Islam: According to Islam, Mohammed is the last and greatest of the prophets, but other prophets are also honoured, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus.
Shinto: The “Meiji Restoration” of 1868 restored the power of the Emperor after nearly 700 years of feudalism under the shogunate (1192–1867) and made Shinto a centralised national religion under the Emperor. The “Shinto Directive” or “Bunce Directive” issued by the United States in 1945 after Japan’s defeat in World War II attempted to introduce a separation of religion and state on the US model. As a result Shinto has become decentralised again, but it still retains its close association with Japanese national identity, and Shinzo Abe, the current Prime Minister of Japan, has come out in favour of the reintroduction of state-Shintoism and of emperor worship.300
Denominations
Islam: Islam has two main denominations, Sunni and Shia, together with several smaller groupings. According to the Pew Research Center, the Sunni make up 87–90% and the Shia 10–13% of the world’s Muslim population. The main concentration of Shia is in Iran, where 89% of the population belong to the “Twelver” branch of that denomination, followed by Iraq, where 60% to 70% of the population are Shia Muslims. The hostility between Sunni and Shia Islam is based not so much on differences in belief as on disagreement over the succession to Mohammed. In fact, however, underlying these purported differences is an ethnic divide between Iranians and non-Iranians, Iranians being essentially Indo-European or Indo-Aryan with a language related to Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, and ultimately to modern German, French and English. Iran was deliberately switched from Sunni to Shia by Shah Ismail I (reigned 1501–1524), who was intent on giving Iran a religious and national identity distinct from the Sunni Ottoman Turks and from the Sunni Arabs. The high proportion of Shia in Iraq, an Arab country, is thought to have resulted to a large extent from migration from Iran.
Shinto: The main divisions in Shinto are Jinja (“Shrine”)Shinto, Kyoha (“Sect”) Shinto and Minzoku (“Folk”) Shinto. “Shrine Shinto” refers to the beliefs and rituals of the shrines affiliated to the Jinja Honcho, or Association of Shinto Shrines. “Sect Shinto” refers to the thirteen Shinto denominations or sects recognised by the Japanese Government. “Folk Shinto” refers to practices of local Shinto shrines. The various denominations do not differ so much in their beliefs but rather on emphasis.
Violence
Islam: Does Islam preach violence? This is a hotly debated topic. There are a number of passages in the Koran that appear to condone or even incite violence against the “infidel” or non-believers. E.g. “I will throw fear into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Then smite the necks smite of them each finger.”301 On the other hand, there are those, like Muhammad Asad, who argue that the Quran verses in the Quran apparently allowing the killing of non-believers is only in the context of defensive wars.302
Shinto: The “Shinto Directive” of 1945 was based on a perception by the Americans that state Shintoism was somehow to blame for the Japanese “militaristic and ultranationalistic ideology”, and in particular for the following doctrines: (i) The Emperor’s superiority to other rulers because of his descent from the sun-goddess; (ii) The superiority of the Japanese people to other peoples; and (iii) The superiority of the land of Japan over other lands because it was so willed by the sun-goddess.
Origins
Islam: Was Islam spread by the sword? This common view has been strenuously opposed by writers who quote, among other things: “There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion. The right course has become clear from the wrong.”303 However, two professors at Brigham Young University offer an authoritative explanation for their view that: “Islam didn’t spread by the sword; the Arabs did.”304
Shinto: Most scholars believe that Shinto is the indigenous religion of Japan and has existed as such since prehistoric times. Toshio Kuroda, a Marxist historian, disagreed with this view and claimed that Shinto was an offshoot of Buddhism and only emerged as a separate religion after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. There is no real evidence for Kuroda’s view.305
Conversion
Islam: “Becoming a Muslim is a simple and easy process. All that a person has to do is to say a sentence called the Testimony of Faith (Shahada)… Once a person says the Testimony of Faith (Shahada) with conviction and understanding its meaning, then he/she has become a Muslim.”306 The website goes on to say that “The conversion can be done alone” without anyone else being present.
Shinto: In common with most other communal religions, Shinto is not a proselytising religion and there is in fact no mechanism for conversion to Shinto.
Toleration
Islam: In Islamic states, notably Moorish Spain (Al-Andalus), the “Peoples of the Book”, i.e. chiefly Jews and Christians, were traditionally treated more favourably than other non- Muslims and were accorded dhimmi status, which gave them certain rights in return for payment of a special tax (jizyah). Although this status was lower than that enjoyed by Muslims, its chief value was that it accorded dhimmis limited religious toleration. So, in Moorish Spain, for example, the pecking order was Arabs, Berbers, Muwallads (Christian converts to Islam) and only then dhimmis, who were not allowed public displays of their faith like processions, and were not permitted to build new places of worship or even to repair existing ones. There has also long been a major rift between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and never more bitter than at the present time.
Shinto: There are essentially three possible solutions, all of which have been used by Shinto at different times. (i) The first solution is to ban the intruding foreign religion altogether. This is the way Christianity was treated in Japan from 1597 until 1853, or really until 1871, when complete freedom of religion was established under the Meiji Restoration of imperial power. (ii) The second solution is for the communal religion to coexist harmoniously but quite separately from the foreign religion concerned. This is essentially the relationship that has existed between Shinto and Christianity since 1871. Such is the toleration enjoyed by Christianity in Japan that, although Christians number less than 1% of the population, there have been no fewer than eight Christian Prime Ministers in Japan, the first of whom, Hara Takashi, held office from 1918 to 1921, long before there was a Catholic president of the United States! (iii) The third solution is to tolerate the alien religion to the extent of amalgamating with it to some extent. For some 1,200 years until the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Shinto assimilated Buddhism in the so-called Shinbutsu-shugo (“syncretism of kami and Buddhism”). The “Separation Order” of 1868 attempted to free Shinto from Buddhist influence, but temple-shrines are still common and a partial syncretism is still in evidence, with funerals, for example, generally being conducted in accordance with Buddhist rites while weddings are mostly left to Shinto.
Community
Islam: Although Islam is a creed religion it has also always combined with the creed a sense of community, or ummah, meaning “people”, “nation” or “community”. Ummah is short for ummat al-Islamiyah, meaning “the Islamic nation”, referring to the collective community of Muslims around the world. This links up with the concept of a caliphate, meaning an Islamic state under a ruler combining political and religious power known as a caliph, or khalifa, literally “successor”, “lieutenant” or “deputy” to Mohammed. It is no accident that the Islamic Republic of Iran is essentially a theocracy — and that in 2014 the self-styled “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant”, known as ISIS, ISIL or Da’ish (ad- Dawlah al-Islamiyah fil-Iraq wa ash-Sham), claimed to have set up a new “caliphate” combining political and religious hegemony.
Shinto: Despite the “Shinto Directive” of 1945, Shinto remains at the heart of Japanese culture and national identity, and it is very largely confined to Japan.
Sacred Book(s)
Islam: The centrality of the Koran (Quran) to Islam cannot be exaggerated. Islam believes that the Koran was revealed to Mohammed by God through the archangel Gabriel. The Koran is supplemented b
y the hadith (“reports”), or account of Mohammed’s life, chiefly to aid interpretation of the Koran itself.
Shinto: Shinto has no canon of scripture, but there are some books of mythology and history, none of which are earlier than the eighth century CE, including: Kojiki (“Record of Ancient Matters”), Shoku Nihongi and Nihon Shoki (“Continuing Chronicles of Japan”), Rikkokushi (“Six National Histories”) and Jinno Shotoki (study of Shinto and Japanese politics and history).
Claim of “Truth”
Islam: Islam claims to be the only true religion. The Religion of Islam website set up under the auspices of Saudi Arabia has no fewer than 134 articles claiming to contain evidence of the truth of Islam.307
Shinto: Shinto makes no claim to truth. The very concept of a “true” religion would be alien to it — as to most other communal religions. So the test of credibility has no relevance to Shinto.
Ethics
Islam: The Koran contains a number of commandments relating to ethical conduct, including: Honouring one’s parents (17:23); Prohibition of “mercy killings” of one’s own children (17:31); Prohibition of adultery (17:32); Prohibition of killing “unjustly” (17:33); Care for orphans (17:34); Keeping one’s promises (17:34); Honesty (17:35); Injunction against arrogance (17:37).
Shinto: Shinto seek harmony and purity in all areas of life, both physically and morally, and the avoidance of tsumi, meaning sin, crime or unethical conduct. Hence the many harae, or purification rituals, including temizu (washing hands and face) and shubatsu (cleansing by the sprinkling of salt), and having new buildings and even cars being blessed by a Shinto priest.
Reflections
Communal Religion vs. Creed Religion
As a creed religion Islam is based on a set of beliefs, which it claims embodies “the truth”, and it is eager to attract new converts. These are all typical features of creed religions. As a communal religion, Shinto lacks all these features. However, neither religion is a pure example of its type. Islam began as an Arab communal religion (see below), and in Iran since the 16th century Islam has had certain communal features and has been the outward expression of Iranian national identity, differentiating it from its Turkish and Arab neighbours. Likewise, Shinto, which was between 1868 and 1945 the outward expression of Japanese nationalism, was stripped of that role by the American “Shinto Directive” of 1945. But it still remains at the heart of Japanese national and cultural identity.
Violence: Islam
Islam and Shinto have both been accused of promoting violence. It is often said (among others by Pope Benedict XVI quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor) that Islam owed its rapid rise in the early days to conversion at the point of the sword.308 It has now been convincingly shown by Ira Lapidus, Graham Fuller and Hamblin and Peterson that “Islam didn’t spread by the sword; the Arabs did.” (See under “Origins”, above). The early Arab conquerors did not actually want to convert their conquered subjects to Islam, preferring to tax them instead. “At the time of the conquest, Islam was meant to be a religion of the Arabs, a mark of caste unity and superiority. The Arabs had little missionary zeal. When conversions did occur, they were an embarrassment because they created status problems and led to claims for financial privileges.” How then did Islam change into the very evangelical religion that it is today? The first shift came with the overthrow of the Arab-oriented Umayyad dynasty by the more multi-ethnic Abbasid caliphate in 750 CE, although the concept of Arab superiority within Islam has still not disappeared altogether.309
Islam has also been blamed for recent atrocities committed by terrorist groups in the name of Islam, as for example in the oft-quoted remark by Richard Dawkins that “Islam [is the] greatest force for evil today.”310 However, Graham Fuller argues convincingly that “[T]he present crisis of East–West relations, or between the West and ‘Islam’, has really very little to do with religion and everything to do with political and cultural frictions, interests, rivalries, and clashes.”311
One noteworthy feature in this regard is the tendency of Islam to take on features of a communal religion. As we have already seen, Iran only became Shia because Shah Ismail I (1487–1524) wanted to use a religious identity in his fight against the Sunni Ottomans — and gave his subjects the choice of conversion or death to achieve his objective. Now, five centuries later, we find militant Islamist groups like Boko Haram in West Africa and the self-styled “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL, ISIS or in Arabic, Da’ish) actually taking over territory by military means and, in the latter case, claiming to have set up a new caliphate, the term “caliph” (khalifah) meaning “successor”, “deputy” or “representative” of the Prophet Mohammed. Al-Qaeda, of which ISIL is an offshoot, has long had the establishment of a caliphate as a goal, and its former leader, Osama bin Laden, is on record calling for Muslims to “establish the righteous caliphate of our umma”.312 The Arabic term umma or ummah means “nation” or “community”, commonly used as an abbreviation for ummat al-Islamiyah, meaning “the Islamic Nation”, referring to all Muslims throughout the world. Does this mean that for these jihadist movements Islam is now a communal religion? Not at all, because these communal elements have been grafted on to what is still very much a creed religion, with hostility not only towards other religions but also towards other Islamic denominations, coupled with a creed religion’s missionary zeal to recruit new converts: ISIL evidently confronts their captives with the stark choice of either converting to the ISIL brand of Sunni Islam, or paying a tax known as jizya, or being killed. In ISIL’s magazine, Dabiq, the “Official Spokesman for the Islamic State” boasts that Allah “has healed the chests of the believers through the killing of the nusayriyyah and rafidah at your hands” — the rafidah (“rejectors”) evidently being the Shia, and the nusayriyyah being the Alawites, a Shi’ite group to which President Bashar al-Assad of Syria belongs.313 Is this sort of thing sanctioned by the Koran? Beheading, ISIL’s favourite method of “execution”, is mentioned in the Koran: “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.”314
However, there also are verses enjoining toleration, but at the same time encouraging conversion to the “truth”: “Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error.”315 And: “Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve.”316
Violence: Shinto
Shinto was blamed by the US for Japanese militarism and ultra-nationalism leading to its involvement in World War II. Hence the so-called “Shinto Directive” of 1945 discussed above. However, this blame is undeserved, as a comparison with Germany will show. Can Nazi Germany’s militarism and ultranationalism be blamed on religion, and, if so, which one? Hitler did try to bring the German Lutheran Church under state control in the so-called Deutsche Evangelische Kirche (German Protestant Church) under Reichsbischof Ludwig Müller, but that was done only after the Nazis’ accession to power, and it proved in any case a dismal failure. The Roman Catholic Church signed a controversial Concordat with Germany in 1933, although this had been preceded by concordats with the individual German states of Bavaria (in 1925), Prussia (in 1929) and Baden (in 1932) during the Weimar Republic. Hitler, though brought up as an Austrian Catholic, became disillusioned with religion, and when in power allowed anti-church members of his government to conduct persecution of the churches.317 This culminated in the barbaric “execution” of Dietrich Bonhoeffer just as the Nazi regime was collapsing in April 1945.318 To regard Nazism as a secular religion and therefore still manage to blame religion is a bit far-fetched. In short, therefore, as German militarism and ultranationalism cannot be explained in terms of religion, neither can that of Japan.
Contrast
Here the contrast between a creed religion and a communal religion is particularly s
tark. Islam has extended toleration to adherents of other religions but usually only on payment of a special tax as an alternative to conversion, and toleration does not usually amount to according non-Muslims equal rights to Muslims (see under “Toleration”, above). By contrast, since 1871 Shinto has not discriminated against adherents of other religions at all, and, as already noted, Japan has had no fewer than eight Christian Prime Ministers since 1918.
Review Of Chapter Seven
Islam is a creed religion, while Shinto is a communal religion.
Each of the two religions largely conform to the classification to which it belongs, thus corroborating the communal/creed classification.
Beliefs: Whereas Islam has a clear creed, which has to be accepted in order to be or become a Muslim, Shinto has only the vaguest of beliefs, which are in no sense a test of membership.
Claim of “Truth”: Islam claims to be the only true religion, whereas Shinto makes no claim to truth.
Name: Islam has a definite name, but the name “Shinto” means nothing to most Japanese people, 70% of whom profess no religious affiliation but 90% of whom nevertheless attend Shinto shrines.
Toleration: Though often praised for toleration in the past (e.g. in Moorish Spain), Islam has never accorded non-believers, even the “Peoples of the Book” (i.e. Christians and Jews), equal rights to Muslims. There has also long been a major rift between Sunni and Shia Muslims, which has never been more bitter than at the present time. In Japan, by contrast, complete religious toleration has existed since 1871, and no fewer than eight Japanese Prime Ministers have been Christians.
God Without Religion Page 19