Islam

One of the world’s major religions. Its adherents, called Muslims, constitute between 80 and 98 percent of the population of Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, the Sudan, Somalia, Niger, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. Muslims account for 60 to 80 percent of the population of Nigeria, Senegal, Guinea, and Mali. About one-half of the population of Lebanon, Nigeria, and Albania is Muslim, as is more than 30 percent of the population of Ethiopia, about 20 percent of the population of Liberia, the Ivory Coast, the Malagasy Republic, and Tanzania, and about 11 percent of the population of India. In the USSR, Muslims live in Middle Asia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan; in the Adzhar, Abkhazian, Bashkir, Dagestan, Kabarda-Balkar, Severnaia Osetiia, Tatar, and Chechen-Ingush ASSR’s; and in a number of krais and oblasts in the RSFSR. In all, there are more than 570 million Muslims in the world.
Islam arose in the seventh century A.D. in the Hejaz (western Arabia). Its founder was Muhammad, whose teachings were a response to the acute crisis in Arabian society brought about by the breakdown of tribal relations and the undermining of corresponding moral-ethical and religious (polytheistic and fetishis-tic) concepts and by the emergence of early class society. The times required the creation of a stable state and social organization in Arabia, and it fell to the religious and political movement of Islam to accomplish this task. A theocracy was established that reflected and sanctified above all the interests of the new Muslim elite and of the part of the old ruling group that joined it.
The Muslim community (umma), which was both a political organization and a religious body, was united by a single faith rather than by ties of kinship. As the secular and spiritual leader of the umma and as a preacher, law-giver, and supreme commander in chief, Muhammad’s source of authority was not tribal tradition but god (Allah), who was believed to have endowed his “messenger” (rasul) with absolute religious prerogatives. The unification within a theological framework of the secular and religious spheres (of which the religious was dominant) and the amalgamation of morality and law made Islam an all-embracing, total system which, claiming to satisfy all spiritual needs, demanded man’s unconditional submission to and recognition of Islam’s right to control all aspects of his life.
In many respects the dogmas, ethics, rituals, and mythologies of Islam closely resemble those of Christianity and Judaism. Islam borrowed a considerable number of ideas and precepts from Christianity and Judaism, as well as from Zoroastrianism and certain other Middle Eastern religious-philosophical and political movements; but all these borrowings were transformed in the spirit of Islam, only then becoming elements of Islamic religious, political, cultural, legal, and other institutions. Islam as a whole is an independent religion, functioning in accordance with its own norms and principles.
Being from its very inception a synthesis of religion, political norms, and law—a synthesis in which religion served as a unifying and determining factor—Islam attained considerable stability both within Arabia, where it formed the basis of a centralized state, and outside Arabia. A vast Muslim empire, known as the Caliphate, arose as a result of Arab conquests. The need to unite the Caliphate’s various ethnic, racial, and cultural groups into a single political and ideological entity brought about the univer-salization of Islam. The religious-egalitarian ideal of Islam, the extreme ease of conversion, and the absence of an ecclesiastical hierarchy contributed to this universalization. Islam in principle excludes mediators between god and man. The professional jurists-theologians, known as fuqaha, were not bearers of “divine grace” and unlike the Christian clergy had no exclusive right to perform religious ceremonies, to excommunicate, or to pardon sins.
Islamic traditions were reinforced by the relentless insistence upon Islam’s messianic role and the supreme nature of everything Islamic, as well as by the essentially uniform system of education, a high degree of dependence of ethical, aesthetic, and political ideals on theological precepts, and the availability of uniform communication channels (primarily the use of Arabic as the language of religious practices, law, and learning). Islamic traditions fundamentally influenced the culture of the Caliphate, which in turn had a strong impact on European civilization.
In the ninth and tenth centuries, Islam became a complex system with refined philosophical-theological principles (ka-lam) and a thoroughly elaborated legal (sharia) foundation.
Islam’s basic tenets, which are said to have been communicated by god to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel, are found in the Koran. Reverence for the Koran played an important role in the establishment, consolidation, and unification of medieval Muslim civilization.
The Koran is the only source of Islamic theology, although in practice sacred tradition (sunna) is treated as essentially equal to the Koran or even—in cases of clear divergence from the Koran —as superior to it. Consisting of numerous canonical traditions (hadith) about the sayings and actions of Muhammad, the sunna has absorbed many elements of the cultural heritage of the countries within the Caliphate. Used in conjunction with fatwa and qiyas (the logical answer to a question based on analogies in the Koran or the hadith), the sunna made it possible to expand and develop Islamic religious dogma and law in new conditions.
Religious worship in Islam centers around the individual. Prayer, even when uttered by a group, is individual, as is pilgrimage. But orthodox Islam limited this individualistic tendency as much as possible and to a significant extent preserved and encouraged the individual’s extremely close dependence on the religiopolitical community, which was characteristic of the ideologies of the tribal societies antedating Islam.
Equally flexible was the Islamic doctrine of predestination, which arose during a bitter struggle between different religio-philosophical and to some extent also political schools of thought in the eighth and ninth centuries—the Murjiites, Jaba-rites, Qadarites, and Mutazila. A fruitful compromise between the proponents of absolute predestination and those who stressed the need to recognize the important role of man’s free will made it possible to combine Islam’s persistent fatalistic attitude with a measure of indeterminism, thereby allowing for certain voluntary actions by man, who must bear moral responsibility for them.
Islam derived much of its vitality from its emphasis not only on myth but also on strictly prescribed ritual and from its combination of a universal appeal with an ability to preserve its basic principles and to accept the values of other cultures only in accordance with these principles. To these factors Islam owed its permanent practical influence on all important aspects of social and individual life.
The religious structure of Islam is twofold, consisting of iman, or faith (in the truth of Islam), and din, or religious practice, including all rituals, morality, and traditions. The details of iman and din are defined in the Koran, sunna, and decisions of official religious authorities.
The essence of iman is monotheism and belief in the prophetic mission of Muhammad and the prophets who preceded him, belief in angels, and belief in the revelations of the Koran and in the Last Judgment. The Muslim affirms his adherence to his faith by the brief formula (shahada), “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.” Although these words are not in the Koran, they are the basis of Islamic self-consciousness. Iman above all presupposes internal conviction as to the truth of the faith (itikad). To a degree not found in any other religion, Islam ascribes paramount importance to the omnipotence of god —the sole and eternal “creator, giver of life and death.” In Islam, god is not only jealous and chastising but also just and merciful; this makes it possible not only for the “good Muslim” (that is, one who sincerely believes in the truth of the shahada and performs the rituals derived from it) but even for the “sinful Muslim” (the fasik) to hope for eternal bliss, while non-Muslims are condemned to hell’s everlasting torments. This idea of the exclusiveness of Islam and its adherents is further strengthened by the belief that Muhammad is the “prophets’ seal,” the last prophet. The earlier prophets are divided into the messengers of god (rasul) and the “simple” prophets (nabi), who continued the prophecy initiated by the rasul. Besides Muhammad, Islam recognizes as the highest rasul Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus Christ. Islam has retained such pre-Islamic Arabian religious concepts as the belief in jinns, who are associated (sometimes very intimately) with human beings. (Jinns are divided into two groups, the “heathen” and the “faithful,” or Muslim.)
Din.is based on the five “pillars of faith” (arkari): (1) the profession of faith, by pronouncing aloud and clearly the shahada, with a full understanding of its meaning and with sincere conviction of its truth; (2) the act of worshipping five times every day (Arabic salat, Persian namaz), the central part of which is the prescribed prayer accompanied by and culminating in many ritual ablutions and genuflections (although these can be modified during war or in other extreme circumstances);3) the observance of a fast (sawm) during the month of Ramadan (with voluntary fasts also acceptable at any time of the year); 4) the payment of an obligatory charity tax (zakai), in addition to which voluntary almsgiving (sadaka) is also recommended; and (5) the pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca (not obligatory, however, for several categories of believers).
Islam is characterized by an extensive set of rituals meant to uphold not only faith in the almighty god but Muslim solidarity as well and to join all the faithful in a single idea and a single act. Islam ascribes primary importance to custom and tradition as the chief means of social control and of guaranteeing a high degree of unanimity of belief, based on pride in belonging to the umma, the “community of the faithful” led by god. (Of particular importance is the Friday namaz in the mosque, during which a prayer is said for the powers that be and for the entire Muslim community.)
The most important Islamic holy days include the end of the fast of Ramadan (id al-fitr, Turkic Uraza-bayram), the feast of sacrifice (id al-adha, kurban-bayram), the Miraj (connected with the myth of Muhammad’s ascension to heaven), and Mawlid (the day of Muhammad’s birth). The religious obligation of jihad (or ghazawaf), the “war for the faith,” or “holy war,” also acquired fundamental importance.
By declaring its indivisible bond with Muslim governments and rulers (first with the Medina umma and its sheikh Muhammad and afterward with the Caliphate and caliph) and by denying that its principles could be realized in any political organization other than a Muslim one, Islam proved to be closely joined to the political sphere, actively abetting the formation and consolidation of a unified religiopolitical system. But this tendency gradually weakened as a result of continually growing contradictions between Islam’s abstract universal ideal and the cultural and religious traditions that took root locally. The absence of an interregional ecclesiastical organization in Islam greatly favored the development of autonomous and separatist tendencies.
The growth of social contradictions, most often expressed in the form of a religious struggle, weakened Islam as a consolidating force. As a consequence, the once unified Muslim political organization dissolved into a number of hostile states only formally joined by a single ideological doctrine; a multitude of sects appeared, each creating its own doctrine even when not necessarily striving for complete independence within Islam. In the seventh century, Kharijism arose, advocating full equality within the Muslim community and election of the /mam-caliph.
The political struggle led to the appearance, also in the seventh century, of Shiism—next to orthodox Islam (Sunnism) the second main branch of the Muslim religion. Shiism in turn subdivided into a number of sects, such as the Zaidites, Ismailites, and Imamites, in the eighth and ninth centuries. The Shiites differ from the Sunnites chiefly in their conception of supreme power. With the exception of Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law, who is recognized as the only lawful successor to the prophet and as an interpreter of Islam, Shiites reject as usurpers all the Sunnite caliphs, to whom they oppose their dynasty of the 12 imams (Ali and his direct descendants from his marriage with Muhammad’s daughter Fatima). While Sunnism relies on ijma (formally “the agreement of the whole community” but in actuality a consensus among authoritative theologians competent to judge different religious, legal, and everyday questions not covered in the Koran and sunna), Shiism gives only to the imam and to the mujtahids (who act in his name) the right to interpret, apply, and even elaborate “divine law.”
The eighth century saw the birth of Sufism, a mystical current in Islam. Although it resisted the “leveling” tendencies of orthodox religious organization and emphasized the value of the individualist principle to a much greater degree than did the official view, Sufism was never the direct opposite of the official view. Striving to transform not the faith as such but the believer, Sufism still had a common aim with formal Sunnite and Shiite structures, and was therefore essentially their “uncodified” extension and supplement. Moreover, it was the Sufi orders that, often combining asceticism with militancy, repeatedly proved to be the most zealous defenders and expanders of the sphere of Muslim rule, the strictest observers of “original and pure” Islam, and the moving forces of missionary work. At the same time, however, Sufism gave support to humanistic and anticlerical thought and became the source of refined cultural movements alien to orthodoxy. With its distinct and unwavering mystical-ascetic orientation, Sufism also undermined the organizational stability of Muslim society and came into conflict with the spirit of orthodox Islam as a system based on the inviolable traditions that were embodied in the sharia.
In its efforts to regulate and regiment all individual actions and all spheres of social life, orthodox Islam proclaimed the sharia to be the fruit of divine precepts and therefore eternal and immutable. The sharia’s precepts ensured juridical unity throughout the vast territory of the Caliphate. The basic norms of Muslim law were completely elaborated by the tenth century. The founders of the four Sunnite schools of law (the madha-hib) that arose in the eighth and ninth centuries were recognized as incontrovertible authorities; in Sunnism they were regarded as the last permitted to authoritatively interpret (ijtihad) the main sources of Muslim law (the Koran and sunna), which in practice meant the right to interpret all important theological, juridical, and ultimately social problems. (In this, Shiism gives more freedom to its religious authorities, the mujtahids, by assuming (hat each of them has a direct spiritual link with a “hidden imam”) All this helped to reinforce orthodox Islam as a means of stabilizing and sanctifying the dominance of the exploitative elite.
The decidedly conservative nature of orthodox Islam, which tenaciously preserved the principle of the identity of its religious, cultural, and political institutions, reflected the stagnation of medieval Islamic societies, based on a natural and seminatural economy. On the other hand orthodox Islam significantly contributed to the considerable economic and cultural lag of the Muslim East, preventing its complete secularization.
At the same time, Islam, as a universal ideology of the peoples professing it, often objectively aided the rise of their national liberation movements, in turn assuring Islam’s great influence in Muslim social life and rendering Islam’s division into secular and religious spheres extremely problematical and uncertain. Nonetheless, there has been on the whole a noticeable decline in Islam’s traditional strength, a decrease in the amount of socially significant activity controlled by its religious institutions, and a gradual movement away from thinking in purely theological categories and from consistently theocratic models and ideals.
Attempts to transform Islam began in the late 18th and especially in the 19th century, associated with growing social, religious, national, and other contradictions in the Muslim countries arising from the emergence of bourgeois relations in Muslim society as a result of the pervasive influence of European culture. These attempts were aimed either at the decisive rejection of all the “distortions and accretions” accumulated over the years and restoration of the “ideal” form that Islam had in its early stages (the Wahhabites), or at bringing Islam into the greatest possible harmony with the basic tendencies of the new capitalist era. Such Muslim modernizers of the late 19th and early 20th century as Abdu, Rashid Rida, and Iqbal sought to revive Islam’s political and intellectual greatness in the spirit of contemporary scientific and technical progress. They argued that the real world could be comprehended, that the human mind had greatness, and that the free development of the human mind was compatible with faith in god. Vigorously defending the “harmony” between Islam and science, the modernizers demanded a considerable enlargement of the category of persons empowered to freely interpret the Koran and sunna “in the spirit of the times.” They also demanded simplification of rituals, softening of a number of ritual prescriptions and norms, improvement in the position of women (to whom traditional Islam accorded a place inferior to that of men), abolition of polygamy, and introduction of Europeanized educational and juridical systems.
But as a rule all the efforts of these ideologists were directed toward incorporating new elements into the traditional structure without sharply contradicting established principles and toward adapting Islam to modern times by reforming (or very cautiously and gradually eliminating) only its most archaic elements. Therefore the democratic, enlightened, and antifeudal demands of various modernizing projects often receded into the background in the face of the idea that Islam is indisputably superior to all other religions, sociopolitical doctrines, and cultures. Islam was still proclaimed to be essentially the most perfect way of life, to which European science and technology would have to be adapted. Affirmation of Islam as the eternal symbol of a unique identity and demands for the Muslim’s absolute dependence on the “supranational umma” retarded the total secularization of Muslim societies, hampered the development of national self-consciousness and national cultures, and deprived Muslim modernism of consistency and a firm social base. As a result, radical religious reformism had no success in the Muslim East.
Traditional Islam continues to play a prominent role in different spheres of the social life of Muslim countries outside the USSR, in the overwhelming majority of which Islam is not simply a state religion but an essential component of national culture, significantly determining norms of behavior, daily life, and attitudes toward other peoples and civilizations. In these countries Islam is often invoked to sanctify various government actions. Nevertheless, the secularizing tendencies already noted in the 19th and early 20th century directed toward drawing a boundary between social ideology and religion continue to grow in strength, with religion relegated to being a mere tool of national policy. Such, in essence, is the policy now pursued in almost all contemporary Muslim countries. The governments of some of these countries are attempting to transform all traditional religious organizations in accordance with their own aims. While the state may often identify itself with these organizations, it seeks to eliminate all sources of their real and potential autonomy (nationalizing the waqfs [religious endowments] and removing from the control of religious organizations and taking into its own hands the direction of public education and the selection, distribution, and supervision of religious functionaries).
At the same time the state attempts to unify the religious sphere in every way possible, combating various unorthodox but deep-rooted popular traditions such as the cult of saints, animistic and magical notions and practices, and all types of Sufi brotherhoods, which usually oppose modernizing reforms.
The direct collision between the openly traditionalist and the secularizing and modernist value systems is giving rise to a multitude of different schools and currents within Islam, ranging from the archaic and orthodox to the ultrasophisticated and flexible. The mosaic-like variety of modern Islamic intellectual life, demonstrating ever more convincingly the barrenness of pan-Islamism and similar doctrines, ultimately reflects the struggle to find the most effective means of achieving general progress that is now occurring in Muslim regions outside the USSR. In the USSR and other socialist countries, where the social foundations of religion have been undermined, Islam, like all other religions, is becoming more and more a relic of the past.
The continual affirmation of the idea of man’s eternal subordination to mythical divine powers, the orientation toward life in the next world and the contrasting pessimistic estimation of earthly life, and the absolute denial of man’s autonomy and intrinsic worth—all make Islam, like any other religious system, incompatible with a genuinely scientific world view.
M. A. BATUNSKII
Islam and the arts. Islam has exerted considerable influence on the art of Muslim countries. In architecture this influence was felt in the appearance and wide distribution of such new types of buildings as mosques, minarets, khankas, madrasas, and cara-vanseies. The prohibition against depicting god resulted in the absence of religious themes in pictorial art and led to restrictions in the depiction of man and other living beings. The idea that such representations were improper was derived from their condemnation in the hadith and gradually spread through the broad masses of the Muslim population. From the 11th century, Muslim theologians, Sunnite and Shiite alike, categorically condemned depictions of people and animals in public places although permitting their inclusion in the decoration of household objects (for example, on ceramics, bronze, and cloth). This prohibition did not have the force of a law and could be interpreted according to circumstances. In Iran, for example, where there was a strong national tradition of painting, representational painting (even on religious themes) existed throughout the entire Middle Ages. In the Arab countries and in Turkey the effect of the ban was stronger. In these countries, after the 14th century, depictions of living beings are seldom found even in the applied arts. In the early 20th century Muslim authorities, yielding to tendencies in modern life, reviewed their attitude toward pictorial art and officially declared that Islam prohibits only the making of idols and icons.
O. G. BOL’SHAKOV
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Category:Religion
Category:Islam