Views of the Absolute in World Religions
Center for Media and Independent Learning - University of California Extension
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Islam - The Religion of Submission to God
Course Guide written by Mike Fedel
In the name of Allah, the most Merciful and Compassionate
These words are often used to begin a Muslim's written or spoken comments. They show the extent to which the remembrance of God is integrated into a Muslim's daily life. This integration is one of the features of Islam which will look at further below.
Adherents of Islam number between 16 and 20% of the world's population. When we look at and think about this religion, several features immediately stand out. One of them, as Smith mentions, is the high degree of misinformation and confusion we have here in the United States about the Islamic religion. Some others are Islam's integration of our life in the world and our spiritual life and the question of the place of women in Islam. We will look briefly at each of these questions and hope to shed some additional light on them.
ISLAM AND DAILY LIFE
Even the casual observer is struck by the way in which the remembrance of Allah pervades and gives meaning to the day to day life of Muslims. Followers of the tradition are instructed to pray at least 5 times a day, fast for at least one month of the year, and look to the Qur'an for guidance on financial matters, ethical decisions, and raising their family. While all religions at their best seek to be part of the daily lives of their followers, Islam begins with the assumption that daily life is spiritual life. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a major scholar of Islam, puts it as follows:In the Islamic perspective, religion is not seen as a part of life or as a special kind of activity along with art, thought, commerce, social discourse, politics, and the like. Rather, it is the matrix and worldview within which these and all other human activities, efforts, creations, and thoughts take place or should take place. It is the very sap of the tree of life. . . . Islam does not even accept the validity of a domain outside of the realm of religion and refuses to accord any reality to the dichotomy between the sacred and profane or the secular and the spiritual and temporal. Such terms as secular and profane cannot even be translated exactly into the Islamic languages in their classical form . . . [Nasr, Our Religions, 439]This has led to misunderstandings and problems of interpretation in the West, and particularly in the United States where we have a population which contains many different religious traditions. One of the ideals in American society has been a separation between Church and State. The vision is that daily life and personal interactions should no more be determined by the Christian tradition than by the Buddhist or Muslim traditions. In reality, this is open to debate, but the point here is that this would not make much sense to a Muslim. Religion is daily life, everything we do, we do by the grace of Allah. This brings us to the question of the interaction of Revelation and daily life in matters of human behavior.
Reading from Nasr again, he proposed that one of the major accomplishments of Allah--through His revelation to Mohammed [PBUH]--was to give humankind a more complete Law according to which to live. Writing about the relationship between Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Nasr says
As Judaism represents the law or the [exoteric] aspect of this tradition and Christianity the way or the esoteric aspect of it, so does Islam integrate the tradition in its original unity by containing both a law and a way, a shari'ah and a tariqah. Moreover, it can be said that in a sense Judaism is essentially based on the fear of God, Christianity on the love of Him and Islam on the knowledge of Him although this is only a matter of emphasis. . .[Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, 35]We will not press further on Nasr's characterization of Judaism and Christianity, but try to see his point. He claims that the Muslim Revelation sought to integrate the spiritual and secular poles of human life. Consider, for instance, the question of violence and war. The Christian dictum "love thy neighbor" was not sufficient to answer the needs in the time of Constantine, in the Middle Ages, or in World War II. Therefore, elaborate exegesis had to be performed to find a way that fighting and killing could be seen as acceptable to God. In the Islamic tradition, the rules for warfare were very clearly spelled out from the beginning [see Novak section 8]. Muslims are willing to admit that the rules may not always be applied evenly, but again we must consider the record of the other religious traditions as well and realize that very few traditions have consistently lived up to their goals. The including of rules for war in the Qu'ran and the commentaries show at a minimum the concern that Allah has with insuring that Islam address all aspects of the daily life of the believer. Read sections 10, 21, 24, and especially 33.a in Novak for more scriptures on Islam and daily life.
THE FIVE PILLARS OF ISLAM
The Five Pillars are one of the most important features of Islam. These prescribed rituals help the practicing Muslim stay on the right path. Smith describes and explains the different obligations laid upon the Muslim by Allah and we will not repeat them. The important thing for us to realize is that these are not to be understood as obligations to pay mechanically. We do not do them to 'get them over with' or to 'pay our dues'. Whether it be tithing, fasting, or the 5 daily prayers, these are meant to be done with full intentionality and focus. In this way, they will remind us that Allah is always present and should always be central in our thoughts. Some Islamic scholars characterize these as duties out of obligation while others write about them as duties out of gratitude--ways of showing thankfulness to Allah for the abundant gifts we have been given. This is an ongoing debate, but in both cases it is clear that our attention is to be on Allah while performing them, we cannot simply go through the motions.Some additional examples may help us understand, at least in a minimal way, how the Islamic obligations function based on comparison to our own experience. Remembering that the purpose of Islam is submission to the will of God and remembrance of God in all of our actions, we can consider the 5 daily prayers and the Hajj.
Have you ever tried to get an important telephone call through to someone whose line was busy or who was not home? You phone once at 9 a.m. and there is no answer. You go about your daily business, but you remember several times that you need to get in touch with this person. At noon, you stop what you are going and try the number again. Still no response. So, you go ahead with your daily tasks again but it's not easy to concentrate on what you're doing. You try again at four. No answer. Now, you can't get it out of your mind. When will we be able to talk! Surely the other party will come home sometime! You drive to the store and purchase groceries, but your mind is back in the telephone booth. You try again at dusk and before going to bed.
You can see in the above scenario that the thought, the need to communicate with the other person, is always with you--in the way that the presence of Allah is to be always with you. This particular day, you took notice of it because there was a phone call to make. But (presumably), you have had a relationship with the person for some time before the call. Was she on your mind every minute of the day yesterday? The day before? Probably not. This is the genius of the daily prayers. Just as the person was on your mind all day today, Allah will be on the mind of the Muslim at all times every day.
We might also think about the pilgrimage in this way. Have you ever planned a trip which was to take place several months off? For instance, imagine you are taking a trip to Japan in six months. You look forward to it, it is on your mind constantly. You make telephone inquiries about travel arrangements. With every purchase, you consider whether the money would be better spent on the trip. You begin to notice things you would not normally notice--a Japanese dictionary, woodblock prints by Hiroshige, the origami swan on your friend's table. You might even contact others who are going at the same time. The point to consider is how this trip has become a constant focus for you. For a Muslim, looking forward to the pilgrimage all of his life (if indeed it is seen this way, rather than as a duty to fulfil) can have the same focusing effect.
WOMEN IN ISLAM
In this particular period of history, we are very much aware of the problems which have been caused by imbalance of power between groups of people. There are different interpretations of the problem and explanations of the cause. Some writers stress class as the principle imbalance from which all other problems stem. Others find that sexism is the major division between people and the precursor to other types of power imbalances. Still others cite racism as the primary problem. We will not go further into these arguments as they are not the subject matter of this course, but this type of analysis provides an introductory point to our consideration of the role of women in Islam.In the book Princess, an anonymous princess of a Saudi Arabian royal family describes and discusses the abysmal treatment of herself, her sisters, and the women around them by the men in their family. In the West, we are exposed to media portrayals of women in the Middle East who are forced to veil themselves, who cannot drive cars or attend school, and who are generally treated as second-class citizens, if not worse. Yet, in Smith's book and in several of Novak's texts (see 10.d, 28.b and fn. to 10.d), the case is argued that the Prophet significantly improved the lot of women in Islam and that it is, in some cases, better than the status of women in the Western world. How can we begin to resolve this question?
One way to look at it is to consider the difference between competition and complimentarily in gender roles. Nasr writes that
Islam sees the role of the two sexes in their complementarity rather than competition. The role of women is seen as being more in the preservation of the family and upbringing of children and that of men as providing economically for the family.[Nasr, Our Religions, 461]He also writes that
From the Islamic point of view the question of the equality of men and women is meaningless. It is like discussing the equality of a rose and jasmine. Each has its own perfume, colour, shape and beauty. Man and woman are not the same; each has particular features and characteristics. Women are not equal to men. But then neither are men equal to women. Islam envisages their roles in society not as competing but as complementary[Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, 112]Nasr states that many of the practices we find objectionable are cultural rather than religious, and that the proof is seen in how these practices differ in various regions of the Islamic world. For instance, the veiling of women has been practiced in Judaism and Christianity as well as Islam, yet is associated as a mark of the inferiority of women in Islam. In addition, even with the Muslim world, many women in smaller villages have never practiced this veiling and it is not seen as a violation of Muslim law. The Muslim injunction is toward modesty of dress, not specifically toward veiling of the face (or in some cases, the entire body). How strictly this is followed is a matter of interpretation, not law.
Are these just excuses and justification? Is the notion of 'complementarity' a way to ignore the fundamental mistreatment of women? That is a topic which needs ongoing debate and which requires the capability to try to look at the question while recognizing our own prejudices. We will not try to resolve the question here. Our emphasis here is to try to realize that Muslims frame the question differently. The idea of tradition is very important in Islam. Since Allah laid down the rules for human behavior and they included assigned gender roles, they are not to be discarded lightly.
Another way to look at the question of social practices in traditional religions and how they differ from our own social practices is to consider the Hindu practices of caste. This is another practice from a different culture which has come under attack, yet which we need to ask ourselves questions about. Do we criticize these ideas because they fundamentally degrade human beings or because they are different from the way we do things? And we need to ask ourselves: what practices in our culture have the same results or degrading human beings? Are we truly a classless, non-racist, non-sexist culture? These questions often temper our condemnation of the practices of other cultures when we ask them honestly.
ISLAM AND THE ABSOLUTE
When we look to Islam to see what we can learn about views of the Absolute, we find a very well developed monotheistic system. The focus on the Absolute in Islam is one of its most essential features and idolatry the cardinal sin. The Qu'ran is continually warning against idolatry (see Section 5 and 7 in Novak). Idolatry will weigh very heavily on us on the Last Day and in the Final Judgment.Allah cannot be contained by descriptions but Muslim writing does make us aware of many of His attributes. Some of the Ninety-nine Most Beautiful Names of Allah are listed in Novak's book in the section on the 5 Pillars of Faith. We see from these that all positive attributes we recognize in human beings and in the universe are attributable to Allah. Each individual will find some of these more meaningful than others and this will help foster a closer relationship with the Absolute.
While remembering Allah's transcendence of all categories we cannot forget Allah's nearness to us. The Qu'ran says "It was We Who created man, and We know what suggestions his soul makes to him: for We are nearer to him than (his) jugular vein"[50:16]. This well-known verse brings to our attention one of the eternal paradoxes in religious thought: while the Absolute is different from us in so many ways (infinite, eternal, all-powerful), yet the Absolute manifests itself to us and is as close to us as our very heartbeat.
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