedom regarding obedience to God’s commandment that makes fulfillment of the command moral.

Tawhid affirms that God, being beneficent and purposive, did not create man in sport, or in vain. He endowed him with the senses, with reason and understanding, made him perfect ? indeed, breathed into him of His spiritAs in ibid., 15:29; 21:91; 38:72; 66:12. — to prepare him to perform this great duty.

Such great duty is the cause for the creation of man. It is the final end of human existence, man’s definition, and the meaning of his life and existence on earth. By virtue of it, man assumes a cosmic function of tremendous importance. The cosmos would not be itself without that higher part of the divine will which is the object of human moral endeavor. And no other creature in the cosmos can substitute for man in this function. Man is the only cosmic bridge by which the moral ? and hence higher ? part of the divine will may enter the realm of space?time and become history.

The responsibility or obligation (taklif) laid down upon man exclusively knows no bounds. It comprehends the whole universe. All mankind is object of man’s moral action; all earth and sky are his theater, his material. He is responsible for all that takes place in the universe, in every one of its remotest corners. For man’s taklif or obligation is universal, cosmic. It comes to end only on the Day of Judgment.

Taklif, Islam affirms, is the basis of man’s humanity, its meaning, and its content. Man’s acceptance of this burden puts him on a higher level than the rest of creation, indeed, than the angels. For, only he is capable of accepting responsibility. It constitutes his cosmic significance. A world of difference separates this humanism of Islam from other humanisms. Greek civilization, for instance, developed a strong humanism which the West has taken as a model since the Renaissance. Founded upon an exaggerated naturalism, Greek humanism deified man, as well as his vices. That is why the Greek was not offended by representing his gods as cheating and plotting against one another, as committing adultery, theft, incest, aggression, jealousy and revenge, and other acts of brutality. Being part of the very stuff of which human life is made, such acts and passions were claimed to be as natural as the perfections and virtues. As nature, both were thought to be equally divine, worthy of contemplation in their aesthetic form, of adoration — and of emulation by man of whom the gods were the apotheosis. Christianity, on the other hand, was in its formative years reacting to this very Greco-Roman humanism. It went to the opposite extreme of debasing man through “original sin” and declaring him a “fallen creature,” a “massa peccata“.To use the term of St. Augustine.

The degrading of man to the level of an absolute, universal, innate, and necessary state of sin from which it is impossible for any human ever to pull himself up by his own effort was the logical prerequisite if God on High was to incarnate Himself, to suffer, and die in atonement for man’s sinfulness. In other words, if a redemption has to take place by God, there must be a predicament so absolute that only God could pull man out of it. Thus human sinfulness was absolutized in order to make it “worthy” of the Crucifixion of God. Hinduism classified mankind into castes, and assigned the majority of mankind to the nethermost classes — of “untouchables” if they are native to India, or malitcha, the religiously unclean or contaminated of the rest of the world. For the lowest as well as for the others, there is no rise to the superior, privileged caste of Brahmins in this life; such mobility is possible only after death through the transmigration of souls. In this life, man necessarily belongs to the caste in which he is born. Ethical striving is of no consequence whatever to its subject as long as he is alive in this world. Finally, Buddhism judged all human and other life in creation as endless suffering and misery. Existence itself, it held, is evil and man’s only meaningful duty is to seek release from it through discipline and mental effort.

The humanism of tawhid alone is genuine. It alone respects man as man and creature, without either deification or vilification. It alone defines the worth of man in terms of his virtues, and begins its assessment of him with a positive mark for the innate endowment God has given all men in preparation for their noble task. It alone defines the virtues and ideals of human life in terms of the very contents of natural life, rather than denying them, thus making its humanism life-affirmative as well as moral.

Tawhid as First Principle of Axiology

Tawhid affirms that God has created mankind that men may prove themselves morally worthy by their deeds.Qur’an 11:7; 18:7; 47:31; 67:2. As supreme and ultimate Judge, He warned that all men’s actions will be reckonedibid., 9:95, 106.; that their authors will rewarded for the good deeds and punished for the evil.ibid., 99:7?8; 101:6, 11. Tawhid further affirms that God has placed man on earth that he may colonize itibid., 11:61., that is, that he may strike out on its trails, eat of its fruits, enjoy its goodness and beauty, and cause it and himself to prosper.ibid., 2:57, 172; 5:90; 7:31, 159; 20:81; 67:15;92:10. This is world?affirmation: to accept the world because it is innocent and good, created by God and ordered by Him for human use. Indeed, everything in the world, including the sun and the moon, is subservient to man. All creation is a theater in which man is to perform his ethical action and thereby implement the higher part of the divine will. Man is responsible for satisfying his instincts and needs, and every individual is responsible for the same satisfaction for all men. Man is obliged to develop the human resources of all men to the highest possible degree, that full use may be made of all their natural endowments. He is obliged to transform the whole earth into productive orchards and beautiful gardens. He may in the process explore the sun and the moon if necessary.As God had said in the Qur’an, “You may penetrate the regions of heaven and earth if you can. You will not do so except with power and authority” (55:33). Certainly he must discover and learn the patterns of nature, of the human psyche, of society. Certainly he ought to industrialize and develop the world if it is eventually to become the garden where the word of God is supreme.

Such world affirmation is truly creative of civilization. It generates the elements out of which civilizations are made, as well as the social forces necessary for its growth and progress. Tawhid is anti-monkery, anti-isolation, anti-world-denial, and anti-asceticism.Qur’an 57:27. Indeed, we stand under the divine commandment, “And do not forsake your share of this world” (28:77). God taught humans to pray to Him that they “may be granted advantage in this world as well as in the next” (2:201; 7:156). Moreover, He assured them that He will answer their prayers if they do the good deeds (16:30; 39:10). On the other hand, world affirmation does not mean unconditional acceptance of the world and nature as they are. Without a principle to check man’s implementation or realization, affirmation of the world and nature may run counter to itself by the exaggerated pursuit of any one value, element, or force, or group of them, to the exclusion of all others. Balancing and disciplining man’s pursuit so that it results in harmonious realization of all values, under the priority system properly belonging to them, rather than under any haste, passion, zeal, or blindness of man, is a necessary prerequisite. Without it, the pursuit may wreck itself in either tragedy or superficiality, or may unleash some truly demonic force. Greek civilization, for instance, exaggerated its pursuit of the world. It asserted that all that is in nature is unconditionally good and hence worthy of pursuit and realization. Hence, it declared all that is actually desired, the object of a real interest, to be ipso facto good, on the grounds that desire itself, being natural, is good. That nature often contradicts itself, that and the pursuits of such desires or elements of nature may counter one another, did not have enough appeal to warrant a revision of the first assumption. The need for a supernatural principle overarching all the tendencies and desires of nature, and in terms of their contradictions and differences may be understood, must be recognized. But instead of realizing this truth, Greek civilization was too intoxicated with the beauty of nature per se and regarded the tragic outcome of naturalism itself natural. Since the Renaissance, modern Western civilization has paid the highest regard for tragedy. Its zeal for naturalism took it to the extreme of accepting nature without morality as a supernatural condition. Since the struggle of Western man has been against the Church and all that it represents, the progress of man in science was conceived as liberation from its clutches. Hence, it was extremely hard even to conceive of world-affirmation or naturalism as attached to normative threads stretching from an a priori, noumenal, absolute source. Without such threads, naturalism is bound to end up in self-contradiction, in conflicts within itself that are ex hypothesi insoluble. The Olympus community could not live with itself in harmony and had to destroy itself. Its world-affirmation was in vain.

The guarantee of world-affirmation, which secures it to produce a balanced, permanent, self-redressing civilization, is morality. Indeed, true civilization is nothing but world-affirmation disciplined by an a priori, or supernatural, morality whose inner content or values are not inimical to life and the world, to time and history, to reason. Such morality is furnished by tawhid alone among the ideologies known to man.

Tawhid as First Principle of Societism

Tawhid asserts that “this ummah of yours is a single ummah whose Lord is God. Therefore, worship and serve Him.Qur’an 21:92; 23:53. Tawhid means that the believers are indeed a single brotherhood, whose members mutually love one another in God, who counsel one another to do justice and be patientAs Surah Al ‘Asr (103) indicates. See also 49:10.; who cling together without exception to the rope of God and do not separate from one anotheribid., 3:103.; who reckon with one another, enjoining what is good and prohibiting what is evilibid., 3:110; 5:82; 9:113; 20:54, 128.; who, finally, obey God and His Prophet.As God has commanded in the verses 3:32, 132; 4:58; 5:95; 24:54; 47:33; 64:12.

The vision of the ummah is one; so is the feeling or will, as well as the action. The ummah is an order of humans consisting of a tripartite consensus of mind, heart, and arm. There is consensus in their thought, in their decision, in their attitude and character, and in their arms. It is a universal brotherhood that knows neither color nor ethnic identity. In its purview, all men are one, measurable only in terms of piety.As the hadith said, quoting the Prophet’s farewell sermon on his last pilgrimage. By tripartite consensus we mean the sameness of vision or mind or thinking, the agreement of will or decision and intention, and the agreement of action or human arms. If any one of its members acquires a new knowledge, his duty is to teach it to the others. If any one acquires food or comfort, his duty is to share them with the others. If any one achieves establishment, success, and prosperity, his duty is to help the others do likewise.The Prophet likened the Muslims to a well-constructed building whose parts consolidate one another; and to an organic body that reacts in its totality whenever any organ or part of it is attacked.

There is hence no tawhid without the ummah. The ummah is the medium of knowledge, of ethics, of the caliphate (vicegerency) of man, of world-affirmation. The ummah is a universal order comprehending even those who are not believers. It is an order of peace, a Pax Islamica, forever open to all those individuals and groups who accept the principle of the freedom to convince and to be convinced of the truth, who seek a world order in which ideas, goods, wealth, or human bodies are free to move. The Pax Islamica is an international order far surpassing the United Nations, that child of yesteryear, aborted and warped by the principles of the nation?state and the dominion of the “big powers,” both of which are constitutive of it. These principles are, in turn, based upon “national sovereignty” as it has evolved in the ideological history of Europe since the Reformation and the demise of the ideal of the universal community the Church had so far half-heartedly carried. But national sovereignty is ultimately based on axiological and ethical relativism.

The United Nations is successful if it fulfills the negative role of preventing or stopping war between the members. Even then, it is an impotent order since it has no army except when the Security Council’s “big power” members agree to provide it ad hoc. Per contra, the Pax Islamica was laid down in a permanent constitution by the Prophet in Madinah in the first days of the Hijrah. He made it inclusive of Jews of Madinah and the Christians of Najran, guaranteeing to them their identity and their religious, social, and cultural institutions. History knows of no other written constitution that has honored the minorities as the constitution of the Islamic state has done. The constitution of Madinah has been in force in the various Islamic states for fourteen centuries and has resisted dictators and revolutions of all kinds — including Genghis Khan and Hulagu!

The ummah then is a world order in addition to being a social order. It is the basis of Islamic civilization, its sine qua non. In their representation of human reason in the person and career of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, philosophers had discovered that Hayy had by his own effort grown to the point of discovering the truth of Islam, and of tawhid, its essence. But having done so, Hayy had to invent or discover the ummah. He therefore made for himself a canoe out of a hollowed trunk and set forth on the unknown ocean, to discover the ummah without which all of his knowledge would not cohere with the truth. Tawhid is, in short, ummatism.

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August 9, 2012
On the Nature of Islamic Da’wah

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Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, has commanded the Muslim: “Call men unto the path of your Lord by wisdom and goodly counsel. Present the cause to them through argument yet more sound” (Qur’an 16: 125). Da’wah is the fulfilment of this commandment “to call men unto the path of Allah.” Besides, it is the effort by the Muslim to enable other men to share and benefit from the supreme vision, the religious truth, which he has appropriated. In this respect, it is rationally necessary, for truth wants to be known. It exerts pressure on the knower to share his vision of it with his peers. Since religious truth is not only theoretical, but also axiological and practical, the man of religion is doubly urged to take his discovery to other men. His piety, his virtue and charity impose upon him the obligation to make common the good which has befallen him.

I. Da’wah Methodology

A. Da’wah is not coercive

“Calling” is certainly not coercing. Allah (s.w.t.) has commanded: “No coercion in religion (2: 256).” It is an invitation whose objective can be fulfilled only with the free consent of the called. Since the objective is an exercise by the called of his own judgement that Allah is his Creator, Master, Lord and Judge, a forced judgement is a contradictio in adjecto and hence punishable with jahannam. Humanistic ethics regards coerced da’wah as a grave violation of the human person, second only to homicide, if not equal to it. That is why the Holy Qur’an specified the means of persuasion to be used. “Argue the cause with them [the non-Muslims] with the more comely arguments” (16: 125). If they are not convinced, they must be left alone (5: 108; 3 : 176-177; 47 : 32). Certainly, the Muslim is to try again and never give up that God may guide his fellow-man to the truth. The example of his own life, his commitment to the values he professes, and his engagement, constitute his final argument. If the non-Muslim is still not convinced, the Muslim is to rest his case with God. The Prophet himself allowed those Christians who were not convinced by his own presentation of Islam to keep their faith and return home with dignity.

From this, it follows that the societal order desired by Islam is one where men are free to present and argue their religious causes with one another. It is a kind of academic seminar on a large scale where he who knows better is free to tell and to convince, and the others are free to listen and be convinced. Islam puts its trust in man’s rational power to discriminate between the true and the false. “Truth is now manifest from error. Whoever believes [i.e. accepts the truth] does so for his own good. Whoever does not believe [i.e. does not accept the truth] does so to his own peril” (39: 41). Islamic da’wah is, therefore, an invitation to think, to debate and argue. It cannot be met with indifference except by the cynic nor with rejection except by the fool or the malevolent. If it is met by silencing force, then that force must be met by superior force. The right to think is innate and belongs to all men. No man may preemptively deny it to any human. Islamic da’wah operates only under these principles. Thomas Arnold’s The Preaching of Islam is a standing monument to da’wah written by a Christian missionary and colonialist.

The principle that Islamic da’wah is non-coercive is based upon the Qur’an’s dramatization of the justification for the creation of man. The Qur’an represents God as addressing the angels in Surat al-Baqarah, verse 30, with the words: “Lo! I am about to place a khalifah (vicegerent) on earth. The angels replied: Will You place therein one who will do harm and will shed blood, while we sing Your praise and sanctify You? He said: Surely I know that which you know not.” In another verse of the Qur’an, Surat al-Ahzab, 72, we read: “Lo! We offered Our trust to heaven and earth. They shrank from bearing it and were afraid of it. But man assumed it…” Both these statements are understood by Muslims as defining the purpose of man’s existence, namely, that he is God’s khalifah, the carrier of the responsibility entrusted to him for the fulfilment of the divine will. That will is already fulfilled in part, within nature as natural law, and not yet fulfilled in another part, by man as moral law. This constitutes man’s distinction from all other creatures. Only he acts freely and thus enables himself to actualize the moral part of the divine will. His essence is his capacity for responsible moral action. Coercion is a violation of this freedom and responsibility and is utterly inconsistent with man’s relation to the divine will.

B. Da’wah is not a psychotropic induction

It follows from the nature of the judgement that da’wah cannot have for objective anything but a conscientious acquiescence to its contents on the part of the called. This means that if the consciousness of the called is in any way vitiated by any of the common defaults or defects of consciousness, the da’wah is itself equally vitiated. Thus a da’wah that is fulfilled through, or whose fulfilment involves in any way, a lapse of consciousness, a lapse of forgetfulness, a lapse in ta’aqqul or the intellectual binding of ideas and facts so as to make a cohesive and consistent whole, or a transport of emotion and enthusiasm, a sort of “trip”, is not Islamic da’wah. Da’wah, therefore, is not the work of magic, of illusion, of excitement, or any kind of psychotropia. In such work, the subject is not in control of his power of judgement, and hence, his judgement cannot be properly said to be his “personal free judgement”.

The presence of God, that is as Ultimate Reality, Creator and Lord of the Universe, Judge and Master of all men, is a fact that can indeed enter common consciousness. Indeed, Islam holds that were consciousness to be tampered with, the object perceived would not be God, but something else. Under the tremendous impact of revelation itself, the Prophet’s consciousness neither lapsed nor became vague as in a mystical experience, but continued to function normally and was even enhanced in its clarity and perception. That is why Islamic law does not recognize the conversion to Islam of the minor child; for his consciousness is presumed immature until he comes of age.

The principle that da’wah has nothing to do with psychotropic induction preserves the freedom and consciousness of choice which cannot be affirmed in case of dilation of consciousness by chemical or mystifying means. It protects the da’wah from being conducted for pleasure, happiness, freedom from care, eudaemonia — indeed, for anything but the sake of Allah. Any ulterior motive would vitiate it in both the giver and the recipient. On the other hand, the unconscious conversion of any person who has been tricked into entering Islam is evil; more evil, of course, is the trickster.

C. Da’wah is directed to Muslims as well as non-Muslims

It follows from the divine commandment that da’wah must be the end product of a critical process of intellection. Its content cannot be the only content known, the only content presented. For there is no judgement without consideration of alternatives, without comparison and contrast, without tests of inner consistency, of general consistency with all other knowledge, without tests of correspondence with reality. It is this aspect of da’wah that earns for the called who responds affirmatively to its content the grace of Hikmah or wisdom. Allah (s.w.t.) described His prophets and saints as “Men of Hikmah” precisely because their Islam was a learned thing, not a narrow-minded addiction to a single track of thought, certainly not a “pre-judgement”. That is why da’wah in Islam has never been thought of as exclusively addressed to non-Muslims. It is as much intended for the benefit of Muslims as of non-Muslims.

Besides stemming from the fact of all men’s equal creatureliness in front of God, this universalism of da’wah rests on the identity of imperative arising out of conversion to Islam. All men stand under the obligation to actualize the divine pattern in space and time. This task is never complete for any individual. The Muslim is supposedly the person who, having accepted the burden, has set himself on the road of actualization. The non-Muslim still has to accept the charge. Hence, da’wah is necessarily addressed to both, to the Muslim to press forward toward actualization and to the non-Muslim to join the ranks of those who make the pursuit of God’s pattern supreme.

The directing of da’wah to Muslim as much as non-Muslims is indicative of the fact that, unlike Christianity, Islamicity is never a fait accompli. Islamicity is a process. It grows, and it is sometimes reduced. There is no time at which the Muslim may carry his title to paradise, as it were, in his pocket. Instead of “salvation”, the Muslim is to achieve felicity through unceasing effort.

D. Da’wah is rational intellection

Since da’wah is a critical process of intellection, it is of its nature never to be dogmatic, never to stand by its contents as if by its own authority, or that of its mouthpiece, or that of its tradition. For it to be critical means that it should keep itself always open to new evidence, to new alternatives; that it continually cast and recast itself in new forms, in cognizance of the new discoveries of human science, of the new needs of human situation. In making the da’wah, the da’iyah labours not as the ambassador of an authoritarian system, but as the co-thinker who is co-operating with the mad’u (the called) in the understanding and appreciation of Allah’s double revelation, in creation and through His Prophets. So much for the standpoint of the da’iyah.

From the standpoint of the mad’u, his process of intellection should never stop. His man should be dynamic and always growing in intensity, clarity of vision and comprehensiveness. Moreover, conversion to Islam is not a sacrament which, once it takes place, becomes an eternal fait accompli. Islam knows of no “justification by faith”, certainly of no “justification” in the sense of justi facti. If lethargic and stagnant, iman degenerates into narrow-mindedness and gradually impoverishes its subject. On the other hand, its dynamism — its openness to new knowledge, new evidence and new life-situations, new data, problems, as well as creative solutions which may or may not be derived from the tradition — makes it a source of enrichment for the subject. Fortunate is he whose iman increases in “yaqin-ness” (certitude) with every new day.

As rational intellection, da’wah shows that in Islam, faith has to do with knowledge and conviction, whereas in Christianity it is, as Pascal found out, a blind wager. The Arabic word iman does not mean “faith” as Christians use the term. Rather, it means “conviction”. It does not involve the functioning of a sacrament. There is no ex opere operata principle in Islam.

E. Da’wah is rationally necessary

Islamic da’wah is therefore the presentation of rational, i.e. critical, truth. It is not the proclamation of an event, or even of a truth (idea), but the presentation, for critical assessment as to truth value, of a proposition, a factum, which has theoretical (metaphysical) and practical (ethical) relevance for man. As to the recalcitrant will, Islam recognized it for what it is, namely, recalcitrant and delinquent, and left the subject of that will to himself until God guides him to the truth. It respected his will and his judgement and, indeed, it extended to him its protections and Pax Islamica. But it asked him to respond equally with peace and not to interfere with his neighbor’s right to listen and be convinced. Moreover, the Muslim of history has always presented his case in the open, never entered or practiced his Islam in secret. His da’wah preceded his entry onto any international or inter-religious scene. In consequence, he interpreted the killing of the da’iyah, the silencing of his da’wah, as a hostile act, a rejection of the peaceful call to reason and argument, and not merely the opposition of a recalcitrant will. That is also why, once his call is answered not with conversion but merely with “yea, I will think”, the Muslim of history has spared absolutely nothing in so presenting his argument as to make it convincing; above all, by embodying it forth in its universalism, justice and brotherhood.

That da’wah is rationally necessary is implied by the fact that in presenting its case, Islam presents it as natural or rational truth. “Rational” here means “critical”. Men differ in their use of reason but there would be no point to our dialogue unless we assume the truth to be knowable, that is, unless we believe it possible to arrive at principles which overarch our differences. Therefore, the standpoint of Islam is not an “act of faith”, but one of “conviction”. It is one of knowledge, of trust in the human power to know.

F. Da’wah is anamnesis

In commanding the Muslim to call men to the path of Allah, He (s.w.t.) did not ask him to call men to anything new, to something which is foreign or unknown to them. Islam is din al-fitrah (religio naturalis) which is already present in its fullness in man by nature. It is innate, as it were, a natural constituent of humanity. The man who is not homo religiosus, and hence homo Islamicus, is not a man. This is Allah’s branding of His creation, namely, that He has endowed all men, as His creatures, with a sensus numinus, a fitrah, with which to recognize Him as Allah (God), Transcendent Creator, Ultimate Master, and One. It is history which confirms this natural faculty with its primeval perceptions and intellections, cultivates and enriches it or warps it and diverts it from its natural goal.

Da’wah is the call of man to return to himself, to what is innate in him, to “objective” or “phenemenological” (i.e. with suspension of the indoctrinations and inculcations of history) reexamination of facts which are already given, and so in him. It is the nearest thing to Platonic anamnesis without the absurdity of reincarnation or transmigration of souls. As such, the claims of da’wah are necessarily moderate, nay humble! For the da’iyah is to do no more than the “midwife”, to stir the intellect of the mad’u to rediscover what he already knows, the innate knowledge which God has implanted in him at birth.

As anamnesis, da’wah is based upon the Islamic assertion that primeval religion or monotheism is found in every man (din al-fitrah), and that all he needs is to be reminded of it. The function of the prophets is to remind people of what is already in them. Christianity has approached this position in the literature of the Apostolic Fathers and particularly in the Enlightenment. But it receded from this position in the nineteenth century because western man was too deeply committed to his ethno-centrism to accept the universalism implied in that position. Let us remember that Immanuel Kant, the prince of the Enlightenment, held that “to be black is an argument”, and categorized the world’s races in order of ascendancy with the Europeans on top. This was a failure of nerve on the part of Christendom.

G. Da’wah is ecumenical par excellence

Islam’s discovery of din al-fitrah and its vision of it as base of all historical religion is a breakthrough of tremendous importance in inter-religious relations. For the first time it has become possible to hold adherents of all other religions as equal members of a universal religious brotherhood. All religious traditions are de jure, for they have all issued from and are based upon a common source, the religion of God which He has implanted equally in all men, upon din al-fitrah. The problem is to find out how far the religious traditions agree with din al-fitrah, the original and first religion; the problem is to trace the historical development of religions and determine precisely how and when and where each has followed and fulfilled, or transcended and deviated from, din al-fitrah. Holy writ as well as all other religious texts must be examined in order to discover what change has befallen them, or been reflected in them, in history. Islam’s breakthrough is thus the first call to scholarship in religion, to critical analysis of religious texts, of the claim of such texts to revelation status. It is the first call to the discipline of “history of religions” because it was the first to assume that all religions had a history, that each religion has undergone a development.

Islam does not claim for itself, therefore, the status of a novelty, but of a fact and dispensation at least as old as creation. The religious life of man, with all its variety across the ages is rehabilitated under this view not as a series of vagaries, but as attempts at true religion. Monotheism is said to be as old as creation.

Islamic da’wah begins by reaffirming this ultimate base as genuine and true. It seeks to complete the critical task of sifting in the accumulated traditions the wheat from the chaff. We are not impressed by the claim of latter-day ecumenists, advocates of inter-religious dialogue, toleration and co-existence, who assert the ultimacy of any religious system because it is religious. For such a claim is the absolutization of every religion’s propositions, which is nothing short of cultural relativism. Indeed, such ecumenism is non-representative of the religions which claim that what they propose is the truth, and not merely a claim to the truth among many claims. And it is rationally inconsequential because it counsels the juxtaposition in consciousness of contrary claims to the truth without the demand for a solution of their contradiction. By avoiding all these pitfalls and shortcomings, Islamic da’wah is ecumenical, if ecumenicity is to have any meaning besides kitchen cooperation among the churches.

Da’wah is ecumenical par excellence because it regards any kind of intercourse between the Muslim and the non-Muslim as a domestic relationship between kin. The Muslim comes to the non-Muslim and says “we are one; we are one family under Allah, and Allah has given you the truth not only inside yourself but inside your religious tradition which is de jure because its source is in God.”. The task of dialogue, or mission, is thus transformed into one of sifting the history of the religion in question. Da’wah thus becomes an ecumenical cooperative critique of the other religion rather than its invasion by a new truth.

II. Da’wah Content

Islam’s view of other faiths flows from the essence of its religious experience. This essence is critically knowable. It is not the subject of “paradox”, nor of “continuing revelation”, nor the object of construction or reconstruction by Muslims. It is crystallized in the Holy Qur’an for all men to read. It is clearly comprehensible to the man of today as it was to that of Arabia of the Prophet’s day (570-632 A.C.) because the categories of grammar, lexicography, syntax and redaction of the Qur’anic text, and those of Arabic consciousness embedded in the Arabic language, have not changed through the centuries. This phenomenon is indeed unique; for Arabic is the only language which remained the same for nearly two millennia, the last fourteen centuries of which being certainly due to the Holy Qur’an.Controversies have arisen, as they certainly may, in the interpretation of the Qur’anic text. What is being affirmed here is the fact that the Qur’anic text is not bedevilled by a hermeneutical problem. Differences of interpretation are apodictically soluble in terms of the very same categories of understanding in force at the time of revelation of the text (611632 A. C.), all of which have continued the same because of the freezing of the language and the daily intercourse of countless millions of people with it and with the text of the Holy Qur’an. For Muslims, this essence has been on every lip and in every mind, every hour of every day.

The essence of Islam is tawhid or the witnessing that there is no god but God. Brief as it is, this witness packs into itself four principles which constitute the whole essence and ultimate foundation of the religion.

First, that there is no god but God means that reality is dual, consisting of a natural realm, the realm of creation, and a transcendent realm, the Creator. This principle distinguishes Islam from trinitarian Christianity where the dualism of creator and creature is maintained but where it is combined with a divine immanentism in human nature in justification of the incarnation. Tawhid requires that neither nature be apotheosized nor transcendent God be objectified, the two realities ever-remaining ontologically disparate.

Second, tawhid means that God is related to what is not God as its God, that is, as its creator or ultimate cause, its master or ultimate end. Creator and creature, therefore, tawhid asserts, are relevant to each other regardless of their ontological disparateness which is not affected by the relation. The transcendent Creator, being cause and final end of the natural creature, is the ultimate Master Whose will is the religious and moral imperative. The divine will is commandment and law, the “ought” of all that is, knowable by the direct means of revelation, or the indirect means of rational and/or empirical analysis of what is. Without a knowable content, the divine will would not be normative or imperative, and hence would not be the final end of the natural; for if the transcendent Creator is not the final end of His own creature, creation must be not the purposive event consonant with divine nature but a meaningless happening to Him, a threat to His own ultimacy and transcendence.

Thirdly, tawhid means that man is capable of action, that creation is malleable or capable of receiving man’s action, and that human action on malleable nature, resulting in a transformed creation, is the purpose of religion. Contrary to the claims of other religions, nature is neither fallen or evil, nor a sort of Untergang of the absolute, nor is the absolute an apotheosis of it. Both are real, and both are good — the Creator being the summum bonum and the creature being intrinsically good and potentially better as it is transformed by human action into the pattern the Creator has willed for it. We have already seen that knowledge of the divine will is possible for man; and through revelation and science such knowledge is actual. The prerequisites of the transformation of creation into the likeness of the divine pattern are hence all, but for human resolve and execution, fulfilled and complete.

Fourthly, tawhid means that man, alone among all the creatures, is capable of action as well as free to act or not to act. This freedom vests him with a distinguishing quality, namely responsibility. It casts upon his action its moral character; for the moral is precisely that which is done in freedom, i.e., done by an agent who is capable of doing, as well as of not doing, it. This kind of action, moral action, is the greater portion of the divine will. Being alone capable of it, man is a higher creature, endowed with the cosmic significance of that through whose agency alone is the higher part of the divine will to be actualized in space and time. Man’s life on earth, therefore, is especially meaningful and cosmically significant. As Allah has put it in the Holy Qur’an, man is God’s khalifah, or vicegerent on earth.Qur’an 2:30; 6:165; 10:14, 73; 35:39; 7:68, 73; 27:62.It is of the nature of moral action that its fulfillment be not equivalent to its non-fulfillment, that man’s exercise of his freedom in actualizing the divine imperative be not without difference. Hence, another principle is necessary, whereby successful moral action would meet with happiness and its opposite with unhappiness. Otherwise it would be all one for man whether he acts, or does not act, morally. Indeed, this consideration makes judgement necessary, in which the total effect of one’s lifetime activity is assessed and its contribution to the total value of the cosmos is acknowledged, imbalances in the individual’s life are redressed and his achievement is distinguished from the non-achievement of others. This is what “The Day of Judgement” and “Paradise and Hell” are meant to express in religious language.

Fifthly, tawhid means the commitment of man to enter into the nexus of nature and history, there to actualize the divine will. It understands that will as pro-world and pro-life and hence, it mobilizes all human energies in the service of culture and civilization. Indeed, it is of its essence to be a civilizing force. In consequence, Islamic da’wah is not based upon a condemnation of the world.

It does not justify itself as a call to man to relieve himself from the predicament of an existence which it regards as suffering and misery. Its urgency is not an assumed “need for salvation” or for compassion and deliverance from anything. In this, as in the preceding aspects, Islamic da’wah differs from that of Christianity. Assuming all men necessarily to be “fallen”, to stand in the predicament of “original sin”, of “alienation from God”, of self-contradiction, self-centeredness, or of “falling short of the perfection of God”, Christian mission seeks to ransom and save. Islam holds man to be not in need of any salvation. Instead of assuming him to be religiously and ethically fallen, Islamic da’wah acclaims him as the khalifah of Allah, perfect in form, and endowed with all that is necessary to fulfill the divine will indeed, even loaded with the grace of revelation! “Salvation” is hence not in the vocabulary of Islam. Falah, or the positive achievement in space and time of the divine will, is the Islamic counterpart of Christian “deliverance” and “redemption”.

The Islamic da’wah does not, therefore, call man to a phantasmagoric second or other kingdom which is an alternative to this one, but to assume his natural birthright, his place as the maker of history, as the remolder and refashioner of creation. Equally, his joys and pleasures are all his to enjoy, his life to live and his will to exercise, since the content of the divine will is not “not-of-this-world”, but “of it”. World-denial and life-abnegation, asceticism and monasticism, isolationism and individualism, subjectivism and relativism are not virtues in Islam but dalal (misguidance). Islam stands squarely within the Mesopotamian religious tradition where religion is civilization and civilization is religion.

Finally, tawhid restores to man a dignity which some religions have denied by their representation of him as “fallen”, as existentially miserable. By calling him to exercise his God-given prerogatives, Islamic da’wah rehabilitates him and reestablishes his sanity, innocence and dignity. His moral vocation is the road to his falah. Certainly the Muslim is called to a new theocentrism; but it is one in which man’s cosmic dignity is applauded by Allah and His Angels. Christianity calls man to respond with faith to the salvific act of God and seeks to rehabilitate man by convincing him that it is he for whom God has shed His own blood. Man, it asserts, is certainly great because he is God’s partner whom God would not allow to destroy himself. This is indeed greatness, but it is the greatness of a helpless puppet. Islam understands itself as man’s assumption of his cosmic role as the one for whose sake creation was created. He is its innocent, perfect and moral master; and every part of it is his to have and to enjoy. He is called to obey, i.e. to fulfill the will of Allah. But this fulfillment is in and of space and time precisely because Allah is the source of space and time and the moral law.

Man, as Islam defines him, is not an object of salvation, but its subject. Through his agency alone the moral part, which is the higher part of the will of God, enters, and is fulfilled in creation. In a sense, therefore, man is God’s partner, but a partner worthy of God because he is trustworthy as His khalifa, not because he is pitifully helpless and needs to be “saved”.

Published in the International Review of Mission, Vol. LXV, No. 260 (October 1976), pp. 391-406

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March 10, 2010
Appendix: Dialogue On The Nature of Islamic Da’wah

Reading Time: 18 minutes
Khurshid Ahmad opened the discussion of Dr. al-Faruqi’s paper with the following prepared response. Some parts of a background paper he circulated at the consultation have also been incorporated in this final version.

Ahmad: First of all I would like to compliment Professor Isma’il al-Faruqi on his short but brilliant exposition of Islamic da’wah. This paper brings to sharp focus the real nature of the Islamic da’wah and some of its salient features. Another significant aspect of this exposition is that it also emphasizes, albeit indirectly, some important elements of the modus vivendi of the Islamic da’wah. I fully agree with the substance of Professor al-Faruqi’s argument as well as with his formulation of the issues involved.

After this introductory observation, I would like to say a few words about three aspects of Islamic da’wah, that is, its what, why and how.

The central issue, according to Islam, is not man’s need to know the person of God and to extricate himself from his vicarious predicament by seeking the grace of a saviour, but his need for hidayah (divine guidance) to enable him to know the will of God and to try to live in obedience to it. Islam means complete submission to the Divine Will and it is this harmonization of man’s will with the Divine Will that leads to real peace — peace within man’s soul, between man and man, between man and the creation and finally between man and God.

The human situation, according to the Islamic view, is exemplified in the Qur’anic narration about the creation of man. He was created to play a positive and dynamic role — that of God’s khalifah, His deputy, representative and vice-gerent on earth. He was endowed with free will, with the capacity to make moral decisions, and was given the knowledge of things, so as to make such decisions properly. He was given the opportunity to make moral decisions for himself and to show whether he can behave responsibly, fulfilling the trust put in him. The experience he had with this freedom before he came to the earth brings to light his potentialities as well as his weaknesses — his exposure to evil and the dangers of his succumbing to it, as also his innate goodness to realize his mistakes and to strive to rectify them. It is because of this human situation that man needs divine guidance — as a reminder, a protector and a guide to make the right moral decision and remain steadfast in this respect. The critical question is man’s relationship with God and in the light of that his relationship with himself, with other human beings, with the entire creation and with history.

The strategy of the hidayah is to start with giving to man the iman, that is, faith and conviction in the unity of God — in tawhid with all its ramifications. God is One. He is the Creator, the Lord, the Mercy-Giving, the Sustainer, the Nourisher, the Perfector, the Truth, the Guide, the Law-Giver, the Sovereign, the Judge, the One to whom is man’s return. God and man represent two categories and man’s success and salvation lies in accepting God as his God, as Ma’bud (the object of worship, reverence, loyalty and obedience).

God’s will is not something mysterious, unknown or vague. It is revealed in the hidayah which provides the code for human conduct, the Law, the shari’ah. Islam is a complete way of life — al-din. Acceptance of God and His hidayah results in the emergence of a community of faith. Social institutions are reared on the foundations of iman. Muslim community is an ideological entity and represents a social movement to actualize in space and time the demands of the hidayah.

Islam is not merely a metaphysical doctrine or a theology; in it emphasis is on iman as the starting point, that is a conviction and a commitment to accept God as the Lord and to submit to His Will completely. This produces a particular outlook on life. Islam also provides a complete way of life; a system with explicit criteria for right and wrong and a set of clear injunctions as to how to regulate major institutions of human society. Finally, Islam inculcates the spirit of living in God’s presence as symbolized in the Islamic value of ihsan.

In this scheme, the prophets of God were not merely passive recipients and simple communicators of divine guidance but were also assigned the responsibility of presenting before man a living model of that guidance, a model that could be followed and emulated by divine sanction. All prophets of God fulfilled this function and Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) represents the last expression of this model. The Qur’an contains the Word of God as it was revealed to the Prophet, and his sunnah provides the living model which we as Muslims try to follow and to approximate to.

This being the framework, we are now in a position to answer briefly the three questions we posed at the outset. The what of the Islamic da’wah means invitation to Islam as a faith and as a way of life, as al-din. This is an invitation to all human beings and the invitation becomes more pressing for those who respond to this call, for they have to engage themselves in an unceasing struggle to transform their own lives, individual and social, in accordance with this code of guidance. It is an invitation not only to a new iman, a new outlook in life, but also to a new order, the Islamic way of life. It is an invitation, not merely to the acceptance of a certain historical event, but to engage in a dynamic and unceasing process of understanding, training and social action, towards the transformation of human life through tarbiyah and tazkiyah, to suggest the relevant Islamic values.

The why of the da’wah can be understood by reflecting upon the framework we have discussed. Man is not self-sufficient and needs divine guidance. As Muhammad (peace be upon him) is the last Prophet, how does the mechanism for guidance operate after him? The Islamic position is that this is ensured first by the preservation of the divine guidance in its pure and pristine form in the Qur’an and secondly by making the Muslim ummah — every Muslim and all Muslims — the witness of Truth before mankind in the same way as the Prophet was a witness of the Truth unto them.1 This has also been enjoined upon the Muslims in a number of places in the Qur’an as also by the Prophet.2

Now a word about the how. Da’wah is presented primarily through conveying the message, preaching you may call it, and by practising it and as such presenting before the world its living example. Islam has ruled out techniques of coercion as instruments of da’wah. The methods it has enjoined and actualized in history are methods of communication, discussion and persuasion on the one hand, and the gravitational pull of godliness as exemplified in the lives of the people and realized in the social order. There is no professional class of priests or preachers in Islam. Every Muslim is responsible for the da’wah whatever be his vocation in life.

Fitzgerald: I would like to ask for clarification of Dr al-Faruqi’s statement that Islamic da’wah is ecumenical par excellence, by virtue of its comprehensive recognition of all the religions as de jure. In fact, what is meant by all religions? Having recourse to Apollo and other gods and goddesses is a kind of religion, but would Islam recognize this as well as all other religions as de jure.

al-Faruqi: Islam recognizes all religions as de jure, and then it invites the adherents of these religions to begin the task of criticism. No religion is ruled out by the Muslim a priori. In other words, if I meet someone who has never heard of Islam and who worships, for example, an “X” or “Y”, whatever that may be, I as a Muslim am not free to call him a pagan, or to regard him as condemned by God; rather, I must talk with him in order to discover what his religion is, in the belief that God must in His mercy have sent a prophet to him, for the Qur’an says: “And there is no people unto whom God has not sent a prophet” (Q. 35: 24).

Believing then that God in His mercy must have told him something, I meet with him with a view to being instructed about his faith, and then I invite him to research his own tradition in order to discover the essential message that God has given him. And if, in relation to that central revealed core, the rest of the beliefs and practices of that religion as developed through history turn out to be a pack of lies, that would be an empirical discovery for me. But for the Muslim this must never be an a priori decision which condemns a man because he doesn’t believe “in my God my way”!

However, if I discover that another man’s religion has been corrupted and falsified beyond recognition, then I have a duty to tell him about the Qur’an, God’s final revelation, to present it to him as rational truth, and invite his consideration. If he says, “I don’t want to listen”, then either he is malevolent or a fool.

Cragg: What you are saying, then, is that God has sent prophets everywhere, but ex hypothesi these prophets must be consistent with Islam.

al-Faruqi: Yes, Islam as religio naturalis, din al-fitrah.

Cragg: But that which in Buddhism is antithetical to Islam and to rationalism is not simply chaff mixed with wheat, if I may put it that way; it is the very wheat of Buddhism. By your analysis here it must then have been a false prophecy which brought the Buddhist to that belief.

al-Faruqi: I won’t say a false prophecy. I would say that a true revelation through an authentic prophet has been thoroughly falsified.

Fitzeragld: But by what historical criteria is the “true” prophet to be identified? And where is the “true” prophecy of which you speak within Buddhism?

al-Faruqi: I don’t know, but it can be researched; the fact that I assume it to be there at the origin is at least a good step in the direction of ecumenical tolerance.

Ahmad: It is very possible that rudiments of the true prophecy are to be found even in some pagan religions.

Cragg: It seems rather an escape hatch of a theory, because if a prophet is really a prophet then his message becomes known, it is balagh, communication; and if it has not survived historically it must be mythical.

al-Faruqi: No. At one time it was known. But then later on it became falsified as the Hebrew message became falsified, and the Christian message was falsified.

Cragg: But from an historical point of view that would be entirely conjectural.

The discussion then turned to Dr al-Faruqi’s point that Islamic da’wah is “rational intellection”.

Cragg: Going back to your exegesis of the verse in Surat al-Ahzab, we take the point that there is a kind of natural Islam of nature — that is, islam with a small “i”, as it were — and there is a volitional Islam, on the part of man. But in the conclusion of that verse, after man has accepted the trust, the Qur’an says: “Indeed he is a wrong doer and rebellious” — which is what the Psalms describe when they speak of the “froward”, i.e. both ill-advised and obstinate. It is this area that I am so deeply concerned about in your paper because, if I may put it this way, there is a certain naivete about principles of reason, and about your alternative of the world being either full of fools or of people who are prepared to be persuaded. Is there not a third possibility that there is a kind of quality of … perverseness? — for which law, exhortation, argument, do not suffice. Indeed they may provoke the very disobedience they condemn. Could it not be that it is this perversity of man which is implied in that particular verse in the Qur’an? There seems to be a real emphasis upon man as being in trust and at the same time distorting the trust he was given; the trust, if you like, is simply the context of the distortion. Your paper, in its very real concern which we all share for a right and true humanism, neglects this dimension which, perhaps in some emphases exaggeratedly, nevertheless essentially has been at the core of the Christian tradition about man, and the sense of the divine responsibility which Christians understand in terms of that saving intervention which you say is psychotropic folly…or whatever.

al-Faruqi: Since we understand the purport of this verse as being to stress the moral aspect of the will of God, it stands to reason that the violation of it is mentioned in the verse rather than its realization. But the realization is mentioned in many other verses in the Qur’an. The concern here is not really with man’s violation as something necessary, but with man’s violation as something real. Nobody can deny that men sin and do evil. They are not angels. In the other verse of the Qur’an which I quoted, the angels actually argue with God that men will sin. But God says that He has a motive in creating man which the angels do not know. The difference between Islam and Christianity is still very great here. Islam recognizes the universality of sin, and God deals with it by sending down the Qur’an. He commands the Muslims to continue to deal with it by da’wah. But the concept of the necessity of sin, the fallenness of man, has nothing to do with Islam. To read in this verse any such meaning would be contrary to the meaning intended and the unanimous wisdom of fourteen centuries of Islamic thought.

Fitzgerald: Does the term “rational intellection” refer only to the da’wah itself or does it include also the response to da’wah? And of what nature is this response? Is it in any way comparable to “conversion”? In certain Christian religious philosophies, for example Thomism or Neo-Thomism, there is something similar to the idea of din al-fitrah. Man is said to be capable of the infinite; he does not have a limited horizon, but is always striving to surpass the horizon. But he is faced by a fundamental choice — he has to choose the good which is outside himself, and this is an option which has to be confirmed throughout the whole of life. If a man stops, and turns in on himself, then he is refusing his own nature. Now this sense of conversion has been described by C. S. Lewis in his autobiography as “joy”, which includes an element of ecstasy. It is not therefore entirely rational, but this does not mean to say that it is irrational, rather that it is non-rational.

Bishop Rudvin took the discussion back to Dr. al-Faruqi’s comments about the Christian idea of sin.

Rudvin: Comment has recently been made on the dogma of original sin. Now I was brought up in the Christian denomination — Lutheran — which has probably been the most emphatic in its insistence upon the dogma of original sin, and I would say that Dr al-Faruqi’s understanding of it is not really correct. He infers that it is a necessary trait of creation, but this is exactly what it is not. The whole conception of original sin, or the fall, in Christianity is an insistence that man’s empirical situation today, which is hopeless and sinful, is not a part of creation. The dogma about original sin means that we see man as he is empirically, and we emphatically deny that he was created that way.

al-Faruqi: But you define the state of innocence as Adam before the fall —well, that is not history, and what troubles me is that Christianity declares all men to be sinful in essence throughout the entire history of creation. The fall in Christian thought means that all men are by nature sinful, not just that all men sin in the same way as we might say that all men have noses! The fall means guilt, crime, and Christianity seems to condemn all men as being necessarily criminals, necessarily guilty.

Rudvin: But here you are presenting your own conclusions as the substance of Christian doctrine. I would summarize the whole doctrine of original sin like this: we recognize that empirical and practical man is in an awful mess, and all men are in the same mess, and have been throughout history, but we deny — or we insist, we cry out — that this is not what man was created to be. Man is not a sinner of necessity, but by his own will.

Sanneh: I would like to approach this issue from another direction —from the angle of revelation. The problem of revelation is not just the question of divine initiative — God willing and wanting to reveal himself to man in the form of a code of laws — but it is also intertwined with the problem of human volition and how man has resisted, indeed rebelled against, and sometimes persecuted the spokesmen of God, the prophets. Muhammad came as a reminder, certainly, which underscores the idea of Islam as din al-fitrah; but he came also as a warner — a warner because man is recalcitrant, a disputatious being who will argue with the divine initiative and struggle against it. The Qur’an itself accepts the problem that to secure man’s obedience is itself a highly ambiguous and problematic issue, because the intent to seek man’s obedience carries with it the risk of man’s refusing to give his obedience.

In answer to Dr Sanneh, Dr al-Faruqi opened up an area of fascinating discussion:

al-Faruqi: You spoke of God “willing and wanting to reveal Himself to man”. God does not reveal Himself. He does not reveal Himself to anyone in any way. God reveals only His will. Remember one of the prophets asked God to reveal Himself and God told him, “No, it is not possible for Me to reveal Myself to anyone.”

Cragg: Do you make this distinction absolute? Is not the will expressive of the nature?

al-Faruqi: Only the nature in percipe. In other words, the will of God is God in percipe — the nature of God in so far as I can know anything about Him.

This is God’s will and that is all we have — and we have it in perfection in the Qur’an. But Islam does not equate the Qur’an with the nature or essence of God. It is the Word of God, the Commandment of God, the Will of God. But God does not reveal Himself to anyone. Christians talk about the revelation of God Himself—by God of God — but that is the great difference between Christianity and Islam. God is transcendent, and once you talk about self-revelation you have hierophancy and immanence, and then the transcendence of God is compromised. You may not have complete transcendence and self-revelation at the same time.

Cragg: But no more can you have complete transcendence and creation.

al-Faruqi: Yes, you can. Because creation is, in the Qur’an’s words, kun fa yaqun, “be and it is”. Creation is a commandment of God (Q. 3:41 et. al.).

Cragg: Yes, but the creation of man is an involvement of the divine will with the human answer, as Dr Sanneh has been arguing. And therefore it is possible to say that to some extent the transcendent is now in the custody of man.

al-Faruqi: But God created creation by His command. I as a creature have no right to inflate myself and the rest of creation to such a degree as to say that without His creation God would flounder.

Cragg: But if I may say so modestly, you proceed into an extravagance. The point we are trying to get at is whether in Islam there is a divine responsibility — as I believe there is — and I believe this binds Christians and Muslims very closely together — a divine responsibility relating to this creation and to man in particular. This is, I believe, the proper corollary of a belief in creation, and of a belief in revelation and the succession of prophets. God cares about being obeyed and seeks the obedience through the sequence of prophets. Now we on the Christian side are going to go further and say: Yes, God seeks this obedience in redemptive terms. But I’ll leave that aside for the moment. The principle must surely be established that the will of God is involved in the creation, and therefore involved in man the creature, offering him the trust (amanah) and giving him the vice-gerency (khilafah). God, so to speak, has gone out on a limb. The omnipotence of God is, we could say, in a certain sense compromised, to the extent that an element of what this omnipotence is seeking is now squarely entrusted to man.

al-Faruqi: Not really. I as a human being can create a computer or an automaton to do certain things and not to do other things, but the existence of the automaton is certainly no compromise of my own inventive power or my superior mind.

Cragg: But your analogy breaks down. Man is not a computer. As you yourself said in an earlier session, he is a volitional being and what is required of him is a volitional Islam. This cannot be automatic, for it must always turn upon the will of man.

Ahmad: I do not see the logic of saying that because God has created man as a volitional being His Omnipotence and Sovereignty are in any way compromised. God can be caring. God is caring. But that doesn’t mean that He abandons part of His Sovereignty or Transcendence. On the one hand, as we find in the Qur’an, God is caring and loving — Rahman, Rahim, Wadud— and He desires man’s obedience and worship; but on the other hand the Qur’an also makes it clear that God is in no way dependent or in need of man’s worship. If men refuse to worship God and to obey Him, God is not affected. It is not God Who seeks completion in our worship, but rather we who seek completion through worshipping Him.

Cragg: Now we have really come to something which is crucial. In my view if you want an unmitigated transcendence, then you have got to go to Buddhism where the absolute is totally dissociated from the immanent and historical. But unmitigated transcendence for me is a contradiction in terms. I have introduced the term “compromise”, which is an unfortunate term because it suggests bargaining with truth. But if we are going to use this word, then it would seem to me that an indifferent transcendence would be the compromise. It is not that God cares and comes that compromises him. The abeyance of this would compromise him because it would be a kind of abdication.

If I may say so, it seems to me that what we have to try to do is to think more deeply about what we mean by omnipotence. Omnipotence is not the ability to do all things, but rather the ability to be undefeated. It means that God will subdue all things unto himself. It means a final competence. But having said this, I as a Christian am of the conviction that there are certain things about which we can say: “God ought”. I find it a terribly desolating and finally contradictory concept to believe in unobligated deity. That is deism. Theism, to which we here are all committed, must mean divine involvement for this, as I have said, is implicit in creation itself. You cannot create and be as if you hadn’t. You cannot have law and be indifferent to what happens to it. You cannot educate and be indifferent to what is happening in education. The whole succession of prophets seems to argue a divine solicitude; jahiliyyah matters. If you have a false God it matters. Now this is not a fiction; it is not a play on words. God is involved in wrong that jahiliyyah does to him. I would say that this is where, if we are open together, Islam has to be open at a deep level to what Christians are saying, just as we Christians want to be open to what you are saying. Can we think of the Allahu akbar as a genuine accountability and responsibility to the human situation? Is not that within the meaning of transcendence?

al-Faruqi: No. Allah is not responsible for our misdeeds.

Cragg: … If he isn’t, quite simply I would prefer to be an atheist. An indifferent or a silent heaven…

al-Faruqi: I would deny accountability or responsibility on the part of God for my misdeeds. I do not mean to say that God is indifferent, that God is a cynic. Of course He cares. But God has given me freedom and moral responsibility. He has given me all the equipment needed for knowing His will, and even if I am lethargic of mind He has given me the quick rule of thumb by which to know His will — the shari’ah, the law, which I can read easily in books. Now if it is my will, despite all this, to disobey Him, then I am responsible and I have to bear the burden — not God. How can the Judge, how can the Source of the law, how can the King be responsible for the misdeeds of the subject? But of course if His citizenry turns out to be gangsters, He will use His authority as Judge and King. Men do fail in their responsibilities — this is an incontrovertible, empirical fact — and Islam recognizes it fully. The Qur’an tells us that God is Merciful, and that it is out of His mercy and grace that He has given us revelation through the prophets in order to correct us.

Cragg: Well, I think that we are agreed that transcendence is not non-involvement. What is at issue is the degree of this involvement…

al-Faruqi: The kind of involvement…not the degree. The nature of involvement.

Cragg: But the Qur’an says kataba ‘aid nafsihi al-rahmah — “He has written the mercy upon his soul” (Q. 6: 12). Now that is a verse which takes the will of God into the nature of God. Let’s take the metaphor of a shepherd, for example. What is the degree of his responsibility? We think of shepherd-hood as requiring the utmost of exposure, search, compassion, concern, and would not think a shepherd responsible if he were to say: “Here I have got a fold, and I will sit in it folding my hands.” However, whatever a shepherd does under the constraint of his nature is not limitation: it is fulfilment. It would be the repudiation of this which would constitute limitation.

Here we are talking about the degree of the divine relationship to the human predicament. On the one hand you say there is a divine involvement because God cares about man, but his relationship is didactic, hortatory, educational — revelatory in terms of propositions. But is there the possibility of a relationship more tragic, more compassionate? We are not wanting to say that God is less great but differently greater. Now let God be God. It is possible that you can be found forbidding things to God in the interest of what you think is his dignity, and we ought to beware of this.

al-Faruqi: I am forbidding man, not forbidding God.

Cragg: But you are forbidding God, implicitly at least, for you say there are things that it is not appropriate for God to do. You are forbidding God the sovereign freedom of manifesting his transcendence in whatever way he choose — which may be to condescend to man’s condition in terms of incarnation. What I am saying is, let God himself be the arbiter of what is appropriate to transcendence. This is all I am pleading for.

al-Faruqi: What does this mean, “Let God be the arbiter of his transcendence”? After all there is this revealed text in the Qur’an which says: laisa kamithlihishay — “there is nothing like unto Him” (Q. 42: 11). It is we who must beware of what is appropriate when talking about God and about transcendence.

Rudvin: If care means that you are really involved, then what you care for affects you…it may even hurt you and cause you to suffer.

Ahmad: Again you are treating God at a human level.

al-Faruqi: In no way can God be hurt. If you want to use the word “hurt” poetically, maybe I will wink my eye and let it go…with plenty of poetry! But if you start saying that something hurts God, therefore He has to take action, then I say that you are putting a condition upon the divinity of God.

Cragg: But if you say anything about God, if you use any human description of him, then you are by implication making God share in humanness. So you are involved in the paradox if you are to use the divine names at all. This is not at stake between us. Once again, the question is the degree to which one can interpret the status of the divine self-spending, which is the heart of the Christian faith — “Being in the form of God he took upon himself the form of a servant”. You mentioned kingship a moment ago. We have a marvelous example of kingship in Shakespeare in Henry V, when the king lays the crown aside and shows a simple concern to get alongside the common soldier in a dire situation. Is this less kingly than sitting in the palace on a throne? I think most of us would agree that it is not.

Al-Faruqi: No, it is not less kingly but the how of it needs to be specified. If you are saying that the king next started polishing the soldier’s shoes and carrying his ordinance box, then this is not kingly. But remember that a Muslim believes that God is nearer to him than his jugular vein, and that our success is dependent upon Him. But to interpret this as a specific reduction of God’s transcendence is not permissible.

Cragg: Reduction is not permissible certainly, but this is not reductionist. This is the whole point.

Published in the International Review of Mission, Vol. LXV, No. 260 (October 1976), pp. 391-406

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March 10, 2010
Review of “Islam: A Challenge to Religion” by Ghulam Ahmad Parwez

Reading Time: 2 minutesIslam: A Challenge to Religion by Ghulam Ahmad Parwez.
Idara-e-Tulu-e-Islam: Lahore, pp. 392
Review by Isma’il Raji al-Faruqi

The author of this book is famous for his “Abandon of the Hadlth and return to the Qur’an,” the central theme of the Association for the Reemergence of Islam (Tulu-e-Islam) of the last three decades, of which he is the founder. His call has appealed especially to the learned civil servants of Pakistan, who flocked to his durbar in Gulberg (Lahore) every Sunday to hear the teacher expose his views. Anxious, like all Muslim modernists, to break out from under the deposits of centuries of deadening conservatism and Sufism, Parwez sought an anchor for the creativity and dynamism of this generation and found it in the Qur’an if approached in abstraction from the Hadith, the base of most Islamic laws and popular beliefs. His views he elaborated in his 30-volume Qur’anic study, Mafhum-ul-Qur’an and a periodical carrying the name of the movement.

The present work, the author’s first in English, undertakes to substantiate a classic Islamic claim, popularized anew by Muhammad Iqbal, that Islam is “a protest against all religions in the old sense of the term.” The opposition is between Islam as din and as madhhab, or cumulative tradition, which Parwez also calls priestcraft, recalling Khalid Muhammad Khalid’s critique of the 1950s (Min Huna Nabda’). The opposition is equally between Islam as din and the religions of the world, which Parwez surveys under the categories, religion’s idea of itself, of man, divine guidance, divine law, salvation, survival, economic and political order, war and peace, rise and fall of nations, woman, the environment — which are also titles of separate chapters.

Parwez’s forte is not his analyses of the religions, which are anyhow subsidiary to his thesis. Rather, it is in his attempt to separate the core from the chaff in the Islamic tradition. Here, his choice of the term din and its contrast with madhhab is not felicitous. For the Qur’an does apply the former to non-Muslims and makes no use of the latter. The contrast would have been better stated between din (religion), and al-din (the religion, or better still, Ur-Religion). The concept of Ur-Religion is certainly Qur’anic; for the Islamic theory of revelation leaves no room for doubt that God’s religion, which has been repeatedly revealed to mankind and repeatedly distorted, misinterpreted and its Scriptures tampered with by the priests of all nations, has once and for all been communicated in its pristine purity and comprehensiveness to the last of the Prophets, Muhammad.

The core of Islam is, according to Parwez, a system of “permanent values” whose translation into prescriptive legislations admits of infinite variety and creativity, and whose main object is to guide “the conduct of affairs concerning the individual as well as the collective of human beings in order to harness the forces of nature for the development of his own self and the larger community of mankind; (p. 355)… to rid the entire world…of all (its) travails and troubles…(p. 357) and, since “the permanent values” include the moral, to achieve for all men “the very life of Jannah on the earth” as well as in the hereafter (p. 359).

Certainly, this is a welcome contribution to the literature of Islamic modernism and is a representative statement of Muslim modernist thought.

Isma’i’l R. al Faruqi
Temple University

May 2, 2009
Islam and the Tehran Hostages

Reading Time: 5 minutesCertainly no Muslim may question the following principles, since they are Qur’anic and the Qur’an is for Muslims the only ultimate authority. These principles are not unique to Islam; rather, they represent some of the highest ethical standards of other human civilisations.

1. Islam advocates a very personal, individualist ethic. “No soul may be charged with more than it can bear…No soul may be charged with the sin of another…To every person belongs what he/she has wrought and earned” (Qur’an 2:286 ; 6:164;: 53:39). These precepts have barred from the religious consciousness of Muslims any suggestion of vicarious guilt or vicarious atonement.

2. Islam does not distinguish between humans and advocates a comprehensive universalism. The world community of Islam has integrated almost all the ethnic identities of earth into a single brotherhood governed by one law. “We created you from a single pair and made you tribes and nations that you may cooperate with and complement one another. Nobler among you is only the more righteous.” The Prophet admonished his people: “No Arab has priority over a non-Arab, and no white over a black and no black over a white –except in righteousness” (49:13).

3. Islam is neither a religion of revenge nor one that teaches to turn the other cheek. The Biblical law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth holds good for it, along with the teaching of forgiveness and magnanimity which it recommends. “If you are aggressed upon, attack the aggressor in the same measure with which he aggressed upon you… If the aggression stops, remember that God is forgiving and merciful” (2: 194, 192)

4. Property is sacred. Even to enter another’s house without permission of its owner is a crime. Gifts made to public officials belong to their offices, not their persons. Theft, in any form, is punished by cutting off of the hand (5:41). This severity reflects Islam’s strict commitment to the notion of private property and its indignation at any violation of it.

5. Further, Islam teaches that humans are innocent, not fallen; that they are created in the best of forms, capable of doing good as well as evil. The Qur’an declares that every human is born with a natural predilection to recognize God. His moral law and to incline to its fulfillment (30:30). This purpose, which the Qur’an calls “al amanah.” or the divine trust, provides meaning to human life and assigns to the actions of men and women cosmic significance (33:72).

By virtue of this, humans are held in Islam higher than the angels (2:34). “Whoever kills one man,” the Qur’an asserts, “has killed the whole of humanity, and whoever has saved one man has saved humanity’” (5:32). There can be no better basis than this for human rights and dignity.

6. Islam is a religion of justice. Human worth is measured in works and achievements. “Every atom’s weight of good or evil work is registered and on the Day of Judgment will be revealed and reckoned for or against ts author” (99:7-8). The very purpose of creation is that humans may prove themselves in their deeds. Life is a race in which those who do the good deeds will be the felicitous both in this world and the next. Blest or unblest, every person gets exactly what he deserves.

7. Islam affirms every person’s responsibility for history. God has placed humanity within a malleable creation which He made subservient to them (14:32; 22:65). and equipped them with all the faculties necessary to transform creation as well as themselves into the ideal (90:8-10). Religion has no meaning in Islam other than this transformation, every act of which is an act of worship.

Humans are expected to take history into their hands and knead it into what it ought to be. Realization of the absolute is not an eschatological hope, but the object of an activist engagement in life’s real processes. That is why the Muslim regards himself as responsible for justice throughout the world as well as at his own family home.

These principles of ethics constitute the bases of Islamic international law. which Muslim jurists have developed and applied a millennium before Grotius, father of European international law. International trade and diplomacy, war and peace, citizens in states not their own. tariffs and douanes (Arabic terms!), embassies and naturalization, transit and visits, etc. — all these were subjects of very elaborate legislation, and they constitute materials in any Muslim legal training. The dominant objectives here as elsewhere are justice, as well as liberty and dignity for all.

Inspired by Islam, the recent Iranian revolution has made Iran leap toward the restoration of liberty and dignity to the Iranian people whose human rights were openly violated, and whose wealth was plundered by the Shah and his regime. The hope of Iran to become an Islamic state is a hope for an open society where law is supreme and humans are equal: where government is for the commonweal but under the law: where society is internationalized by commitment to universal ends, to a world order of brotherhood and cooperation.

What does such an Islamic state and, behind it, Islamic law say about the hostages of Tehran? They say unequivocally that the restriction of the physical freedom of any human is forbidden, except where that human is personally involved in crime. The employees of an embassy in a foreign capital do not fall in this category. Hence, in the eye of Islamic law, the seizure of U.S. embassy employees tn Tehran is illegitimate and unacceptable. Indeed. Islamic law recognizes that foreign envoys in the Islamic state enjoy full personal immunity and may not be treated except as envoys. They cannot be incarcerated or executed; they can only be expelled. However, if their conduct brings material damage to the Islamic state or its citizens, they will have to compensate for the damage inflicted.

The Islamic law of nations equally condemns the harboring of criminals and of stolen wealth. There can be no doubt that the Shah, despite his longstanding friendship with the U.S.. has personally ordered the perpetration of innumerable crimes for which he ought to be brought to justice. And there can be no doubt that he and his entourage, have illegitimately appropriated billions of dollars from the public national wealth of Iran, which ought to be restored to the Iranian people.

These charges stand at the root of that unfortunate downward spiral of action and reaction into which Iran and the U.S. have been thrown. True, it is the tradition of America to be the haven for the oppressed of the world, a tradition which gives us due pride. But it is a travesty to invoke that tradition to give harbor to criminals, or to share with them their stolen wealth.

If, after all that has been said, seen and heard, the criminality of the Shah is contested and his facing justice is denied, it reflects our inability to distinguish between the sufferers of injustice and its perpetrators. For us Americans, this inability should be a far more serious matter than the whole affair of the Shah and his billions. It joins forces with Watergate to corrode the moral fiber of our society. Imperceptible as the corrosive change may be, its cumulative effect will adversely affect our future as surely as it did the fate of the ancient Roman Empire.

From “Islam and the Tehran Hostages,” The Wall Street Journal (November 28, 1979): 24. For a background on the Iran hostage crisis, read here for details.

May 1, 2009
The Nation-State and Social Order in the Perspective of Islam

Reading Time: 20 minutes
I. The Family: First Level of Social Organization

Human association has had a long history in which three institutions had struggled to dominate. The first is the family, which has blood and heredity for bases. The characteristics it engenders in humans are innate and immutable. Indeed, they are constitutive of the relationship. Certainly family-living engenders in humans other characteristics which are acquired through association. These, however, are not necessary. Members born to one family may successfully be brought up as members of another; but the innate characteristics remain unchanged. The family was declared by God an intrinsic order of creation. “O Humankind, revere your Lord Who created you of a single soul and created of it its spouse…It is of God’s providing that He created of yourselves spouses in whom to find quiescence, and established between you love and compassion…that He generated from you and your spouses your children and grandchildren.” Qur’an 4:1; 16:72; 30:21 Parents, their children and grandchildren, and the love and compassion relation between them, constitute an immutable pattern of God in creation. This is the family in its nuclear and extended forms spanning three generations. Islam not only acknowledges it but has girded it with law. Unlike any other social system, the law of Islam articulated the relations of all members of the extended family in order to insure proper functioning of all of them. Marriage and divorce, legitimacy and dependency, earnings and support, inheritance, and the members’ mutual rights and duties have been detailed by the shari’ah. Matters which are not dealt with by any law, hardly ever considered by custom, or spoken of in public (e.g., the sex relations between the spouses) – let alone the more common affairs of everyday living – have also been defined by Islamic law in terms of rights obligations. Justice and equity are as much involved here as in any other human transaction. Delinquency may be established with precision, and dealt with effectively. On top of all the laws, stands the divine commandment that mutual love and compassion, kindness and gentleness, and what is usually normative (al ma’ruf – Qur’an 2:180, 228, etc.) should govern all intra-family relations.

The extent of the extended family is three generations inclusive of all members. Although Islamic law left open the possibility to include members of other generations as need and the particulars of the case dictate, it assumed that those are included who can effectively eat from one kitchen and live in one estate. It assumed that through their shared living, which is possible for three generations but extremely difficult for more, the feelings of love, compassion and ma’ruf proper to the relation could be effectively maintained. The extended family is therefore the area where immutable factors constitute the sufficient reason for human association and where promoting these factors and using them as criteria of desirability or ethicality is legitimate and indeed commendable. It is not ethically improper to love one’s spouse, one’s children, one’s brothers and sisters, one’s grandparents and grandchildren, one’s uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces because they are the relatives. To love them for their wisdom or piety or achievement is worthy but additional. Indeed, it is not ethically improper to define the effective association to promote their welfare, to the exclusion of all other humans is ethically desirable.

II. The Tribe or Nation: Second Level of Social Organization

The second institution to dominate human association is the ethnic community or unit; and its pursuit is ethnocentrism.

A. The Ethnocentric Claim

Ethnocentrism is the view that man is definable in terms of the ethnic entity to which he belongs; that the good of the ethnic entity is the ultimate criterion of good and evil; and that humans ought to be guided in their conduct on earth by ethnic realities and values as principles. The ethnic entity is the tribe or nation. Its existence is necessary and justifiable by virtue of the biological, geographic, psychic, historical and political facts on which it rests.

1. The Biological Base

The biological basis consists of qualities which physical anthropologists study – the color of the skin, the shape of facial and skull bones, the form of eyes, nose and mouth, bodily build, and other innate physical characteristics inseparable from the person. These, every humans gets neither by decision nor achievement. They are simply given by God at birth. Whether they are of this or that variety is neither the work nor the decision of the creature, but of the Creator. It is He Who determines them for all humans. But they belong to the first level of social organization, viz., the family. They are not true of all members of the tribe or nation, though they are necessarily of them outside the family. However, the farther one moves from the family, the more diffuse these characteristics become and the less predictable. Only racists would claim such innate characteristics to belong necessarily to all members of the group – the tribe or nation – which they call “the race”. But their claim is false.

2. The Geographical Base

Humans, it is affirmed, live not nowhere, but somewhere, within a definable territory. The tribe/nation lives on land endowed with its own topography, location, aridity or fertility, its flora and fauna, its mountains and forests, its rivers and deserts, its lakes and seas. Tribes or nations differ from one another territorially. Their lands are separated from each other by physical boundaries (rivers, mountains and seas) or by imaginary political lines created by man (barbed wire fences, walls, etc.).

True as this may be, human belonging to a territory is not necessary. Human history has known many massive migrations of peoples from one territory to another. Modern technology, transportation and communication are making it more and more possible for humans to change territories at will. There is no necessity to one’s continuing to live in the village, city or province of one’s birth. The fact that a person was born, or resides, in a given territory does not define him; nor does it determine his worth as a human. The enlandisement of man is a debasement of him; for it defines or evaluates the person in terms of an accident of birth or history; and commits the reductionist fallacy by doing so in terms of that which must needs to be evaluated rather than provide the criterion of evaluation. Just as humans are not definable, and far less subject of evaluation, by what they eat or put on, they are no more so by the real estate the occupy or the street address they occupy. It is far more becoming to define humans by the highest principles they acknowledge and by which they order their lives – namely, by their ideology or religion.

3. The Psychological Base

The tribe/nations is equally claimed to rest on a common psyche shared by all the members. This consists of psychic qualities such as language and dialect, habits of mind and perception, taste and sense of beauty, customs and mores, sense of humor and levels of concern and responsiveness. These shared characteristics, it is claimed, constitute “national character,” a “national ego or psyche,” distinguishing one tribe/nation from another and justifying its distinction from all others. The essence and value of a person are functions of his instantiation of national character, of his concretization of the national ego.

Language, dialect, and customs, as well as the sense of humor and beauty, may well be shared by members of a tribe/nation. Their sharing, however, is not innate, but acquired. It is the result of many years of acculturation and socialization, of formation by the group, which may succeed in making the person an instance of the homogeneous group, and may not succeed. “National character” therefore is not so much as a reality as it is a generalization. It is a hypothesis based upon a percentage, a certain frequency of occurrence. It is not necessary. Moreover, it is not an intrinsic good, but an instrumental one, deriving its value from the deeds of morality to which it prepares the individual, if at all. It is neither universal nor necessary. Moreover, its presence proves no more than its instantiation in the person, leaving that person’s moral worth or unworth utterly untouched, a perfect “specimen” of its embodiment maybe compared to a bow ready for the arrow. But nobody mistakes the bow for the hunter, or confuses their different values.

4. The Historical Base

The experiences which befall humans accumulate, and confirm one another. Eventually, they build up a tradition. Tradition constitutes a fiduciary framework which affects the members of a tribe/nation, and determines their perception of their past, present and future as well as their conduct. It generates in them a feeling of continuity with previous generations, of belonging to one another’s contemporaries, and a capacity to bear events and forge a future continuous with the past. Tradition is essential for the tribe or nation and indeed, constitutive. It not only distinguishes the nations from one another, but indicates their individual and comparative worth. It may well then provide the criterion of worth and unworth for persons inasmuch as their belonging to this or that tradition makes them members of this or that tribe or nation and predetermines their conduct.

History, and the tradition it builds, are perhaps the most important elements justifying the tribe or nation. Certainly, history is one of the factors which cause the group to emerge as a separate entity by its disciplining, instructing and homogenizing effect. But it is not the only agent. Nor does it determine conduct with necessity. A critical view of one’s history and tradition is not only possible but necessary for any significant human advance. Otherwise, life becomes too repetitious to be interesting. Moreover, great revolutions would be inconceivable; and so would massive conversion to a new faith. Where history is the criterion the present and future can be only a replica or taqlid. Where history and tradition are material to be judged by the tribe’s or nation’s absolute and a priori principles, the present and future can become the occasion for its transformation into something different and worthier, new and greater. Even a total abnegation of history cannot be ruled out merely on the ground that it is history. For it may be desirable – nay, ethically necessary – to turn one’s back to history and turn a new page, as those who turned to Islam or Christianity did during the last twenty centuries, or those who turned their backs to the “old world” and sailed for the “new” did in the last four. In all these cases, far from justifying anything, history and its tradition were the materials crying for justification which they never obtained from within themselves.

5. The Political Base

Finally, it is claimed that a tribe/nation rests ultimately on the will of its people to be a tribe or nation, autonomous and separate from all others. Their identification of themselves as different and their desire to perpetuate and institutionalize this differentiation constitute the necessary accreditation. This general will is equally the source and base of sovereignty which is the power of the group to determine its present and future in accordance with the consensus of its members, and to impose such determination in case of absence of such consensus.

Like the psychological base, the general will and sovereignty are instruments, not ends. Their values are preparatory only, and hence derivative from those of the ends to which they lead and which they are manipulated to serve. By themselves, they do not justify anything, not even their own existence. For that can be as much a cause of ultimate good as ultimate evil.

B. The Islamic Position

1. Descriptive vs. Normative

It follows from the foregoing that all the elements on which the tribe or nation is based are not necessary, though they may be universal. They could be otherwise than they are. To alter them is indeed possible, not only in childhood where alteration would be most effective and permanent; but also in adulthood where deliberate decision, resoluteness and perseverance could change them just as perfectly. A person’s membership in the tribe or nation does entitle him to love, honor, assistance and protection by fellow tribesmen on the basis that charity begins at home or, as Islamic jurisprudence has formulated it, “the nearer is more entitled to your good deed (al ma’ruf) than the farther.” But this principle is not absolute. It is limited by the nature of the content of the claim. By virtue of belonging to the tribe, for instance, the tribesman is no more entitled to one’s charity than the distant neighbor whose need for that charity is greater; nor for one’s protection if the distant neighbor stands in greater need for that protection. However, the near neighbor is indeed entitled to a minimum-survival, safety of body and property, freedom from disease, and education. He is entitled to these necessities of existence with priority. But he is entitled to one more than these necessities until the distant neighbor has achieved same. In no case does the need of the near neighbor entitle him to pursue these necessities at the cost of any other human, near to distant. That would be theft. Colonialism is precisely that; viz., to exploit coercively for the benefit of one’s fellow tribesmen the resources of the distant neighbor, or other tribesmen. If done without coercion, it is trade which may bring advantage or disadvantage to one or both partners. But with coercion, it becomes criminal, worthy of forced restoration of the robbed wealth as well as grave punishment.

Being a realistic religion bent upon the promotion of human welfare, Islam did not deny that humans are born into their tribes and/or nations; or that they become socialized into them by historical accident. This much of the claim of the advocates of particularism or ethnocentrism is not denied. Had Islam denied it, it would have had to wage an impossible battle against the hundreds of ethnic group it had penetrated, a war in which it or the other party would have had to be annihilated. In fact, Islam never waged such a war. It tolerated the existence of ethnic characteristics as God-given as long as they remained in place. Once they interfered with the purposes of the shari’ah, then they were curbed by the very people they characterized, as those people developed the higher loyalty to Islam and its vision. Language is the most important element of ethnicity. Its relation to Islam is a true index of Islam’s position toward ethnicity as a whole. It is a commonplace fact that the native languages of the Muslim World not only survived, but were developed and became richer through the advent of Islam. Indeed Islam lifted many of those languages from the primitive level, to that of ordered structure, literacy, and endowment with a great legacy of literature. The legacies which developed in Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Malay, Hausa, and Sawahili are of world significance as well as inconceivable without the influence of Islam.

2. The Positive Good of the Tribe or Nation

Human acculturation and socialization through the tribe or nation of one’s birth was ordained by the Creator. However, the purpose of the wider association differs. “O Humankind,” the Qur’an affirms, “We have created you all of a single pair, and we have constituted you into tribes and nations that you may know one another. The nobler among you is the more righteous” (Qur’an 49:13). The purpose of belonging to this or that tribe or nation is identification. That this man is English and that one is Japanese, that one is black and the other is white, that one speaks Persian and the other Arabia, that one resides in Moscow and the other in Chicago -– all these are aids in identifying the person. They do not tell us anything about the person’s worth as a human. That is why God explicitly added to His Qur’anic declaration the conclusion that the criterion of comparative worth among humans is righteousness. This addition is meant to deny that belonging to this or that tribe or nation constitutes any criterion of worth.

Under a variant interpretation, the word lita’arafu (that you may know/identify one another) of the Qur’anic verse quoted earlier maybe taken to mean “that you may cooperate with one another in doing al ma’ruf or the good deed.” In this case, ethnicity becomes a good which serves as a base for al ma’ruf. Undoubtedly, the development of an ethnic language and its endowment with a literary tradition is ma’ruf, a commendable achievement. The same maybe said of other elements of ethnicity; music, dress, food, architecture, village or urban planning, social custom.

All these positive aspects of ethnicity Islam acknowledges under the “ummah,” as theoretical category, and all their values are subsumed under the “ummah” as axiological category. This particular meaning of the ummah (the ummah in this or that region of the world) contrasts with the universal ummah which is the first object of the world-state of Islam. To each, Islam and its law have assigned its proper place. The nearest Western term which covers the regional ummah is patriotism. Patriotism is the love, compassion and responsibility one feels toward his neighbors, his fellow tribesmen, his region of the globe. Islam appreciates these feelings. Indeed, it provides laws for the actualization of these objectives. Service to tribe or nation, it holds, defence of the regional ummah when aggressed upon from within (gangsterism, rebellion, breakup of public order) or from without (invasion, subversion) are duties under Islamic law. Their neglect or violation is punishable in this world and the next. Thus Islam outdoes Western patriotism by making the ethnic group’s service and defense a civic as ell religious duty. Islam doubles the motivation for compliance with patriotic requirements, by adding the punishment and reward of the other world to those of this world.

3. Patriotism vs. Ethnocentrism/Nationalism

Patriotism however, is radically different from nationalism, or ethnocentrism. The latter go far beyond patriotism as we have defined it. First, nationalism or ethnocentrism assumes the existence of characteristics in the group which biology knows to exist only in the family among people related in blood through a very few generations. This is the blunder of racism, which asserts the presence of biological qualities in the group to justify the separatism of its members from, and their superiority over, humanity. The “master race” and the “chosen people” theories with which this century made us all too familiar, are examples of biology-based racism, the one defining membership in terms of descendence from mother, the other in terms of descendence from mother and father as well as eyes and hair color and cephalic index.

Second, ethnocentrism/nationalism considers all acquired group characteristics as necessary as the innate family characteristics, and treats them as such. For it does not differentiate between the necessities of biology and history. Its vision is so committed to the group that it read into group history an absolutely necessary march which could not have been but as it was and is. Through mythologization, it creates gods out of the group’s past and prostrates itself in worship at their feet. The accidents of history are fused with biological qualities assumed to exist in the group to form a mystical block with which the group is identified and its destiny charted.

Thirdly, nationalism/ethnocentrism assigns to the hypostasized biological-historical characteristics of the group universal value. In its axiological hierarchy, the values of other groups find only inferior, secondary position. The very existence of other groups is assigned instrumental status and value in relation to those of the nationalist/ethnocentrist group. The nationalist good is the highest. It must be pursued uberhaupt; i.e., it must be the ultimate and of all other pursuits, and as such, all other pursuits are to become subservient to it. This is the axiological foundation which justified in the eye of the nationalist/ethnocentrist, his violation of all other groups, which indeed regards such violation not only permissible where it is instrumental to the nationalist good, but even obligatory when the two run in opposite directions. The nationalist/ethnocentrist group is egotistic, preferring its own good to that of humanity.

Promotive as it is of patriotism, Islam has no countenance for nationalist/ ethnocentrism. It condemns it for its falsity, its pretense, and its truncated, reductionist axiology. Islam regards it as violating the most basic intuitions and values of humanity, as well as the highest commandments of God. Indeed, Islam regards nationalist/ethnocentrism as a threat to divine transcendence. For under nationalist/ethnocentrism, humans are not the equal creatures of God who compete for merit with Him. They are unequal creatures and their inequality is not a consequence of their effort, but a function of their creatureliness. Furthermore, as preferred or chosen creatures, possessing higher values in their beings (i.e., ontologically), they stand to God in different relation that other creatures do. A god that suffers himself to stand in such different relations to his human creatures is not the transcendent God of Islam, but a prejudiced weakling, dominated by an irrational, arbitrary passion for his preferred stock. No wonder that nationalist/ethnocentrism conceives of Him as “the God of Promise,” i.e., as straightjacketed by his own promise given to his chosen, to which he is bound regardless of the chosen’s conduct. The God of Islam is indeed the “God of the Covenant.” But the covenant of God is an open covenant which all humankind are invited to enter. It is a free, open, two-way highway in which man serves God in loyalty to Him and God disburses His rewards according to personal merit. Nationalist/ethnocentrism reduces the God of the covenant to the God of the Promise and thus ruins His transcendence.

4. Nationalism/Ethnocentrism in History

Nationalist/ethnocentrism dominated life in Arabia before Islam, and was called “asabiyyat al jahiliyah.” It raised the tribe above humanity, focussed all poetry and feeling upon the tribe’s glory, and demanded exertion of all effort in pursuit of the tribe’s welfare. In the process, it justify raiding of the other tribe, robbery of its wealth, and slaughter of its innocent members for no crime but the fact to their belonging to another tribe. In order to eradicate this evil, Islam abolished the tribe as form of human association, and built the ummah on trans-tribal, humanity-wide foundations. It was to an Arab audience that the Prophet Muhammad (SAAS) addressed the following admonitions on his last pilgrimage to Makkah, and hence the holiest occasion: “Listen to me well, O People, God created you all descendants of Adam, and Adam he created of earth. No Arab has any priority over a non-Arab, no white over a black and no non-Arab over an Arab, or black over a white – except in righteousness.”

Later in Islamic history (first century of the Abbasi caliphate, from about 150/ 775), the same evil showed its head again, this time under the name “shu’biyyah” (factionalism). But the ummah combated it successfully and eradicated it.For a detailed account, see Ahmad Amin, Duha al Islam (Cairo: Maktabat al Nahdat al Misriyah, 1956), Vol. I, pp.57ff. In modern times, it has risen again among Muslims in the aftermath of colonialism under the name “qawmiyyah” or nationalism. Fortunately, qawmiyyah has not penetrated to the Muslim masses, who remain aware of but one identity – the Islamic – from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Qawmiyyah was adopted by a Westernized upper crust of Muslim society which had been trained by the colonialists to hold the reins of power after their departure and to perpetuate the fragmentation of the world-ummah into mutually conflicting factions. Like the shu’ubiyyah of early Muslim history, modern qawmiyyah is devoid of thought, but it is far more dangerous. It seeks to attach itself to Islamic civilization to which it has yet contributed nothing. As shu’ubiyyah was the camouflage of zandaqah (pretense of Islam shown by non-Muslims), qawmiyyah is the pretence of anti-Arab or anti-Islamic forces in the Muslim world seeking the division of the ummah into ethnic/linguistic/geographic units which Islam never recognized. Qawmiyyah is the committed enemy of the universal brotherhood of Islam, of world-unity under the aegis of Islam. Undoubtedly, the opposition of qawmiyyah to the world—ummah will be the “battle of the century”For an account of its literature, see this author’s On Arabism (Amsterdam: Djambatan, 1961), pp. 121ff..

Nationalism/ethnocentrism is built upon a relativist axiology. The scale of values as well as the higher values in the hierarchy are regarded as normative only for the group. The others may be its objects, or instruments, never its ultimate purpose which must be the group itself. That is why the God of nationalism/ethnocentrism may reach humankind, not in love or compassion but in revenge and vindication for the ethnic group. Equally, just as ethnocentric religion is hardly ever missionary, seeking deliberately to contain itself within the group and absolving humankind from equal obligation under the commandments of God, nationalism seeks to shut itself from humanity by setting for itself a temple, or holy ground, out of a piece of real estate it cuts off from the earth, and girds itself against humankind by restrictive citizenship and immigration laws. Little does nationalism/ ethnocentrism know that any sub-group within the group has more title to separatism and exclusivism than the group itself of which it is part. For the more restrictive and smaller the sub-group, the more accurate its description of itself, and the stronger the ‘asabiyyah (cohesive bond) among its members. Little does nationalism/ethnocentrism realize that by its own logic, it dooms itself to infinite fragmentation into ever smaller sub-groups, a fate it escapes only by contradicting itself, by denying its own logic. But, founding itself upon feeling, it takes refuge in the arbitrary judgment of ineffable experience. Little does it realize how perilously close it stands to the dogmatism of the Catholic Church, opposition to which gave nationalism ethnocentrism its birth certificate.

The nation-state is a phenomenon of European history. It arose as an expression of nationalism/ethnocentrism. Its origins are to be found in the Reformation. Having bused the peoples under its care, the Roman Catholic Church became the object of resentment by many. Its justification of its tyranny and abuse by declaring its practices consistent with its ideal of the universal oikumene (community) make the ideal itself hateful along with the practices. Thus, rebellion against the Church of Rome was at once rebellion against “aliens” who exploited the people, extorted their wealth and spent it on the beautification of alien lands (Italy). Rallying around the prince and against the Church of Rome was “national liberation” from that yoke. Thus the nationalist movements of Europe began.

Later, when seventeenth-century rationalism and the Enlightenment, in their combat of the dogmatism of the Roman Catholic Church, projected against the old ideal of the universal community but as the necessary consequence of rationalism, the mind of Europe was revulsed. In its second rebellion against universalism (whether religious, rationalist or secular) Europe flung itself violently toward ethnocentrism. The new movement was known as Romanticism. It developed an epistemology of feeling and experience on which to base its religion (Schleiermacher), and ethics (Fichte, Nietzsche); and it relegated rationalism and empiricism to the sciences of nature alone. Group self-assertion became the order of the day in Europe. Inter-group conflict was mitigated only by the rivalry of European nations to invade and colonize Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America. Even so, wars between the European nations never ceased with one ethnic group claiming superiority over its neighbors, its colonies and the whole world. The Muslim world received the brunt of Europe’s colonialist expansion. The terrible mess in which the whole world finds itself today is the direct consequence of European nationalism/ethnocentrism. Indeed the world is groaning from it. Its contagion however is spreading to the Third World, just as the colonialists had planned in the hope of keeping its peoples divided against themselves.

III. The Universal Brotherhood under the Law: The World-Ummah

The third institution to dominate human association is the universal community. It was first established in history in the Akkadian, and later in the Babylonian, state in Mesopotamia. Although these states never extended beyond the Tigris-Euphrates valley and/or geographic Syria, they were thought by their rules and citizens to cover “the four directions of the world.” Every Arab migration into Mesopotamia and/or the Fertile Crescent (Akkadian, Amorite, Aramean) tended to repudiate the city states in favor of one which included the whole region which was the extent of their knowledge of the world. The peoples of the most distant areas were regarded as de jure citizens of the Semitic universal state, as witness the code of Hammurabi; whereas the Egyptians, the Greek and the Romans never looked upon the citizen of the distant lands except as strange aliens and subject people to be colonized.

The ideal of the universal community was equally taught by Jesus, son of Mary, as the antidote to Jewish ethnocentrism. The same teaching was promoted by his followers who took the new religion outside of the Jewish community and proselytized the world. The ideal remained active in the Roman Catholic Church for almost a millenium and a half; but its history has been made turbulent by two factors militating against it. The first was the commonplace human failure to live by the high ideal. The second, unique to Christianity, was her condemnation of all political life as fallen, necessarily sinful and salvation.

Islam was the ideal’s greatest affirmation; and the Islamic State, its greatest embodiment. Islam offers the universal community as base of human association, instead of the nation, people or ethnic group. This is not the ummah of the Muslims, or Muslims community, which is only a segment of the constituency of the Islamic State. In the first written constitution, which was given by the Prophet to the New Islamic State in Madinah, the ummah of Muslims was one community, and the ummah of Jews was another. Later, the ummah(s) of Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus and Buddhists joined the Islamic State. The Islamic State itself was an ummah of a different order, an expanding world-ummah designed eventually to include humanity as its citizens. The communities which constitute the world-ummah were to co-exist in peace. Each ummah is to order the lives of its members according to its own religion. It is to have its own institutions and its own laws, as well as the power to activate the former and implement the latter. The Islamic State guarantees these prerogatives in its shari’ah, or God-given law and constitution. Within the world-ummah, everyone should be free to convince and be convinced of the truth. The divine commandment, “No coercion in religion” (Qur’an 2:256) is to govern the relations of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

The world-ummah of Islam was a radical and new political ideal then, as it is today; for the need for it continues persistently. It is a pluralistic universal society in which all humans are members by virtue of their religious affiliation. Its pluralism is based not on courtesies or arrangements and treaties which can be denied or revoked at the whim of politicians, but on laws which no earthly authority can change or revoke. Moreover, it is not a pluralism in the matters which do not count, such as one finds today in London or New York. It is a pluralism of law – an idea of which the West has not yet even conceived. Beside the shari’ah, whose laws govern the lives of Muslim citizens and are administered in Muslim courts, the Islamic State has the Torahic, Christian, Zorastrian, Hindu and Buddhist laws which govern the lives of their adherents and are administered by Rabbinic, Christian, Zoroastrian, Hindu and Buddhist courts. Where the jurisdiction of these courts overlaps, as when the cases presented to them involve adherents of many faiths, the courts reconcile their verdicts together for the good of the adherents and the world-ummah of which they are the constituents. Only in matters of war and peace affecting the world-ummah as a whole is the Islamic State exclusively the judge.

The Islamic State is hence a world-state, with an army on the ready to repel aggression as well as to prevent war between one ummah and another. It is a pax islamica in which a person is identified according to what he cherishes best, his religion, ideology and law, not his tribal membership. It is a United Nations with teeth so as to preserve the peace, and with respect and concern for the spiritual identify of the members. It is the expression of Islamic humanism.

The raison d’etre of the ummah – with its government and institutions – is not merely to curb the evil tendencies of man. To restrict the origin and purpose of political organization to the task of protecting the individual from the bellum omnium contra omnes, the presupposition of liberal political thinking in the West, debases the state and truncates it. Even if true, such prejudgments against it reduce the state’s value to that of a preliminary condition. Underlying this thinking is the doctrinal position of Christian dogma, namely, that man is fallen, essentially vitiated by “original sin”, and hence hopelessly embroiled in a predicament from which he can never extricate himself. Such a view is the presupposition of Christian soteriology. It has no place in Islam where man is held to be innocent, created in the best of forms, higher than the angels, and commissioned (mukallaf) with a task of cosmic significance, namely, to do God’s will on earth, to realize the absolute in this space and time. To this end, God has made the whole of creation subservient to man, and created him capable of free action. The causal system of creation which is sustained and ordered by God was broken open only for human action to intervene and effectively to change the course of events and transform creation into the pattern God has commanded and revealed. This is the meaning of man’s khilafah, or vicegerency of God; of his carrying the amanah, or divine trust in space-time.

Evidently, if man is to pursue this end and actualize it, he needs the state. Being an ethic of works rather than an ethic of faith or intention, the ethic of Islam requires and presupposes the ordered society. For only three will man be able to fulfill the commandments of God. These, being all social, or ummatic in character, society, its institutions and the whole web of societal relation in which man stands are necessary. The state is not merely a policeman; though it does fulfill this function when and where necessary. Rather, the state is the focus of ummatic activity. It is the leader and mover which mobilizes and organizes human energies; which leads the ordered energies of the ummah effectively toward the goal. That history has known some men bent upon mischief, some rulers who have fallen to corruption and tyranny, constitute no attack upon the state and no argument against its desirability and legitimacy. The onward march of humanity toward the khilafah-goal is the only legitimate criterion of worth. It justifies the state and all its institutions. But it also lays the greatest burden of responsibility upon it –- the responsibility of fulfilling or not fulfilling the diving imperative, as well as that of Ultimate Judgment where every person, ruler or ruled, will get exactly what he or she has earned, blest or unblest.

From Chapter 7: “The Nation State And Social Order In The Perspective of Islam” in Isma’il Raji al Faruqi (ed.), “Trialogue of the Abrahamic Faiths”, Amana Publications, 4th edition (1995)

April 28, 2009