Ismail Faruqi Online

Tag: islam

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

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Islam and the Problem of Israel

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

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

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

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

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

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

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

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

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

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  • Da’wah in the West: Promise and Trial

    Reading Time: 38 minutes

    I. The Marvel of the Spread of Islam

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

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

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

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  • Role of the Family in the Spread of Islam

    Reading Time: 17 minutes

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

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