ISLAM : What it is

By
Hassan S. Karmi

Introduction

This is a small book on Islam: What it is. The choice of the title was deliberate, in the sense that the book deals with Islam in its essence to show its roots rather than its branches. The attempt, I think, is unprecedented, and therefore the treatment is hardly dependent on previous books. This is not to draw my long how, but it is the truth as the reader will see for himself, except, of course, the Qur’an, the Holy Book of Islam, which was mainly my guide, together with the traditions of the Prophet, for the subject of Islam in the West I am indebted to R. W. Southern .

The word Islam has been interpreted variously. The current generally accepted interpretation is that Islam means: submission to the will of Allah, the only and unassociated god. But what about another interpretation, equally valid, which means: to hold on to peace. The justification of this interpretation is that one of the major aims of Islam is to do away with the turbulent tribal system in Arabia and the chaotic state of affairs under the banner of Islam which calls for unity in everything and for egalitarianism.

Islam has been discussed and written about by various writers. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. Their views were inevitably coloured with the prepossessions and prejudices, and hardly impartial. The Christian writers were most prejudiced and ignorant, as I have shown in the book. The Qur’an, when translated, was sometimes translated by a Christian priest who naturally distorted the views on certain cardinal beliefs. Rodwell, for instance, translated a Qur’anic verse in a way that would not contradict a principal tenet in Christianity: the original sin. He also mistranslated another verse which urges Muslims to emancipate their slaves. Christian writers described Islam as a warlike religion which spread by the sword, and which called for plunder and forcible conversion. This hostility to Islam continued in all forms through the Middle Ages and onwards. Recently, in the United States of America, Paul Harvey, a prominent broadcaster from 1200 radio stations accused Islam, in one of his broadcasts, of being a fraudulent religion. Another broadcaster, Mark Goldsmith, on National Public Radio, told a story that the Prophet Muhammad was once offered  coffee by the angel Gabriel which made him able to make love to forty women in one night and for forty nights in a row. Now, even for political and perhaps religious reasons Muslim countries are listed as supporters of terrorism. For this unfounded charge, those Muslim countries are punished by bombardments, air strikes and economic sanctions. This hostility to Islam must have a psychological reason and that reason must stem from the fact that Islam is fundamentally different and therefore a challenge and a foil to both religions, Christianity and Judaism.

Islam is now being charged of fundamentalism, a new mode of attack, and consequently of being uncivilized. Islam is absolutely innocent of this charge, and on the contrary it is a religion which has the welfare of all creatures, human and animal, at heart, as may be clearly seen from reading this book.

Islam is distinguished further by being free from myth or fiction, and by being not man-made. Islam does not rely on mythical or fictional explanations but, like science, on demonstration. This is an undeniable fact, proved by the Qur’an itself.

The present chaos in international affairs is the result of blind hurry to make money without regard to consequences and without any thought for humanity as a whole. It was a mad rush, absolutely free from any constraint and a consideration for those trampled underfoot or those who fall by the roadside. The world is split apart into Chosen and Gentile with millions of people massacred by lethal weapons and people dying of starvation.

One should always bear in mind that Islam is the classical Islam and not the popular Islam, and that Islam is not the Muslims. In many cases now Muslims very often turn against Islam in its essence knowingly and unknowingly, under influence from a variety of sources, political or otherwise. There is a call for a dialogue between Islam on the one hand and Judaism and Christianity on the other. The Qur’an anticipated the dialogue by saying: “O people of the book, let us rally to a common formula to be binding on both us and you that we shall worship only God alone and associate no one else with Him, nor shall any of us take on others as lords instead of God.” The latter condition in this verse is that we shall have no clergy to rule over us instead of the rule of God. Islam has no papacy, no institutionalized religious system like the one in Judaism and in Christianity.

Islam is an egalitarian religion, and all members of an Islamic society are united in equality under the rule of God alone. Even the elected head of an Islamic community or state loses his mandate to rule or reign if he disobeys God, and his subjects should not obey him. This is a major criterion for unity in an Islamic organised society. God cannot be but just. He commanded that Islamic society should be based on social justice and unity. The universe is a unity and the family, founded by Islam, is a unity. This rule of unity is immanent in creation, and it is so because it is reasonable. Even globalization, the new trend in western civilization is very divisive and far from being socially just. It is totally un-Islamic. It is inspired by the doctrine of “chosenness” which has split human beings into sheep and goats, into “chosen” and outcast and perhaps inspired the drift of the Europeans into the practise of colonialism and slavery. The mastery that money has over the minds of the civilized people is thought to be originally a result of this doctrine.

Ernest Gellner, in his book Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (Routledge, London, 1992), speaks of fundamentalism as a purely modern religious movement and opposed to secularism, and the two are in conflict. Fundamentalism rests on the religious doctrine, and secularism rests on science and technology, both opposed to fundamentalism. Gellner thinks that this opposition is strongest in Islam. This conflict is always an essential aspect of every revolution in the world, be it religious, cultural, intellectual or scientific. It is endemic and ingrained. I  remember, in this connection, the Chinese idea that the world was created by two conflicting forces ying and yang, and the Hindu religious creed that there is a balance between two gods, Siva and Vishnu, one is destructive and the other constructive.

The doctrine in any religion is one of the two poles of conflict. The conflict in its intensity or its laxity is dependent upon whether the doctrine is rational, semi-rational or irrational. I believe, to start with, that the Islamic doctrine is rational and, as such, is not in conflict with science. Therefore, I disagree with Gellner who thinks that fundamentalism in Islam is the same as it is in the other two religions, Christianity and Judaism.

The doctrine in Islam is rational. It has nothing religious which conflicts with science. It even conceded the possibility of dissidence. It seems to me that it says: if you believe that there is god, that god could not be rationally other than one only God.

I recall, in this connection, a saying by Tertullian, a church father, to the effect that he may believe in something because it is absurd. The Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, says that the essence of religion is not to persuade its followers of the truth of the doctrine but a commitment to a position which offends because it is absurd. Those two sayings, strange as they are reflect a mental attitude inherent in the West called ambivalence, exemplified in the belief in two contradictory things, like Cromwell who is said to have held the sword in his right hand and the Bible in his left during his campaign against the Irish in which he killed forty thousand. The West is also known of being schizophrenic.

Ancient peoples used to believe in things that did not exist, in myths and in fables. A notorious example is the ancient Greek religion and the Olympian gods. The ancients believed in the existence of mermaids, sphinxes, gorghons, sirens, fairies, Amalckites, griffins, witches, etc. The West seems to be more interested in its early history of myths and fables and in things opposed to reason, and in its later history is prone to be ambivalent. It also tends to be hypocrytical and schizophrenic particularly in matters of religion.

Karen Armstrong, in her book Battle for God (Harper Collins, London, 2000) distinguishes between two ways of thinking, especially in the sphere of religion: the mythos way and the logos way. The former was the way of the past peoples who understood the world mostly in terms of myths and fables and logos way is the way of understanding the world through facts and reason. The two ways are antithetical, and a religion which is more mythical is less reasonable, and a religion which is less mythical is more reasonable. According to this rule, I think that Islam is more reasonably because it is free from myth.

Secularism or modernism is the enemy of mythos and the first casualty will be the religion which is more mythical than reasonable.

By contrast secularism is not the enemy of Islam except in marginal matters. Islam is partly secular. It is a philosophy as well as a religion, and the first religion to think of man as  responsible with a reasoning mind.

I would like to add that the cult of Chosennes did not spread in the Christian East, nor in the Far East.

Hasan S. Karmi