DIVERSITY IN ISLAM

1
DIVERSITY IN ISLAM

• Presented by
• Michael G. Knapp
• 17 February 2004

2
The Language of Islam

• BISMILLAH AL-RAHMAN AL-RAHIM
  (the Basmallah In the name of God, the
  merciful, the compassionate)
• AS SALAAMU ALEIKUM
  (Peace be unto you)
• WA ALEIKUM AS SALAAM
  (And unto you the peace)
• ASHAHADU AN LA ILAHA ILL ALLAH WA ASHAHADU ANNA
  MUHAMMADAR RASUL ALLAH
  (the
  Shahada I declare there is no god except God,
  and I declare that Muhammad is the Messenger of
  God)

3
A Diverse Faith

• Second-largest faith worldwide (one-fifth of
  mankind) and fastest growing, but still
  misunderstood in the West
• Most Muslims (80) live outside the Arab world,
  with many in Southeast and South Asia, Africa
• Two main branches, but divisions within each
  also includes mystics, opposition movements,
  reformers, modernists and fundamentalists
• Has small proportion of extremists, but most
  Muslims disagree with violence, intolerance
  toward others
• Not monolithic many Muslim interpretations of
  Islam, in spite of its commonalities

4
Common Beliefs Practices

• Five pillars (personal rituals)
• - Shahada (testimony of faith)
• - Salat (prayer, five times daily)
• - Zakat (charity annual religious payment
  to needy)
• - Saum (fasting during the month of Ramadan)
• - Hajj (once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to
  Mecca)
• Three duties (communal)
• - Jihad (primarily individual, spiritual
  struggle to lead a good life secondarily
  communal defense of faith)
• - Dawah (spreading the faith to others)
• - Encouraging good and forbidding evil

5
Beliefs and Practices (2)

• Seven beliefs
• - Oneness of God (tawhid) He has no
  partners or son, and is all-powerful, all-seeing
  and all-knowing
• - Angels intelligent robots made of
  light energy who can assume physical form to
  carry out Gods will
• -- 4 top Gabriel (brings revelations),
  Azrail (angel of death), Michael (controls the
  weather), and Israfil (blows the horn signaling
  the end of the universe)
• -- Each person has two angels, one at
  each shoulder, to record good and bad deeds
• -- Also jinn unseen spirits made of
  smoke who cause mischief
• - Revealed books of God all have been
  changed or corrupted except for the Quran
  (Koran)

6
Beliefs and Practices (3)

• Prophets Many have been sent by God to all
  peoples, but their teachings have mostly been
  ignored by other faiths Muhammad is the last
  and greatest of these prophets
• Day of Judgment God tests us in our beliefs and
  actions, and all our good and bad deeds are
  recorded through life we are confronted with
  this book on the Last Day, when witnesses are
  called and we must repay all injustices to others
  
• Divine measurement On the Last Day, we are held
  accountable as our good and bad deeds are weighed
  against each other finally the verdict is given
  and our souls are sent to heaven or hell
• There is life after death

7
Islams Two Branches

• SUNNI
• 85-90 of Muslims
• Leadership by consensus (of Muhammads followers)
• No organized clergy author- ity from below to
  above
• Literal interpretation of the Quran (apparent
  meaning)
• Majority status throughout duration of the
  caliphate

• SHIITE (SHIA)
• 10-15 of Muslims
• Leaders only descended from family of Muhammad
• Authoritarian guidance from Imams (above) to
  below
• Leadership determines (hidden) meaning of Quran
• Oppressed, tragic minority greater emphasis on
  martyrdom, and use of dissimulation (taqiyyah)

8
The Great Split

• Resulted partly from pre-Islamic tribal customs
  age and wisdom respected, leaders chosen by shura
• Muhammad died in 632 A.D. without a male heir or
  a designated successor
• Abu Bakrs selection as first caliph by Prophets
  small inner circle went against tribal consensus,
  alienated Alis followers
• Uthmans selection as third caliph after Umar
  reflected ongoing Mecca-Medina tribal rivalry
• Ali eventually becomes fourth (and last
  rightly-guided) caliph, but challenged by
  Muawiyah and assassinated by Kharijites
• Death of Ali and his son Hasan leads to transfer
  of caliphate to Damascus, start of first Muslim
  dynasty (Umayyads)
• Tragedy of Yazids massacre of Alis son Husayn
  at Karbala in 680 A.D. marks beginning of Shiism
  as a religio-political movement

9
Divisions Within Sunnism

• Four schools of Islamic law (madhhab)
• Hanafi oldest, most liberal and flexible of the
  schools founded in Iraq introduced legal
  opinion based on analogy (qiyas) concentrates
  more on juridical opinion and less on tradition
  its 400 million adherents are concentrated in
  Central/South/Southeast Asia and Turkey
• Maliki founded in Medina produced the first
  law manual focuses on ahadith and emphasizes
  living legal tradition its 50 million
  followers located mainly in North and West
  Africa, Persian Gulf, Upper Egypt
• Shafii founded in Iraq, this school
  concentrates on the scientific interpretation of
  law defined community consensus (ijma) as the
  strongest of the four roots of law, since it
  determines how other three are used 100 million
  adherents are in the Levant, SE Asia, E. Africa
• Hanbali smallest and strictest, most
  conservative of the four schools rejects
  consensus and only follows the Quran and
  tradition basis of reforms by Ibn Taymiyya and
  Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and still influences
  Salafis and radical Islamist movements today its
  12 million followers are the Wahhabis of Saudi
  Arabia and Qatar

10
Divisions Within Shiism

• Differences over hereditary succession of Imams
• Zaydis (Fivers) differed with most Shia in
  that any descendant of Ali could become imam, not
  just descendants of Ali by Fatimah (Prophets
  daughter) named for Zayd bin Ali, grandson of
  Husayn closest to Sunnis since they do not
  regard their imams as more than human
• Ismaelis (Seveners) recognize an unbroken
  chain of imams down to present, but focus
  adoration on seventh in the line, Ismail (not
  recognized by majority as an imam) early
  Ismaelis were revolutionaries who attacked,
  assassinated Sunni political and religious
  leaders
• Druze (Unitarians) offshoot from Ismaelis
  centered on the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, who
  believed he was a divine incarnation and cosmic
  intellect followers believe al-Hakim went into
  seclusion to test their faith, return to restore
  justice in the world have own scripture and law
• Ithna-Asharis (Twelvers or Imamis) Majority
  of Shiite community, believe that imamate
  succession ended in 874 A.D. when 12th Imam went
  into seclusion he will return as a messianic
  figure (the Mahdi) at the end of the world to
  restore the Shiite community to its rightful
  place, usher in a perfect Islamic society where
  truth and justice prevail

11
Sufis the Mystics of Islam

• Not a sect, but a spiritual orientation in both
  branches
• Adherents are introspective, gentle, highly
  spiritual people who seek to attain inner
  ecstasy, self-enlightenment, and emulate the
  Prophets own example of frugality and
  self-discipline
• Arose in opposition to social trends in the early
  expanding Muslim empire such as opulence,
  overindulgence in worldly pleasures, excessive
  emphasis on legalism, and pageantry
• Faith in God experienced through meditation,
  chanting, selfless love for others, self-denial,
  and pilgrimage to shrines of past Sufi masters
• Were not respected by many traditional ulema
  (Islamic scholars), and reformers such as
  Wahhabis/Salafis still consider them to be
  outside the Muslim faith

12
Other Opposition Movements

• Kharijites (Seceders)
• - resulted from Alis submission to
  arbitration with rebellious governor Muawiyah
• - first radical dissenters and extremists
  exclusivist view that any deviation from Islamic
  principles rendered a person a non-Muslim
  (apostate) subject to excommunication (takfir),
  warfare and death if no repentence
• - divided the world neatly into realms of
  belief and unbelief
• - combined puritanism and religious
  fundamentalism in literal interpretation of the
  Quran and hadith
• - separated themselves (hijra) then
  conducted revolts and guerilla warfare against
  the early Islamic caliphates

13
Opposition Movements (2)

• Mutazilites (Moderate withdrawers)
• - established middle position between
  Kharijites and feuding companions of the Prophet
  a sinning Muslim was merely a hypocrite, not an
  apostate
• - blended Greek philosophy and logical
  argumentation with traditional Islamic learning
  introduced theological science of kalam (didactic
  discourse) that helped to explain issues such as
  faith vs. reason, Gods power vs. mankinds
  freedom of action
• - strict, militant movement which sought to
  force its beliefs on other Muslims even
  instigated an inquisition in Iraq where they
  tortured and executed Muslim religious experts
  and jurists who didnt agree with their views
• - finally defeated and declared heretical
  during the Abbasid caliphate

14
Opposition Movements (3)

• Ahmadiya
• - messianic movement founded in British
  India in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
• - core belief is prophetology, which
  postulates an uninterrupted succession of
  non-legislative prophets following Muhammad
• - Ahmad claimed both messianic and prophetic
  status
• - has aroused the fierce opposition of Sunni
  Muslims, especially in Pakistan and India

15
Reform Movements in Islam

• Islah (reform) Quranic concept of a return to
  the fundamentals of Islam, and reform preached by
  the prophets to warn their sinful communities to
  return to Gods path by living within sharia
  norms
• Tajdid (renewal) Hadith that states that God
  will send a renewer (mujaddid) at the beginning
  of each century to restore true Islamic practice,
  regenerate the ummah (which strays off the path
  over time)
• Key features of renewal
• - removal of foreign (un-Islamic) historical
  accretions or unwarranted innovations (bidah)
  that have corrupted the community and
• - critique of established institutions,
  especially the religious establishments
  interpretations of Islam
• Goal was not to accommodate new ideas, but to get
  back to or re-appropriate the unique and complete
  vision of Islam from its revealed sources

16
Reform Movements (2)

• Revivalism not an attempt to reestablish the
  early community in a literal sense, but to
  reapply the Quran and hadith more rigorously to
  existing conditions
• Prominent renewers/revivalists such as Ibn
  Taymiyya and Abd al-Wahhab claimed the right to
  act as mujtahids to reinterpret Islam to purify
  and revitalize their societies
• Wahhabism (Muwahiddun, or Unitarians)
• - compared Islamic community of the 18th
  century to pre-Islamic Arabia appalled by newer
  form of jahiliyya, and pagan superstitions such
  as Sufi veneration of saints
• - political weakness of the community and
  its moral decline were due to deviation from the
  straight path must repeat Islams first
  reformation
• - destroyed sacred tombs, including those of
  the Prophet and his companions in Mecca and
  Medina, Husayns at Karbala

17
Islamic Modernism

• Response to threats from European colonialism in
  late 19th, early 20th centuries
• Consisted of legal, educational and social
  reforms aimed at rescuing Muslim societies from
  their decline and demonstrating the compatibility
  of Islam with modern Western thoughts and values
• Used by Muslim governments to justify unpopular
  and misunderstood reform measures
• Reactions to this Westernizing of Islam led to
  the formation of modern Islamist organizations
  such as the Muslim Brotherhood (Middle East) and
  Jamaat-i-Islami (Pakistan)
• Catalyst for modern Islamic reform Jamal al-Din
  al-Afghani
• - traveled throughout the Muslim world
  calling for internal reform to defend, strengthen
  Islam and drive out the West
• - Muslims required to reclaim reason,
  science and technology to reassert Islamic
  identity and solidarity

18
Islamic Modernism (2)

• Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida
• - great synthesizers of modern Islam, built
  on Afghanis efforts
• - religion, reason and science are
  complementary Islams decline due to un-Islamic
  religious practices, spread of Sufi passivity and
  fatalism, rigid views of scholars
• - regulations governing worship are
  immutable, but regulations on social affairs are
  open to change
• - true Islamic governments are required to
  implement Islamic law, pan-Islamic unity needed
  to restore the caliphate
• - shifted position of the Salafiyya movement
  to more critical of the West its secular
  nationalism and capitalist exploitation are
  political and religious threats
• Muhammad Iqbal
• - Muslims must return to the past for
  principles and values that can be used to
  construct a modern Islamic society
• - nationalism is a tool used by the
  colonialists to dismember the Islamic world the
  trans-national Muslim community needs
  pan-Islamism tempered by political realism to
  unify against such threats

19
Rise of the Fundamentalists

• Original thinkers build on the ideas of Ibn
  Taymiyya and Abd al-Wahhab (1920s-1960s) Abul
  ala Mawdudi, Hasan al-Banna, and Sayyid Qutb
• Charismatic publicists apply, expand on and
  redirect earlier radical Islamist thought (1980s
  to present) Muhammad abd al-Salam Faraj,
  Abdullah Azzam, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Osama bin
  Laden
• Instigating events 1979 was a key year
• - Iranian revolution brings Khomeinis
  militant theocracy to power, gives hope to Shia
  and Sunni Islamists everywhere
• - Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ignites
  regional jihad and plants the seeds for its
  global expansion
• Dispersion of mujahidin, durability of madrassas,
  and widespread receptivity to radicals
  distortions of the faith will ensure that
  anti-Western intolerance and violence continue

20
What Can We Do?

• Encourage reform efforts of friendly Muslim
  governments apply commitment, resources to help
  solve enduring problems
• Approach all players in the Middle East (and
  South Asia) in a more balanced and fair way
• Realize that what we do is more important than
  what we say, and that we are being carefully and
  constantly scrutinized
• Attempt to better understand Islams cultures and
  the variety in its religious beliefs and
  practices
• Realize that Islam (like Judaism and
  Christianity) is not monolithic, and that most
  Muslims are not extremists