Basics of Islam
- What is Islam?
- A religion? The hadith of Gabriel (Murata
and Chittick xxvff) calls it din
- The goal: Tawhid ("asserting
God's unity")
- Three main dimensions:
- Islam (submission): a duty
- Shahadah: a
confession of faith that invokes the sharia (Law)
- salat: recited
prayers, after Muhammad's example, in a state of purity (tahara)
- zakat: almsgiving
- fasting during Ramadan
- Hajj: pilgrimmage
to Mecca (if possible)
- jihad: military
and ascetic struggle
- Iman (faith): a worldview
- Ihsan (virtue): a character
- M&C are not describing Muslim history,
civilization, and culture as Westerners would, but the classical
(premodern) Muslim din
- This is embodied differently in different
competing communities:
- "learned Islam": ulama
- "mystical Islam": sufis,
walis
- "folk Islam": families, merchants
- "liberal Islam": Westernized intellectuals
- "political Islam": Islamist reformers
(Wahhabis, Deobands)
- "ideal Islam": apologists and dreamers
- (the Sunni/Shi'i split crosses over all these)
What is happening in Islam today?
- The Muslim world "is in the process
of major transformation" (Voll 3)
- Voll describes contemporary Islamic history
and civilization through a modern, less theological, chronological
and geographic description more Muslims are coming to appreciate
- Three main dimensions of his analysis (Voll
4-5):
- Local contexts and personalities
- General history and dynamics of the modern
world
- The continuous character of Islam itself
- Eighteenth century themes (Voll 25-31):
- political decentralization (weakened Ottoman
control)
- Sufi transformation from mysticism/syncretism
to activism/reform (the Naqshbandiyyah tariqah)
- social reconstruction under scholarly revivalists
(Wahhabism)
-
- Other key terms (see glossaries in both
texts)
- Authoritative traditions:
- Qur'an: Prophetic
Scripture, the basis of Muslim truth and life, divided into Surah
("chapter") and Aya ("verse")
- Sunna: the
sayings and stories of the Prophet, recorded in hadith literature
- Authorities:
- 'Ilm: Interpretation
of texts, by an 'alim (jurist) among the 'ulama
- Madhhab: A
school of fiqh (legal interpretation)
- Sufi: Muslim
mystic
- Wali: One especially
close to God, a "saint" whose life should be respected
and imitated
- Politics:
- Mecca: the
first Quranic context, where Muhammad struggles for acceptance
- Medina: the
second Quranic context, where the Muslim community first rules
- Caliph: the
leader of the Umma, or Muslim community (after Muhammad,
Abu Bakr, Uthman, Umar, Ali...)
- Umayyads and
Abbasids: Empires ruled by Muslim dynasties
- Factions:
- Shi'i: Follower
of Ali, who forms a splinter group (like Temple scribes?) which
vests authority in imams (teachers) with the light of
Muhammad
- Kharijite:
Purist (like Zealots?) who terrorized Shi'a and Sunni compromisers
- Sunni: The
Muslim majority, which lives with political realism and consensus
(like Sadducees and later Pharisees?)
-
- Proceed with caution
- Four warnings for Christians studying Islam:
- Don't impose a Christian-style "orthodoxy"
on Muslim convictions
- Don't impose one camp's understanding on
the whole
- Don't assume that Muslim distinctives parallel
Christian distinctives
- Don't take one era's issues as definitive
for all eras, even the first
- Be good guests in someone else's mansion
- Our tour: Practices, texts, history, encounters
- What are our biases?
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