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AS we approach the twenty-first
century, few challenges loom larger in the search for justice
and world peace than the achievement of mutual understanding
among nations, cultures, and religious traditions. For people
who profess faith in a sovereign God, few responsibilities are
more urgent than that of moving toward a sympathetic
appreciation of other faiths. The more our world grows, the more
rapidly it seems to shrink, so that we must at the very least
learn to cope with the fact of diminishing religious and
cultural elbowroom.
One of the increasingly visible
features on the international landscape is the religion known as
Islam, with its nearly three-quarters of a billion adherents. A
major question for Christians with respect to Islam is this: How
can we begin to learn about so massive and expansive a
phenomenon without resorting to the convenient but unjust
stereotypes one hears so often, caricatures that amount to
little more than a new form of religious bigotry or racism?
Three more specific questions
present themselves. First, what do Muslims have in common with
other avowedly religious people across the world? Second, how do
Muslims define themselves as a distinct community of faith
unique among religions? And third, what possibilities for
spiritual growth has Islam offered historically to the
individual believer? The image of a spiritual journey will
provide a framework within which to respond to these questions.
As citizens of the world, Muslims
discern God's signs in nature, the broad terrain on which they
journey. As members of a unique community of faith, they
discover God's signs preeminently in their scripture, the
Qur'an, and in their history; this scripture and history map out
for them the main road, the "straight way." As individual
believers, Muslims look for God's signs within themselves, where
the signs mark off the path each person must walk before God. In
all three instances the signs are illumined by the light of
God's all-encompassing revelation. Believers strive to respond
to that revelation by taking one more step across the terrain of
creation, down the "straight way" of Islam's special history,
and along the path of personal sanctification and
self-knowledge, all in a journey back to the Lord of the
universe.(1)
Both the imagery of God's threefold
revelation and that of journey and light are rooted in the
Qur'an. "We will show them Our signs on the horizons and in
their very selves, until it becomes clear to them that it is the
Truth" (41:53). And: "On the earth there are signs for those of
firm faith, and in your very selves. Will you not then see?"
(51:20-21). In addition, the Arabic term that is used for
"verse" of scripture (ayah) also means "sign," thus suggesting
that the Qur'an also is one great sign replete with more
specific signs. In response to each of the three questions I
have posed above, I will introduce further texts of the Qur'an
that unite all three elements of the imagery of journey, sign,
and light.
If readers are willing to accept the
possibility that God has spoken, and continues to speak, to
human beings who are not Christians, let them read on. My
premise here is that, for reasons known only to the Creator, God
has desired to make his word known to a faith community whose
members call themselves Muslims. He is not some "other" God who
speaks Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and a host of other tongues
which Muslims speak all over the globe. For the Arabic word
Allah simply means "God," the very Deity to whom we pray.
Now to the first question: How do
Muslims perceive and respond to God's signs on the horizons?
SIGNS ON THE HORIZONS
Behold, in the heavens and the earth
are signs for those who believe. And in your creation, and all
the wild creatures He has scattered over the earth, are signs
for a people of firm faith. And the alternation of night and
day, and the sustenance that God sends down from the sky,
quickening thereby the earth after her death, and the ordering
of the winds -- these are signs for a people who understand.
(Qur'an 45:3-5)
Divine revelation in nature appears
in Islam's scripture as the "terrain" on which the journey of
humanity takes place, the heavens and the earth as alluded to in
the word horizons. Human response at this level we may
characterize as a universal or cosmic experience expressed in a
creation -- inspired language and system of symbols that
describe the journey of all creation from God and back to God.
According to an Islamic tradition, called a "Sacred Saying," God
once said: "I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known,
so I created the world." In that world all nonhuman creatures
are essentially "muslim" in that they "surrender" to God
by their very nature. Human beings must make the choice as to
whether they will surrender.
Once they choose to submit and
respond gratefully (thus becoming muslims through their response
of "islam", human beings rather naturally express their response
in ritual and symbol that are at once common to other religious
traditions and also distinctively Islamic. In themselves these
practices are not uniquely Islamic, but they bear an Islamic
stamp to the extent that they are integral to the faith-response
of a community explicitly gathered by God's revelation as
delivered through Muhammad in the Qur'an. This aspect of Islamic
religious experience we will take up in the next segment of this
discussion. For now, let us look at some of the ritual and
symbolic ways in which Muslims express their response to the
"signs on the horizons."(2)
Fasting is a nearly universal
religious practice. Each year, during the lunar month of Ramadan
(movable in relation to our calendar), Muslims break their
regular life-patterns by abstaining from food and drink from
dawn to sunset each day, a period that averages fifteen to
seventeen hours. The discipline of refraining from creation's
means of sustenance is a reminder of one's greater need of God,
a need that even creation itself cannot fill. It presupposes
that one is also refraining from forbidden words and actions and
thoughts, such as envy or hatred. Compassion for those who
habitually suffer from hunger, greater ability to go against
one's own less noble tendencies, and the removal of obstacles in
one's relationship to the Creator are among the most desired
effects of the fast.
Almsgiving likewise is commonly
practiced among religious people the world over. Muslims have
the conviction that creation is not a permanent possession, but
merely given to humankind as a "loan." That conviction prompts
the response of sharing God's own wealth. Muslims "give God a
loan" in return and seek to steward creation by giving freely
what they have freely received. The root meaning of the word for
almsgiving in Arabic, zakat, is "to purify oneself," in
the sense that one must strive never to lay claim to what
belongs only to God. One must not "overflow one's banks" by
imagining he or she is the source or owner of created goods.
Almsgiving is therefore meant not to give a person the good
feeling of being generous, but to remind the Muslim of who first
gave all to him or her.
Before each of the five daily
prayers, Muslims perform a ritual ablution. It is another facet
of the purification that almsgiving presupposes. The action
involves the use of that universal symbol of cleansing -- water.
But if water is not available, one may use sand or pebbles. The
important thing is to make use of some earthy object as a
physical reminder of the overall, inner and outer, purification
that is itself an integral part of a proper relationship with
God and his creation.
Daily ritual prayer with its
orientation toward Mecca is another way of expressing a right
relationship to the created world. Mecca is a symbolic axis of
the world, a spiritual center, the meeting place of heaven and
earth from which all creation radiates. Orientation to one of
the cardinal points of the compass or to a particular "spiritual
center" (such as Jerusalem in Judaism, for example) is evidenced
in many major religious traditions. When Muslims pray together
on Friday at noon, or whenever they gather in a mosque for
congregational prayer, they express their right relationship
with each other by lining up in rows as they face Mecca.
Finally, the five daily ritual prayers sanctify time as well as
space, as a round of concrete reminders that morning, noon, and
night are a gift of God.
Pilgrimage to Mecca, ideally to be
made once in a lifetime if one possesses good health and
sufficient means, is meant to acknowledge the unity and absolute
equality of all. It is the symbol par excellence of the journey
of God's people back to the source. Including such rituals as
change of garb and cutting of hair, the journey gives physical
expression to the need for a change of heart and mind. Pilgrim
goals vary from one religion to another, but they are all
symbolic of the journey to the center of creation.
According to Qur'an 6:39, "those who
reject Our Signs are deaf and dumb and in profound darkness. God
allows to go astray whom He will, and He places on the Straight
Way whom He will." One of the Qur'an's most beautiful images
provides both a background and a foreground against which to
appreciate the Muslim response to signs on the horizons:
God is the Light of the heavens and
the earth. The likeness of His Light is as a Niche [the symbol
of orientation to Mecca on the back wall of every mosque, as
well as a symbol of the human heart] in which there is a lamp.
The lamp is within a glass which is like a shining star
enkindled from a blessed olive tree, neither of East nor West,
whose oil would glow almost of itself even if no fire touched
it. Light upon Light! And God guides to His Light whom He will.
(Qur'an 24:35)
THE QUR'AN AS SIGN
These are the signs [verses] of the
clear Scripture. We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur'an.
Perhaps you will understand. (Qur'an 12:1-2)
Muslims believe, as do Christians,
that the most significant events in human history are precisely
those events that define their history. If the "signs on the
horizons" describe the terrain in which God reveals himself, the
historical fact of the Qur'an as revealed to Muhammad between
610 and 632 is for Muslims the opening to the main road on which
they as a community journey. "Lead us along the Straight Way,"
Muslims pray five times daily and on the many other occasions
when they recite the opening chapter of the Qur'an. One might
describe Muslims' response to God's revelation in "an Arabic
Qur'an" as a communitarian experience expressed in a
confessional (or kerygmatic) language and symbol-system. Their
experience is that of being Muslims in a world where most people
are not. Terms of membership are definitive; although there is a
good deal of latitude in practice, for we are talking about a
tradition that crosses many ethnic and cultural boundaries, they
call for a deliberate choice either for or against membership.(3)
How do Muslims define themselves as
a unique community of faith? What is distinctively Islamic about
Islam? Reduced to the most fundamental terms, to be a Muslim is
to adhere to God's revelation in the Qur'an as spoken by the
Prophet Muhammad. "We have sent a Messenger into your midst and
from among you, to recite [that is, make a Qur'an, a recitation]
to you Our Signs . . . and to teach you the Book and Wisdom"
(Qur'an 2:151). But if the matter were all that simple, I would
probably not have written this article, and surely no one would
be reading it. History has a way of making life enormously
complicated.
During the course of nearly fourteen
centuries, Islam has come to embrace a remarkable variety of
cultural and ethnic entities. As the world of Islam expanded, it
became more and more evident to Muslims that neither the text of
the Qur'an, nor the paradigmatic words and deeds of Muhammad
enshrined in the community's collective memory, corresponded
item for item with the new issues that surfaced with changing
times and circumstances. Therefore, the two prime sources of
Islamic tradition, the scripture and the Prophetic Example
(called the Sunnah in Arabic), had to be adapted and
reinterpreted continually. Islam's religious history is the
composite story of how those adaptations and reinterpretations
have unfolded.
In order to appreciate something of
the Islamic experience of unity in diversity, it will be
necessary to explore some of the implications of Muslims'
evolving understandings, first, of the Prophet Muhammad and the
issue of leadership and authority as it arose after the
Prophet's death; and, second, of the Qur'an and the problems
attendant on the need to implement it in daily Islamic life. I
shall introduce each of these considerations with an appropriate
text from the Qur'an, so as to situate both the Prophet and the
Qur'an in the context of our journey, sign, and light imagery.
We turn, then, to the role of the Prophet and the question of
community leadership.
He [God] is the One Who sends
manifest Signs to His servants, that He might lead you from the
depths of darkness into the Light .... O you who believe! Be
mindful of your duty to trust in His Messenger, and He will
bestow on you a double portion of His Mercy: He will provide for
you a Light by which you shall walk and He will forgive you ....
(Qur'an 57:9 and 28)
It was one thing to trust in God's
messenger while he lived; it was yet another to know whom to
trust as Muhammad's successor. Muhammad's death thrust the young
Muslim community into a protracted debate over the criteria of
legitimate succession, a debate that gave rise to a diversity of
opinion that would also have serious implications for the
practical implementation of Qur'anic legislation, as we shall
see shortly.
According to sources compiled as
much as two or three centuries after the Prophet's death in 632,
two predominant approaches to the problem of succession emerged.
One group held that the Prophet had named his son-in-law Ali to
be his caliph ("successor," "vicar"). The other, convinced that
Muhammad had made no such appointment, opted for an elective
procedure. Abu Bakr, Muhammad's father-in-law, emerged as their
choice. Ensuing developments are much too involved to detail
here. In brief, the group that supported Ali came to be known as
the Shi'ah (that is, party) of Ali. Those who backed Abu Bakr
formed the nucleus of what is known now as the "People of the
Sunnah and the Assembly," or the Sunni Muslims.
The distinction between Sunni and
Shiite is not the only mark of diversity within Islam. Within
each of these groups there are significant subdivisions. I will
mention the most important variations among Sunnis shortly, in
the context of variant interpretations of the Qur'an. Here I
would like to give a brief sketch of the two principal Shiite
groups.
Major differences between the two
largest segments of Shiite Islam crystalized around the second
half of the eighth century. Until that time, both agreed that
the authority to lead the community was vested in a hereditary
succession of six descendants of Muhammad, beginning with Ali.
In 765, the sixth Imam, or spiritual leader, died; and a dispute
arose over who would be his legitimate heir. One group pledged
allegiance to the sixth Imam's older son, even though he had
died before his father did. They effectively terminated the
official line of succession with this seventh Imam, and hence
are known as "Seveners" (or Isma'ilis, after the seventh Imam,
Isma'il). The Seveners are now found, for example, in East
Africa, Pakistan, and India, and are headed by the Agha Khan.
A second faction chose to follow the
man whom the sixth Imam designated after the death of Isma'il.
This faction continued the line of succession down to the
disappearance of the twelfth Imam in 873. Hence, they are now
known as the "Twelvers." They constitute the vast majority of
the population of Iran and about half that of Iraq. Shi'ism has
been Iran's state religion since the sixteenth century.
For both the Seveners and the
Twelvers, religious experience has been decidedly millenialist.
A strong messianic hope awaits the return of the last Imam
(either the seventh or the twelfth), who will inaugurate a new
age in which all believers will benefit from the Imam's
redemptive suffering and that of the whole family of the
Prophet. However, to say that Shiite spirituality is very much
involved with the concept of redemptive suffering is not to say
that Shiites are motivated by some sort of "martyr complex," as
the news media have often alleged in recent years. "Martyr
complex" simply does not do justice to the willingness people
have shown, in many ages and in many religious traditions, to
die for what they believe in.
What I have said thus far is but a
superficial glance at some immensely intricate historical
developments; but we must move on to consider the Qur'an.
It is not fitting that God should
speak to a human being except by inspiration [a technical term
used for the revelation given to a prophet], or from behind a
veil, or by the sending of a Messenger to reveal, by God's
leave, what God wills .... And thus We have, by Our command,
sent an inspiration to you [Muhammad]. You knew not what the
Scripture was, nor what the Faith was. But We have made it [the
Qur'an] a Light by which We guide such servants of Ours as We
will. And truly you [Muhammad] guide them to the Straight Way,
the Way of God, to Whom belongs whatever is in the heavens and
whatever is on earth .... (Qur'an 52:51-53)
The light of the Qur'an's guidance
is the primary touchstone against which Muslims must judge the
authenticity of their faith and action. Some texts of the
scripture provide explicit regulations regarding matters of
personal and social morality as well as ritual. But the Qur'an
is not primarily a legislative handbook. Very early in Islamic
history, local communities faced issues on which the book gave
no specific ruling. The most pressing problem for the community
was then, as now, how to interpret the sacred text in such a way
as to preserve its spirit and still respond to new needs.
From about the late seventh century,
the community as a whole began elaborating various
interpretative principles and procedures. Schools of thought,
each with its own peculiar emphasis on one or another aspect of
legal reasoning, began to take shape. All agreed that the Qur'an
and the Prophetic Example (Sunnah) were fundamental; but the
schools differed in the relative stress they placed on community
or scholarly consensus, private opinion, and analogical
reasoning. By the end of the ninth century several distinct and
formally constituted legal methodologies had come into being.
Today, Sunni Muslims consider the four extant schools -- the
Malikite, Hanifite, Hanbalite, and Shafi'ite -- equally
acceptable and "orthodox." More than one school may be found in
a given Islamic country, but one generally predominates; for
example, Morocco, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia are
dominated, respectively, by the schools listed above. In cases
for which no explicit solution can be found either in the Qur'an
or in the Sayings of Muhammad (Hadith), the Sunni schools
usually leave the final decision to scholarly or community
consensus, rather than to the judgment of an individual legal
authority. Shi'ites, who do not recognize the Sunni schools of
law, vest overriding legal competence in some individual whom
they consider to be divinely sanctioned by reason of a
spiritual-genealogical link to Muhammad, via the descendants of
Ali.
The point I want to make is that
Islam is not now, and never has been, the monolithic religion
many outsiders have thought it to be. For although the historic
revelation of the "straight way" demands an exclusive commitment
to a single and unique community of faith, the meaning of that
original call has for many centuries been variously interpreted.
Hence, it is neither fair nor accurate to equate Khomeini's
approach to Islam with that of Sadat, or that of Qaddafi with
that of Pakistani President Ziya al-Haqq or Wallace D. Muhammad,
a leading figure in the World Community of Islam in the West.
All things considered, we may say
that the Islamic religious experience of God's signs in the
historic scripture, revealed through the historic personage
Muhammad, has been mediated through the community's ongoing
experience of reinterpretation as required to keep the spirit of
both the primordial revelation and the paradigmatic leader alive
and growing.
SIGNS WITHIN THE
INDIVIDUAL
On the terrain of creation, God lays
open the main road of the Muslim community's unique and
exclusive history. Believers discover and set out on that road
in the company of others. But Islamic tradition has not denied
the individual person either the right and exhilaration or the
requirement and risk of exploring and journeying alone before
God. Community supports the individual's desire to acknowledge
God's signs, for God has created an affection between the hearts
of believers such as all the riches on earth could never effect
(Qur'an 8:63); but the choice must be made and renewed in the
solitary heart.(4)
The individual experiences the light
of faith, which God casts into the core of his or her being, as
a personalized gift, often articulated in mystical language and
symbol-system. The expression is "mystical" in the sense that it
describes, in Hodgson's definition of mysticism, an "inward
personal experience, more or less transitory as an event but
enduring in relevance, which is felt to express or lead to a
special authoritative and normative relation between individual
and cosmos."(5)
The term includes much more than ecstatic experience, but it
does not rule out experiences that are usually associated with
the "great mystics" of any religious tradition.
An important and sometimes
controversial element in Islamic tradition has been the Sufi
Path. Although Sufism has witnessed the development of a great
variety of formally constituted religious orders, the Sufi Path
is not itself an institution. It is the personal counterpart to
the main road of the revealed law (called the Shariah) which
circumscribes the Islamic community as a whole. Both in the more
technical handbooks on Sufi doctrine and practice and in the
intensely personal poetry of some of Islam's "great mystics,"
the individual appears as a wayfarer on a course designed
uniquely for him or her. It is the journey of a love
relationship between servant and Master, creature and Creator.
Authors of Sufi manuals elaborated a number of psychospiritual
typologies to describe the various "stations" and "stages" along
the path. But they all agree that intimate knowledge of God is
the crucial ingredient in the experience. (I must point out here
that I know of no clear connection between classical forms of
Islamic Sufism and the "Sufi Numbers" or "Enneagrams" that have
gained some popularity in recent years.)
Guidance along the path comes
ultimately from God, as does the community's guidance along the
main road. Sometimes, however, the wayfarer needs counsel
tailored to individual temperament and gifts. The theory and
practice of spiritual direction in Islam are highly developed.
That topic would require its own treatment elsewhere; but it is
definitely a matter we Christians, and especially Catholic
religious, could very profitably explore. Muslims not formally
affiliated with religious orders, as well as members of orders,
have sought and received spiritual direction from a shaykh
(spiritual guide) either in person or by letter. Some of the
material needed for a thorough study of the subject is beginning
to be made available, and there is much more still to be edited
and translated.
Sufism's emphasis on individual
religious experience, on the ability to recognize and interpret
the "signs within the self," has had considerable influence on
the broader range of Islamic popular piety. Whether for good or
ill, the growing popularity and esteem of certain early Sufi
shaykhs soon transformed some of them into saints in the eyes of
the people. A cult of the saints grew up, often encouraging
pilgrimages to a holy person's tomb in the hope of receiving
boons and miracles of all kinds. Sunni Islam has never
officially sanctioned the cult of the saints the way Shi'ite
Islam has recognized popular reverence at the tombs of the
Imams, but both devotional practices appear very much a part of
popular piety and are probably here to stay for a long time.
What I have proposed here is a
synthetic model. Nowhere do the primary Islamic sources analyze
Islamic religious experience precisely this way. This model is
therefore a reconstruction; but the materials -- the language
and imagery of journey, sign, and light -- are Islamic in
inspiration. So long as one is aware of the limitations inherent
in such models, they can be drafted appropriately into service
as vehicles for cross-cultural understanding. Even so, the
reader may as yet see no realistic way of setting out on the
journey described in these pages. It may seem impossibly
compromising, perhaps bordering on an outright betrayal of one's
allegiance to Christianity. In the sequel to this article I will
offer some reflections as to how twentieth-century Christians
can go forth on this journey, knowing that, although it is not
without its terrors, it will also have rewards as yet untold.
NOTES
1.
In his The Venture
of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), Marshall G. S.
Hodgson has suggested a three-part model for understanding
Islamic religious experience. He describes three "components in
devotional religious experience and behavior." Here I have
amplified his scheme, associating the components with
foundational texts from the Qu'ran and integrating the
components with the Qu'ran's imagery of journey, sign, and
light. As Hodgson says of the three components, they "are not
mutually exclusive -- indeed, they presuppose each other -- but
they mark different moments of spiritual experience. Each of
these components [corresponding to the three questions I have
posed] may be determinative in a devotional tradition, or even
in an individual devotional life, and the other two subordinate
to it; and to the extent that it is so, that component
determines the overall mode of the devotional experience and
behavior" (vol. 1, p. 363).
2.
What follows
corresponds to Hodgson's "paradigm-tracing" component, in which
"ultimacy is sought in enduring cosmic patterns, in recurrent
nature (including social nature)" (vol. 1, p. 363). At this
level, Islamic religious experience may be said to include
features common to all "religious experience," such as a sense
of sacred space and time, the use of rites of purification,
natural symbols, myth, and so forth. A phenomenological approach
to the study of religion might be inclined to describe Islam
entirely in such terms.
3.
Hodgson's "kerygmatic"
component, in which "ultimacy is sought in irrevocable datable
events, in history with its positive moral commitments"
(vol. 1, p. 363). Whereas the first component relates to the
level at which a member of any religious tradition can recognize
experiences shared with virtually every other religious person
on earth, the second refers to the experience of belonging to a
specific confessional community. In this instance the community
is that of Islam with its historical beginnings in the Qu'ran
and the forging of a body of believers who pledged their
exclusive allegiance to one another. This is a component perhaps
more important in the prophetic monotheistic traditions
(Judaism, Christianity, Islam) than in religions such as
Hinduism and Buddhism, though adherents to the latter also
experience themselves as members of a more or less clearly
defined community of faith.
4.
This relates to
Hodgson's "mystical" component, in which "ultimacy is sought in
subjective inward awarenesses, in maturing selfhood"
(vol. 1, p. 364). Non-Muslims often assume that Islam is a
mass-religion in which the individual founders in a sea of
predetermination. That assumption is based on a caricature of
Islam, a view that regards the "God of Islam" as a despot whose
autocratic whims and arbitrary exercise of omnipotence make
smoking stubble of human choice and responsibility. God does not
despise the individual; for it is the individual Muslim who must
make the choice of belief or infidelity and, in the end, account
for that choice. Muslim writers in moden times have been
increasingly attentive to the issues of human freedom and moral
responsibility.
5.
Ibid., vol. 1, p. 396.
John
Renard
http://sufizmveinsan.com
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