Ismail Faruqi Online

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  • On the Nature of Islamic Da’wah

    Reading Time: 16 minutes

    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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  • 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

    [cite]

  • Islam and the Problem of Israel: Zionism, The European Jew’s Counsel of Despair

    Reading Time: 10 minutes

    From Chapter 5: “ZIONISM: The European Jew’s Counsel of Despair” in Ismail Raji al Faruqi, “Islam and the Problem of Israel”, Islamic Council of Europe (1980)

    A. Between the Two Horns of a Terrible Dilemma

    The Jews of Europe found themselves in the second half of the nineteenth century tossed on the horns of a terrible dilemma. If they pursued the gains of emancipation, they must assimilate; and the more they did so, the more their Judaism would have to be reformed, the more dilute it would become, the less Jewish they would finally turn out to be. If, on the other hand, they restricted their pursuit of the gains of emancipation and hence, the less they assimilated and lost thereby their Jewishness, the more they would stand out as strangers in a society bent on not granting them its identity. On either count, they stood to lose. But which loss was greater? Jewishness, or freedom, and often, life? It was not the conservative orthodox Jew of Russia that asked this ominous question, for he had never known freedom and the centuries had taught him that it is his fate to remain true to every letter of the Torah and to suffer — even die — because of it. Rather, it was the Reform Jew of Western Europe who had tasted the joys and acquired the gains of freedom, who enthusiastically accepted the invitation to become English, French or German but, at the same time, had to suffer new waves of persecution and hatred for doing so. Was it possible that Christian Europe had gone mad? The hyphenated Jew (English-Jew, French-Jew, German-Jew, etc.) could not understand what was happening to and around him.

    Such a hyphenated Austrian-Jew was Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), a correspondent of the Vienna-based Neue Frei Presse newspaper. Herzl belonged to Reform Judaism and was completely Westernized. The dilemma of Jewish existence did not haunt his mind, convinced as he was that his personal destiny as well as that of his people was ‘Europe.’ Certainly, he knew of many lapses by Jews of their Judaism, and by Christians of their tolerance. But these did not bother him. Assigned to cover the tiial of Dreyfus in Paris, he travelled thence with the intention of discovering new ways for Jewish-Christian cooperation and understanding. The facts glaring out of the case, however, taught him otherwise. The Dreyfus case established beyond doubt that the Christians were not at all committed to accepting the Jews in their midst no matter how Europeanised they may become. Who could suspect Dreyfus’ Frenchness? his loyalty to the Republic? And yet, the very guardians of the Republic were precisely the first to reject him. Adding insult to injury, Maurice Barres, leader and spokesman for this anti-Jewish sentiment, had boldly defined patriotism as love of the past, France as a “collective being” which lives and speaks in the conscience of its sons, and national identity as communion of personal will with this Hegelian God-state and as harmony with it.

    B. Zionism: Attempted Escape from the Dilemma

    The Dreyfus episode, the upheaval it caused in France and Europe, and the awesome popularity of the anti-Jewish sentiment, left Herzl utterly dazed and dismayed, his hopes shattered and his ideal in ruins. It convinced him that the “European-Jew” ideal is impossible and futile. Since he himself was a European, educated under the same Hegelian romanticism dominating the university and cultural life of Europe, he really believed that the tendencies reflected at the Dreyfus trial were real and necessary forces of history which could not be stopped. No amount of assimilation was going to win for the Jew a European identity as long as he remained something to be assimilated, i.e., a Jew. In that direction, only conversion to Christianity would do, provided the milieu still believed in Christianity. Where that milieu had become scientific, skeptical and atheist, where it had replaced God with the state or “la nation,” the ultimate base was blood and soil from which the Jew was excluded ex hypothesi. On the other hand, no amount of self-preservation could guarantee the Jew’s survival in the midst of lands infested with this enemy mentality.

    The solution of this dilemma readily presented itself to Herzl, the European romantic. There could be no return to the ghetto of the past. Therefore, the Jew must pick up his roots from Europe and leave. He must find for himself a place on this globe where he could be both a Jew and a free man; where he could exercise his Jewish identity in security; where he could allow his peculiar ethnic genius to blossom and maintain his dignity. For Herzl, it did not matter where this Jewish state was to be. In fact, he thought the Jewish state could be founded in Argentina; and he seriously considered Uganda, as well as Russian Central Asia, as possible sites. Palestine did receive a mention but on par with all those other possible areas of the world. Any place on earth or on the moon would do, provided it assured security and freedom for the Jew to be a Jew. The Jewish state which Herzl envisioned was not based on religion. It was to be a copy of the European secular national state, the only state he knew. Such a state would carry its own mystique, like the European original; it would enthrone a Jewish collective, and pursue a Jewish community-destiny (Schicksalsge-gemeinschaft). A religious state, or a messianic restoration a la Isaiah of the Kingdom of David, was at the farthest possible remove from his mind. He expressly denied that the present predicament of the Jews in Europe was caused by Christianity. Though true of the past, this was not true of the present attitude which Herzl regarded as due in the main to the socio-economic success of the Jews in the modern industrialised city. It is the Europeans’ persecution of the Jews, he held, that makes the Jews a people; their persistent hatred of the Jews that creates the cohesiveness of the Jewish people. Herzl’s Jewish state was an ideal born out of the gentiles’ hatred and persecution of the Jews and the Jews’ acculturation by the gentiles’ romantic, nationalist, secularist God-state idea which dominated Europe at the time. His famous statement, “The [Jewish] state is already founded, in essence, in the will of the people of the state” is a perfect embodiment of that gentile, non-Semitic, indeed pagan god-state idea. This was equally the way Max Nordau, Herzl’s successor, thought. “Zionism,” in A. Hertzberg, ed., The Zionist Idea, New York, Atheneum, 1971)

    It is difficult to say which of the two parent conditions gave more than, or was prior to, the other in bearing Zionism as a solution to the tragedy of the European Jew. Certainly, persecution and hatred are negative. What they give birth to is of the nature of a reaction; and it is natural herd-feeling to withdraw into the group in face of danger. Necessarily, this is not creative; it is an “un-vision.” It is otherwise with the God-state, collective being idea of romanticism. It is a vision of reality, new and positive, which has the power to fascinate as well as to transform. It spread in Europe like wildfire; and the Jew, in his effort to Europeanise himself, fell into it with gusto. Herzl’s mind which first articulated the vision of a Jewish state was thoroughly trained in it. But the first to envisage it were those Jews who lived in areas of Europe where the craving for a national entity was at its fiercest — namely, the Balkans and Poland. Yehudah Alkalai witnessed the movements of the Balkan peoples for national independence and sovereignty and envied them for their success. Zvi Kalisher participated in the struggle of the Poles and convinced himself that the Jews ought to do likewise to achieve an identical goal. The revolutionary movements of the mid-century which called for social justice in the name of national collectivism inspired Moses Hess, another leading Zionist thinker, to mix up the Jew’s yearning for egalitarian justice with a fatherland on the European model. Running against the grain of all Semitic wisdom through the ages in its assertion that “the People” has always meant solely the humans composing it, Moses Hess declared that “A common native soil is a precondition for healthier relations between capital and labor among the Jews”. “Comments,” in The Zionist Idea, p. 136

    The same despair which characterised Herzl and the Jews of Western Europe filled the hearts of Eastern European Jews after the pogroms of 1871 and 1881. Peretz Smolenskin, while advocating with one side of his mouth that “every Jew is a citizen of the land in which he dwells, and it is his duty to be a good citizen … {a citizen upon whom fall] all the obligations of citizenship like all other nationals,” advocated with the other side of his mouth the theory that the Jews already had a “national identity” whose essence was culture. He claimed that the Jews “have always been a spiritual nation, one whose Torah was the foundation of its statehood.” After 1881, Smolenskin dropped the European citizenship idea to advise his fellow countrymen to pull out their roots and emigrate to Palestine, for “only in the Land of Israel…can the Jews find truth and lasting peace”.“Let Us Search Our Ways,” in The Zionist Idea, p. 151

    Likewise, Leo Pinsker advocated more than any Russian the total russification of the Jews of Russia, and founded societies to bring about such assimilation. His dedication to the task and devotion to Mother Russia was noticed – and rewarded – by the Czar himself. Indeed, he was so blindly committed to Russification that even the pogroms of 1871 did not shake him. But the pogroms of a decade later did it. His assimilationist ideal was shattered and he fell headlong into abandonment of Europe for the sake of a Zionist kingdom-to-be.

    C. Europe’s Failure of Nerve

    The above-mentioned cases leave no room for doubt that the emancipation of the Jews was, as far as the Europeans are concerned, a half-hearted affair. It came “too little,” and “too late” to establish itself securely in the legal and political systems of Europe whose people had been only “half-baked” by the Enlightenment. As to those Europeans who used their reason and were convinced of emancipation as a necessary corollary of their rationalism, their hearts were never won. For too long, the European stood unaffected by any sentiment of universal humanity or fraternalism. Equally, the emancipation of the Jews had come too late; for, the forces of ethnocentrism, nationalist self-assertion and egotism were too deeply impressed upon the European soul for the Enlightenment to undo. Though temporarily silenced by the military and political might of Revolutionary France and fastened securely by legislation, this European ethnocentrism reacted violently once these stops were removed by the retreat of Napoleon.

    Furthermore, there is no room for doubt that the Emancipation of the Jews came too little and too late as far as the Jews were concerned. It came too little because the Europeans could not sustain it for more than a generation; and where they did sustain it at all, they did so reluctantly. The Jewish claim is certainly sound that whatever gains the Jews acquired were achieved by superior Jewish effort, never gratuitously given; that Jewish superiority in the various fields of endeavor was only the obverted facade of the Jews’ ever-denied equality. On the other hand, the Emancipation came too late because the ghetto had reshaped the Jewish soul beyond the possibility of universalist reform; even beyond that of relaxing ethnocentrism to enable the Jews to coexist with their European hosts. The ghetto had built separatism into their flesh, as the diaspora had built it into their bones; and Biblical ethnocentrism had built it into their marrow. It was inconceivable therefore that Emancipation would efface Jewish collectivism, or that this would happen within a generation.

    The European thought he had fooled the Jews. When he began to discover that he was fooled by them, he lost his temper! He thought he could wipe the Jews off the map of Europe by Europeanising them; but he did so only for a moment, and he seems never to have been truly convinced of it. The Jew, too, thought he could wipe off European hatred by merely changing his name and language; but he did everything he could, working thrice as hard as anyone, to achieve quick mastery over his fellow Europeans, both as affirmation of his racial superiority and protection against insecurity. Each of them knew in his depth that the other was only fooling. The European’s loss first of his “Enlightenment” nerve and, subsequently, of his “reason” in the romantic outbreak, convinced the Jews that their fears- which never left them – were certainly justified. Hence, the disillusionment and despair on both sides.

    If, under the circumstances, the Jew opted for the Zionist solution of pulling out his roots and exiting from Europe, his decision is certainly understandable, though we may criticise it as one of despair. The plain truth was that the European soul was sick. The cure did not lie in a Jewish exodus. Europe had nursed and sustained the ideal of the universal community for a millennium of Church ascendancy. This left an indelible, though temporarily submerged, mark upon its soul. What it needed was a restrengthening of the Enlightenment nerve that failed it. That is what the emancipated Jews of Europe should have helped restore and promote until it could blossom forth again. What they did, however, was the reverse. From their new positions of leadership in European life, they helped fan the very fires of romanticism which were later to consume them and ruin Europe.

    No one will doubt that romanticism made the souls of Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Poland and the Balkan countries sing and dance with delight — nay, intoxication! No one will doubt that the arts of Europe blossomed as if in a hothouse; or that romanticism did something to promote science and technology under the heat of national defense; or to institute accord and harmony, social justice and welfare, between the members of the national group. Nor can it be denied that these were in some sense human gains as well, indirectly relevant to the welfare of humankind.

    But it cannot be denied that from the purview of human history, these songs and dances of romantic Europe were macabre; that the hothouse atmosphere engendered by romanticism detracted the soul of Europe farther away from God and His law. Romanticism dethroned God and apotheosised the state and the nation. It granted absolute priority to the common will because it is “common” and “actual.” It agreed with John Stuart Mill that the only evidence that a thing is desirable is that it is desired, and went on to mix up the success of nationalist egotism with divinity. It relativised all past history and destroyed its normativeness, while it absolutised the present which is no less dated than the past. With Schleiermacher, it dethroned “reason” and replaced it with “feeling.” The religiously oriented were relieved that the new base of “feeling” and personal ineffable experience provided far sounder support for Christian dogma, then in peril from the attacks of rationalists as well as scientists and other secularist “despisers of religion.” The secularly oriented, on the other hand, saw in “feeling” a new epistemological base for their romantic claims. They were thus emboldened to absolutise their particularist theses for “Volkstum,” “national genius,” race and Historismus, and they sought inspiration in a mystical experience of empirical nature. The innate contradictions of human tendencies and passions were enthralled as visions of the sublime. Romanticism asserted that the highest and ultimate expression of the human soul was a tragedy — and Wagner! Fascism was romanticism’s proudest offspring; secularism was his throne. Hitler came down in the very flames it quickened, but not before Europe lay scorched and in ruins.

    The greatest pity is that the victims of romanticism’s holocaust of the last one hundred years, namely, the Jews, had become infected with the disease, and helped fan its flames by their literary, artistic and philosophical contributions. But the pity that is greater than the greatest is that their walking skeletons should emerge from the Nazi ovens singing — as Zionists — an adapted romantic song of their own, whose materials may perhaps be Jewish but whose essence is Romanticism all over again, both a la Treitschke and a la Wiesel!

  • The Ismail Faruqi Award Presentation Ceremony

    Reading Time: 4 minutesAnwar Ibrahim

    This bi-annual award to IIU scholars who produce outstanding, excellent and exemplary academic work was established in honour of the memory of al-marhum Professor Ismail Raji al-Faruqi who, during his lifetime, had made profound and invaluable contributions not only to Islamic scholarship but to learning as a whole.

    Indeed, I was most privileged to have been given the opportunity of knowing him personally, as a leading scholar of his generation and as a friend. To be sure, he exacted uncompromising intellectual standards and lived by a strict regiment of academic discipline. But, at the same time, he was never lost in mere philosophical abstractions. He was acutely conscious of the realities of the time and the condition of the contemporary ummah. In this regard, he exemplified the conjunction between theoretical learning, ilm, and the righteous deeds, amal salih. He devoted the best years of his life, before his death under tragic circumstances, to the upliftment of the ummah, in inspiring and guiding its youth especially.

    Perhaps his greatest legacy is the establishment of the International Institute of Islamic Thought. It was born out of his concern to revive the culture of learning in the hearts and the minds of the ummah. Through this institution he had enabled the mobilization of the intellectual resources of Muslims worldwide, bringing together scholars who had had Western education and those who had undergone the traditional Islamic disciplines.

    In conferring these awards, we are recognizing scholars who have contributed towards the realization of al-marhum al-Faruqi’s vision.

    It is our conviction that the continuing crisis of the ummah cannot be resolved without a genuine revitalization of the culture of learning at all levels. Most of the problems afflicting Muslim societies in this day and age can be attributed to illiteracy, ignorance and narrow-mindedness. For instance, the highest rates of illiteracy in the world are in Muslim societies. So is the incidence of gender discrimination and denial of the opportunity of women to receive an education. In fact, one can go on reciting a litany of the ills of the ummah, all of which would have prevented had we lived up to the imperatives of the Quran and Sunnah to acquire and disseminate knowledge.

    However, the mere acquisition of knowledge without exercising discernment and the exertion of one’s intellectual faculties can sometimes be even more dangerous than plain ignorance. In this connection, there is a general misconception among Muslims, be they laymen or jurists, that the application of the Shariah is a very simple and straightforward matter: all we need to do is to look at the established or classical texts on Islamic fiqh and the answers are to be found there. There is no need to really exert one’s intellectual faculties in order to derive the fiqh as regards the diverse problems we encounter daily in our contemporary situation. In other words, according to this thinking, present-day Muslims need only to consult the voluminous compendiums of legal rules established centuries ago during the classical period of the great jurists. Such a thinking also implies that anyone who does not apply, or finds difficulty in actually applying those existing rules, can only be either ignorant of them, or worse, perverse and impious.

    As we know surely, this conception of Islamic law is not only myopic but wholly untenable. The very fact of the growth and establishment of the four major sunni schools of law testifies to the dynamism of the Shariah via the doctrine of ijtihad.

    Unfortunately after the crystallization of the Madhahib, intellectual inertia set in which finally led to the closing of the door of ijtihad and it is no exaggeration to say that this condition of juristic malaise has persisted till today, give and take the occasional attempts by more forward- looking scholars and jurists to advocate the revival of Islamic juristic rethinking.

    This basic misconception together with this taqlid predisposition has also given rise to a literalist, legalistic and narrow approach to the application of the Shariah rules as expounded by the classical jurist themselves. In the process, there is a preoccupation more with the rules of the Shariah per se rather than its objectives or maqasid, such as the general establishment of peace and security, the promotion of societal welfare, the eradication of poverty, basically the establishment of a civil society. In the process, we have missed the forest for the trees.

    In the context of Malaysia today, this misconception is further compounded by the problem posed by those who, in their desire to gain political mileage, have called for the implementation of the hudud. It did not matter that the hudud laws they have drafted were not based strictly on established methodology of Islamic jurisprudence. Naturally the resultant Bill that was drafted contains serious contradictions and glaring defects in respect of such crucial matters as the scope of the crime, the nature of the evidence required as well as the punishment to be meted out. And worst, they have completely disregarded the paramount objectives of the Shariah itself. This is indeed a most retrograde move.

    Fortunately enough, recent developments in the Muslim world indicate a trend to refer to the intellectual tradition of the classical period of the great jurists. Although this is still more the exception than the rule, some ulama and writers of modern works alike are now attempting to relate the classical formulations of usul al-fiqh to modern socio-legal conditions. The chasm between theory and practice has developed a rather alarming degree. Perhaps this is what prompted Allama Muhammad Iqbal in his Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam to call for the transfer of the power of ijtihad from individuals to a duly constituted collective body with the power to legislate. It is noteworthy that the late Shaykh al-Azhar Mahmud Shaltut went even further by placing greater emphasis on the maslahah (policy based on public or common interest) advocating that, since the maslahah is bound to vary according to circumstances, jurists should be able to take into consideration changed circumstances and review previous consensus in order to realise the maslahah.

    The award recipient, Prof. Hashim Kamali, is one of the few contemporary scholars who have advocated an approach towards Islamic jurisprudence departing from the purely legalistic and literalist position. I believe he has taken the stand that the scope for the reinterpretation of the Shariah principles is wide and ever-expanding. He has called for a comprehensive and well-defined programme for prospective mujtahids which would combine training in both the traditional and modern legal disciplines. And in this regard, I must says that the International Islamic University should be well-poised to take up such a challenge.

    Thank you.

    Speech by Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim at The Ismail Faruqi Award Presentation Ceremony, International Islamic University Malaysia on the 28th of February 1995

  • Islam on Its Own Terms: The Contribution of Isma’il al-Faruqi

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Ralph Braibanti, Duke University

    In his teaching of Islam the late Dr. Isma’il al-Faruqi had little patience with the anthropomorphic approach with which most comparative religion is taught. He believed there must be faith, belief, and commitment if the inner essence of Islam — and indeed of any religion — is to be appreciated. He deplored the fact that Islam in the West is taught predominately by non-Muslims, whereas Christianity and Judaism are taught by adherents to those faiths.

    He placed great emphasis on the concept of Tawhid.This Arabic word may be translated many ways in English. Among them are unity, union, fusion, belief in the unity of God – Ed. One of his latest articles, “Tawhid: The Quintessence of Islam” appeared in the Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies VIII (Summer 1985), an issue of which I was guest editor. “Tawhid,” he there asserted, “is the primeval source determining all phenomena of Islamic civilization.”

    Its simplest expression was the constantly reiterated conviction of the “unicity” of God, which he believed to be most vividly expressed in Islam and to be obscured by trinitarianism in Christianity and by Judaism’s emphasis on Old Testament prophesy. This deep and abiding emphasis on the central doctrine of Tawhid is evidenced by his translation of Kitab Al Tawhid by Shaykh Muhammad Ibn’ Abd al Wahhab, the influential 18th century Arabian reformer who, as the leading religious teacher of Arabia, joined forces with Muhammad Ibn Saud. This merger of the sacerdotal and the secular made possible the modern state of Saudi Arabia.

    Isma’il al-Faruqi’s little-known and sparsely distributed translation of 191 pages was published in 1979 under auspices of the International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations, produced by the Holy Koran Publishing House in Beirut and Damascus, and printed in Stuttgart, West Germany. In the introduction to this translation, Professor al-Faruqi encapsulated his own views: “The liberated Muslim mind therefore is neither secularist nor does it have to abandon the spirit to achieve advantage in the world of matter. The spirit itself moves it to gain that advantage; Religion itself commands it to be critical, reasonable and empirical, in the highest sense of these terms.”

    Tawhid, he believed, is made manifest by the ummah — the commonwealth of Muslims — one billion strong scattered over the surface of the earth. Correlative with these beliefs was his disdain for any comparative approach which focused on the different cultural manifestations of “folk” Islam as it encountered and was modified in practice by competing older faiths such as Hinduism in India and Indonesia, Zoroastrianism in Iran, and the Pharaonic-Coptic tradition in Egypt.

    He insisted that this attention to differences detracted from the paramountcy of universal doctrinal unity — especially the pristinity and immutability of the Holy Qur’an. This doctrinal unity was greater than that found in any other religion. It endured in large measure because of the sacred nature of Arabic as the unchanged language of the Holy Qur’an. For this reason, he put great emphasis on Arab civilization and on its preservation as a continuing fountainhead of Islam.

    I had many long talks on these subjects while taking vigorous walks with Isma’il when we were together at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Conference Center at Lake Como in August, 1975. His frequent visits and work in such diverse cultural locales did not weaken his views on these issues. His views were those of an “orthodox” Sunni, whose position was respected by Maulana Maudoodi of Pakistan, the Rabitat al-Alam al-Islarni of Mecca, Al-Azhar University of Cairo, the Ministry of Auqaf of Jordan, and leading religious authorities of Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

    In his lectures, these ideas and others on Islam were often expressed with such eloquence and force that listeners construed them as being rigid orthodoxy bordering on militancy. Such an interpretation could only be made by those unaccustomed to hearing a firmly-committed Muslim, learned and articulate, certain of the divine origin of the Holy Qur’an, the rectitude of the Sunnah and the finality (seal) of the Holy Prophet. His expository style was not one of deliberate provocation, confrontation or proselytism. Such techniques were not in his character. Nor did the firmness of his commitment to Islam mean that he was antagonistic to the other two Abrahamic religions. On the contrary, he had formally studied Judaism and Christianity, respected them both and understood the relationships among all three faiths.

    Washington Report, August 11, 1986, p. 10