by Reza Aslan
Thus, in 1934, the modernist reformer Ali Abd ar-Raziq (1888–1966) argued in his book Islam and the Bases of Government for the separation of religion and state in Egypt by drawing a clear distinction between the authority of the Prophet, which he believed was solely limited to his religious function as Messenger of God, and the purely secular function of the Caliphate, which was nothing more than a civil institution that all Muslims felt free to question, oppose, and even rise up against. Ar-Raziq claimed that the universality of Islam could be based only on its religious and moral principles, which have nothing to do with the political order of individual states.
Some years later, the Egyptian academic and activist Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) countered ar-Raziq’s argument by claiming that Muhammad’s position in Medina encompassed both religious and political authority, making Islam a unity whose “theological beliefs [cannot be] divorced in nature or in objective from secular life.” Therefore, the only legitimate Islamic state is that which addresses both the material and the moral needs of its citizens.
In the 1970s, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini applied a distinctly Shi‘ite interpretation of Qutb’s argument to assume control over a social revolution that was already under way against Iran’s despotic American-backed monarchy. Appealing both to the historic sentiments of the country’s Shi‘ite majority and the democratic aspirations of its disaffected masses, Khomeini argued that only a supreme religious authority could manage the “social and political affairs of the people in the same way as the Prophet [had done].”
All three of these thinkers were, in one way or another, trying to restore some sense of unity to what has become a deeply fractured worldwide community of Muslims. Yet without either a centralized political authority (like a Caliph) or a centralized religious authority (like a Pope), the only institutions in the modern world that have had any measure of success in uniting the Muslim community under a single banner have been the religious institutions of the Ulama.
Throughout Islamic history, as Muslim dynasties tumbled over one another, Muslim kings were crowned and dethroned, and Islamic parliaments elected and dissolved, only the Ulama, in their capacity as the link to the traditions of the past, have managed to retain their self-imposed role as the leaders of Muslim society. As a result, over the past fourteen centuries, Islam as we know it has been almost exclusively defined by an extremely small, rigid, and often profoundly traditionalist group of men who, for better or worse, consider themselves to be the unyielding pillars upon which the religious, social, and political foundations of the religion rest. How they gained this authority, and what they have done with it, is perhaps the most important chapter in the story of Islam.
6. This Religion Is a Science
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ISLAMIC THEOLOGY AND LAW
THE INQUISITION BEGINS with a simple question: “Is the Quran created by God, or is it uncreated and coeternal with God?”
Sitting atop his throne of gleaming gold and precious gems, the young Abbasid Caliph, al-Mu’tasim (d. 842), remains apathetic as one by one “the learned men of God”—the Ulama—are dragged before him in shackles to answer the Inquisitor’s question. If they admit the Quran is a created thing (the dominant theological position of those who are called “Rationalists”), they are free to return to their homes and continue their teaching. If, however, they still contend that the Quran is uncreated (the position of the so-called “Traditionalists”), they are flogged and thrown into prison.
The procession of Ulama continues for hours as al-Mu’tasim sits in silence, listening to theological arguments that he himself barely understands. He is bored and noticeably ill at ease. The controversy over whether the Quran was created by God or not holds no interest for him. He is a military commander, not a scholar. There are revolts to crush and battles to win throughout the Empire. And yet, here he must sit, flanked by his scarlet-robed viziers (themselves theologians, not soldiers), in command not of an army, but of an inquisition that was forced upon him by his older brother, the seventh Abbasid Caliph, al-Ma’mun.
“Stand together, all of you, and speak well of me if you can,” al-Mu’tasim recalls his older brother muttering on his deathbed. “If you know of evil I have done, refrain from mentioning it, for I will be taken from among you [and judged] by what you say.”
There is so much to say, al-Mu’tasim thinks, as yet another religious scholar is taken away to be tortured by his guards. Nevertheless—always dutiful, always loyal to his family—al-Mu’tasim remains silent, if only for the sake of his brother’s immortal soul, and allows the next scholar to be dragged into his presence.
This one is a dark-skinned old man wearing a coarse white turban and filthy loincloth. His long beard is dyed with henna, which has bled onto his cheeks and chest. His face is bruised, his eyes blackened. He has been tortured already, and more than once. Like the rest, he is in chains. Yet he stands tall and faces the Caliph without fear. He has been here many times before to defend his position on the Quran against the former Caliph, al-Ma’mun. But this is the first time he has stood before al-Ma’mun’s successor.
The weathered old man is forced to sit while his name is read to the court. When he is revealed to be none other than Ahmad ibn Hanbal—the immensely popular scholastic theologian and founder of the Traditionalist Hanbali school of law—al-Mu’tasim stiffens. Rising from his throne, he points an angry finger at his chief inquisitor, Ibn Abi Du’ad (another man forced upon him by his brother), and shouts, “Did you not allege that ibn Hanbal is a young man? Is this not a middle-aged Shaykh?”
The Inquisitor tries to calm al-Mu’tasim, explaining that the accused has already been questioned by al-Ma’mun on a number of occasions and, in light of his eminence, has been given many chances to reconsider his position with regard to the nature of the Quran. However, he has rebuffed all attempts to make him compromise, insisting instead on maintaining his heretical position that the Quran, the Speech of God, is one with God.
Too exasperated to argue, al-Mu’tasim sits back down and allows his Inquisitor to commence the questioning. “Ahmad ibn Hanbal,” Ibn Abi Du’ad begins, “do you regard the Quran to be created or uncreated?”
The Caliph leans forward, glaring at the old man, waiting for his answer. But, as he has done so many times before, Ibn Hanbal ignores the Inquisitor’s question and instead replies with a slight smile, “I testify that there is no god but God.”
Al-Mu’tasim sinks back into his throne, cursing his brother under his breath, while Ibn Hanbal is taken outside, suspended between two poles, and flogged.
Al-Ma’mun had become Caliph by laying siege to Baghdad—the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate—and killing his half-brother, al-Amin. But because al-Ma’mun and al-Amin had been designated co-Caliphs by their father, the infamous Harun al-Rashid (d. 809), al-Ma’mun was compelled to justify what was essentially an illegitimate usurpation of the Caliphate by claiming divine sanction. God had bestowed the Caliphate upon him, al-Ma’mun declared, and God must be obeyed.
None of this was new, of course; violent internecine conflict was a regular feature of all Muslim dynasties, and most usurpers are forced to legitimize their rule by asserting some kind of divine endorsement. The entire Abbasid Empire had excused their usurpation and indiscriminate massacre of the Umayyads by declaring themselves agents of God. But what made al-Ma’mun different from his predecessors was that he seemed honestly to believe that God had given him the Caliphate so that he could guide the Muslim community toward what he understood to be the correct interpretation of Islam.
“I am the rightly guided leader,” he announced in a letter to the army, informing them of the new political and religious order in Baghdad and demanding absolute obedience to his divine guidance.
This was a startling statement. Ever since Mu‘awiyah had transformed the Caliphate into a monarchy, the question of the Caliph’s religious authority had been more or less settled: the Caliph ran the civil affairs of the community, while the Ulama guided the
believers on the straight path to God. Certainly there were Caliphs who exercised religious influence over the Ummah. But none had ever dared to set themselves up as some sort of “Muslim Pope,” demanding absolute religious obedience from the community. And yet, that is exactly what al-Ma’mun, who had always thought of himself as a religious scholar first and a political leader second, was seeking to do.
As a young boy, al-Ma’mun had been formally trained in the religious sciences and had distinguished himself as an expert in Islamic law and theology, especially in the Rationalist tradition (about which more will be said). When he became Caliph, he surrounded himself with like-minded Ulama, with whom he regularly debated matters pertaining to the attributes of God, the question of free will, and, most importantly, the nature of the Quran, which al-Ma’mun considered a created thing—wholly separate from God’s essence.
Up until this time, al-Ma’mun’s position with regard to the Quran was the minority opinion of the Ulama; most religious clerics believed the Quran to be coeternal with God. However, in the last year of his reign, the Caliph declared that henceforth, all teachers and scholars of religion had to conform to the doctrine that the Quran was created. Otherwise, they would no longer be allowed to teach.
Again, while the notion that the Caliph could have influence over religious issues was not new, this was the first time that a Caliph had made himself the exclusive arbiter of religious authority. It is impossible to say what would have happened had al-Ma’mun succeeded in his attempt at what Richard Bulliet has rightly called a “reformulation of [Caliphal] legitimacy.” Quite likely, Islam would be a completely different religion today. The Caliphate might have become a Papacy; religious authority could have been centralized within the state, and an orthodox Muslim Church would have developed as a result.
But al-Ma’mun did not succeed. In fact, a few years later, under the Caliphate of al-Mu’tasim’s son, al-Mutawakkil (d. 861), the Inquisition was repealed with the understanding that never again would the Caliph embroil himself so explicitly in religious affairs. Indeed, al-Mutawakkil swung the theological pendulum to the side of the Traditionalists by richly rewarding their Ulama and persecuting the very same Rationalists who had up until his reign enjoyed the favors of the court. By the reign of the Caliph al-Qadir (d. 1031), the vast majority of the Traditionalist Ulama, especially the influential Hanbalites, were united under a single doctrine.
Unshackled by the state, the Ulama were now free to ascend to a position of unquestioned religious authority in the Ummah, which they used not only to institutionalize their legal and theological opinions into distinct schools of thought but also to formulate a binding, comprehensive code of conduct called the Shariah, forever transforming Islam from a religion into an all-embracing way of life: one that the Ulama claimed sole authority to define. As the ninth-century legal scholar Malik ibn Anas, founder of the Maliki school of law, once quipped, “This religion is a science, so pay close attention to those from whom you learn it.”
RELIGIONS BECOME INSTITUTIONS when the myths and rituals that once shaped their sacred histories are transformed into authoritative models of orthodoxy (the correct interpretation of myths) and orthopraxy (the correct interpretation of rituals), though one is often emphasized over the other. Christianity may be the supreme example of an “orthodoxic” religion; it is principally one’s beliefs—expressed through creed—that make one a faithful Christian. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Judaism, a quintessentially “orthopraxic” religion, where it is principally one’s actions—expressed through the Law—that make one an observant Jew. It is not that beliefs are irrelevant in Judaism, or actions unimportant in Christianity. Rather, it is that of the two religions, Judaism places far greater emphasis on orthopraxic behavior than does Christianity.
Like Judaism, Islam is primarily an orthopraxic religion, so much so that Wilfred Cantwell Smith has suggested translating the word Sunni as “orthoprax” rather than “orthodox.” However, because the Ulama have tended to regard Islamic practice as informing Islamic theology, orthopraxy and orthodoxy are intimately bound together in Islam, meaning questions of theology, or kalam, are impossible to separate from questions of law, or fiqh.
For this reason, the Ulama often dismissed the practice of pure speculative theology as insignificant babble (kalam means “talking” or “speech,” and Muslim theologians were often pejoratively referred to as ahl al-kalam, the “People of Talking”). What most concerned the Ulama from the first days of the Islamic expansion, especially as the Ummah became ever more widely dispersed and varied with regard to language and culture, was not so much theological arguments about the attributes of God (though, as we shall see, this would eventually become vigorously debated among scholars), but rather the formalization of specific ways to express faith through ritual. Their ultimate objective was to form strict guidelines that would establish exactly who was and who was not a Muslim. The result of their labors became what is now commonly known as the Five Pillars of Islam.
The Five Pillars constitute the principal ritual activities of the Muslim faith. Yet, as John Renard remarks, the Pillars are not meant to “reduce the spirit and life of a complex global community to a cluster of religious practices.” More than anything, the Five Pillars are meant as a metaphor for Islam; they are a summary not just of what is required to be a member of the Ummah, but also of what it means to be a Muslim.
Contrary to perception, the Pillars are not oppressive obligations—quite the opposite. These are highly pragmatic rituals, in that the believer is responsible only for those tasks that he or she is able to perform. Nor are the Pillars mere perfunctory actions. The single most important factor in the performance of any Muslim ritual is the believer’s intention, which must be consciously proclaimed before the ritual can begin. Ultimately, the Pillars are intended to be “a totality of actions,” which, according to Mohamed A. Abu Ridah, are not merely “verbal and bodily, but, above all, mental and moral, performed according to certain conditions of conscious intention, of external and internal purity, presence of mind, humility and submissiveness of the heart, creating within the soul of the believer a real life of religious devotion and spirituality.”
With the exception of the main Pillar, the shahadah, or profession of faith (which will be discussed last), these are all fundamentally communal activities. In fact, the primary purpose of the Five Pillars is to assist the believer in articulating, through actions, his or her membership in the Muslim community. The ancient Kharijite ideal of the Ummah as a charismatic and divinely inspired community through which salvation is achieved has become the standard (orthodox) doctrine of the vast majority of Muslims in the world who, without a centralized religious authority and with no Church or standardized religious hierarchy, view the community as the nucleus of the Muslim faith.
Put simply, the community is the Church in Islam: the “bearer of values,” to use Montgomery Watt’s oft-quoted phrase. The Ummah confers meaning and purpose on the believer, whose national, ethnic, racial, and sexual identity are and always will be subordinate to his or her membership in the worldwide community of Muslims: a community not bound by any borders, geographic or temporal. Thus when one fasts during the month of Ramadan or joins in the Friday prayers, one does so with the knowledge that all Muslims—from the first days of Muhammad’s preaching until today, and in every part of the world—fast and pray in precisely the same way, at precisely the same time.
The first Pillar, and the first distinctly Muslim practice enacted by Muhammad in Mecca, is salat, or ritual prayer. There are two kinds of prayer in Islam: du‘a, which refers to individual, informal communication between the believer and God; and salat, which is the ritualized, obligatory prayer performed five times a day: sunrise, noon, afternoon, sunset, and evening. Salat, which means “to bow, bend, or stretch,” is composed of a series of yogic movements that include standing, bowing, rising, sitting, turning east and west, and falling prostrate, all repeated in cycles (called raka’
ah), and accompanied by specific verses from the Quran.
As with all Muslim rituals, salat can begin only after the intention to pray is voiced, and only while the Muslim faces toward Mecca, the direction of prayer, or qiblah. Although salat can be performed individually as a means to purify and cleanse the soul, it is meant to be a communal act that binds the Ummah as a single body. For this reason, it is always preferable to perform salat in a place of assembly. Indeed, one particular salat—the noon prayer on Fridays (salat al-jum‘a)—must be performed in the mosque, in the presence of the community. And while five daily prayers may seem like a heavy burden, the obligation is suspended for the sick, those who are traveling, or anyone else who is unable to perform them for any justifiable reason; if one wishes, missed salats can always be made up at a later time.
The second Pillar was also established in the early years of Muhammad’s movement in Mecca. This is the paying of alms, or zakat. As previously explained, zakat is alms given as a tax to the community, which is then distributed to the poor to ensure their care and protection. It is not a voluntary tithe; it is a religious obligation. Zakat literally means “purification,” and it is a reminder to all Muslims of their social and economic responsibilities to the Ummah. Of course, zakat is paid only by those who can afford to do so; otherwise, one would receive zakat.
As the Ummah developed into an empire, zakat transformed from an obligatory almsgiving to a sort of state tax levied on all Muslims (as mentioned earlier, non-Muslims, such as Christians and Jews, paid a wholly separate “protection tax” called jizyah). During the height of the Caliphate, it was common practice to use zakat to fund the army—a practice that caused an uproar from many in the Muslim community. With the end of the Caliphal period and the rise of the modern nation-state, Muslim governments increasingly took upon themselves the role of collecting and distributing zakat. Indeed, the payment of zakat, though deliberately differentiated from regular state taxes, has become mandatory in a number of Muslim countries including Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia, the latter of which imposes zakat on both individuals and businesses. However, most Muslims continue the traditional practice of paying zakat individually to their local mosque or religious institution, which then distributes the funds to the neediest members of the community.