ISLAM : What it is

By
Hassan S. Karmi

Middle course

The question of the middle course advocated by Islam needs a bit of further explanation. This, it will be remembered, is illustrated in Islam by the idea of balance. But it can be illustrated otherwise. Aristotle in his third law of thought said that any proposition could either be true or false, but not in between. For instance an object can be red or not red. Here, according to the law, an object cannot be, for instance, half-red. Then any half-red object is excluded.

In human relationship, the tendency is to regard things as opposites, or pairs of opposites, such as good and evil, good and bad, just and unjust, free will and determinism, God and Satan, heaven and hell, Jew and gentile, dark and light, mind and matter, and so on. But if you regard these pairs of opposites as a unity, then the problem becomes a dilemma, and you have to pick your way carefully, and in this case you choose the middle course. Those who contend that the world is absolutely spiritual or absolutely material are wrong, like those, after Descartes, who divide man sharply into mind and body.

One more example, Christ is reported to have said that “ he who is not with us is against us.” This means that nobody can be neutral. This rule adopted by Jews and Christians throughout history and recently by the Americans in the cold war, has been a disaster to humanity. The idea is divisive.

The contrast to that is the saying of the Prophet: “work for your fortune in life as though you would live forever, and work for your fortune in the hereafter as though you would die in the morrow.”

Therefore, the case lies between two extremes and if you choose one of the extremes, to the exclusion of the other, you will be wrong. Judaism and Christianity chose to see the world as a series of dichotomies or pairs of opposites. Western civilization, in deciding between matter and spirit or mind and body, chose matter, to the exclusion of spirit. Therefore, Western civilization is one-sided, and as it goes deeper and deeper into exploring nature alone it will upset the balance and it will carry within it the germs of its own destruction, and along with that, the destruction of the human species.

There is also the dichotomy of Being and Becoming, The Greek philosophers, especially in the fifth century B.C. tried to reconcile the idea of change (Becoming) of Heraclitus with the idea of unchageableness (Being) of Parmenides, but they failed and spirit and matter remained as diametrically opposed as ever until the rise of Western civilization where matter took the field.

Islam which is essentially a religion of the middle course has something to say about this. Dead matter in Islam has life, and is not dead. Living matter has death within it. Therefore life and death are interchangeable.

Now the idea of changelessness, of Being, in nature, is not acceptable in Islam. Everything even dead matter, changes. Islam leans towards changeableness, and what is thought to be changeless is really changing, in relation to an ultimate truth only known to God, but gradually knowable by man.

This looks to be a puzzle, but it is not so. The word for Being in Arabic is Qadha, and the word for Becoming is qadar, and both are in the hand of God. Qadha is the universal rules of nature and qadar is the rules of nature when varying. Modern science admits that there is uncertainty in nature, which leads to the belief that nature is not invariant. At the same time, science assumes that the laws of nature cannot be discovered and cannot function unless they are invariant. It is cyclic, or like, a point on the circumference of a circle, which is the beginning and the end at the same time. Shakespeare has a saying about one of his characters : “ He has a system in his madness.”

There remains another important pair of opposites, namely that of male and female, or man and woman. The discussion of this pair is important if only to refute the characteristic prejudicial charge brought against Islam that it treats woman as chattel. This is malicious. Islam is the only religion that raised the status of woman. In proof of that, a brief survey of the attitude to woman in the various religions will serve the purpose. Socrates is reported to have said: “woman is the source of all evil; her love is to be dreaded more than the hatred of man. The poor men who seek women in matrimony are like fish who go to meet the hook.” Almost at the same time, the Buddhists believed that “woman is a creature with the look of an angel on the countenance, but with a diabolical spirit in the inmost heart.” Confucius, the Chinese greatest thinker says: “Man and woman should never sit in the same apartment after they reach seven years of age.”

In Judaism, woman has an inferior status. But her status is worse in Christianity. The doctrine of the Original Sin damned woman forever, and even before that St. Paul was the greatest enemy of woman. In the Middle Ages, to praise a woman for her beauty in prose or verse was thought to be blasphemous. The Troubadour from Arab Spain introduced the art of minstrelsy and of good men, and women for the first time began to be praised in songs.

Libido versus credo was finally triumphant, and eventually Christians forgot about Eve and her part in the Original Sin. The cult of celibacy and that of monasticism were discredited. Islam, of course, never believed in the Original Sin, Cilibacy or monasticism for men or women is taboo. Men and women are partners in fertilization, like the partnership of male and female in nature. This is, I think, the first time that the concept of fertilization in nature was ever mentioned in a holy book other than the Qur’an.