Islam

Religion of Islam (Bowering)

Introduction: 9/5/96

Gibb has a Western (Christian) view.  Rahman is a modern Muslem, a professor from Chicago.  Goldziher's text is a classic, emphasizing religious belief.  Read the Koran.  Midterm: Oct. 24th.  Identifications and essays.  Old exams are on file at CCL. The Final Exam covers the entire course.  Term paper: 12-15 pages.

Today, there are six billion Muslems. The Arab Middle-East is important but not in terms of Muslem population which is spread over several regions.  For instance, India and Pakistan, Turkey and Iran, Several of the Russian Republics, Indoneasia, Africa, and increasing Muslem populations in the States as well as Europe.  So, Islam has become a world religion.  As it has spread, it has interacted with different cultures. We will study the common element: that is Islam.  'Islam' means submission, or surrender, to God.  'There is no God but Allah and Mohammed was a messenger, or prophet.  The revelation came from God, not Mohammed. Contrast to Jesus in Christianity. Sunism (90%) and Sufism(10%) are the two major forms of Islam.  Sufism came from the Arab world, and has spread to Persia (Iran). 

Andrae's biography of Mohammad from a Christian view.  Watt gives the basic career of Muhammed, emphasizing the social condition.   Guillaume edited the earliest biography.  Rodinson gives a psychological approach.  See also the Encyclopedia of Religion.  Kennedy requires background reading. 

9/10/96

Pre-Islamic Arabia:

Nomads and a few settlers in the fifth-century.  Muhammad (570-632) was born in the 'backwater' of civilization.  Lower Arab peninsula had some form of civilization, based on trade with India and Africa.  To the north of the peninsula, two empires were in place: the Byzantine and the Assidic.  By the sixth century, these empires had weakened through their wars.  Due to their weakened states, Arab raids occurred.  Arabs created buffer-states to the south of these empires.  The Assaids were Nestorian Christians and Zoroastrians, and the Byzantines were monophyte Christians.

The nomads lived off their herds and commerce (middlemen between Mediteranian and Indian trade.  The people spoke Arabic.  An oral culture--no literature in the form of books.  Social organization: the tribe, led by an elder (Shafkh).  Not hereditary; rather one who shows leadership qualities.  So blood kinship, sharing the same ancestors, was the basis of the tribe.  The law of blood revenge: a life(not necessarily the culprit) was taken for a life between tribes.  Blood money could be used to stop the cycle of blood-shed.  A hakam, or arbitrar, was used for justice by adjucation. 

Within a tribe, a kahin, or soothsayer, would offer guidence for a clan in oracle statements.  Muhammad appeared like a Kahin at first when he gave revelation.  The Shair was the poet, being similar to the Kahin, as understood to having the power of the (oral) word.  The Koran was the first written Arab book.  These offices were not gained on the basis of heretity, but by qualities shown.

The pre-Islamic Arab religion.  The Jahiliya, or 'time of ignorance or darkness', was the time before Islam.  The Arabs were polytheists.  Tribes had their own deities.  Other gods had perminant shrines.  For instance, Kaba's shrine was in Mecca.  Some deities were seen in particular rock-formations.  Others were linked to particular stars.  Also, a world of spirits, of Jinn, were believed to be in the world of nature, in an odd tree or the rain.  The world of nature, being beyond human control, was seen as being controlled by the world of Jinns. 

Judiasm was organized more so, but was a minority religion.  Jewish groups had been pushed out of Palestine, intermingling with Arabs.  These Jews assimilated the tribal organization and Arabic. They brought with them their monotheism.  Although Muhammad agreed with their monotheism, he 'retold' the stories of the Hebrew Bible, angering the Jews. 

Christians, especially monks and hermits, had settled in Arabia.  These Christians had come from different areas, thus having variant beliefs albeit similarities.  Mohammed learned from these Christian groups orally.  The Arab polytheism was dominant, however.  We have little direct knowledge of this religion.

Muhammad was born at Mecca and died at Medina.  Two phases of his public ministry (610-622: Mecca; 622-632: Medina).  570-610: he had not gone public.  He became a public prophet at age forty.   He belonged to the Quraysh tribe which had settled in Mecca because it had a permanant water supply (the zamzam well).  It was not an oasis, so the people lived in trade rather than agriculture.  Mecca had the Kaba shrine, a place of pilgrammage.  Most of the religious rites took place around Kaba. Also, markets existed nearby.  So the Kaba facilitated trade.

In contrast, Medina was an oasis with orchards.  It was settled by several tribes, including some Jewish tribes.  'Medina' meant 'city' before Islam and 'the city of the prophet' in Islam.  Muhammad was drawn to the disputes between the tribes there.

So, two different types of environments influenced Mohammed. 

The Life of Mohammed:

His parents died when he was young.  He lived with his grandfather and then his uncle, Abu Talib, who did not become a Muslim but protected Mohammed due to tribal allegiance.  He belonged to the needy place of society.  He had to fight for what he had.  There is not much known about his youth.  There arose legends from 150 years after his death.  For instance, predictions from a Christian monk that he would be a great prophet.  Also, that he, while he worked as a stone-cutter, put the black rock in the Kaba, showing leadership qualities.  He had been given to a bedwen, or nomad, to live in the desert for a time.  Also, there is the story of angels taking out his heart and cleaning it.  Also, there is the legend of his ascension into heaven, showing that he was the last prophet. 

Muhammad was involved in the caravan trade, acting as the agent of Khadiza.  He married her, an older woman.  He had no other wives until she died.  They had several kids.  Only their daughters survived.  On succession, prophesy was believed to be limited to Muhammad. As for political leadership, as per tradition, heredity was not a factor.  However folks who were to become Shi'as maintained that Muhammad's cousin (son of Abu Talib) followed Mohammed.

By age forty, Mohammed, tested by adversity--even life in the desert, pronounced himself a prophet, stressing prayer and homage to the poor.  His first revelation was in a mountain cave in the desert.  Perhaps his earlier neediness inspired his religious belief.  Perhaps his contact with Jews and Christians influenced his belief in an afterlife.  Pre-Islamic polytheism did not hold the belief of an afterlife.  A life was thought to be like a print in the sand.  Mohammed: the world would come to an end, when each individual would be made accountable, going on to paradise or hell.  His salient beliefs were monotheism and an after-life.  This all came to the fore with such a conviction that he had came to a new religious synthesis not only for himself but for others as well.  No one in Arabia had claimed to be a prophet.  However, there had been Hanif's, or 'God-seekers'.  Disenchanted with the prevailing polytheism, they functioned as individuals in working out their own religious views.  Abraham had been thought of as one.  But none of them stood out as a model for Mohammed.

Nabi means prophet and Rasul meant messenger (of God). 

Mohammed was illiterate.  He did not know Hebrew or Aramic.  Stories of biblical characters in the Koran came from oral access (indirect) to the bible.  He felt impelled to teach to others what he had found. Second, he felt called by God to convert people.  This recognition by him is said to have occurred at one time in a desert cave.  A command given by Gabrial from Allah.  Allah is so different from mankind that a messenger was necessary for Mohammed had a messenger.  So much of Islam goes back to the personal experience of Mohammed--his breakthrough.

The reaction of his people was resistent if not hostle.  Even his own family would not join him fully.  It was mostly the poor who first followed him.  Most people in Mecca wanted to maintain their current way of life.  There was inherently a threat to this as well as to the polytheistic religion and its leadership..

9/12/96

Mohammed put emphasis on the individual as a member of a tribe, whereas pre-Islamic Arabia stressed only the tribe.  Pre-Islamic Arabs had four holy months in which no violence could occur.  Festivals and exchange of goods but not warfare.  Pre-Islamic gods were often represented by stones and stars. Imp.: deification of powers beyond human control.  Mohammed grew up in Mecca working in commerce.  At age 40 in 610, Muhammad became conscious of being called to communicate revelation.  One god, a resurrection after death at which point judgment and then heaven or hell.  Hebrew and Christian influences on him, were not so strongly felt in the polytheistic faith.  He assimilated faiths of scripture, or 'the book'.  He knew that other religions had written scripture in their own languages.  Mohammed knew of these indirectly and saw himself as proclaiming that which Moses and Jesus had proclaimed (revealed) to their own people. Mohammed's revelation was written as the Koran after his death.  So he was not an individual god-seeker.  Having fought for his position in life, he was realistic about who he was and what he preached. 

            In Mecca, the Muslems were a small group, somewhat intrusive to Meccan life.  The Meccains came to see him as a threat, and so the Muslims were persecuted.  Some of Mohammed's follows emigrated in 615 across the Read Sea to Africa.  Knowing that he was being seen as a threat, he admitted to three other (Meccan) deities as intermediaries.  But he recanted. Mohammed was criticized for his so-called revelations as of his own knowledge.  Later, his temporary acceptance of the Meccan gods was referred to in Satanic Verses, by Rusdhi.  Meanwhile, Mohammed's uncle who protected Mohhamed was being boycotted by other tribes.  It came to a stalemate between his tribe and those others in Mecca.  Umar joined Islam in Mecca, influencing more converts.  In 619, Muhammad's uncle died and his group was still rather small.  He had not won over many to his vision of things.  So he went to another city nearby.  He considered breaking from his tribe and family.  Some folks from Medina came to Mecca asking Muhammad to act as an arbitrar between the Aws and Khazraf tribes in Medina.  They needed an outsider to mediator.  In addition, three Jewish tribes, the Qaynuqa, Nadir, and Qurayza, lived in Medina, assimilated to Arab culture but retaining their own faith.  They often sided with the weaker Arab tribe to keep a balane of power between the two major tribes.  The Muhajirun were those who emigrated with Muhammad to Medina in 622.  That emigration is called hijra.  He cut his ties to his tribe and was accepted into another society with his followers.  Some Medina tribes accepted Muhammad's claim--they were called the Helpers (the Ansar and Muhajiruns).  The Munafiqun (hypocrites) were 'fair-weather' fans' of Muhammad in Medina.  They were the majority in Medina.   Mohammed and his emigrates came from a trade culture and had to adjust to an agricultural society.  He sought to unite Medina into one community in his faith.  In the last ten years of his life, he built a Umma--a Muslim community not based on blood ties but on a common faith.  Muhammad changed the order of society.  Profession of faith, rather than geneology, was the basis of membership in the community.  Individual choice is salient here--you enter it as an individual. 

To sustain his fellow emigrates, he raided caravans.  He was part of a Muhajirun crowd that had a slave kill a Meccan man during one of the pre-existing holy month.  So tension between Mohammed and Mecca increased. 

In 624, the batttle of Badr.  A caravan from Mecca to Syria via Medina was intercepted by Mohammed and his forces.  He was almost routed, but he turned around the battle and routed the Meccans.  He saw it as Allah's hand favoring him.  He came out as an able military leader, gaining not only wealth but more power in Medina.  Mohammed then drove the Qaynyqa Jewish group out of Medina to Khaybar.  He did not feel supported by the Jewish groups on religious grounds.  Specifically, there were differences between how Mohammed recounted the ancient prophets differently than the Jews did.  Also, although Muhammad never claimed to be the Messiah, he claimed to be a prophet, receiving revelation directly from Allah.  Mohammed claimed that the Jewish and Christian followers of their respective prophets distorted the scripture of their respective prophets.  Also, Muhammad taught that Abraham(Ibrahim) and his son Ichmeal founded the Kaba in Mecca.  Ichmeal was seen as the father of the Arabs.  Also, whereas the Jews prayed toward toward Jerusalem (east), Mohammed prayed toward the Kaba.  So, there were religious grounds for a tension between Mohammed and the Jews.  From that time on, Mohammed did not see himself as confirming Judaism and Christianity but revealing a new religion.  A change in Muhammad's self-consciousness.

In 625, Mohammed was defeated at Uhud.  He himself was wounded.  He returned to Medina as a wounded man.  The Meccans did not pursue him to Medina but returned to Mecca (a mistake of strategy).  Mohammed needed wealth for his people, so he plundered the Nadir Jewish group.  

In 627, the Khandaq of Mecca seiged Mohammed's group.  Mohammed dug a ditch around his town--a strategy he got from a Persian friend.  Finally, the group withdrew.  Mohammed then killed the children of Qurayza (the last Jewish group in Medina) and sold the adults into slavery.  Bowering: there is no excuse for this action by Mohammed.  

            In 628, Mecca and Medina had reached a cease-fire.  Mohammed went to Mecca for a pre-Islamic pilgrimage.  The Meccans saw his followers' swords and reached an agreement with Mohammed that he would wait until the following year to enter Mecca.  This was actually good for Mohammed, as he was then seen as the leader of the enimies of Mecca by the Meccans.  Mohammed made a ten-year truce with the Meccans.  Mohammed broke this truce and attacked Mecca.  Mohammed won Mecca.  He distributed large bribes and booty to the previous Meccan leaders, so he 'won their hearts'.  But he killed many of the poets.   Mohammed was then the ruler of Mecca as well as Medina.  He then attacked nomadic tribes outside the two cities.  He defeated them at Hunayn.  Mohammed then made a pilgrimmage to Mecca.  He was the leader of all of the Arabs.  The peak of his power.  Mohammed was seen as by the Arabs as prophet and ruler.  The new monotheistic creed with the Koran as a basis was the new basis (individual profession of faith) that dismantled the prior arrangement of society and provided unity.  Military enterprise had entered into the religious faith.  Namely, strife and struggle, or Jihad--an all-out struggle for Mohammed's faith.  There was spillage into political war. 

By 632, he had put Arab society on a new level, given it a new religious faith and the Koran, and a driving force (a nation) to create a world empire.  He died peacefully in Mecca in 632.  So much of Islam is tied to his life and teachings.

Islam after Mohammed's death:

After Mohammed died, some tribes claimed to have been under Mohammed and were no longer obliged to follow Islam and be ruled by his successor.  The person chosen in Medina to succeed Moh.'s rulership was Abu Bakr.  He was a Khalifa (a ruler and, later, a representative of God)--this office was not that of a prophet.  He used force to bring the stray tribes back to Islam.  These wars of Ridda (against apostates). were successful.  Abu Bakr died in 634, to be followed by Umar.  Abu Bakr appointed Umar whereas Abu Bakr had been elected by the powers of the time.  In 644, Uthman was chosen as the weakest of a six-member council.  He was murdered in 656 and succeeded by Ali.

: 9/17/96

Mohammed synthesized his political and religious roles and considered himself still as a prophet when he took on a political role in 622 in Medina.  His 'holy war' which gave a social and political unity for the Arabs dovetailed with the missionary emphasis of Islam.

Shahada: the profession of the faith (There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet).  No preparatory education or ritual.  His inspired teachings were collected after his death and became the sacred scripture, the Qur'an

After Mohammed's death, Abu Bakr became the leader from 632-634.  He was acclaimed by the elders.  He had to deal with the outlying Arab tribes which held that their contracts died with Mohammed's death.  They were defeated by Abu Bakr.  He appointed Umar, a convert to Islam in 600, as the second Caliph. He led from 634-644.  He kept the tribes together in religion and society and directed battles north into Syria and Palestine as well as Mesapotania (Araq, today), and into Egypt.  He organized the conquered territories, and so led the way to the Arab empire.  This was in part possible because Byzanthium and Mesapotania had weakened each other.  Also, the Arabs were able to move quickly on camels.  The other armies had heavy equipment.  Finally, the Arabs did not exact a heavy burden of taxes on conquered people and they in turn were allowed to be conquerers further out, rewarding rather than subsegating them.  The Arabs granted conquered tribes freedom of religion.   But with time, assimilation allowed for conversion--fervent (really wanting to become a Muslim), formal (nominal commitment,  because it is to the benefit of one economically and politically), or forced (when cities did not give in to the Arabs when surrounded).  But Jews and Christians usually held a special place, being of the book, and so had more freedom of religion.

By 742, the Arabs had reached the border of France and were in Spain.  The Arab armies were in Central Asia and the Indus valley of India. 

In 644, Umar was killed by a non-Muslim slave.  The problem of succession.  Uthman, the fourth Caliph, was established as the ruler by the powers that be in the empire. But Ali and his supporters resisted.  Even so, Uthman led from 644-656.  The Koran was put toghether during his reign. Uthman was murdered.  Ali led from 656-661.  But in 658, the Umayyads, having their own successor following Uthman, separated and moved the capital to Damascus.   Ali was murdered in 661.  The Shi'as, those who had stood behind Ali on the basis of his blood-relation to Muhammad, were thus not able to rule the whole Arab world.  The Sunnis were the majority group, which included the Umayyads.  The Shi'as argued that the leadership should have been hereditary from Mohammed.  Ali was the first so. Ali was a close relative of Mohammed and followed Mohammed from an early date. Ali did not exercise his claim until 658. So, there was deep-seated civil strife for leadership.  Ali was the leader of the Shi'as.  This, in spite of the success of the outward conquests of the empire.  The empire was Islamic.

The Koran: Allah's word on paper.  The Word of God, literally.  It is Allah's own uncreated word, so it is eternal.  Mohammee governance of municipal and private commercial

enterprises is ages old, [FN70] the permissible scope of corporate by-laws has never

been defined with anything approaching scientific precision or settled convention.

On one hand, black letter descriptions of the role and content of corporate by-laws

articulate a broad, even grand, importance of by-laws in the scheme of corporate

governance. As one might expect from someone who wrote an entire treatise on the

subject of corporate by-laws, one author recited ronological.  But the opening sura, the Fatiha, is short--it is the call to Allah.  End-rhythms used in the verses.  This distinguishes the Koran from other religious works or poetry.  The rhythm has an effect on the listener.  'ALM' used in the Koran, but their meaning is unknown. 

Before the Koran, Muslims had memories of Mohammed's teachings.  He could not read or write, but he may have had scribes.  The Arabic at that time was poetry (the Koran is not poetry because it does not have meter).  Arabic was not in books, but was oral.  From 610 until his death, Mohammed recited his preaching which was to become verses in the Koran.  If the Koran was made orally and the end-rhythms had an effect on the listeners, is its written form taking away from Allah's word?  Kitab means scripture (including those of other religions).  Qur'an means recited.  In time, it became the name of the book itself.  It is not clear that Mohammed wanted his translation of Jewish and Christian scripture into Arab language made into a book. 

Each Sura has a name.  So they are not known by number.  Mohammed believed that there is a heavenly archetype of which scripture comes.  The Torah, or Tawrat, reflects the beginnings, coming down through Moses.  Also from the archetypal scripture came down through Jesus as the Injil.  And Mohammed received the Qur'an.  Moses, Jesus and Mohammed were only the mouth-pieces of God, according to Mohammed.  He interpreted the Hebrew and Christian scriptures differently than how those faiths had interpreted them, themselves.  He believed that a spirit had communicated the messages to him.  He came to call it Gabriel.  Revelation as spirit-given.  Personified as Gabrial. 

9/19/96

The Koran:

It was meant by Mohammed as a recitation to be done in prayer.   Also, it was meant to be a scripture in Arabic parallel to those of the Hebrews and Christians.  The Koran was not written in a particular sequence or order; rather, piece-meal revelations via Mohammed.   After his death, his recitations were put in the form of a book, ordered only by chapter length and end-rhythm.  Some verses are clear, whereas others are vague(thus needing interpretation).  Also, development of Mohammed's thought, including abrogration which reverses his prior revelations (a later correction).  But God can't be subject to error or mistake.  But someone with a religious message develops just as do others; this does not necessarily reflect upon God.   The recitation is done solemnly, but not sung or accompanied with instruments.  No statues, pictures or human form in the Koran or in Mosques.  No created forms (including man) should be part of that which aims at God. 

On the language: was the Arabic used of the Meccan dialect or the classical form of the language?  Bowering: this is a modern question.  Arabs know both forms of Arabic.  The Koran, being the first book in Arabic, became the standard for language. 

On the transmission of the Koran:  During Mohammed's life, the verses were recited orally. Around 650, Ufman established a standard Koran to cut out infighting over different interpretations as well as which verses were part of the Koran.  The council of Zaid put together the Koran as a corpus. It was written without vowel signs, which have to be added by the reader.   This was the way of the written Arabic language.  Even some constanant sound 'dots' were not included for a century after the text was written.  The Koran was a skelaton.  It was understood that a sumpplimentary note page was needed for oral recitation.    Constant, and then vowel, diacritical marks were added one hundred and three hundred years after Mohammed's death, respectively.   Copies of the Koran were sent to the provincial capitals (i.e. of the conquered lands) as it was originally written and  then in its linguistic specifications. 

On the Content of the Koran: objections that Mohammed had argued against are included.  Also, his discusions with folks of other religions are included.  Mohammed's creed is 'The one God is Allah'.  The name 'Allah' had come from Al-cah ('the deity).  Was it a name for deities, or of deity itself--the latter, rather than of a name of a particular deity.  Elohiem (Hebrew) is behind 'Allah' too.  Some sutras were given before Mohammed went to Medina, and those after his arrival.   There is an afterlife, when man would be called into account according to their deeds, going to heaven or hell.  Allah is creator and sits in judgment. Allah can give life to the dead body (resurrection). The concept of man created is Adam.  So, Allah stands at the beginning and end of human life.  In his early revelations, this theme was salient; the strict monotheism was salient later, in refuting 'Shirt', the belief of polytheism.  Allah is the one God, superior to the other gods as well as the Christian trinity (understanding Mary, Jesus, and the Father as the trinity).  These bring plurality and humanness to that which is wholly other, known only through His attributes:  the first and the last, omniscient, omnipresent...'The Ninety-Nine most beautiful names of God, 'Allah' being the one-hundredth. 

Even later still, Mohammed saw himself in a line of prophets beginning with Adam.  He takes his understanding of them from midrash rather than the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.  The prophets were the patriarchs, rather than the prophets such as Isiah.  Mohammed added prophets from Christianity as well as the pre-Islamic religion. They were reinterpreted as prototypes for Mohammed.  The mission of the prophet--to bring man back to God.  Mohammed saw himself as the last prophet. 

Man is viewed as the servant of God.  Obedience as the ideal attitude.  Prayer and praise of Allah are signs of obedience.  Thus, a strong emphasis on 'law' that has been given given by His prophets. 

The signs of history are the prophets (God acting in history).  God sends the prophet to bring the true message.  The people reject the message and the prophet and God intervenes on behalf of his prophet against the unbelievers.  There are also signs of nature: the powers of nature beyond human control.  Night and day (order).  To understand creation and resurrection in the sign of the rising of life out of dead sand in the desert.

Mohammed knew Jesus as Isa, son of Maryam (childhood stories of Jesus).  Usually, identifying someone to his mother was an insult.  But Jesus was seen as being conceived by Mary without husband.  He was seen as an injil, or prophet, who rebuked his followers for believing in the Trinity.  No evidence of Sonship or incarnation in the Koran.  The Koran rejects the death of Jesus on the cross.  A prophet cound not go down.  God would never go down on a prophet.  The majority interpretation of the Koran is that Jesus actually died (though not on the cross) and went to heaven.  Some Muslims believe that Jesus will return at the end of time when Islam will triumph.  This view developed outside the Koran.  No concept of redemption in Islam.  The death of Jesus as an expiation of sin was rejected, but some vicarious suffering motif in Sufism (though not of Jesus).  Mohammed was informed in part out of the early church contriversies on the identity of Jesus.  He did not have normative scriptures in front of him. 

A doctrine of angels and satin.  the Jinn spirits were forces of nature beyond human control and influence the fate of individual men.  Angels, in coming out of Jewish-Christian scripture, were mediators between Allah and Man.  Gabrial to Mohammed.  Other angels--of death.   satin is known as shaytan(in pre-Islamic Arabia, is connected with the Genesis story of Adam and Eve) and ibil(the diabolical one).  God asked iblis, an angel, to prostrate before Allah created Adam and Eve. A later tradition: He wanted to worship only God, not the creation, and so would not prostrate before man.   Out of pride, Iblis refused to acknowledge Allah's act of creation and so was sent to hell.  Sin is seen as disobedience to the law (i.e. Allah).  Mohammed can intercede for his own followers at the final judgment.  This is the extent of redemption in Islam.  Mohammed does not atone for the sins of others.  Acts of repentence can be done by man, but this is not an expiation of sin.  Nor original sin.  Human nature is basically good.

Tafsir was an early explanation of the Koran, as well as combining teachings and actions of Allah not contained in the Koran.  To illustrate the background of various Koran verses.  A later development of Islam--how to define Islam and explain the relation between Allah and man.  Strong emphasis on predestination, yet a free-will was recognized.  How do these jive?  Also, what does this make of the final judgment.  Also later, a rational (philosophical)--from Greek Philosophy--interpretation of Islam.  Also, the Sufi's interpreted the verses in terms of their own individual experience.  The Shi'i interpretation emphasizes hereditary sucession.  Materials are said to have been repressed by the Sunis.  Finally, a modern interpretation showing that modern science has it source in the Koran.  Islamic fundamentalists react with a literal interpretation.

There are also commentaries verse by verse.  Voluminous.  Later authors add their own view while maintaining the preceding commentary.  A trend of growing. 

Much of the Koran is practice, rather than doctrine.  How to pray, fast, pilgrimmage.  Family-life is also salient.  But other aspects of human life are omitted.  This gave rise to the 'tradition literature', giving law on these uncovered matters.  Islam is not simply to accept a faith, but is a way of life.  Mohammed is the model Muslim. 

No ten commendments in the Koran, but the laws against killing, etc. are in the Koran.

Allah--personal or impersonal attributes?

Koran-- a sacred object?  If so, idolitry?

Resurrection or recesitation?  Jesus.  Different than the general resurrection?

Injil or Masih?  (Jesus)  Meaning of these words.

9/24/96

The Chronology of the Koran:

The human mind is not in a position(equipped and a right) to question it as God's word. So, no form or source criticism.  Sura's belong to two phases: Median and Meccan.  In Median suras, more reference to historical events.  Redaction criticism  was used to place the Median and Meccan suras chronologically.  Three Mecan periods: 48 suras, 21 suras, and 21 suras.  Twenty-four in the Median period.  The first Meccan phase: on an emminant end of the world.  The second phase: recognition of opposition; recognition of historical prophets.  The third phase: directly against the opposition.  The Median period: law and social rules.  Laws about religious ceremony as well as the polity. 

This chronology is a circular argument, because it takes phases of Mohammed's life as given (in the Koran).  Bell: determine where each verse belongs.  Muslims resented this.  The Koran was put together on the basis of end-rhym rather than logic.  But there was language study concerning the origins of various terms in the Koran.  Other languages.  But this did not solve the problem of the Koran's origins.  Without the archeological finds, this is difficult to find.  Also, biblical criticism was more endeared to the biblical type of literature--having been written through a long period of time, with some sources known.  Old manuscripts of the Koran, have not been found.  The Arab countries will not allow expeditions of this sort.

Hadith: tradition; the literature or record of Sunna.  Also, a science of the Sunna.

Sunna: custom; the normative conduct of Mohammed and his early followers.

With Mohammed's death, revelation came to an end.  Hadith has to do with the sayings and conduct of the prophet.  Projecting Mohammed as the normative standard.  The Koran is incomplete to cover all matters of religious, economic, social, and political life.  So, Hadith is also a book of duties (proper conduct).  Mohammed's followers had a memory of his life and teachings which were not captured in the Koran.  After several generations, the Hadith was put in writing.  Imp.: Koran is the word of God; Hadith is the report about the Sunna of Mohammed.  The Sunna is the custom of the prophet as seen by the forefathers.

So, at the death of Mohammed, there was the Koran and eye and ear witnesses of that of Mohammed not captureed in the Koran.   Mohammed came out as the model and example of the ideal Muslim.  In contrast was Bida--your own way of life, irrespective of the example and model of Mohammed.  Innovation was thus barred.  This gives modern fundamentalists a strong claim against innovation.  On the other hand, tradition has given Islam a continuity. 

Two groups of followers:

1. Sahaba 'C': the companions of Mohammed.  Eye and ear witnesses.

2. Tabi'un 'F': the followers of the next generation of the companions.  They were seen as the source of customs of the Muslim as per Mohammed's practices and teachings.  These oral accounts grew with time, later written as the Hadith. 

The Hadith was not a biography of the prophet, but consisted of reports of particular practices and teachings ascribed to Mohamed.  For instance, a Hadith is an individual account, having two parts.  Isnad (chain) and Main (text).  A chain: a string of persons back to a Sahaba: the chain of authorities which leads to 'And Mohammed said...".  This is followed by the text of that which was reported of what Mohammed did or said.  Ideally, the content of the text has been passed down through the chain.  The written collections were done two centuries after the prophet's death.  They became normative.    See: A Manual of Hadith.  A section of ethics. 

During the period of the formation of Hadith, Islam was spreading beyond Arabia.  With one-hundred years following the Prophet's death, the Arab empire had spread to from Spain to North India.  Conditions thus differed.  A living development of the practices of the conquered.  Practice and custom, as synthesized, was not of the Sunna of Mohammed.  There was actually a form of the accumulation of written records which became Hadith.  The standardized collections were then accepted as the Hadith.  The development of the Arab practice and teaching  of Islam was ignored; the Hadith was said to be of Sunna.   Even so, different traditions can be found in the material.  Also, matters to which Mohammed could not have known of were said to be Sunna in the Hadith.  Additions in the chain?  So, biographies of those in the chain were done by Muslim scholars.  When a hole was found in a chain, the Hadith passage was thrown out.  The Western scholars argued that the Matn should be considered too. 

An Islam way of life reflected what the Muslims had developed over the two centuries between Mohammed's death and the codification of the Hadith.  An influence of the conquered people.  Goldziher: the Hadiths reflect a state of Muslim development during two-hundred years after the prophet.  So, Western scholars do not view the Hadith as of the prophet's life.  For instance, it had been easy for people in the chain to fabricate a matn to support their economic or political interests.

The six Hadith collections (chain until the 800's):

1. Bukhari

2. Muslim

3. Tirmaidhi

5. Abu Da'ud

6. Ibn Mada

7. Nasa'i.

Each follows lists of topics.  Organized by subject-matter.  Bukharai and Muslim are the most authoritative of Hadith.  Each of the six is voluminous.    There were other collections of hadith.  They were denegrated by the Muslims. 

The Shi'i's believe that power should have gone down the family-line of the Prophet beginning with Ali.  The Shi'is accepted only the collections accepted by the family of the prophet.  So, they do not accept the six Suni collections; they have others.  No substantive difference on the content, however.   Not much difference in the conduct or custom of the Sunis and the Shi'is  The Shi'is accept the Sunna, but through collections recognized by the family of the prophet.  Shi'is dominate in Iran. 

Those who developed Hadith were called the traditionalists, the Fuqaha--the legal scholars.  Using Hadith as their sourse, they constructed Islamic law.  Their legal reasoning paralleled the development of the Hadith collections.  The Hadith material also influenced the biography of the prophet, which was based on an oral form.  Perceptions of how the followers looked back at their 'bigger-than-life' prophet.  This biography is the Sira.  It is not of the prophet's historical accounts; rather, written from a faith-perspective.  

The Koran is taken as the actual words of Mohammed, so is not like the New Testament.  Hadith is closer to the New Testament, both being of witnesses or others around the first hundred years of the prophets, respectively.  The Sira is also like the New Testament, as both are of how the followers looked back in a faith perspective on their respective prophets, rather than a biography of actual events in the prophets' lives.  The New Testament has some material said to be of the life of the historical Jesus, being written 180 years after his death, whereas the Koran, written at Mohammed's death, has relatively more material on the historical life of Mohammed to which Christianity has no counterpart.  In other words, that which Christianity has in written form on Jesus is less historical than that which Islam has on Mohammed.  The New Testament is like the Hadith and Sira; Islam has the Koran as well.[1]

9/26/96

Hadith:

It reflects the teachings and customs of Islam during its first two centuries after the prophet's death.  An almagimation or assimilation of traditions in the Median area, spread outward as the empire spread.  Integrating conquered peoples. 

Islamic Law:

First, the old tribal Arab law was a source.  Such law had been normative: for instance, blood revenge (eye for an eye).  Blood money was used to negotiate a settlement between the parties.  Litigation between tribes was arbitrated by a hakam, a neutral party.  Matters within a tribe were handled by the tribal chief. 

Mohammed became a religious and social reformer who demanded obedience from his follower.  His consciousness of being a prophet included this, so included law giving and acting in effect the highest judge of his own community (a hakam).  Unlike pre-Islamic hakams, he related divine revelation to his function as hakam.  Substantively, he opposed wine-drinking and unlimited poligamy.  Also, he pronounced laws such as cutting off a hand for stealing. 

The Koran was considered the word of God, God's will being pronounced by Mohammed as God's mouth-piece. 

Shari'a is a path to a water-well: the divine will of a Muslim way of life; God has designed a revealed path, or law, by which to get to heaven.  Fiah is the science of the law (jurisprudence).  Fiah orginally meant the type of understanding based on the independent reasoning of individuals.  So, Shari'a means divine law and fiah means the science of law. 

Shari'a is a way of life, so is comprehensive (of private as well as public life) includes not only duties to others but to God as well.  Ibadat (worship) are the duties of the individual Muslim toward God.  Praying five times a day, giving alms, fasting during Ramadam, pilgrimage, and holy war. Muamalat:are the duties to other Muslims (applying only to Muslims).  Personal law (marriage...), criminal law, and civil law as well as contracts and commercial law.  For interest, usary is prohibited, so banking and oil money have been problematic. Modern practices burdened by ideological preferences from another (historical) contest.

Moreover, modern Islamic societies have the problem of a divine immutable law (shari'a), rooted in the Koran.  Historical development has changed the conditions from those in which the shari'a laws were developmented.  So, difficult to translate shari'a laws into the modern State.  Western laws have been assimilated by some Islamic states.  Fundamentalist Muslims resent this development, trying to go back to the earlier times. 

From 632-641, the period of the first four califhs, the empire expanded vastly.  658-750: the Umayyad period. North Africa, North India, and Spain were conquered.  Local customs had greater salience in these remote regions.  The capital was in Damascus (Syria being the center--in the old Byzantine Empire)--so the Muslims assimilated Byzantine law and its structures for their own laws.  Also, some elements of Jewish law were integrated in the Ibadat.   In 750, the Abbasid revolution emphasized Islamic way of life was pushed on all the regions. The capital shifted to Baghdad. 

So, a progression forming Islamic law.  Various legal opinions of legal scholars (fuqaha).  No legal code or constitution. 

Sources for Islamic law.  The Qur'an and the Sunna.  In early Islamic times, the Sunna was regarded as having priority, because the Qur'an is too limited in scope of practical application.  Some struggle between them.  The Qur'an was then regarded as primary.  The Sunna did not cover every circumstance either.  So ijma (consensus) came to be a principle.  Believing that the society could not agree on an error, ijma became a source of Islamic law.  The consensus is recognized by the scholars.  It creates some cohesion of an Islamic way of life rooted in the society itself.  Fourthly, qiyas (rational reasoning by analogy) is a way of dealing with new situations needing law.  The individual law-finding of the scholar, showing analytically that it is rooted in one or more of the other three sources (Koran, Sunna, and Ijma).  Together, these four sources are the four usul.

Ahl Al-hadith: the people for the legal opinion of a legal scholar, in contrast to the Ahl Al-Ray: the people for individual (independent) common-sense.  Both peoples looked back to the sources, but the latter was more independent from them. 

Ijtihad: the finding of the law by legal opinion.  The individual effort at law-finding by a scholar of the law.  It became controversial: seen as a personal opinion, similar to Al-ray.  But it was also seen in some schools as akin to Qiyas.  In c.a. 900, there were so many ijtihad laws.  The door was closed on this sourse. Talqlid: the corpus of the then established Ijtihad. 

A judge is called a Qadi.  He is not a lawyer producing legal reasoning, but is a legal administrator.  They were not necessarily trained in the law.  During Umayyad times, appointed by the caliph.  Appointed by someone else in the Abbasid period. 

The Muhtasib oversaw the commercial world as an inspector, usually being very powerful.  He became in effect the supervisor of the public conduct.  The moral police.  This function is not clear-cut in the law. 

The Faqth: a scholar of the law.  The Mufti: a person who gives a Fatwa (a legal opinion).  A Mufti is usually a Faqth.  A person becomes a mufti when approached by a person or people needing a legal opinion on a specific matter.  This opinion is legal advice, thus not obligatory.  The Mufti tries to base his opinion of the Qur'an, Sunna, the Ijma, or the Qiyas (the four Usul, sources of law). 

Discussion: 9/26/96

Hadiths of the Gardens of the Righteous.  These hadiths are not for scholarship but for the laity. 

On fighting: fight against those who resist converting.  Kill to defend Islamic territory.   Kill to unify Arabia.  Kill the Jewish group when it is no longer a threat (Bowering: there is not an Islamic ethic to justify this). Guyer: but Mohammed himself killed the Jewish group.  Separation of religion and political?  Did Mohammed see himself as the exemplary?  If so, in killing the Jewish group, did he not act contrary to his own religion's ethic?  But, if he saw himself as an ordinary person, able to speak revelation, then he need not have been a good guy.

Some hadiths contain revelations to Mohammed in them (not in the Koran).

On obedience of authority: some contradiction--obey even a negro, but one need not obey an unjust ruler. 

There are charms, proverbs, and general piety hadiths.  Mohammed did not do miracles except winning 'impossible' battles. But some hadiths have miracles and as well as self-sacrifice. Why?  Promoting missionary work.  Christian influence, perhaps a borrowed story. 

Western scholars have rejected most hadiths as being authentic.  Goldzier(1910), for instance, was one such scholar. His view is unaccommodating to the Muslim point of view.  Muslim scholars disagree with them.  No interchange between them. 

On the Quran: it will be summoned on the Day of Judgment and will be heralded.  The Quran (or, reading the Quran) will intercede for its readers on the Day of Judgment.  Guyer:  Is the Quran being idolized here?  Is the Quran in a role here as Jesus is in Christianity?  If so, would the Muslim see the Quran as an idol if he sees Jesus as one?

10/1/96

Islamic Law:

A living tradition of law accumulated from back to the Koran.  From 750 onward, an intentional effort to make the empire Islamic.  Several large 'other peoples' had entered the empire, so Muslims were in the minority.  Those peoples demanded more equality; the caliphs (protector of the law) responded in enforcing Islamic law and emphasizing conversion.  Four schools of Sunni law: the Madhhab, containing the Maliki, Hanafi, shafii and the Hanbali schools (know them!).  These schools exist today.  None of them have a code; rather, they each represent an orientation to the formative period of Islamic law (700-950).  The Maliki school is mainly in Africa, except Egypt.  Hanafi is the largest of the schools. It is in India and Pakistan, as well as Turkey and central Asia, including Afganistan and the Muslim Russian republics.  Shafii is in Malasia.  Hanbali is in Saudi Arabia. 

The Maliki and Hanafi schools developed earlier.  Shafii has a bit of synthesis of the Maliki and Hanafi schools; Hanbail being a reaction to the Shafii.

Malik B. Anas was the founder of Maliki who died in 795. He emphasized a reliance on the Hadith. Malik B. Anas, living in Medina, has some preeminance among them.  He wrote a book on the practices in Medina, Muwatta.  Basis: Hadith(tradition).  A traditional account of what Mohammed and his follows did. Abu Hanifa (d. 767) founded Hanafi. He came from Kufa, which became a Sufi (e.g. Ali) area.  His reasoning was based more on leagal reasoning and less so on tradition.  He was in a new providence (Iraq), who applied Arab and Islamic traditions to the new conditions he found in Kufa. His followers were people of the Ray(legal reasoning by the individual).  Al-Shafii (d. 820) founded the Shafii (emphasized books).  He lived in Baghdad, hte capital.  He emphasized the Sunni of the prophet, moreso than the sunni of Mohammed's followers. He tried to unify the Hadiths, but he subsumed earlier traditions, attributed them to the prophet.  Ahmad B. Hanbal (d. 855) founded Hanbali (had a book of tradition).  He was active in Baghdad, where learning was concentrated. He emphasized the Hadith, deemphasizing common-sense legal reasoning.  His theological disposition was salient.  So, a traditional (orthodox) school. 

These four schools of law (or rites but not sects) really developed a century or two after their founders' deaths.  Some of the followers studied at Madrasa, the major Islamic seminary. 

The Shii's had their own school, the Jafari, founded by Dafar Al-Sadiq in Medina (d. 765). He reflects not only Medina, but the Kufa tradition.  Emphasizes the words of Mohammed as spoken by him and his descendents.  Law is the teachings of the Imami (Mohammed's direct desecendents).  It is perhaps closes to the Hanafi as both emphasized the reasoning of the individual.  The Shiis are 10% of the Muslim population.

Two legal concepts through the schools.  Haram-that which is forbidden in the Koran.  Halal--that which is allowed in the Koran.  With time, they develop into the 5 Ahkam (five categories of actions along the spectrum from forbidden to allowed).  A middle (indifferent) category, as well as  blameworthy and permissible categories bounded by the duty and the forgiven.  The duty was called Fard.  The duties were codified: prayer five times a day--a religious duty by the law, though not with a prison penalty. 

On the treatment of women by Islamic law: the man has a favored position over the woman, as rooted in the Koran.  For instance, wearing a veil.  But in the urban city, the veil is seen as a sign of distinction.  It also connotes a sign of availability from childhood.  in some cities, it is a sign of being married.  The ideal of the Muslim way of life is the married life.  There is no life-ideal of celebate.  So, many Muslim women accept the veil as a sign of distinction, rather than as a prison.  The rural and lower urban classes do not practice wearing the veil.  Another area of inequality between men and women: inheritance.  A women is entitled to half the inheritance of what the male offspring get.  This is rooted in the Koran, so can't be overturned.  This provision also comes from the view that a married couple shares their wealth.  Another inequality: the testamonies of two women are necessary to contradict that of one man.  Another distinction: women live in separate quarters than the husband.  He, the lord of the house, would be in the parlor (interacting with visitors); the wife is in the kitchen and the kids' room.  The wife is not to show her face except to her husband.  Also, for protection.  For instance, when a women goes out, she should be covered as well as accompanied by a close male relative.  Marriages are arranged, so there is no dating.  So, men and women go to movies separately.  It is more common to see two men holding hands going to a movie than to see a man and a women going there together.  In the Mosque, the women pray either outside the Mosque or in separate quarters in the Mosque.  Men and women do not intermingle in public.  So there are curtains behind men and women in a classroom.  Women working with men in public is also not advised. A woman's world is her family and her girl-friends. The haram is the womens' quarters; it is rare.  Wives and conqubines included.  Powerful men had castrated males (of non-Muslim origin because a Muslim could not be castrated) to administer their harams.  On adultary, stoning the woman or lashing her.  A trend toward the harsher.  This was not always the practice.  A man can have concubines, so adultary by men has been rare--it is only if he sleeps with a married women (such a man could be stoned).  These traditions of Islamic Law are not necessarily in the Koran, but have come through tradition (esp. the veil).  But modesty for women is in the Koran; the veil is not.  Family honor is at stake as well in these matters.  The practice of the veil differs by country.  A tension between modern times and Islamic law and custom.  So, Pakistan can have a woman President and yet have women stoned for adultary.

More than 2/3 of Islamic women are illerate, so they don't know about feminism. 

10/3/96

Marriage(Nikah) and Divorce(Talaq):

Stipulations of Islamic law on marriage are not observed by all Muslim societies.  But it is the area of Islamic law that is attempted most to integrate into the modern world.  Social pressure and rigidity have contributed to the salience of Islamic law on family structure. 

Marriage is a contract, rather than a sacrament, between two parties (the two families).  Consent is the essential element.  Provision of its dissolution.  The terms of the contract can be altered during the process of making the contract.  For instance, the family of the wife can insert the clause that she gets his right of divorce if he marries a second wife.  A limited (4 at a time) polygamy--if the husband treats them equally.  In practice, the first wife has more power than do the others.  The first son is important to the parents.  He is whom most of the education is invested.  The parents depend on their first son when they are old.  A controlled polygamy, contrary to pre-Islamic Arab custom.

A marriage gives a woman social status.  No social status for a single women.  A muslim man can marry a Jew or Christian as well as a Zoroastrian (the people of the book-- Ahl Al-Kitab) as long as the children are raised as  Muslims.  Zoroastrians have no writen scripture, but are normatively of the book (e.g. monotheism).  A Muslim woman can't marry a non-Muslim.  In a divorce, the children go with the father.

Mohammed advocated marriage for all Muslims.  The procreation of offspring is the primary concern, mutual love is secondary.  In Medieval times, the more children the better.  The idea of family as an expansion.  Most marriages are arranged, so to establish stronged family ties.  Distant relatives would be married to cement the blood bonds between the two extended family. 

Marriage is defined as a contract for the legalization of intercourse and the procreation of childen.  The legality of children has to do with inheritance, especially when there are children are from different mothers.  A proposal and acceptance are necessary for a marriage to be formulated.  The proposal can be made by anyone in the bridegroom's family.  Same for the acceptance.  Two fathers of families may discuss the qualities of their respective children and the relations between their families, and make an arrangement.  It is possible for the bridegroom or bride to reject the arrangement when he or she reaches majority.  But there can be strong family presure.  To make  a marrage, witnesses(s).  Words indicating via formula spoken that there really is in fact a marriage.  The man and women must repeat the words.  So to verify that the proposal and acceptance have been accepted and not just intentioned.  Also, there are agents, or lawyers, there to verify the conditions agreed to in the contract.  The sex-act is not required for consummation of the marriage.

The largest Muslim feast in a family is the marriage ceremony. 

With regard to capacity, every Muslim of sound mind who has attained majority (puberty) can marry.  Often, teenage marriages occur.  However, the marriage of minors can be contracted in advance by the fathers.  The father is the child's legal guardian.

A second marriage of a wife while still married to the first is called a bigomy.  It is treated like adultary and the offspring are illegitimate.  It is rare that Sunni and Shii marry.  The Shii's maintain that only a temporal marriage (Muta)--a marriage for a period of time--are possible between a Muslim man and an Ahl Al-Kitab women. The time can be an hour or eighty years.  The Sunni reject this, due to its 'prostitution'-like implications. 

A man can't marry the descendents of his wives, as well as his mother or his sisters.  Unlawful conjunction: a man can't marry two sisters.  Idda is a stipulation of a waiting period.  It only applies to the women, after a divorce or death of her husband.  This waiting period is for the purpose of establishing whether she is pregnant.  The waiting periods differ for death or divorce.   Extramarital sex is prohibited.  If a women and a man of marriage age are found together in a place where intercourse could have occurred, then it is presumed that it did, and the man can marry the woman, unless they are of close blood relation.  The two partners of a marriage should be of equal social status.  A woman should not marry down, because of the disparity.  If a wife becomes wealthy and gains over the man in equality, he can divorce her.  If a man is 'excommunicated', he must divorce his muslim wives. 

Divorce can be in a harsh form: if so, then the two can't remarry unless she has remarried and divorced or through death become single again.  A woman could marry another and not consummate it and then he divorces her and she can then go back to her prior husband.  The husband has the right of divorce.  He needs witnesses in his pronouncement.  If pronounced once, it can be revoked.  Also, he can revoke it within a month.  Because she is not free to marry during that period.  But if he has pronounced divorce three times, or has written a bill of divorcement, then it is irrevokeable.  To get her back, she has to go through another marriage.   The death of a spouse: a husband can immediately remarry but the woman must wait.   A divorced woman is at the mercy of her original family.  The children stay with the husband.  A woman can't make a divorce pronouncement, but she can have the deligated right of divorce in the contract if he marries a second wife without her consent.  He would still get the kids, however.  There are also forms of divorce regarding to adultary as well as mutual incompatibility.  If a non-Muslim man converts and is married to a non-muslim not of Ahl Al-Kitab, then he must divorce. 

If a man renounces Islam, he is to be put to death.  Not so for a woman, but other harsh consequences.  So conversion out of Islam is rare.  If a woman converts to a non- Ahl Al-katab religion, then she loses her husband and kids.  A husband can beat his wife.  It is seen as discipline, rather than as abuse.  The control of a Muslim family is in the hands of the man.  A woman who has become pregnant without being married can commit suicide or be killed by a member of her original family. This is of custom rather than law. In the case of a rape, the fault is seen in her family, rather than the man who committed the rape if he has high social standing; otherwise her father of the woman can go after the rapist.  The woman should not have put herself in a vulnerable position and her family is responsible as well. 

Ironically, this system of arranged marriages and easy divorce(for a man) has a lower divorce rate in practice than does the West. 

Islamic family law does not give over well to modern Western law.

Discussion: 10/3/96

Marriage(Nikah) and Divorce(Talaq):

Family law is of the oldest of the Islamic books. It was a radical social change from the pre-Islamic view of women as property (to that of partner, having rights and protection). It was a social reform, therefore, supporting greater equity(fairness). The status of a woman as a partner in marriage is still within the dominance of her husband as head of the family.  A woman should not come into a marriage from a position (social status, wealth, or character) superior to that of the man.  This protects her from being set up with a dud (protection), and it maintains the peace and stability of the social system, the family being at its core, in which the man has more power than the woman.  It protects the man's honor (of maintaining the proper authority over his wife) as well.   The Koran speaks to the protection of women and raising their status as well as insisting that men are dominant in the family and society.  Sharii deals with civil law.  Blood-money deals with criminal law.  It compensates for retribution and makes up for damage done. 

Retaliation, blood-money or revenge, ties into the value placed on honor.  Honor is also salient in Family Law.  For instance, honor of a family is salient.  Family  honour rests in the conditions of the women(being chaste) and the actions of the men(taking revenge.

Fidelity, protection, equity/fairness, and honor are the values behind Sharii and Islamic custom. They do not necessarily reflect how Muslims view their relationship with Allah; rather, these values are on the sphere of social relations. 

On Sharii and Government:  Islamic law is enforced by social pressure rather more so than by government police.  Sharii is in the social fabric.  Social cohesion is valued in Islam: the community of believers, and of the extended family as the main unit thereof, in place of the tribe without any larger commmunity as was the case in pre-Islamic Arabia. 

10/8/96

The four usul('the roots') of the law.  The furu('the branches') are the applications of the usul. 

Muslim Religious Practices:

The Islam way of life is salient in the religion.  It is salient in the sunna.  The five arkan ('piller')- al-din of Islam are not tenets of beliefs, but are practice. 

The shahada: the Islam profession of faith (a practice of the foundational profession: 'There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet'.  It is wispered to infants.  If said by a convert, it is sufficient for such conversion.  A minority view: shahada is the foundation of the five pillers, adding juhad as the fifth arkan.

Salat: ritual prayer, performed five-times per day at specified times.  This is not personal prayer (du'a) or the Sufi way of prayer, dhikr.  'Salat' is rooted in Aramiac.  Not clear that the salat resembles prayer in the eastern churches at the time of Mohammed.  It is not in the pre-Islamic religion.  Salat emphasizes bowing.  Stand up-right(qiyam), bowing (hands on knees)--ruku, prostration (on knees, head touches floor)--sujud.  Shoes anre taken off, and a prayer rug is used. Head covered with a small cap, usually.   Mosque, or Masjif(the place of prayer)--Arabic root.  So, the Muslim makes a special space for the prayer--a Mosque space.  For instance, put shoes ahead of one to mark off one's prayer space.  The prayer includes a recital--only the Koran.  "God is most great(while standing), then recite from the Koran:  start with a certain surra--the Fatiha(the first sura of the koran).  .  The high-point: in the prostration.  Don't bow to anything or one but God.  Bowing and prostration repeated at least once, then greet others with peace while sitting on your heels.   Mohammed took the morning and evening prayer in Mecca and added a mid-day prayer that the Hebrews in Medina practiced.  The practice of five prayers is mentioned first in the hadith.  The story: Mohammed climed Gabrial's ladder, passing the prior prophets to the seventh heaven.  God imposed onto him five-hundred prayers.  Mohammed goes down to Moses, who suggests that he ask for fewer.  The obligation to five prayers comes from the divine will.  The five prayers: morning, noon, afternoon, evening, and night.  No reference to the Sun, so to exclude Sun-worship.  So, the time of the noon prayer is slightly after the sun has reached its zenith.  Morning prayer: when a black thread could be distinguished from a white one.  Prior to sunrise.  Afternoon prayer: when the shadows are equal to the height of their objects.  Evening: as soon as the sun had set.  Night: when dark.  The prayer direction: the qibla--in the direction of Mecca.  It goes back to Mohammed having first praying toward Jerusalem, then changed to facing Mecca when he broke with the three Hebrew tribes in Medina.  He claimed that Abraham founded the Kaba.  The Semites preferred to pray to the east--toward the sunrise.  A natural orientation toward the east.  Salat can be performed anywhere, except where animals are slaughtered and other unclean places.  Before entering into prayer, ablusions (wudu and ghusl), ritualized cleansing or purification with water or sand(if no water), necessary.  In Mosques, there is a pond or water-basins where it could be done.  Impurities include intercourse (although it is not seen as unclean).  On Fridays, the noon prayer is the community prayer (at Mosques).  Line up in rows.  A mosque is a square building.  A mihrab indicates the direction of Mecca.  It is on the wall opposite that of the entrance.  The prayer leader is the Imam('leader').  Not ordained.  Not an office.  The imam does the recitation.  The prayer is done in unison. Women must cover all but hands and eyes.  Men: cover navel to knees. A mosque has at least one minaret.  It was used for calling to prayer--for the individual and mosque prayer-times.  A muezzin gives a standard call to prayer. Now, taped calls via loud-speaker.  This was once controversial.  'God is great, come to prayer, come to salvation, God is great'. On Fridays, a Khutba, or sermon, is preached in the mosques by the prayer leader.  Political ideology can be included.  A mullah (religious scholar) may be the Friday prayer-leader and preacher.  Originally, the mosque was also a place of assembly.  Defensive utility.  There was also a Koran school, originally at a Mosque, where kids learned how to recite the Koran.  Even now, a professor can be seen on the steps of a Mosque teaching students in his field.  Muslim prayer is a public, rather than private, act.  It is a daily manifestation of a Muslim life and society.  The bowing--from eastern Christianity to icons or created by Mohammed.  Hebrews had practiced abolutions.

Besides Shahada and salat, zakat: alms-giving, sawm: fasting during the month of Ramadan and hajj: the Muslim pilgrimmage.  These five go back to pronouncements made by Mohammed and are in the hadith. 

10/10/96

The Five Pillers (con't):

Shahada(profession of faith: monotheism and prophetism), Salot (prayer), Zakat(alms-giving), Sawm (or, Siyam) during Ramadan, and Hajj (pilgrimmage),

The point of the Salot: to have your attention on God as much as possible.

Zakat: a principle emphasized by Mahammud while he ruled in Medina.  Taking care of orphans (Mohammed had been one).  His social consciousness. With time, it became regulated like a tax to be distributed to the weaker members of society.  Zakat is a type of religious tax.  Sunni's: to the caliphs.  The Zakat is levied only on adult Muslims.  Non-Muslims in a Muslim State: Ahl Al-Kitab (people of the book), or Dhimmi, are protected minorities.  They are monotheists of a scripture with a prophet.  They pay a special tax on their land (Kharaj) and a poll tax(Jizya), to make up for (and exceeding) the Zakat.  This system goes back to the first few centuries of Islam.  It provided the financial resources for the Islam empire to expand.

On Sawm: no record of pre-Islamic Arabs observing fasting.  It was in Judaism and Christianity.  Mohammed had at an early time observed Ashura, the tenth day of the first month, a day of atonement.  But after being rejected by the Jews over his biblical interpretation, he said that Abraham had established the Kula.  Further, he established the fast.  Like Lent.  Yet, distinct.  Fasting during daylight.  No food, drink, or sex.  It is a harsh discipline in the desert areas.  Much of the night is used for activity, including celebration; day is used for sleep.  Restaurants close during the day in Muslim societies.  It would only be broken in private.  Furthermore, there is usually more Mosque attendence and Koran recitation during the month.  The twenty-sixth day of the month: when the revelation of the Koran is said to have first come down.  Also during the month, religious leaders can bring about political upheaval.  Also, more hostility toward non-Muslims.  So, a period of fasting and feasting.  Id Al-Fitr: the first day of the next month: prayer at around 9 a.m. with a sermon.  Fast broken.  More alms-giving.  One of the two major feast-days. 

Because Ramadan is a lunar month, it moves back two weeks per year, thus varying seasons.  The fasting is not in preparation for something greater.  Self-control, community-spirit, rather than penitence.  The idea of turning around to God is seen elsewhere in Islam.   The fasting is done out of duty to Allah.  So, it is done out of strength. 

The Hajj (the pilgrimmage): the major community event.  It shapes Muslim brotherhood.  It is during the month of Dhu'l-Hijja.  Especially from day eight to twelve.  Umra (pilgrimmage including circulating the ka'ba) is a lessor pilgrimmage because it is not during the time of the Dhu'l-Hijja.  The Hajj is required at least once in a life-time, if the individual has financial resources (this excuses about 95% of the Muslims).  This was even more so in Medieval times.  Pilgrim caravans were attacked frequently.  Today, many means of getting there.  Particular places near Mecca which play a role: Arafat and Mina.  There is an area around Mecca which is considered the Haram, sacred space.  Ablusions and a white garment not stitched.  Ihram is the state of sacredness once the pilgrim's dress is on.  All are in an equal dress: the idea of brotherhood--that everyone is equal.  The only thing that counts is being a servant of Allah.  So, some American Blacks have been attracted to it, such as Malcum X.  Only Muslims are allowed in the pilgrimmage(in the wider haram area).  Even at times other than the Hajj, non-Muslims are not allowed in this space, although this is less enforced. No churches either or crosses shown.  Now there are a film-accounts of it.  The Ka'ba has a cover over it (on the building).  New covering for the Hajj.  A creation of Mohammed's synthetic work from various religions. 

The pilgrim appoaches the Ka'ba building and courtyard--the haram in the strict sense,   There is a five-foot black stone on the outside corners of the Ka'ba which everyone must touch.  It was an odd type of stone, there from pre-Islamic times.  Before Islam, the Ka'ba building had idols. In Islam, there is nothing inside of it.  The Saudi's cleanse the building before the hajj to demonstate that they are the guardians of it.   As the muslim enters the court-yard, he or she says "at your service lord", and goes around (not inside) the building counter-clock-wise seven times(the Tawaf).  During the pilgrimmage, one should have the intention of doing it.  No head-cover.  No shoes (but sandles allowed).  During the ihram, no sex or blood-shed.   In passing the black stone, touch or kiss it.  The pilgrim then goes to a place in the courtyard where Abraham was said to have stood to oversee the building of the Ka'ba.  There is also the well of Zamzam in the courtyard.  There is water from the well in outlets outside the courtyard as well.  Drinking of the water is usually done.  Some of it taken home.  There are two hills, Safa and Marwa, near the Ka'ba, between which pilgrims travel three times.  The running back in forth: as Haga had to search for water for Ismael.  It was probably a pre-Islamic rite originally.  Then, rites outside of Mecca followed by rites back in Mecca. 

10/15/96

The Islamic Pilgrimage (con't):

From the seven walks between the two mountains, the pilgrims go to Arafat.  They stand there on the mountain from noon to evening--standing in the midst of Allah (wuquf)--seen as the high point of the hajj.  Sermans given there.  Then, the pilgrims go to Muzdalifa, a tent-city, for the over-night.  The next morning, they go to Mina.  On the way, three stone pillars at which each pilgrim throw seven stones; the pillars represent malevalent forces.  Stoning of satin.  The hajj moves then the concluding feast, which is a sacrifice.  Animals are ritually slaughtered.  Blood is the seat of the soul, so all the blood must come out. Also, sanitary to have blood let out of body.  This feast of the slaughtering is the Id Al-Adah.  In all Muslim households, there is an animal sacrifice, whether on the hajj or not.  The sacrifice is interpreted as Abraham's sacrifice of Ismeal.  The practice goes back to pre-Islamic Arab time.  After the slaughtering, the pilgrim shaves and discards the ritual dress.  This ends the hajj. Many pilgrims return to Mecca to drink from the Well of zamzam.  Some pilgrims go on to Medina as an act of piety.  The prophet's tomb and mosque.  Even fewer pilgrims then go to Jerusalem to visit the Dome of the stone, of which the prophet took of too heaven.  It was probably build a century after Muhammad by Muslims who wanted an alternative to the Kaba, as they opposed the ruling party then at Demascus(secular).  The Al-Masdid Al-Aqsa mosque is near the dome. 

Hebrew stories (Abraham) applied to pre-Islamic Arab ritual.  This goes along with the universality attributed to Islam.  Muhammed performed a farewell pilgrimage to Mecca, so the hajj goes back to Mohammed.  The hajj emphasizes the brotherhood (equality) of all Muslims.  How Muhammed founded his religion is shown in how he established the hajj.

The fifth pillar, Jihad, meant self-control as well as war against unbelievers.  Interprets the world into two camps: the Dar Al-islam (Islam), and Dar Al-harb(the non-Islamic world).  The Dar Al-Islam is to be speard into the Dar Al-Harb.  Peaceful negotiations given defrence.  If it is rejected, warfare is condoned.  An absence of tolarance.  Islam as the only world religion, to be taken up by mankind before the Day of the Resurrection.    Today, Islam is spreading in Africa, Asia and North America. 

In general, Islam is more practice than of belief.

MIdterm covers up to October 22.  Identifications (ten).  The word will be given.  I am to briefly state its meaning.  About three sentences.  Then, a question that in essay style shows my synthesis of the material.  Also, a question concerned a more precise part of the course.  Of the questions, a choice between two options each.  The final exam is cumulative.  Reading and lecture. 

Theology: Influenced by persecution by dissadent military forces as well as by discourse.  Pre-Islamic Arab religion did not have an explicit theology, so Islamic theology began out of the Koran.  Salient topics: Free-will, predestination (vis a vis the Day of Judgment).  Verses of the Koran lend toward both positions.  Also, verses stressing divine omnipotence and ....???

The Muslims, in entering into theological discourse, felt it necessary to use it as a tool to defend Islam.  Kalam: speech of God or about God, or a thesis-antithesis theological process that attempts to define the faith of Islam against other Islamic groups' dialectics as well as an apologetic against other religions.  Islamic groups in the Islamic empire differed in theological positions.  There was not a central theological authority, so consensus too time; it involved civil strife.  Also, recall that Islam was at one time a minority religion in many Arab cities.  It was only two-hundred or more years before a caliph tried, unsuccessfully, to establish a state creed.  Consequently, there is no Islamic creed, though certain elements have become the basic 'chapter headings' central to Islamic theology.  The only Islamic 'creed' is the Shalana.  An unbeliever is a Kafir.  Groups within Islam use it as a smear word against another political/theological group within Islam.  So defined, license to kill, because a person labeled a Kafir (apostate) could be killed under Islamic law.

So, a drive to define Islam which never reached a doctrinal creedal stage, fueled by defense against believers of other faiths as well as against opposing Muslims.  An attempt at self-identification.

Kalam (Logy--speech of) Allah (Theo--God): Theology.  Theological themes in sunni and hadith.  By translating Greek and Assyriac works (Christian Theology and Greek Philosophy) into Arabic, a vocabulary for creating a theological structure for Islam.  A technical vocabulary and a way of reasoning rooted in Greek logic and metaphysics. For instance, the dialectical methodology. Zoroastrian and Iranian reasoning were also ingredients of Islamic theology.  In the beginning, 'Ficq' was an overlarging concept of law and theology.  Then, Kalam distinguished from the term, Ficq, for jurisprudence.

Muhammad was a preacher rather than a theologian.  In the Koran, theological themes but not a system of theology.  The conquests of other thought-systems as well as civil war within the Islamic empire gave rise to influence on Islamic theology.

The Shahada: the first, essential, identification of Islam.  It grew out of two phrases in the Koran--the elements of the Shahada are in the Koran.  The Aqida: statements said to be from Muhammad worked out in hadith,  Five points--1. Belief in the oneness of God.  The attributes of God's perfection: Creator, omnopotent, Judge,...  How the oneness is to be understood.  These attributes are implied in the belief in God.  2. Belief in angels.  Less salient in time, but particular angels called by name in early hadith.  Gabriel: of jugement.  Raphael: involved in the calling of mankind to the general resurrection.  Iblis: the fallen angel (satin).  3. Belief in all prophets, including Abraham, Moses and Jesus.  They were all human (not divine) messenger of God's word--a warning, by which to lead people back to the oneness of God.  4. Scripture: Tawrat (Torah, in Arabic)--Genesis.  Little of the Prophets and sayings.  The Injilc (gospel) includes Jesu's teachings.  The New Testament is seen as a hadith.  Zabur: the psalms of David.  More like revelation than poems. The Suhuf: the book given to Abraham: oneness of God.  5. Eschatology (Gk: the last): Judgment Day, rewards.. Includes the bridge over hell, the consideration of deeds, the Christ and anti-Christ that would come.  Pre-Islamic Arabs did not believe in an after-life.  

Risala: theological treatise: a larger, more systematized piece on Islamic theology.

10/17/96

Kharijis: as a political party, Kharijiyya.   They were against Ali.  They preferred fighting it out.  Ali had to fight two battles against them and defeated them.  But the civil strife did not end with the Ummahads. 

So, conquest of Islam and internal civil strife impacted theological discussion. Of the first, Hellonistic influence; of the second, how the discourse took place.  The latter also brought to the fore the theological question of Islamic leadership.  For the Shi'a, the Ahl Al-Bayt(bloodline of Muhammad)--through his daughter, Fatima (who married Ali, who was Mohammad's cousin).  Hasan and Husayn were their sons. Husayn was to be the next leader.   This was contrary to the pre-Islamic custom of picking a natural leader, proving oneself, rather than through heredity.  The Caliph (comes from 'Khalifa'---successor, which comes from Imam(leader)).  For the Shi'as, the Imam is a leader that belongs to Mohammed's family.   Theological liturature uses 'iman' as 'leader'.  The Shi'as never ruled the entire Islamic empire, so their claim never came to reality. 

The majority (later known as the Sunni) believed that the Islamic leader should come from Quraysh tribe.  This followed from historic reality.  The Caliphs did in fact tend to come from that tribe. 

In who would succeed Ali, were political and theological questions.  The Khariji group claimed that the best of all the Muslims should be chosen.  The main Sunni group, supporting the Quraysh, became associated with the Murjia (the quietists, who don't want to fight, but want to stand back from this issue, quietly going along with the existing tradition).  This was the majority position. 

Uthman was murdered by another Muslim.  This was a sin.  Is such a sin such that one becomes a Kafir (unbeliever) rather than a Mumin(believer)? A Fasiq: an evil-doer. The question of a serious offence as sin and the resulting standing within the faith and its community.  Iman: Muslim faith.  The various political groups answered this question in accord with who they wanted in power.  The Murjia accepted the Muslim sinner as a Mumin (as a believer).  The Kharijis saw only the Kafirs as believers.  A radical position that led to blood-shed.  Hasan Al-Basri was a theologian who tried to mediate a middle position between belief and unbelief, allowing for the emergence of Wasil's(and Amr's) group which accepted an intermediate state (Manzula)-the middle position between Karir and Mumin.  Neither a believer or an unbeliever.  This view became the 'watch-word' of the Mu'tazila, the first group of Muslim theologians.  It was open to different positions.  It accepted Greek forms to systemize Islam theology.  Far beyond the hadiths.  Five principles of the Mu'tazila School.

Tazil become the basis of the Risala (their treatise).  God and the world, free-will and pre-destination.  In 750, the Abbasids overthrew the Ummayads.  The Abbasids widened the claim to leadership from a small group of Arabs. The Persians, for instance.  The Abbasids ruled (from Bagdad) from 750 to 1258 to establish an Islamic, rather than Arab, empire, so they wanted an Islamic theology that would apply throught the empire.  Around 830, they established a state creed.  They used the Mu'tazila position. They had to do it by force, throught the Mihna: 'the inquisition'. It lasted 20-30 years. They also sought to develop Islamic, rather than Arab, law.  The founder of an Islamic law school and a theologian, Imad B Hanbal, led a movement against the imposition of a specific normative creed as state creed.  His school of theology, Ash'ariyya, added tradition(Hadith) onto the position of the Mu' Tazila school.  So, it was a more orthodox school.  This school is the main Sunni position.  The Mu'tazila, by adopting Greek thought, had become an elite, above the speakers in the Mosques.  So, tradition was preferred over Greek rationalism.  Shi'a theology was closer to the Mu'Tazila.

Popular opposition led by Ahmad B Hanbal works a new synthesis over that of the Mihna. 

The Mu'Tazila and Ash'Ariyya have remained the major Islamic theological thought.  The latter has dominated.  Theology was not run by the state through the middle ages.

On the early questions in Islamic theology after the civil feuds:  arrived at by consensus.  Free-will and predestination, the nature of the Koran, and the attributes of God.  Concerning free-will and predestination, there is support for each in the Koran. The Mu'tazla emphasized predestination; the Ash'ari emphasized free-will. If predestination, did the human who did evil follow God in obedience?  To punish the person would be unfair.  Would such a person go to hell?  Who is responsible for evil?  If created by man, it is something.  If not, there is another creater besides God, because God is good.  A dualism, rather than a monotheism out of the two creative principles.  But monotheism: there is one reality. 

The Zoroastrian religion in pre-Islamic Iran: two principles--light and darkness.  The human must choose between these two conflicting realms within the soul as well as making up reality.  Achieving self-control was salient.  Islamic theologians discarded this view. 

The nature of the Koran.  Of the word of God.  If so, an eternal (uncreated) source. The uncreated God brings into reality another realm: that of creation.  So as God's speech as eternal, is the Koran created or uncreated?  The status of revelation.  Uncreated if the emphasis on it being God's created word.    The Mu' Tazila adopted the createdness of the Koran. Because it appeared in the created realm when proclaimed in the created realm: God's speech became created; the Ash'ariya adopted the uncreated view.  This question triggered the questions of the divine essence and attributes.

Attributes of God in the Koran: divine names of perfection.  Describing God in his otherness, or transcendence, of who God is. Ninty-nine most beautiful names; 'Allah' being the one-hundredth.  Because they are in the Koran, they are taken as God's own names.  If the names are taken as actions, is there not internal differentiation within the one essence of God.  The names refer to different things and could not be identified with each other or a one-essence.  The Mu'tazila saw the names of symbols rather than factual realities in God.  The ultimate oneness is only one.  The Ash'ari saw the names as eternal, being in the Koran.  They are not God, but they are not other than God.  Is this a solution?  Or is it above the human mind to comprehend.

The Sunnis used 'Caliph' for 'ruler'; the Shi'as used 'Imam' for religious and political leader.

Islamic theology was influenced by John of Damascus as well as Platonism.

Theological questions of disputation:

Who is to be the leader of the Islamic empire?  The death of the third Caliph, Uphram, who was killed by some Muslims.  Ali was accused of participating in the regicide.  Can Muslims sin and still be in the faith?  Ali and Mularia have an arbitration.  The karajis initially supported Ali, but insisted that the two fight it out.  The Karajis had a strict view of who can be the leader.  They held that one who commits a mortal sin can't be included with the believers.   They thought that Allah would determine whether Ali had sinned, by whether he wins the battle.  Ali lost.  The beginning of the Upammuds dynasty in Demascus.  They were followed by the (relatively orthodox) Assydians.

On the divine essence: there is one God.

On divine attributes: ways of describing God.  Does having these irreducable names/qualities of God mean that God is not really one.  Greek philosophy: that which is one is simple (not complex).  Muslims and Christians disagree over the trinity.  If Muslims begin to ascribe reality to the names of Allah, then is this not like the trinity: one and three.  Slippage from monotheism.  So, the names of Allah were seen as symbols according to the Karajis.  But the 99 attributes of Allah are in the Koran.  So this scheme was not accepted by the general public.  Some of the attributes are anthrophormorphic.  But to view these as symbols was seen as allegoring the Koran excessively.  So, one answer: God has a hand and does not have a hand.   This was the Ash'aris' position.

On free-will and predestination:  if Allah 'pulls the strings' which cause mankind to do evil, is Allah unjust in punishing man for sin?  The  Mu'tazila view: predestination does not allow for God's justice.  But, by judging God by human standards of justice, God's freedom is impinged upon.  Also, if predestination, then one could be immoral.  Each prophet will intercede for those in his own religion.  Encouraging people to do good (because there is free-will) but not

Mu'tazila supported free-will and that sinners should be excluded from the faithful), and the Ash'aris support the traditional predestination(the sinners are still Muslims).  Mu'tazila: created Koran(otherwise, God's unity would be slighted); Ash'ari: uncreated Koran.  The reverence for the Koran led to the view that the Koran is eternal.  Thus uncreated.  If something is eternal, it can't be changed.  Greek thought.  If the Koran were created

Does mankind have free-will (vs. predestination)? If the latter, then Allah would be unjust in punishing man for his sins.  The Muharthadas: God is not unjust and individuals are responsible for their sins.

10/22/96

Islamic Theology:

Islam emphasizes right praxis, rather than theology.  The theology came with the necessity of assimilating conquered peoples and intra-Islamic civil strife. Political, military, as well as religious ideological opposition, centered on the matter of leadership of the Islamic polity.  Salient: who is the correct leader.  Question of faith and works (membership in the faith). Islam, as a way of life, could accommodate some of the ways of life of the conquered peoples.  Greek thought was salient.  The empire was not Arab, but Islamic.  A centralization of power, so to reinforce the coherence of the culture.  Hadith was codified. 

A Caliph attempted a State creed, turning to the Mu'tazila--a group that had two sub-schools.  One in Bagdad, the capital.  The caliph sought to strengthen his role by them because Greek reasoning (logic) and metaphysical terms (Hellonistic) could be translated into Muslim ways of reasoning.  The Iranian system of dualism was slighted.  The Zanadiqa were closer to the Iranian dualism.  The Greek side won out because the Iranian dualism was incompatible with monotheism.  The Greek view had a one source view, even though they were not monotheist. 

Mu'tazila (separatist) was a smear-name.  They called themselves Ahl(people) Al-Tawhid(to profess God to be one) Wa'l-Adl(justice).  On the oneness of God: Koran as created, attributes of God...   On justice, free-will.  Good and evil. 

Divine essence and its attributes, free-will/predestination, and the nature of God's word were the three major theological issues.  The Mu'tazila had five principles: Tawhid, Wa'l-Adl, Resurrection beyond death(the promise and the warning), sin as going against the divine command(five categories of action, disobedience to which was considered sinful), the state of the believer between belief and unbelief(faith and works, intermediate stance)--the Caliph liked this because it did not create parties(all four of the first Caliphs could be accepted), and fifthly, enjoining what is good and avoiding what is evil(should a bad leader be followed?; moreover, where could the the individual make decisions about political legitimacy?).  Islam did not have a single teaching authority; rather, consensus to find the compromise.  Not a religious hierarchy.  Not a distinction between cleric and laity.   Egalitarianism.  Each individual could express his own faith as long as he could show that his principle was in line with the Koran, Hadith, and Sunni.  Opposing principles could thus exist among Muslims. 

The Caliph used Mi Hna (inquisition) to stream-line the various theological schools of thought into a more systematic theology of the Mu'tazila.  The orthodox opposed the Mu'tazila due to too much foreign thought rather than Hadith.  In support of Hadith and the model of Muhammad, the traditionalist group won and the rationalist(symbolic and rational interpretations) Mu'tazila, eventually becoming the Ash'ari.  With time, the Mu'tazila were the heretics, the Shi'a were to hold it.

Ash'ari: to reintroduce a more traditional view.  873-935, Ash'ari abandoned the Mu'tazila and he moved to Bagdad.  He retained rational thinking, but he joined the people of the Sunni (Alh Al-Sunna).  To derived categories of thought and action from the normative behavioral model of Muhammad.  Even this was too rationalist for...legal school.   Ash'ari had a crisis, joined the people of the Sunna as through Hadith and using a rationalist method. 

Differences from the Mutazila.  First, God's attributes are eternally with God.  Through these actual attributes, God knows, speaks and hears.  God actually has these faculties, because it is stated in the Koran and the Hadith.  These attributes are not distinct from his essence.  No division in God.  The anthropomorphic (man, form): to attribute human form to divine reality.  The Ash'ari accepted this.  The Mu'tazila interpreted these attributes symbolically.  The Ash'ari: not that God's face is corporeal; the nature of these atributes is beyond human understanding.  Third, for the Ash'ari, the Koran is uncreated, an eternal atribute of God.   The word of God, thus eternal rather than created.  The word itself, rather than the paper and ink, is eternal.  Mu'tazila: the Koran is created.  God's word is divine, and came into a created world.  The Ash'ari feared an incarnation-like view would come of this: that the world became flesh.  The word become book.  These positions became salient in distinguishing between these two schools. Both schools believed in the Koran as part of the reflection of the heavenly archetypal scripture(the treasure-house of God's knowledge).  Fourth, for the Ash'ari, the world to come is real.  God will be seen, but we don't know the nature of such a vision.  The Mu'tazila: God can't be seen, because that would imply that God is limited.  That would be to blend corporeality into non-corporeality.  Fifth, the Ash'ari stressed divine omnipotence: good and evil are willed by God.  God creates the acts of humans.  Man creates his own acts only by a power to act (Qatra).  If not, I would be autonomous, a rival to God.  So my act is God's act.  Two levels: being and legislation.  God acts with me in creating an action, even if the act is against God's commandment.  Two different levels--how they are related is beyond human understanding.  God, as omnipotent, is behind everything.  Even evil acts.  The Mu'tazila emphasize human free-will.  God only will the good; He does not create evil.  Man creates his own acts.  Man has the freedom to choose between good and evil, being responsible for it.  Sixth, the Ash'ari take the murderer to be a non-believer and will go to hell (although Muhammad's intercessory role is recognized as well as future atonement).  The Mu'tazila: symbolic and rational--God will judge folks to be good or bad.  Muslim sinners are in between believers and unbelievers.

10/29/96

Islamic Philosophy(Falsafa):

Indebted to the Hellenic (the ancient Greek world, such as of Plato and Aristotle) and Hellenistic (beginning with Alexander the Great, it refers to a later time of the Greek empire, from India through the Mediterranian world, such as neo-platonism) philosophy.  Islam can into contact with Hellenistic thought in Egypt and Asia Minor.  Islam also came in contact with the Hellenistic Christianity (esp. of Paul) in Syria.  Such Christianity had been in Greek, but came to be translation to Syriac, a semetic language.  So, a precedant for translating Greek works into Near Eastern languages.  Islamic philosophers, for instance, translated Aristotle.  Greek thought moved from Athens to Alexandria to Syria to Gundayshapur.  Christians had regarded it as pagan and so pushed it outward to the east.  The Islamic empire took over the areas of this movement.  By 750, a large Islamic empire, not dominated by Arabs.  The Abbasid empire in Baghdad was established (until 1256).  The Caliphs sought a unified way of life and the formation of Hadith.  The Caliphs had an interest in philosophy.  Philosophy and medicine were taught together back then.  The Caliphs sought well-equipped physicians.  So Greek philosophers were called to the Caliphs.  Second, a more adequate theoretical structure or framework based on reason (philosophy) was needed for Islamic theology(based on revelation).  So the Caliphs encouraged translation of Greek works into Arabic.  Bayt Al-Hikma, the institution that entered into translating the Greek heritage into Arabic.  But the phrase 'to be', salient in Greek philosophy, was not known in the Arabic.  So the Muslims turned to Nestorian Christians.  As against the monophysites (in Syria and Egypt), the Nestorians in Syria had been translating Greek into Syriac.  They also knew Arabic.  So, the Caliphs employed such Christians to begin the translation movement.   With time, Arabs could translate Greek directly into Arabic. They used the orginal greek works.  They realized that the Syriac Christians had altered the Greek.  Neo-platonism had developed, with almagomated Plato and Aristotle, and the Nestorian Christians adopted it.  Plotinus was a neoplatonist.  In Arabic came out The Theology of Aristotle.  It was actually from the Enneads by Plotinus.  The Arabs conflated Plato(Aflatun) and Plotinus even though seven centuries had separated them. 

In the twelth century, there was also a translation movement in Spain.  Arabic Islamic philosophy.  The Western Christians came into contact with it, translating Arabic into Latin, informing Medieval scholastic Christian thought, such as Aquinus.  In the West through the sixteenth century, the west so awakens to its own Greek philosophy. 

Islamic Philosophers:

Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina(Avicenna), Al-Ghazzali(Algazel), and Ibn Rushd(Averroes).   Kindi was an Arab, born near 800(d. 870) in southern Iraq.  He was well education and moved to Bagdad.  He learned Greek philosopher and became a physician and astrologer/astronomer of the Caliph's court.  His library was confiscated by a Caliph who opposed the rationalization of Islamic theology.  He absorbed the learning and culture of his time.  Influenced by Aristotilian works.  He wrote on medicine, psychological philosophy, and astronomy as well as general philosophy.  He assimilated the Greek heritage.

Farabi was not an Arab.  He was originally a Turk from central Asia.  He knew Arabic.  Disputed whether he knew Greek. He became known as the second teacher after Aristotle.  Unlike Kindi, Farabi developed a system of Islamic philosophy.  He lived from 870-950.  He moved to Iraq in Bagdad and then to Damascus in Syria.  He did not become involved in the court; rather, he spent his time studying and writing.  A Nestorian Christian had been his teacher.  At that time, philosophy was an open intellectual persuit, not partitioned by religion.  Farabi: human reason is superior to religious faith, as it provides certainty through the rules of logic which apply cross-culturally (unlike revelation).  The prophet-philosopher has the highest office in his opinion.  Some of his works are extant, but still difficult to understand his system.  Even so, he emphasized emmination rather than creation. What is caused needs a cause.  At some point there must be a first cause which is not caused itself.  Everything that moves requires a prime mover, the origin of the universe.  Identifying the first cause with God is done by faith rather than reason.  Farabi was more attracted to Plato: that the universe, through the world or archetypes, enfolds from an origin, rather than being created at one time by a divine intelligence outside of the universe.  For instance, those animals called 'horse' have the form of 'horse'.  The source of being unfolded and produced a variety of forms and multiplicity of individuals within a given form.  An inner process of emmination, rather than creation by an intellegence outside.  He saw revelation and prophasy as dealing with symbols and imagination, so being of lessor certatude of reason.  An individual who has both is an ideal.  Farabi sought an ideal State.

Ibn Sina (d. 1037 at 57) was of philosophy and nature(medicine).  He wrote the major handbooks of medicine that lasted for centuries.  He wrote an autobiography.  He was born in Iran.  He was self-taught, presumptuous toward his teachers.  He was in the Caliph's court, and was in prison due to court politics.  His works on Philosophy and Medicine range from one-hundred to two.  Later philosophers used his name for their own works.   Not unusual of the times.  He wrote The Canon of Medicine, an encyclopedia of medical knowledge that dominated until experimental medicine began.  He also wrote a poem to explain the contents of the encyclopedia.   By memorizing the poem, the students had an aid with them when they practiced.  He also wrote The Book of the Healing of the Souls, in which he shows the difference between eastern and western Islamic philosophy.  He set out his own philosophical system.  He was influenced by Aristotle.

10/31/96

Islamic Philosophy(Falsafa):

Ibn Sina was a Sunni.  Sunni philosophy emphasized cosmology.  He studied law, mathematics, medicine and metaphysics.  He had trouble understanding Aristotle's metaphysics but he came to understand it.  Bowering: an inquisitive and broadly learned man. The way of instruction in Medieval Islam: the teacher would have a text of Aristotle, for instance.  He would read from it with his commentary, with his students taking notes from his spoken word.  The students then polished up their notes.  They would read it back to the teacher, who would make comments to be in the revision.  The teacher would then give the student(s) permission to pass on the notes as a book in the teacher's name.  The students would then teach from it, as well as from the original texts of Aristotle.  

Ibn Sina was one of the prime intellectuals of the Islamic world.  The first certitude is being. Descartes later said this self-relection as 'I am'.  Sina distinguished between essence and existence.  For instance, a horse has an essence that makes it a horse.  What is a thing; the idea.  Essence.  In addition, there are horses that exist.  Whether a particular horse exists is another question.  Only in God are the two identical--being the first cause.  Ibn Sina preferred the Platonic view of emmination: a thing unfolds itself.  An original one intelligence was the first thing: the intellect; the first step in self-knowledge.  In this act of recognition, it unfolds itself.  Neo-Platonic.  He did not believe in creation.  For him, being and knowledge correspond to the celestrial soul and body, respectively.  Out of the original one intelligence unfolds other forms.  The generally accepted cosmology: the earth is flat and is in the center.  Spheres outflow from the source that had all-being.  Man is the crown of this emmination process.  Man assimilates from each sphere in the universe (being a microcosm of the macrocosm) down to the one souce in which intelligence is fully being(existant).  Later, the Sufi's considered how the human returns to the source.  They claimed that it is only the soul that returns to the source.  So, an ascent/descent process.  The multiplicities emminating from the One have their respective forms (formed in the mind of the Being).  Man is purified at death in leaving matter behind.

Everything that exists comes out of the same source.  The word 'being' is not in Arabic, so it was difficult to express.  So, 'to be found' was used as a proxy.  The original Being exists out of necessity.  English: a being is an individual being; being as such is what all things have.  There are ten spheres, each collected by its own intellect.  So, ten intellects.  Intellect: that which gives order.  Life is not explained solely by reference to order; rather, the principle of the soul as well.  Being, intellect, and soul are the major principles of Plotinus.  Sina uses angels as symbols for the intellects ruling over the spheres.  Ibn Sina emphasizes the soul as immortal and can return to the source. 

Al-Ghazali (d. 1111) held contrarily.  He sought certitude, finding it not in philosophy.  Islam presupposed body and soul to receive life again in the bodily resurrection.  This contradicts Sina's view of the soul being freed from matter to return to the source.  He also believed in creation.  God created every particular being, rather than there being general forms out of which the particulars are manifestations.   Moreover, he could not get his mind and faith together, so he did not see certitude in philosophy.  He joined Sufi groups which emphasized personal experiences of the divine.  He developed a new synthesis in his text, The Revival of the  Islamic Sciences.  Of the inner presence of God in his heart.  His work was not original, but was a synthesis.  Emmination would mean no-beginning of the world, so it would be eternal.  So, he rejected this notion.  He also opposed the esoterics of Islam. 

Sufism:

The party of Ali, the Shi'a, failed to gain the Califate for long. Their claim took on religious overtones.  The leadership of Islam should fall in the Ahl Al-Bayt, the family of the Prophet.  They claimed that the descendents of Ali and Fatima (their sons, Hasan and Husayn) had the right to the Caliphate.  The Shi'a sought to reconstruct a line of Imams(leaders).  Hasan, then Husayn, then Husayn's son, Ali(Zayn al-abidin), then his son, Muhammad (Al-Baqir), and then Ja'far.  The Shi'a rallied against the Uppayads who killed Husayn by the Kufa people at Karbala.  The grandson had been slain by Muslims sent by the Caliph.  The Shi'a made Husayn into an intentional martyr.  The Shi'a have a passion narrative and ritual.  Muhammad Al-Baqir had a half-brother, Zayd B'Ali.  He believed that it was in battle that one proved oneself a leader.  The Zaydi Shi'as (today, in Yamman) follow Zayd.  Soon thereafter in India, Hasan's followers revolted. But, by the time of Ja'far, Shi'a was not a threat to the Uppayads.  However, with Ja'far came a schizm between the twelve Isma'ilis and the seven Isma'ilis. 

Discussion: 10/31/96

Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan.

The multiflicity and unity problem: there is unity in things and yet plurality.  Forms.  Plotonic.  He identifies these archetypes with the soul. Being a certain way is a form, or soul.  It is a being's identity.  His account does not fit with bodily resurrection.  Rather, he sought to show the spirit's return to God.

For a physical thing, matter and form are the two preconditions.  Living things have a spirit which make them move.  This life-force, or soul, is the form.  One Soul that everything has, to various degrees: vegetable, animal, and human (cumulative). Ideal=form=archetype.  Any particular thing of that essence has existence.  Form categories: extension and matter (necessary for an object), weight or lightness, heat or coldness.  Certain forms have some of these characteristics and not others.   A first cause is necessary.  He argues that it must be non-corporeal because he uses his non-corporeal perception to percieve this cause.  He assumes that non-corporeal perception necessarily has a non-corporeal object (God).  So, God exists.  Being non-corporeal, God's existence is its form.  Hayy, the character in the story, uses observation and deduction as his method.  A close relationship between medicine and philosophy.  At the other end is cosmology, God and astronomy.  God is 'up there' and emminates down to earth.  His cosmology: seven spheres above a flat earth. 

His account does not include a social context.  Also, he does not explain what qualities are good.  So, a morality is absent. 

His interest shifts from how creation happens to the existence of God.  The interest in having a creator rather than in the process of creation itself.  From the process of creation, he takes there to have necessarily been a creator as a the first cause.  But his argument seems to lead to emmination.  He uses 'first cause' as being necessary for the universe to have had a beginning. That first cause must be both non-corporeal and outside of time, also a mover to set the universe in motion. 

His value-judgments: the non-corporeal and eternal are 'above' the corporeal and temporal.  A close association between abstract philosophy and medicine.  Also, an assumption that abstract reasoning can be done on one's own--a link between reasoning and the existence of a world-soul.  That language is pre-existent.  So teachers are not necessary.  Abstract thinking closely linked with divine aspects.  That reason is innate, operating from the principle of non-contradiction.  Also, reasoning leads him to normative conclusions--for instance, humility. 

11/5/96

Shi'ism (con't):

Al-Hasan had litter interest in being a leader; his followers soon dissolved.  Al-Husain was killed by the Uhmmans at Kufa in 680 C.E.  His son, Ali Zain al-Abidin and his son Muhammad al-Baqir were scholar types.  By that time, Shi'ism was a political and religious minority school in Islam.  No Shi'i imam ever ruled the Islamic empire.  By the time of Ga-far aq-Sadiq, the Assidians rules and Shi'ism had a distinct theology. Ga-far appointed Isma'il as his successor, but he died before his father died.  Dilema: should the leader be Isma'il's son, Muhammad b Isma'il or should Isma'il's brother, Musa al-Kazin.  His son, Ali ar-Rida, was given a leadership position by the Sunni Caliph, but was killed a year or two later.  No effort since then to healing the rift.  The end of Musa al-Kazin was Muhammad al-Mahdi (Mahdi: leader of the end-time who is expected to return).  He died as an infant.  He ended that geneological line.  In the other line, Muhammad b Isma'il had no offspring.  At about 900, Abdallah claimed to be related to Isma'il. 

Shi'is of the seven and of the twelve, the latter being bigger.  The 'seven' were of Muhammad b Isma'il: belief in the rulership of the Imam on earth.  The 'twelve' group, in contrast, believe in the Imam not on earth; that Muhammad al-Mahdi would reappear in the end times.  The power to represent the Imam in the meantime goes to the Mullahs--the learned.  Iatollas--the more widely followed Mullah.  The social standing and power from a bigger followership give the status; not from any ordination.  Iatollahs: signs of God.  For instance, Iran in the 1980's.  They have control over funds.  So, a secular and religious claim/power.  Because of their knowledge of the religious writings, the Mullahs and Iatollahs were believed to have a relatively close relation to God. In Sunni'ism, the scholars don't have control over finances.

Of the Isma'il line, Ma'add al-Mustansir (d. 1094) was the last uncontested Imam.  He had three sons.  Nizar was killed, his followers diven out of Egypt to Afganistan and Northern Iran.  They became known as 'assasins' because they would terrorize the crusaders as well as the Islamic powers in their areas. 

The major Shi'ism movement by the thirteenth century was the twelve Shi'ism, when Iran converted to it.  India, Syria, and the Umman had some 'seven' groups.  The 'twelve' group came to be of two sub-groups: the Bohras and Khojas.  The kings of Morroco and of Jordon claim lineage to Mohammad.  

Shi'ism as a movement was not crystalized as such in the time of Ali. Ali's group split over whether to negotiate or fight the Ummanahs.  Al-Husain was slain, giving the Imam a special status, as in the resurrection in which they would intercede for their followers.  The idea that the Imam would appear at the end-times and a period of peace would be established.  Some Muslims saw Jesus as this figure.  Different than the Jewish expectation of an end-time figure.  This idea is not in Sunni Islam.  Some extremist Shi'is came to saw some divine element in the Imams: having a special heretitary knowledge from Muhammad through the blood-line.  A secret knowledge, seen as more important than external knowledge.  Zahir: the outer, literal meaning of Islam; Batim: what is internal, metaphorical. The Shi'is believed that the (superior) knowledge, batin, has the true meaning of Islam.  For the 'twelve' group, the batin is that which the muhhahs and Iatollahs had  batin. The Ghulai, a group in the 'twelve' group, believed that an inner light make the Imams special--in effect divinising the Imams.  But this is to compromise the monotheism of Islam, so most Islamic grops disregard the Ghulai.  Divine protection against divine sin, errorless, and infaliblity: isma.  the Shi'is claimed this for the Imams.  The Sunnis attributed this to the prophets including Jesus and Moses; it was their followers who went into error of idolitry. 

The Shi'i movement came only with time.  Scholars had a hand in it.  By the ninth century, it had adopted an ideology in which suffering was salient.  Because the Shi'is were persecuted, taqiya (hiding one's faith) was seen as a virtue as a way of co-existence with a hostile majority.  This encouraged dissimilation, publically, of their faith.  On the tenth day of Muharram, the actual slaying of al Husain is re-enacted.  Prior ten days, mourning.  Atonement.  Men hit themselves with ropes to suffer as al-Husain did.  Shouting down the heros of the Sunnis.  In the procession, a horse (of al-Husain) is present, as is a coffin. After the procession, a passion play.  Martyrdom and suffering of al-Husain is reinacted.  Politicians use such mob scenes for their own interests.  The sacrifical death of al-Husain revitalizes the movement.

Discussion: 11/7/96

Imams are representatives of God, not via revolution but through interpreting and explaining that which was revealed by prophets.  Later in Shi'ism, a special divine light and special knowledge (past down from God or Muhammad) were attributed to Imams, especially in extremist Shi'i groups. 

Also, the 'twelve' school of Shi'ism claims that the world can't exist without a guide. So, the idea that the last Imam does not die but is in hiding. He is expected as the last Messiah.  The Sunni Caliph, on the other hand, is seen by Sunnis as having a right to rule, than any special gift from God.  The Sunnis believe that Jesus is the returning Messiah and do not believe that either a Caliph or Imam is necessary.

The writings of Allamah Tabataba'i: there is no doubt that the Prophet would have had Ali as his successor.  Hadiths about Ali's appointment are accepted by Sunnis, as there is no evidence against them--pertaining to the historicity of Ali.  Historically, after the first four Caliphs, the power of the sword determined who would be the next Caliphs; thus the Ummahads took over by force. 

On the Martyrdom of Husayn: it is about penitence for not having been there to stop his death.  A focus on suffering itself.  Lament is meritorious. It is self-punishment for not having stopped the martyrdom and it is to demonstrate one's grief for the wounds of the martyrs at Karabala.  Husayn and Abbas, as well as Ali, are seen as the perfect warriors. Husayn is perceived by the Shi'i as the 'Fountain of Faith'.  A play of impersonating the hero.  His martyrdom is thought to have been for-ordained, for such vicarious suffering.  He is sacrificing himself so that others will be saved by his suffering. It is an atonement. He is being an intercessor.  Mourn to show oneself as worthy to gain his intercession.  To feel the betrayal that Husayn's fellow fighters did by leaving 

Husayn is not seen as passive, but as one who stood up for the cause.  So Shi'is are taught to stand up to fight injustice and oppression.  This contradicts the principle of renouncing of one's faith in public.  Emmulating Husayn vs. preservation of the sect.  Prophets and Imams are not sacrificed by God, so Muslims don't believe that Jesus was crucified; rather, he died a natural death or is still alive.  A prophet would not sacrifice himself passively as Jesus is said to have been.  Yet Jesus is regarded as a prophet.  Same with the other Hebrew prophets who God allowed to be martyred passively: they really were not martyred.  The prophet figure of Islam is active, fighting against injustice and oppression.  Not so much going out and fighting injustices, but having a sense of being a victim whose leader has been unjustly slain. 

Another difference between the two major schools of Islam: Sunnis go for the literal meaning of the Koran whereas Shi'is go for the inner, hidden meaning.  Shi'is believe in a closer relation between divinity and humanity than do Sunnis.  The Shi'is, for instance, maintain that an Imam, or guide, is necessary for the Muslims of any given age.

11/12/96

Shi'ism:

Nubuwwa: Prophethood; Wilaya: 'sainthood'.  These terms represent the two cycles in history of revelation: pronounced (scriptural) and interpreted.  The first cycle spanned from Adam to Muhammad; the second spans from Ali to Mandi(the savior coming at the end-times).  On scriptural interpretation, the zahir (external, or literal, meaning) is distinguished from the batin (the implicit meaning).  The Shi'is got the batin from the imams, whose interpretations came directly from Muhammad and were made possible due to their personal illuminations.  The imams held a political role as well, so the Shi'is attempted to continue the role which Muhammad had past his death.  The Shi'i held that the teaching of an imam should be in concert not  only with the Koran and Hadith, but with the interpretations of the prior imams. The Sunni's looked to the ulama, the class of scholars, for the interpretive religious authority. 

The ulama were not held to have any divine qualities.  In contrast, various mahdi movements led by imams who claimed to be the mahdi have existed in the batin period.  Such figures have been seen as reformers.  The Shi'i Isma'il (seveners) branch believe that the mahdi time is in the current moment, so the current imam is the mahdi. 

From 969 to 1161 C.E., a Shi'i Cairo Caliphate claimed a counter authority to the Bagdad Caliph.  In North Africa during the period of the Cairo Caliphate, the minority Shi'is ruled over the majority Sunnis.  Some Shi'i held a particular imam who was a Cairo Caliph to be divine.  The imam distanced himself from this claim.  The movement, the Musasins, is now in southern Lebanon.

By the tenth century, the Isma'il movement had become open to intellectual influence.  A system of thought including Islamic history (the two cycles) was developed.  Each cycle was said to have had seven figures.  Seven prophet: Adam, Abraham, Noah, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and Muhammad Isma'il.  These were the antiqs, or proclaimers, who brought the zahir.  The seven silent prophets of the second cycle were Seth, Sham, Arron, Isma'il, Peter, and Ali.  They brought the samii: the implicit meaning of the antiqs' proclamations--the batin.  Batin would become zahir with Muhammad Isma'il, but he died, so the Isma'il Shi'i philosophers used Greek philosophy with Koranic terms to develop a secret knowledge: the batin.  Teachers of the batin are the da't.  They explain the structure of the universe to see the original principle of all things.  The letters of Arabic have been used to represent such principles.  In addition, the universe was explained by emmination: the One, conscious of itself, desired to be known, so emmenated the AQL--the intellectual principle; the world in ideas.  Out of AQL emminated Nafs (the universal soul), out of which emminated life in its various manifestations.  This is a neoplatonic view (Plotinus) of reality being the One, which radiates or emminates itself.  Ptolemy, the universe as many-storied spheres; the earth being flat and at the bottom.  The highest sphere is of the fixed stars, below which is the sphere of the constallations, under which there are the spheres which are ruled by the planets, the Sun and the moon, and finally the flat earth.  Each sphere has its own organizing principle (AQL).  The AQL of earth is the principle of form and matter.  Undifferentiated matter is given form by the AQL via emmination.  The One is spiritual, so the soul emminates from it, gaining a body, or form, as it descends through the spheres.  This view borrows from not only Plotinus's 'The One', but Plato's theory of forms and Aristotle's theory of the four basic elements.  This knowledge was held in secret within the Isma'il groups, directed by the da'ts, the fatimas (in N. Africa--the imams who were mahka), and the Qaramita (the mahka had not come yet).  So the true knowledge of the Koran was believed to be held only by an elite.

Summis criticize the Shi'i for their secret societies, the initiates thereof seem not to have moral constraints, due to the gnostic (spirit is reality) knowledge system.  The general Shi'i people didn't know such knowledge.  Most Muslims saw these Isma'il Shi'i sectarians as extreme and thus only marginally Islamic.

From 900 C.E. on, Islam attempted to assimilate other cultures that had been conquered.  In this process came there ways and beliefs as well as knowledge into contact with Islam.  The Isma'il Shi'is viewed the assimilation as being held by a few in secret--as secret knowledge.  Such speculation was seen as a falsification of Islam by some Sunnis.

Sufism(Tasawwuf):

Neither tasawwuf or Sufi (individuals in the movement) are not mentioned in the Koran.  Islam has not been a monolithic religion, unchaged through history.  Sufism emerged as a movement.  Access to Batin was assumed, but not through a hereditary chain. Rather, purified hearts were thought to obtain the divine inspiration.  So, inner purity is important. 

Sufis wore wool due to their asthetic life of protest against the materialism of Orthodox Islam as well as to be more open and dependent upon God.  Sufism came after the Prophet.  So, its roots came out of assimilation, even from other religions.  The self-innihilation of Buddhism.  Also, Christian gnostism and monastic Russian Christianity, as well as Plotinus.  It has roots in Islam too.  Terms in the Koran are used, as well as the hadith.  Moreover, it could be seen as an opposition to the secular trend of the Umayyads.

11/14/96

Sufism:

Reaction to the secularity of the Umayyads.  Not simply religious, but regional opposition in character as well.  Internal religiousity of Islam that had taken a back seat to the establishment of empire was the problem for the Sufis.  The astheticism of self-abrigation, self-control, prayer, fasting, dependence upon Allah.  In Iraq and Syria as well as eastern Iran.  The asthetics, unlike the mystics, emphasieze self-annihilation whereas mystics focus on an inner vision of God.   Tawhid: God's unity.  Mystics: an experience of unification with God.  THe nearness of God to their hearts.  The Sufis are both mystics and ascetics.

Sufism may have had contacts with Christian asthetics and well as Indian thought and practice.  But development from within Islam itself seems to be the main root.  The terms used are not imported from outside. 

Circles formed around Sufi masters.  Mystical schools.  They had their main tenets or 'path' (tariqa).  This, unlike the shari'a which is more external as legal in form, is an inner-oriented path.  To the extent to which the Shari'a was law and the Sufis de-emphasized it, they were perceived as antinominal.  The tariqu had stages (maqam) and states (hal) so to achieve tawhid.  Maqams included abnigation, turning away from worldly concerns.  The maqams are virtues whereas the states are inner graces.  Self-control and inner peace, respectively, for instance.  A salient maqam is tawakkul--trust completely in God.  Patience and persiverance are also maqams.  Maqams and hals are like steps.  Working on self-control leads to self-contentment, for instance. 

Teachings of individual sufi masters; no central sufi teaching.  But the goal is mystical union.  Love and gnosis (knowledge), mahabba and ma'rifa, respectively, are the mystical goals of Sufis.  Being drawn into the divine consciousness, the sense of self is gone.  The subject and object of knowledge of union with God become one.  Felt as lovers becoming one.  This must be experienced, rather than merely claimed.  Ecstasy (wajd): one in union with God has to show this externally--the external powers that manifest the experience of the union.  Charismatic gifts, or karamai.  For instance, telling the future, mind-reading, knowing sublties of others.  Union with God are described too as fana (being obliterated from one's self, subsisting within God's reality).  One ultimate consciousness.  Leads to introspection of the human heart.  The mind is the tool of the heart.  The heart is the locus of understanding, intellectual and emotional.  The qalb in the heart is directed to God.  The nafs is the life principle, or breath, residing in the blood is that which is oriented to the individual self-assertion 'I am', which emphasizes the duality between the human and God.   Ruh:     Sirr: where the inner encounter between God and man occur.   qalb and nafs are in inner tension within a man.

This movement was also a protest movement against temporal authority, so Sufis were persecuted by Caliphs.  On the other hand, the population supported Sufism, so it became part of the religious disciplines of Islam, along side the Koran, Hadith, etc.  Sufism, in turn, came off intentionally as relatively mainline Sufism.  By 1100 C.E., Sufism had gained acceptance as individual paths.  The Sufi orders (tariqa) changed from teacher-students to masters-disciples.  These orders are more than schools.  When deemed mature sufficiently, the novice gains a khirqa (Sufi clothing) and become members of the order, having sword an oath of allegiance (ba'ya)to the order, as well as obtaining a ijaza, or licence to teach.  A ribat or khanqah is where an order lives.  Collective prayer, no longer individual, such as the dhikr.  By becoming a member, the novice relates to his master (murshid, or pir) who in turn is seen as in a chain of spiritual ancestors.  Silsilas, or such lines, were constructed to authenticate the order back to Muhammad.  These Sufi orders (90 in Medieval times) played a role in the spreading of Islam.  An institutionalization of Sufism after 1100 C.E.

Also after 1100, persian Sufi poetry, especially in Iran and Iraq.  Rumi was a famous poet. 

Thirdly, a philosophical development in sufism after 1100.  Ibn Al-arabi, for instance.  It is not enough to express and experience God as one, one must have knowledge that there is a oneness behind man and God: the oneness of being--there is only one realm of being and it is ultimate--the underlying reality that holds creation and the creator together.  Emmination from that realm, devolving downward through the spheres.  The perfect man is what God had in his mind when he first thought of man.  Like a seed holds the whole tree, so too the perfect man as the perfect form of creation holds the whole creation.  The archtyple forms of creation find perfect expression in the perfect man.  Not just an ontological perfection, but a moral perfection. So, aim toward the perfect human, returning to one's origin before birth.  The Sufi orders assimilated the poetry of Rumi and the philosophy of Ibn Al-Arabi. 

After the fall of Bagdad in 1268 (the end of a unified Sunni Caliphate), secular rulers called Sultans turned to the Sufi Shaykh(the Sufi master of an order) to continue an Islamic presence in the regionals.  Sufi orders spread Islam into new territory, because they were relatively open to outside thought.  Some Sufi orders gained political power, such as one in Iran, switching Iran from Sunni to Shi'i. 

By 1700, the West had discovered America and had colonies in the Muslim world.  Western elements taken in by some reform movements in Islam.  The Arab consciousness led to opposition to them.  Sufi orders in Turkey, for instance, have been opposed within Islam. 

As of the twentieth century, Sufism did not have the standing that it had in Medieval times.

Dhikr: some verses in the Koran recited were repeated as ways of remembering God's name.  When Sufi paths were individualized, dhikr was to bring the individual into greater consciousness of God.  The recitation would come to be accompanied with bodily movement.  When the orders developed, dhikr was common in Sufism (reciting)--no longer body movements and breathing patterns, but rituals of dancing or howling.  The dhikr becomes its own liturgy, even as individualized dhikrs were extant.  Dhikr of the tongue (four elements), the heart(act of the dhikr and the subject doing it become one, but still a duality between the subject (God) and the self).  Indian yoga may have had an influence on the dhikr as it developed, but most of its development came from within.

Discussion: 11/14/96

The perfect man is the first creation of God; it is Muhammad--that he was formed at the beginning of creation.  It is a becoming-again what one used to be before creation.

Rabe'a was an ascetic.  She talks of losing her desires, but not much on unity with God.  Historically, the Islamic asceticism preceded the main Sufi movement which stressed the mystical (experience of union with God). 

Stations and states: ultimately, obsessive human love is used to describe how one should love God.  Looking on human beauty is like looking on God.  Complete abandonment into a total love.  Romantic love stories.  An over-powering love.  Complete obsession and dependency on loving God is the goal.  The goal is to remove the outside world from your view, and then your attributes from your view, and then taking on the qualities of God by perfecting yourself.  The point is to have an experiental knowledge.  There is no self anymore (in one's perception), one's mind's eye is enveloped in God.  Is this to say that I become God if I no longer exist?  Hallaj claimed 'I am Truth (i.e. God)" and he was crucified.  My act of love is really God's.  All is God.  God created the perfect man so He could look at his own reflection.  God wants to see Himself--to become self-reflective, though God never lacked this. 

Study is not sufficient for an experience of unity with God.  The Sufis believe that God is in one's own heart as is heaven and hell; that the stations are a means of defeating the side of yourself(ego).  Your heart is already focused on God so it remains. 

Practices such as prayer, self-discipline, learning, and meditation get at this.  The goal: love of God for its own sake, rather than reward or out of fear of punishment.

11/19/96

Islam in the Modern World:

In 1492, Muslims were driven out of Spain.  Even so, Islam continued to spread, albeit as a minority in societies dominated by Western and Southern Europe.  In the mid-thirteenth century, the Turks invaded Central Asia and settled in Turkey; the Mongols taking over Central Asia as the Turks moved west.  The powerful Islamic empire was divided in the process. Transition and fragmentation.  Three empires result: the Ottoman Turks--moved into N. Africa and Palestine and West to Austria.  An ethnic tension between the Irabs and Turks, but both were Muslims.  A Sunni empire. Seond, the Shifigate empire: Iraq, Iran, Afganistan.  Third, the Mughal empire (not the Mongols) in the Indus Valley--Delhi being its center.  Further east in Indonesia and Mylasia, were not part of an Islamic empire.  Sunni and Shi'i struggles, although Sunni dominated.  Europe would then become the world power center.  Slow assimilation of cultures in the European colonies except in the Americas.  Also, the three Islamic empires east of Europe were geographically between Europe and its eastern colonies.  India, for instance.  Thus the Turks took over Constantinople. 

So, from the 1700's to at least the twentieth century, threats from within as well as outside existed in the Muslim world.  Tensions with Europe and America, for instance.  The internal challenge: Islam was thought by some Muslims to have lost its purity.  New ideas, such as in Sufism, had to taken out to restore the purity of the original Islam.  'Puritan' movements, emphasizing the Arab heritage.  A re-assertion of the Arab dominance as well as a movement to re-establish the purity of Islam.  Other more reformist trends from within.  Making Sufi institutions more orthodox, for instance.  External challenges: the power of Europe and America.  Suspicious of Western thought.  Technology has come to be accepted, but Western thought is not.  A tension: a rejection of the thought-structure of the accepted technology.  Reformism: to restate the basics of Islam in a new context and resist outside thought.  Modernism: assimilate to draw modernity into Islam to achieve a new synthesis.  Some of the old ways of Islam have to go in this view.  Vernacular langages used in reading the Koran.  By restating Islam without conpromising its basic identity.  In contrast, reformists sought to keep the vestages of Medieval Islam even while assimilating Islam to the modern world.

What was behind the reformism and modernism?  Encroaching secularity.  Political colonial position.  Relatively behind the West.   

A secularization trend in the early twentieth century.  Ottoman Turks.  Abandoned the Arab alphabet for the more rational and practical languages of Europe.  To secularize Islam.  To take the religious aspect out of the political sphere.  Abandoning the Shar'i and replacing it with a European system of law.  The red hat became the outer symbol of the Muslim man in Turkey, but it was made solely secular.  The Sufis were oppressed.  This was an extreme example of the secularizing trends in Islam.  Separation of religion from government.  Uttitur was the Turk empirer who made these changes.

Islam in India:  Hinduism and Christianity did not threaten Islam there. Ahmad Kahn (d. 1898) tried to restate Islamic thought.  Adopted English so to become modern so they would not be dominated.  He tried to integrate trends in Western thought.  But such trends are varied.  So, he comes up with a selective philosophy but it did not penetrate the Muslim masses.  They continued to speak Urgu.  He was followed by a ruler who emphasized Muhammad as the gentleman figure of European Victorian ideals.  Ikbal (father of Pakistan) sought to adopt western science because it originally came from the Muslim world.  The translation movement and Islamic achievements. It could then come back and be re-integrated.  But it did not penetrate the masses, although his poetry did.  He lived in the first part of the twentieth century. 

Afghani (d. 1897) wanted to purify Islam from Sufi superstition and other outside influences assimilated, such as saints and shrine worship.  He wanted to raise the level of education.  From repetition and recitation(memorizing the textbook)--the disciple had a direct contact with his master.  The creativity of the thought suffered in the emphasis on maintaining the traditional knowledge.  Afghani sought to open this up and increase literacy levels.  He wanted Pan-Islamis--all Islam under one rule.  He sought the Ottoman Salton represented the most powerful block of Islam and greatest independence from Europe.  This movement did not succeed because it was countered by nationalist forces as well as the failure of the movement to reach the masses.

Muhammad Abduh(d. 1905), another reformer, distinguished religious from political reform.  He sought to keep these realms separate.  He emphasized free-will which Orthodoxy had surpressed. 

The reform that took hold was the Islamic Brotherhood, coming out of Egypt, especially in the Sunni Islamic world.  The control of mullahs in the Shi'i world kept reform more moderate.  Shi'ism: the mullahs had been concerned with advice, but Khumani became a leader.  The mullahs, or scholars of law, had not held political power.

So, strong movements of reformism and modernism, and underlying them a purifying movement, and an attempt of assimilation with the West, occurred during the nineteenth century.  Assimilation included education, but other religions were still rejected.  But it had to live with other religions, especially in India.  Shikism, for instance, assimilated Islam and Hinduism.  During the 1800's, the Ahmad (not Khan) movement in which one called himself a prophet, having assimilated Muslim and outside religious beliefs, trying to move the Muslims to a condition of relative openness to the West.   The Muslims by in large rejected this movement and is oppressed in Pakistan today where it had settled.  Central doctrines were challenged.  Also, the Bahhas in Iran worshiped one of its rulers as a prophet.  It was persecuted in the Iranian revolution.  It has become almost a separate religion. 

The Muslim world overall sought to establish the idea of the early Medina community where Islam was dominate in religion and State.  That was the ideal community under the leadership of Muhammed and the first four Caliphs.  This ideal ignores the struggle of the time; three Caliphs had been murder.  Assimilation of conquered peoples.   Bowering: the Islamic fundamentalists of today forget about the development of Islam from its beginning, so an ideal of today is projected back to Medina.  Islam has become a living organism that has developed and cannot be set back to its original state.  The fundamentalists want to establish the Shari'a as the divine immutable law over Islamic society.  They take the solution to modernity to be their perception of the ideal of Muhammad's own State.  In the vast majority of the Muslim world, the fundamentalists have not taken control. An alternative: a historical critical view of Islam has been difficult for Muslims.  Divine reason held as superior to human reason. 

On the twenieth century, social formations of Islamic Brotherhood and the formation of the mullah class as dominate in Iran. 

11/21/96

Islam in the Modern World:

The modern nation-state introduced into the Near East was foreign and contrary to Islamic principles.  The nation-state put together different ethnic groups which would not otherwise be together.

The jihad is a duty on all (not individual duty).  Fighting against non-Muslims.  But in modern times, it applied also to other Muslims who were rivals, having been shown to be apostate.  Fighting by men only, in sufficient number.  Holy war is superior to ten pilgrimages.  It promises paradise, martyrs bypassing the Day of Judgement.  Earthly booty promised too.  The warrior is seen at the front of Islam, whereas the pilgrim is at the center of Islam.  'Jihad': a struggle in the way of God (Koran); it did not originally mean 'war'.  As a struggle, different types: of the pen, sword...   An all-out struggle, including spiritual warfare.  Including conquering one's own soul, gaining self-control.  Sufis emphasize this form of Jihad--of defeating egocentricity.  Mujahada: achieving self-control by spiritual exercise.  Ijtihad:  stuggling through in legal endeavor.  Different levels that the struggle comes through.  Jihad reflects Muhammad's activities.

Hadith: Islamic tradition. Emphasises the greater jihad of self-control above fighting others in struggling for Allah.  Hadith: do not plunder or kill recklessly.   Whether jihad as war is defensive or to expand Islam has been debated within Islam. 

Jihad is not the duty of Jews and Christians, although non-muslims have fought allied with Muslims.  Thus the poll and land tax on protected minority religions.  All wars are holy wars. 

Shi'is: the Imam must lead the jihad.  The scholars, collectively, can represent the invisible Imam. 

Sunnis: consensus of religious scholars (unless a Caliph) is necessary. 

Jihad is a means rather than an end.  As an evil means (killing), it is justified for the end of struggle and conquering a greater evil. 

Jihad: a religious duty encombant on all Muslims.  A collective duty, involving all Muslims.  It should not be done for the sake of fighting; only if victory is likely should it be done.  Peace with non-Muslim states are temporary, but should be respected.  Most conversions have not been done by force.  Rather, Jihad is to lead to assimilation.  First, non-Muslims must be invited to Islam before a Jihad can commence.  Jihad: a duty until everyone is a Muslim. 

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jihads in N. Africa and S.E. Asia. 

The Hijara: a duty for Muslims to move out of areas of non-Muslims.  Given the power of the British empire, some Islamic scholars emphasized jihad as defensive only.  Since WWII, jihad has been said to be a just war--as when one's faith is threatened.  But fundamentalist version of jihad which is dominate in the twentieth century: to Islamicize the world.  This includes struggle against Muslims not conforming to religious principles--this indeed is regarded as the 'first line'.  Go against those of your own going with the non-believer.  The fundamentalists advocate violence against all non-believers as well. 

Egyption fundamentalism: Allah is our goal, the Prophet our leader, the Koran our constitution, and jihad is our way. 

A variety of fundamentalist groups using 'jihad' in defining themselves are not necessary under one commander, and may even fight against each other. 

The Muslim Brethren:

A phenomenon of jihad in the Middle East in the latter twentieth century.  Al-lkhwan Al-muslimun was founded in 1928 by Hasan Al-Banna who was a young teacher when he founded it.  He lived in a small town in Egypt.  Under British rule, Egypt was a place where Islam was decaying.  In 1932, he moved to Cairo.  A hierarchy in the group.  The group was not calling for revolution.  By 1940, it had broad popular support and became a political party.   It formed a police to protect its members.  Connections to military officers opposed to British rule.  These leaders (three) eventually ruled Egypt.   In 1945, the organization becomes rather structured hierarchically.  When Isreal was formed, the movement grew in militancy.  Reform of society was no longer the goal; rather, self-discipline, ethical conduct, and violent political revolution.   But it was violence within Egypt that led the group to be oppressed in Egypt.  In 1952, two of the three of the above military officers overthrew the king.  Including Nassir and Saddat.  Nassir took charge, and exploited Egyption nationalism and independence from the West (pan-Arabism)--an Arab nationalism.  Nassir made alliance with Syria.  In 1956, Nassir nationalized the Suaz Canal.  He got aid to the Soviet Union for aid to build a dam.  The Islamic Brotherhood viewed this as an alliance with non-believers. Then, the Brotherhood had become violent, Sayyid Qutb, a teacher, was the main intellectual figure. He considered a secular Islamic state such as Egypt to be non-muslim.  He turned to a revitalist Islam, joining the Brotherhood in 1951.  In 1955, he was confined and tortured by Nassir.  He wrote in a concentration camp.  He referred to the government as that like that of the time of the pre-Islamic idolitry of the Arabs.  Strong support of the masses, as colonialism had been removed.  He was the leader at that time of the Brotherhood.  He was hanged by Nassir and became a martyr.  He had assumed that humanity was morally corrupt and without values and so the time for Islam had come. 'Islam is the answer'.   Society needed a form; a collectivity not identified with a collectivity based on an Islamic ethic and way of life.  A new direction to mankind.  Jihad was the way.  Sign-posts needed: the showing where this new direction is to come from.  Total revolution under a vangard.  This path was to lead to an Islamic society.  One must free oneself and Islamic society from anything Western.  Also, struggle against the West as well as Egypt's own ruler.  This led to Al-Takfir Wa'l-higra: a small group which declares the country's leadership to be apostate and thus to be replaced.  The pagan society must be destroyed, including kidnapping.  This was in the time of Saddat.  This group saw the Egyption society as apostate as being used by the regime.  As a group, it was not a majority. It had a manifesto on how to eliminate the Egyption leadership and ultimately all non-Muslims.

  Saddat succeeded Nassir.  He grants general amnasty to the Brotherhood.  But when Saddat made peace with Israel, the Brotherhood opposed Saddat by unrest in Egypt--especially to local (Coptic) Egyption Christians.  Saddat oppressed the Brotherhood.  In 1981, Saddat was killed by an extremist Brotherhood-ideology-oriented group: Al-Jihad.

 Out of this movement came another group which killed Saddat.  The assisin compared Saddat to Pharohs(pagan).  That group's leader went to the States and was responsible for the World-bank bombing. 

12/3/96

The Muslim Brotherhood began as a social reform movement but became political.  Egypt:  the brotherhood sought greater distribution of wealth.  Faqta: a legal opinion.  The blind mullah (world trade boomer):One: to kill Saddat for making peace with Isreal.  This opinion of a scholar of the Islamic law would legitimate the assasins' action.  Another faqta: to loot infidel and Christian jewelry shops.  A third faqta: seize police weapons and give them to brotherhood members.  So, attacks against the Coptics and the political leadership. Also, a faqta against a Muslim author/critic of the Koran.  The author was declared a non-Muslim.  His wife wanted to stay married, but it was prohibited.  Also, a faqta against foreigner tourists.  Religious sanctions on certain actions given by a mullah.

In Algeria, the force used by the Islamic fundamentalists has worked against that movement.

The Nation of Islam (The black Muslims):

There have been inner splits.  Not all black Americans who are Islamic belong to this group.  The group began in 1913. Nobal-Ali's Islamic movement in Newark: blacks are from the Moors, so their roots are Islamic.  W.D. Farc came in 1929, with whom Elijah Mohammad became affiliated with him.  W.D. Farc established a temple in Detroit to secure freedom, justice and liberty for American blacks.  A messiah expected out of the wilderness.  W.D. Farc disappeared in the early 1930's.  Some saw him as deified.  Then, Elijah Mohammad severed links to Farc's followers and began the Nation of Islam in Chicago, building a temple (changed to 'Mosque').  Formally Islamic, but Christian teachings.  Malcohm X: drove it to the Islamic side in the preaching.  The Muslim majority did not accept the Nation of Islam until Malcohm X went on the Hajh.  Racism in the movement had to be removed for the movement to be accepted.  It was only with Elijah Mohammad's death in 1975 that the racial language was dropped.  Wallis Mohammad, his son, was then the leader.  He dropped the racial division goal.  In New York, Farrakan continued the racial language.  The majority of the nation of Islam stayed with Wallis.

Elijah Mohammad's preaching: knowing one's identity is a prerequisite for knowing your enemy.  For him, this was the white man.  This was to lead to an ultimate battle between the races.  Abraham became the patriarch of the movement.  Simple ideology would not suffice; he makes an organization with economic goals for the black man. Inward unity was important.  Refuse to join in the caucacion government.  He was arrested during the Vietnam conflict.  This led to isolation for the group.  Own flag and police.  Isliah Mohammad was the leader.  Each mosque being autonomous.  Stress on education.  Private national conventions.  Recruitment through personal contacts.  When join, the black changes his slave name for his Islamic name.  A reorientation of values, submission to Allah, tight internal discipline.  No smoking, drinking, stealing, drugs, adultary. A strict internal code.  It had led to the betterment of some inner-city neighborhoods.  The cross of Christianity is seen as a symbol of oppression.  Against this, the flag of the moon and stars--symbols of freedom.  The ideal of the community is economic self-sufficiency.  An Islamic college, free tuition. 

  A black nationalist group with a religious outlook, centered today in Chicago.  1897-1975: Elijah Mohammad founded the group. He was seen therein as divinely chosen and inspired as a prophet to unite black Amaericans and liberate them from the majority culture.  The messianic impulse since slavary was thus tapped.  A comparison to the Hebrews in Egypt.  The lost of found nation of Islam in the wilderness of North America.  An ideology of a black political nation.  The final battle: between blacks and caucasions.  This movement first spread in the urban lower class.  By 1960, about 25, 000 members.  But by 1970, 500,000. Perhaps one-million today.  Total muslims in North America: about three million.  So, the black muslims represent a fourth of the American Muslims.

Malcohm X was a lietenant of Elijah Mohammad.  But he fell from the movement and was assisinated.  Deification of W.D. Facq and racism has been dropped.  The splinter group of Farracan has remained racist. Wallis Mohammad took over the main group from his father. 

12/5/96

Khomani (of Iran) was a Shi'i Iatolla(a prestigeous mullah).  A rank achieved through the knowledge that one has shown of Shi'ism.  1900-1989: his lifetime.  From his exile in Paris, he return and established an Islamic republic in Iran in 1979.  He displaced the Shah, or king, of Iran. The Shah had taken power by force after his father died.  He had ties to the West and sought to Westernize Iran, alienating the religious leaders.  Economic benefit to the modernization program of Westernization.  A new Iranian elite.  Demonstrations against this new class.

Khomani: his father had been killed by the Shah's father.  His education was in Arabic and Persian.  He wrote on Islamic philosophy.  Attracted to Sufi philosophy.  Acclaimed an Iatolla in 1950.  In 1962, he began speaking out against the Shaw and the Westernization effect on women.  He saw both as corrupt.  The Shaw imprisoned him brief but exiled him to Iraq (in a Shi'i center of learning).  The Sunnis ran Iraq.   He was asked to leave because he continued to speak out against the Shaw.  He went to Paris, using tapes for sermons to be used by the mullahs in the Mosques in Iran.  The secret police could not touch them.  Also, Iranian middle-class merchants became the second pillar of Khomani's movement. 

In 1979, Khomani was acclaimed the religious leader of the revolution.  The Shaw had left the country.  Still, socialist opposition: The Mulage Hudain, for instnace.  Socialist democracy.  Also, some of the other Iatollahs opposed him. Khomani was not the highest of the Iatollahs in Iran. They stood on the sidelines.  They favoured the politicalization of the religious fundamentalism.  Amelgimated state and religion.  Khomani was the supreme earthly leader.  He was a divinely protected person: an a guidance ofmankind (Wilaya) by the vilayet-e Faqtil: a supreme jurist close to Allah..  It is not based in tradiion or the Koran; it was an innovation.  Also ew was the mullahs use of force (guns).  They had previously been advisors rather than political leaders.   Below the leader is a council serving as advisor.  Distinction on Islamic learning.  Below which is the executive, legislature, and judiciary.  Religion thus sits on top of state.  It was a popular revolution at the time and has reduced the elite economic class.  But the regime persecuted the small Bahai religion which developed from Islam.  Jewish converts to Islam were persecuted as potential spies for Israel.  Also, repression of the Westernization practices.  Veils were mandatory for woman.  Western music as well as alcohal were outlawed.  Vengence against folks who had worked with the Shah. 

Maldullhi in India. Born in 1915 in South India and died in Pakistan in 1979.  The British had favored the Hindus in India.  They used the Hindu-Muslim rivalry to divide the subcontinent when they left.   The Muslim leaders wanted a homeland as well.  Majority Muslim areas would be Pakistan (East and West Pakistans).  Sihks were persecuted in West Pakistan.  East Pakistan eventually became independent of Western Pakistan.  Bangladesh.  The British divide and rule policy.  But Muslims did not want to live under Hindu rule.   Madullhi opposed the partition of the subcontinent.  He was a journalist.  Educated in English and Urdu.  In the 1940's, he established an Islamic group--a way to disseminate his ideas.  After Pakistan was established, he moved there.  He sought an advisory function in the state.  A military general in the 1970's (taken power by force) used Madullhi to legitimate his own political legitimacy.  Maldullhi wanted an Islamic government through a non-violent revolution by changing the views of the popular sentiment.  His movement has survived in  small groups.  An attempt of social reform without aspiration to become a political leader.  He was a revivalist at first, but became more fundamentalist in emphasizing to political role of the Islamic tradition.  He sought a modernized medieval Islamic law. 

Turkey:

Ottoman Turkey was a power allied with the central powers of continental Europe.  Born in 1881 in Western Turkey and died in Istambul.  He was a secularist.  He went to a military academy then to Demascus.  He fought in North Africa.  After WWI, he sought independence for Turkey.  He organized a campaign against the Greeks.  He abolished the Sultinate of the Ottomans.  An independent Turkey.  He was elected President in 1924.   The creation of a nation-state in Asia-Minor and into the Balkins.  He followed a modernizing secular program, trying to free the new nation from the Western nation-states.  He also sought to replace Islamic education with secular education.  Secular social groups were highlighted.  Oriental garb replaced by suites and ties.  Islam was no longer the state religion.  He opposed the attempt by the Kurbs to re-Islamitize the nation.  He introduced the Western alphabet for Turkish print.  He nationalized foreign companies, introduced new civic, criminal and commercial codes based on those of the West.  Family names rather than first names were to be emphasized. Women could vote and work.   He was successful in his secularization movement.  Military and urban economic elite supported him.  A sense and pride in being a modern nation.  He died in 1939.  He was and is popular.  Though in time Islamic fundamentalism has revived by the 1990's. Especially from the rural poor who had not benefitted as much from his program. His legacy: secularization, modernism, and bureaucracy(from Ottoman times).

Most Islamic nations have a synthesization of secularization and Islamic law.  Iran on the end of Islamic rule and Turkey on the end of secular rule.

Discussion: 12/5/96

Elijah Muhammad: the reward deserved should be in this world.  Wallace D. Fard is Allah.  The focus is on a messiah for black Americans.  He advocated separating the blacks from the caucasions in the States.  Do not love the enemy.  Jesus tried to convert the Jews, or white race, to Islam.  So he used Christianity to criticize it.  Son of Man=Mahdi=Allah=Fard.  

This doesn't seem to be very Islamic.  Likewise, Malcohm X had not experienced Islam as a Black Muslim, as he found when he went on the Hajj.  He found something valuable outside the West. He was then no longer racist.  Soon after his return to the States in 1964, he was assasinated.  Elijah Muhammad was still the leader of the Nation of Islam (until 1975).  Wallace Mohammad, son of Elijah Muhammad, had urged Malcohm X to become more Islamic. Although he agreed with the post-Hajj Malcohm X in regard to racial integration, but he believed that whites are racist by nature whereas Malcohm X saw whites on the Hajj who were not racist(realizing that racism is an attitude rather than of a particular race).  After Elijah Mahammad's death, Wallace led the relatively Islamic Nation of Islam and mainstream, whereas Louis Farracan led the segregationist and racist branch of the Nation of Islam.