Some Critical Notes for Educators

To equip you to make up your own mind

How Islam Works

Islam is an Arabic word which means ‘submission’. A ‘Muslim’ is a ‘submitter ‘, someone who submits to God in accordance with the instruction and example of his messenger.

The most important image of Allah is that of the sovereign master. Allah is severe, but to submitters he is compassionate. The correct attitude to take towards him is that of a slave. This is expressed in the common Muslim name Abdullah which means ‘slave of Allah’. The Qur’an teaches that those who submit to Allah will find success in this life and the next.

How do you become a Muslim? By saying and believing the following statement, the Islamic creed:

La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammadun Rasulu Allah

“There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s Messenger.”

How do you submit to Allah? Muhammad is regarded as the unique, final messenger of God. Through the revelation to him of the Qur’an, and his example – his life and teaching – Muslims receive guidance about how to submit to God in the way God himself desires of humanity.

The example and teaching of Muhammad is called the Sunna. Obedience to Muhammad’s example, and a commitment to follow it, are fundamental in Islam. It is therefore of vital importance to know how Muhammad lived, what he said and did.

How can we learn about what Muhammad said and di? Thousands of sayings about Muhammad and the things he said were passed on after his death. Each individual saying is called a hadith.

The hadiths were shifted and checked for authenticity and compiled into large collections, of which the two most famous and authoritative are known as the Sahih al-Bukhari and the Sahih Muslim. These are organized in such a way as to make them handy as legal reference works. There are many other collections of hadith, including four more canonical collections that are especially revered.

An on-line database of Hadiths can be found at the University of Southern California Muslim Students Association web site. This includes a full text of the Sahih al-Bukhari and the Sahih Muslim. This site can be searched: all the hadiths in the database which mention a word or combination of words can be found.

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/searchhadith.html

By studying the hadith, and also biographies of Muhammad – known as sira – the Muslim community can learn about Muhammad’s life and how to emulate and obey him. The earliest and most authoritative biography was written by Ibn Ishaq. His Sirat Rasul Allah has been translated into English by Alfred Guillaume.

It is easy to order English translations of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, the Sahih al-Bukhari and the Sahih Muslim from http://www.amazon.com.

Some aspects of Muhammad’s life are positive, but some are in conflict to contemporary Western standards. Particular statements and episodes in the biographies and the hadiths could be regarded as quite shocking. Knowledgeable Muslims prefer not to allow such aspects of Muhammad’s life to become a subject for public comment by non-Muslims. In some Muslim countries laws exist which are designed to prevent this happening, in some cases, such as in Pakistan, these laws impose the death penalty for criticism of Muhammad.

The Qur’an is comprised of very many sayings that were ‘revealed’ progressively throughout Muhammad’s life. Verses would come to Muhammad in the context of a particular issue or problem which he was facing.

Sometimes things were revealed which appeared to contradict previous revelations. This is called ‘abrogation’. In case of conflict, the later verses take precedence over the former ones, so it is important to know which verses came first, and which later. For this you need to know the life of Muhammad, and how to link episodes in his life to the verses in the Qur’ an. Some Muslims will say that Muhammad’s life and the Qur’an are one, and inseparable.

Understanding the Qur’an is not straightforward. Unlike much of the Bible, the it is not in any kind of narrative order, nor in logical order. Within the Qur’an the suras (chapters) are basically placed from longest to shortest. Consecutive verses in a single sura can be associated with quite different episodes from Muhammad’s life. It does help that translations normally state whether each sura belongs to Muhammad’s Meccan period or his Medinan period.

An on-line Qur’an is available with three different translations which allows word searches. Of three versions, Pickthall’s is normally quite literal and the most reliable, although its English is archaic. The on-line version can be found at:

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/searchquran.html

In summary, there are two sources of authority in Islam:

The Qur’an – revealed word for word to Muhammad. The Bible contains many different kinds of texts, written by people for many different purposes. In contrast the Qur’an is meant to be word-for-word dictation of what God said to Muhammad, often in relation to the specific situations he found himself in.

The Sunna – Muhammad’s perfect example for Muslims to follow, which is known to us through:

Hadith – sayings about what Muhammad said and did Sira – biographies of Muhammad’s life.

Shari’a – ‘the way’ How does one go about submitting to God according to Islam? Based on the Qur ‘an and the Sunna of Muhammad, Muslim jurists have derived the shari’a or ‘way’ to live. This system of rules defines a total way of life, and is intended to be implemented by the authority of the state. There are four different recognized schools of shari’a interpretation.

Westerners often mistakenly think of shari’a as a medieval law code. It is intended to be simply what it says: ‘the way’ to be a Muslim, an authoritative application of Muhammad’s example in a comprehensive and consistent way, using rigorous principles of reasoning and Islamic case-law. But to be followed consistently, shari’a requires an Islamicized society. Why is this so? In his person, Muhammad combined religious, political and military rule for the early Islamic community. Based on this example, many Muslims believe that the Islamic shari’a should be enforced by the state, with Islam the dominant faith in public political affairs. Islam is not just a religion, but a total way of life for a nation.

A contemporary example

The writer was living in a Muslim country. He came to realize that there was a rule that someone mounted upon a motorbike was required to greet a pedestrian first. The pedestrian could then return the greeting. If he, as a pedestrian, greeted someone on a motorbike first, the rider would be embarrassed and could almost fall off his bike trying to signal a greeting in return as quickly as possible. This rule of social interaction is based upon a hadith:

Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: ‘The rider should first greet the pedestrian, and the pedestrian the one who is seated and a small group should greet a large group.’

Another contemporary example

Time magazine of June 17 carried the following report:

‘An Islamic court in Nigeria has ordered that Amina Lawal, who bore a child more than nine months after her divorce, not be executed by stoning until 2003, when her baby is weaned.’

How did the judge come to this verdict? On the basis of comparable cases adjudicated by Muhammad. For example a hadith reports about a woman who had committed adultery. She came to Muhammad to confess. Here is what happened:

There came to him (the Holy Prophet) a woman from Gamid and said: ‘Allah’s Messenger, I have committed adultery, so purify me.’ He (the Holy Prophet)

turned her away. On the following day she said: ‘Allah’s messenger, why do you turn me away? … By Allah I have become pregnant.’ He said ‘Well, if you insist upon it, then go away until you give birth.’ When she was delivered she came with the child (wrapped) in a rag, and said ‘Here is the child whom I have given birth to.’ He said ‘Go away and suckle him until you wean him.’ When she had weaned him, she came to him (the Holy Prophet) with the child who was holding a piece of bread in his hand. She said ‘Allah’s Apostle, here is he as I have weaned him and he eats food.’ He (the Holy Prophet) entrusted the child to one of the Muslims and then pronounced punishment. And she was put in a ditch up to her chest and he commanded people and they stoned her …

Accessing the sources on Muhammad’s life

Christians seek to imitate Christ. It is simple to learn all there is to know about the life of Jesus by reading the gospels. These can be read in the course of one afternoon. The life of Jesus is public knowledge, and the gospels are the most widely published and readily available text in the world today.

Not so with Muhammad’s life. Whilst Muslims seek to imitate Muhammad, detailed information about him is not so really readily accessible. It must be derived from the thousands of hadith collections and from his biographies. The full extent of this material is vast and much of it is only available in Arabic. Some of the difficulties in accessing this information have already been referred to above.

It is quite understandable that most Muslims have only a limited understanding of Muhammad’s life, and do not have a good working knowledge of the Qur’an and the links between specific passages and the context in Muhammad’s life that they relate to. The Muslim community relies heavily upon scholars to make this knowledge available. A great deal must be taken on trust. Only in the last 20-30 years have key canonical texts become available in English.

Versions of Muhammad’s life made available to the general public could be said to be somewhat sanitized. For example it is commonly emphasized that Muhammad married Katijah, a widow much older than himself, and was faithfully and monogamously married to her for 20 years. But it is not normally reported that Muhammad married Aisha, his close friend’s daughter, when she was 5, and consummated the marriage when she was 9. Or that he married, Safiyya a Jewish captive, immediately after killing all her male relatives, and took Rayhana, another Jewish woman, for his concubine under similar circumstances. Such stories are found in the hadith and sira and would normally be well-known to trained Muslim scholars. The very existence of such problematic material in Muhammad’s life story means any public represetnation of his life and character is going to be selective. It will either include such material and become polemical in nature, or it will censor it and risk being propaganda.

There are other ways in which Islamic sources are sanitized for public consumption. For example a Qur’anic verse 4:34 says that a husband may whip his wife for punishment, but some contemporary translations of the Qur’an into English render this as ‘beat lightly’. An Islamic textbook the Reliance of the Traveller reports in its Arabic text that female circumcision involves removal of the clitoris. However a widely read English translation changes this into removal of the prepuce of the clitoris, a much less significant operation.

A common claim is that the term jihad does not primarily refer to military conflict, but to personal struggle with oneself. However an examination of the ‘Book of Jihad’ in the Sahih al-Bukhari will show that the principal meaning of jihad in the hadith collections is military action against unbelievers to make Islam victorious.

A discussion of how deeply embedded this misleading definition of jihad has become in the West can be found at: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/498

Islamic religious knowledge is not democratized in the way Biblical knowledge has been. In Islam certain things are just not discussed if there is no need or opportunity to mention them, or if it might put Islam in a bad light to do so. It could be said that information about Islam is made available on a ‘need-to-know’ basis.

The widespread availability of printed translations, search engines, and internet databases is now challenging traditional constraints on religious knowledge in Islam. For some Muslims this could radicalize them further.

Anyone who wants to form an independent and accurate opinion of Islam should first read Ibn Ishaq’s life of Muhammad and then one of the major hadith collections such as Sahih Muslim or Sahih al-Bukhari (also now available in English). The Qur’an can then be read in the light of these two texts. Other secondary sources may not be not reliable guides.

Basic Islamic Beliefs

Belief in God

Belief in angels

Belief in the Scriptures

Belief in Prophets – of which Muhammad was the final one

Belief in the Last Day

Belief in Predestination

Duties or Pillars of Islam

Confession of the faith: “I bear witness that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.”

‘Prayer’ five times a day.

Almsgiving. This is given to the Muslim poor.

Fasting during the month of Ramadan

Pilgrimage

(Some authorities consider Jihad, or holy war, to be the sixth pillar. Jihad is one of the most mentioned topics of the Qur’an.)

For most Muslims, their faith simply means adherence to the five pillars, accepting basic beliefs, and adopting certain shari’a customs. They do not have intimate familiarity with the Qur’an, hadith or sira.

However whenever Islam is implemented as a whole way of life of a society (shari’a law), or when Muslims fight against infidels, religious scholars are on hand to direct proceedings along the lines of the example and teaching of Muhammad. The result – both in shari’a implementation and in jihad war zones – in a process of Islamization which draws a society into closer conformity to Muhammad’s example.

Christianity and Islam

In Islam Jesus is known as Isa, and he is revered as a great prophet. At first sight Islam may appear to affirm aspects of Christianity. Islam believes in Jesus’ virgin birth, in his miracles, his ‘prophethood’, and his title of ‘messiah’.

However Islam also teaches that Jesus did not died on the cross, that the Bible is a distorted text without authority, and that Jews and Christians deliberately corrupted it. Jesus was supposed to have received a book from God (like the Qur’an). His disciples were true Muslims, and any true Christian or Jew should become a Muslim. Likewise Abraham, Moses, David and other Jewish Biblical figures were all Muslims. Islam claims to supersede and restore historic Christianity and Judaism to its roots.

Islam teaches that Allah is one, without equal, partner or comparison. Christian belief in the Trinity and in Jesus as the Son of God are explicitly rejected and condemned as shirk ‘association’, the worst of all sins.

Islam also denies the incarnation, the Holy Spirit, and the resurrection. The hadiths describe how Jesus will return with his sword and his lance to destroy Christianity and enforce Islam on the earth, eliminating all religions besides Islam by his military conquests.

Issues for Education and Educators

Be careful not to propagate myths of an Islamic ‘golden age’. Many text books for children adopt an uncritical and rosy tinted stance towards the history of Islam. This is misleading and unhelpful. The reality is that persecution of religious minorities is widespread in Islamic nations, some of whom have rejected the Universal Declaration of Human Rights out of hand as a ‘Christian’ and hence infidel document.

Moorish Spain

Sometimes Moorish Spain is cited as an example of an Islamic Golden Age. The reality was however far from golden. In the 11th-12th centuries the Almoravid and Almohad inquisitions eliminated Christianity in Andalusia (Moorish Spain and North Africa), by massacres, enforced conversions, and deportations to Africa.

Andalusian Jews suffered the same fate. At Granada in 1066 the whole Jewish community, numbering about 3,000, was massacred after a long period during which the vizier of the city had been a Jew. Throughout Andalusia Jews were subjected to enforced conversions, and then to confiscation of their children since their conversion was regarded as suspect. It was in the face of such persecutions that Christian and Jewish scholars fled into Europe, bringing their scholarship to the Christian West as refugees. Others fled East to Egypt, like Maimonaides, who was forcibly converted to Islam in Spain, but was able to revert to Judaism in Egypt under a more tolerant Muslim ruler.

Here are some Muslim voices from Moorish Andalusia:

‘The Qadi, Ahmad b. Talib, [9th century] compelled the dhimmis [Jews & Christians] to wear upon their shoulder a patch of white cloth that bore the image of an ape [for the Jews] and a pig [for the Christians], and to nail onto their doors a board bearing the sign of a monkey [cf. Qur’an 5:65].’ (Al-Maliki, an 11th century Tunisian historian.)

‘A distinctive sign [i.e. on their clothing] must be imposed upon them in order that they may be recognized and this will be for them a form of disgrace.’ (Ibn Ardun, d. 1134. Andalusian author of an authoritative legal treatise on Seville).

‘Toward the end of his reign, Abu Yusuf [1184-98, ruler of Spain and North Africa] ordered the Jewish population [who had been forcibly converted] to make themselves conspicuous among the rest of the population by assuming a special attire consisting of dark blue garments [with other stipulations]. Abu Yusuf’s misgivings as to the sincerity of their conversion to Islam prompted him to take this measure and impose upon them a specific dress. “If I were sure”, said he, “that they had really become Muslims, I would let them assimilate through marriage and other means; but if I was sure that they had remained infidels, I would have the men killed, enslave their children and would confiscate their belongings for the benefit of the believers.”‘ (1224, Al-Marrakushi, North African historian of the Almohads).

Some Andalusian Jewish communities did maintain their faith in secret and were later able to revert to Judaism.

Later, as is well known, Jews in Spain were persecuted by the Christian inquisition, and some of these subsequently found refuge in Turkey, under Islamic rule again.

Foster critical understanging Be careful not to set up educational contexts where students are at risk of uncritically accepting one point of view without being exposed to alternatives. There can be many errors and omissions in materials available on Islam. Even text books that attempt to be even-handed can be quite slanted if they are written in ignorance.

Be aware that the Saudi government, which funds some educational materials and educational centres in Western nations, is notorious for religious persecution of non-Muslims.

There have been a number of cases in the US where Islam has been favoured in Western schools. For example New York public schools set aside space in schools for Muslims to pray, whilst Christian and Jewish prayer was forbidden. When Christians and Jews asked for similar consideration, permission to the Muslims was withdrawn. In California an extended part of the curriculum has been devoted to a highly positive study of Islam (including role playing being a jihad conqueror), but wearing a cross to school is forbidden.

Educate yourself about such issues. Do not confuse culture or race with religion. Read primary Islamic source documents. The Answering Islam web site has many reliable resources (http://www.answering-islam.org).

Is our culture ‘Abrahamic’? Do not substitute the term ‘Abrahamic’ for ‘Judeo-Christian’ when referring to the cultural and religious tradition of Western nations. This term has been introduced into the West by Muslims in recent decades because in Islam Abraham is regarded as a Muslim. From an Islamic perspective the term ‘Abrahamic’ affirms Islam’s claim to be the font of civilization. It stands for the negation of the distinctive role of the Bible in shaping Western cultural history.

Some aspects of the Biblical inheritance include:

a.. monogamous households, b.. truth-telling and faithfulness to one’s word as an ethical absolute; c.. the ethical principle that the end does not justify the means; d.. the separation of church and state; e.. the idea of individuals’ duty to support and work for the well-being of the state in which they find themselves; f.. the sanctity of life, even of infants; g.. violence is evil: at best it may be a necessary evil; h.. the concepts of ‘grace’ as foundational to enduring relationships; i.. the high value is placed on individual human dignity and worth – arising from a belief that we are ‘made in the image of God’. This is not to say that the Bible has a monopoly on virtue, nor that Christian societies have always acted virtuosly. Far from it! Neither is the Christian tradition beyond criticism. The point is simply that the Judeo-Christian Biblical inheritance has brought with it specific ethical emphases which have been foundational for Western society. This is not something to be embarrassed about, conceal or retreat from.

Some Muslim nations have explicitly rejected the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the grounds that it is a Christian document. An alternative Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam was drawn up by the Organization for the Islamic Conference, representing the Muslim nations of the world.

What does the Western culture owe to Islam?

Exercise discernment about a commonly heard view that the European Renaissance owes its birth to Islam. In reality the Renaissance was triggered off by the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, and an exodus of Greek scholars into Italian cities such as Venice and Florence. In these commercial centers these Greek refugees set up schools and translated classical Greek texts into Latin.

In earlier centuries, Islamic civilizations had been built upon the cultural and technological capital of wealthy and sophisticated pre-existing communities. For example, Alexandria in Egypt was a center of Greek and Jewish learning for centuries before Islam appeared. After Islamic conquest, non-Muslims, including scholars, doctors, architects and artisans, continued their intellectual work under Arab rule, some converting to Islam, and some retaining their faith. These rich human resources provided the foundations for Arab scholarship and science.

Medieval Islam authorities attempted to erase the memory of the Judeo-Christian contribution to Islam science and culture:

It is forbidden to sell to Jews and Christians scientific books unless they treat of their particular law; actually they translate scientific books and attribute them to their coreligionists and to their bishops, whereas they are really the work of Muslims. (Ibn Ardun, d. 1134. Andalusian author of an authoritative legal treatise on Seville).

The idea that Islam ‘saved’ Greek learning during the Western European Dark Ages is particularly problematic – from what did Greek learning need to be saved? Before Islam arose, Greek civilization stretched from Greece through to Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt.

A final comment

If you believe that all religions are essentially the same and that human beings can just as well derive good or evil from one religious tradition as from any other, then the deeper issues raised by Islam will prove especially confronting and confusing to grapple with.

Islam is not supposed to be a way of searching for God, but a program for submitting to him, according to what is regarded as the Qur’an and the perfect example of Muhammad.

Critique of other faiths is a part of Islam. The Qur’an and the Hadith include many passages which are critical of other faiths, and the adherents of other faiths. Non-Muslims have a right to study Muhammad’s teaching and example and to form an opinion about it for themselves.

[The writer, a reputable scholar, prefers top remain anonymous].