Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty (6 page)

Over the centuries, debate has raged over whether Muhammad, or some other person from his milieu, could have possibly produced the Qur’an. Muslims argue that it is a literary masterpiece, it speaks of scientific facts that people of that era could not have known, and it even makes prophecies that have been confirmed by history.
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All these claims are debatable, and are being debated, between Muslims and others. But even some non-Muslim students of Islam have accepted Muhammad’s sincerity in his belief that he was indeed the messenger of God. “We find a quite original piety, a touching devotion, and a quite characteristic religious poetry in the Qur’an,” wrote German Catholic theologian Adam Möhler in 1830. “It is impossible for this to be something artificial and forced . . . [and] to see Muhammad as a mere cheat.”
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Another argument for Muhammad’s sincerity is that if he were an imposter looking for fame and success, he is unlikely to have embarked on such an unpromising enterprise. From hindsight, the early history of Islam proved to be marked by astonishing success, but such an outcome was not foreseeable in the beginning. In fact, during the earliest years of prophecy, an average Meccan would not have gambled on the victory of Muhammad, who seemed like a hopeless lunatic challenging the established culture of generations. “Your nephew has cursed our gods, insulted our religion, mocked our way of life, and accused our forefathers of error,” protested the most powerful men in Mecca, to Muhammad’s uncle.
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He was, apparently, doing everything to get himself in trouble.

Little wonder, then, that Muhammad’s mission did not bring him peace of mind until his very last years. His first thirteen years in Mecca, in fact, were full of humiliation, threats, and abuses. At some point, the elders of the city asked him to compromise from his unyielding monotheism by refraining from denouncing idolatry. Apparently he gave some consideration to that, but only until he was strongly reprimanded in a revelation.
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Threatened with hellfire, the repentant Muhammad continued to proclaim the falsity of the gods of his fathers, bringing only more hostility and oppression on him and his fellow believers.

The next phase of his prophetic mission took him to the city of Medina, where he and his followers would continue to face the threat of annihilation. He would be physically injured in the devastating Battle of Uhud. According to the late William Montgomery Watt, the eminent British professor of Islamic studies, all this resilience pointed to a genuine devotion. “Only a profound belief in himself and his mission,” he argued, “explains Muhammad’s readiness to endure hardship and persecution during the Meccan period when from a secular point of view there was no prospect of success.”
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But what were the core ideas of the mission in which Muhammad so passionately believed? And how did they transform society?

C
REATING THE
I
NDIVIDUAL FROM THE
T
RIBE

In Muslim terminology, the Arab society before the advent of Islam is called
jahiliyah
(the state of ignorance). From a religious point of view, the most definitive characteristic of that society was idolatry. Yet a sociologist would probably emphasize another trait: tribalism.

Life in the arid Arabian Desert was very harsh, and the only way to survive was to live in a closely-knit group. Therefore the Arabs had created many clans and tribes, and the individual was easily sacrificed for the good of these collective kinships. Because of constant warfare between the tribes, and subsequent attrition, men were considered to be more valuable, and there often was a shortage of them. Moreover, poverty precluded the possibility of raising a large family. Therefore, families might decide to kill some of their newborn females, who were seen as not as useful and honorable as males. What mattered was the interest of the tribe, not the nameless individuals who happened to be a part of it.

Similarly, the penal system recognized the tribe, not the individual. Since it was very easy for an individual to disappear without a trace in the desert, there was no way to punish the criminal who had perpetrated the disappearance. Instead, both the crime and the punishment were handled with a collective vendetta. If someone from tribe A killed a person from tribe B, then the former would be asked to offer one of its members as retribution. It was the classic idea: eye for an eye—but any eye.

This collectivism was necessitated by geography, to be sure, but also by theology—or the lack thereof. The Arabs believed in multiple gods, but not one of these deities was perceived as a judge who could hold men accountable for their deeds. There was no belief in an afterlife, so the individual had no unique eternal destiny. “The only immortality that a man or woman could achieve,” as one historian puts it, “was in the tribe and the continuation of its spirit.”
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But the Qur’an would challenge all these assumptions. First, it defined man as God’s “viceroy on earth,” elevated above all other creatures, including the angels.
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From the very beginning, the Qur’an also emphasized the individual’s personal responsibility to his Creator. One of the early chapters stipulated that this responsibility would be tested by God in the moral choices that man makes:

Have We not given man two eyes,

and a tongue and two lips

and shown him the two highways?

But he has not braved the steep ascent.

What will convey to you what the steep ascent is?

It is freeing a slave

or feeding on a day of hunger

an orphaned relative

or a poor man in the dust;

then to be one of those who have faith and urge each other to steadfastness, and urge each other to compassion.
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In other words, God was expecting humans to perform good works for other humans. And, in the world to come, He would judge every individual according to his works. The righteous would be rewarded in heaven, whereas the unrighteous would be punished in hell. And no one—not his family or his tribe—would be able to save a sinner.
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“Today you have come to Us as individuals,” God would rather tell all people on Judgment Day, “just as We created you in the first place.”
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This Qur’anic theology would create a religious movement with “an intense concern for attaining personal salvation through righteous behavior.”
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And, according to Hans Küng, the eminent Catholic theologian, this focus on personal salvation would help the individual emerge from the bond of the Arab tribe:

The consistent monotheism that Muhammad proclaimed was aimed not only at a new community but also at a new individual responsibility. . . . If there is only one God and this God is the Creator, sustainer and judge of human beings, then individuals assume a special dignity; they are no longer playthings in the hands of several rival deities, nor mere objects in an all-determining system of clans and tribes but the creatures of this one God, indeed his “successors,” responsible to Him.
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The change would be reflected in popular terminology. In the pre-Islamic period of the
jahiliyah
, the key terms
nasab
(lineage) and
hasab
(inherited merit) determined the individual’s status in society. The latter referred not to the individual’s personal accomplishments but rather the totality of the success attributed to his ancestors, by which his worth was measured. Yet the Qur’an stressed that what really mattered was one’s
fadl
(merit), which individuals can only earn as a result of their personal deeds.
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Soon the Qur’an would also forbid blood feuds, introduce legally fixed criminal penalties, and order almsgiving to help the poor.
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According to Marshall G. S. Hodgson, a historian of Islamic civilization, all these injunctions “helped give individuals a status independent of clan associations, and so could foster individualistic culture traits.”
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Despite being new for the Arabs, these were old ideas—ones that had been proclaimed first by Judaism and later by Christianity—which also laid the groundwork for empowerment of the individual.
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And that monotheist continuum was precisely what the Qur’an was proudly acknowledging. “We have sent down the book to you with truth,” God said in it to Muhammad, “confirming and conserving the previous books.”
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Those “previous books” were the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and the Qur’an was just claiming to continue the same Abrahamic tradition— a statement that is factually true, regardless of whether one sees the Qur’an’s origin in divine revelation, as a Muslim would do, or in human compilation, as others would probably prefer.

T
HE
C
ALL TO
R
EASON

If the Qur’an carved the individual out of the tribe, then what did it ask him to do? Simply to have faith? To have a blind, unquestioning, dogmatic belief?

Not really. The Qur’an instead aims to heighten certitude in the minds of its readers, by presenting rational arguments. Appearing about fifty times in the Muslim scripture is the verb
aqala
, which means “to connect ideas together, to reason, or to understand an intellectual argument.” Throughout its pages, the Qur’an repeatedly invites the reader to use these faculties to reflect upon the created universe, and man’s own self, as “signs” for finding God. All the wonders of creation, such as the movements of the heavenly bodies, atmospheric phenomena, the capabilities of the human body, the variety of the animal and vegetable life so marvelously designed for men’s needs—all of them, according to the Qur’an, translate into “signs for people who use their intellect.”
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The Qur’anic reasoning is guided by religious dictums, to be sure, and its verses introduce many articles of pure faith, such as the existence of the afterlife, angels, and miracles. But although one needs to go beyond empirical reason to believe in such notions, one does not need to clash with it. In fact, those who clash with reason, according to the Qur’an, are the unbelievers. “They are people,” a verse bluntly decrees, “who do not use their intellect.”
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“Muhammad,” observed Belgian-born scholar Henri Lammens, “is not far from considering unbelief as an infirmity of the human mind.”
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In the later chapters, we will see how this Qur’anic emphasis on reason gave rise to the Rationalist school in Islam, which in turn laid the philosophical foundation for individual freedom.

T
HE
R
IGHTS
G
OD
G
AVE TO
M
EN—AND
W
OMEN

The Qur’an also introduced into Arab society the concept that individuals have inalienable rights. Justice was at the core of Muhammad’s social message, and justice meant not just punishment for those who commit crimes but also protection from those who could violate others’ rights.

This was grounded in the Qur’anic message of protecting the weak against the strong. “By God,” said Muhammad, “an Abyssinian slave who obeys God is better than a Qurayshi chieftain who disobeys Him.”
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For the Quraysh, the most prestigious tribe in Mecca, this bold egalitarianism was simply shocking.

Another reform introduced in the Qur’an strengthened the nuclear family—husband, wife, and children. Inheritance would now be confined primarily within the immediate family, not shared throughout the tribe. The regulations were made piecemeal, “but the tendency was persistently toward asserting individual rights on the basis of equality before God.”
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Although it may be news to the modern reader, another of the Qur’an’s revolutionary innovations was its recognition of rights for women. In the pre-Islamic period, except for rare examples such as Khadija, Muhammad’s wife, a woman was typically a slave to men. She did not have the right to own property; she herself was property. A man would pay a “bride-price” to a girl’s father. And when he died, the inheritance passed only to his sons—the wife and daughters received no share.