Voices of Islam (43 page)

By establishing these guidelines, Ibn Hanbal separated the purely religious commandments of worship from worldly civil matters in Islamic law and gave the ruler wide latitude in the civil areas of the law as long as he honored the religious aspects. Judgment of the ruler’s actions on civil matters now fell under the purview of the jurists (
fuqaha’
), who by their position and offices were given the role of maintaining the Sunna. While remaining within the limits of political loyalty, they were to keep public opinion vigilant and impose on the ruler respect for the prescriptions of religion. While for Ibn Hanbal’s critics this served to consolidate the temporal ruling power of the Abbasid Caliphs, in his eyes it limited their power and served to keep them away from meddling in issues of theology and jurisprudence. This was a sore point for Ibn Hanbal because he had suffered torture under the pro- Mu‘tazilite inquisition instituted by the Abbasid Caliphs.

Ibn Hanbal’s ideas paved the way for the rise of political theory (
siyasa shar‘iyya
) as a branch of Islamic jurisprudence. Sunni doctrine as shaped by Ibn Hanbal and those who succeeded him drew a sharp distinction between the ‘‘Rightly Guided’’ (
Rashidun
) Caliphs and the later Caliphate, which they admitted had devolved to a monarchy (
mulk
) and consisted of unjust Caliphs. Only the
Rashidun
were deemed to have fulfilled the conditions of the true Imamate; that is, only they had the proper spiritual, religious, and judicial qualifications for just rule. Therefore, only their legal decisions and rulings were binding as
Sunna
on the believers. The legal decisions and rulings of all Caliphs after them were not deemed precedent setting in the same way.

In the interest of social harmony, Ibn Hanbal and his followers developed a minimal set of definitions for the Caliph under their theory of the state. The Imam had to be a Muslim and from the Prophet’s tribe of Quraysh. The Imamate of the ruler could be binding without any act of recognition by the Muslim community. Ibn Hanbal even went so far as to affirm the validity of previous Imamates by usurpation (
ghalaba
), thus retroactively affi

the legitimacy of the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties. Muslims must not get involved in civil wars, and they must obey and actively support the estab- lished leader, whether just or oppressive, unless that leader violated the

What Is Sunni Islam?
203

Shari‘a in a very narrowly defined sense: the Imamate could be forfeited only through apostasy or by neglecting the duty to provide for the communal prayer.

Ibn Hanbal’s view of justice is encapsulated in a formula made famous by the later Hanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328
CE
): ‘‘Strictness with regard to religious obligations and tolerance with regard to worldly affairs.’’
30
This rule is characteristic of Hanbali thought. Nothing is to be regarded as impos- ing legal obligations but the religious practices that God has explicitly pre- scribed; conversely, nothing can be lawfully forbidden but the practices that have been prohibited by God in the Qur’an and the Sunna.
31

After Ibn Hanbal, the concept of Sunni Islam combined the above political and social principles with Shafi‘i’s view of the Sunna as consisting of the normative practices of the Prophet Muhammad. To Sunnis, all of the above elements, taken together, suggested the parameters of correct belief and practice, and thus of Islamic orthodoxy. After Ibn Hanbal, Shafi‘i’s doctrine on the qualifications, investiture, and functions of the political leader of the Islamic state reached its climax in the work of Abu al-Hasan al-Mawardi (d. 1058
CE
), whose work,
al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya
(The Rules of Governance), became widely accepted as an authoritative exposition of Sunni political doc- trine. This work had a profound impact on other thinkers such as Abu Ya‘la al-Farra’ (d. 1066
CE
), who modified it to accommodate some points of the Hanbali tradition.

Later changes to the Sunni doctrine of the Imamate included the investi- ture of the Caliph either through appointment (
‘ahd
) by his predecessor or by election (
ikhtiyar
). Views on who constituted the electors (
ahl al- ikhtiyar,
literally, ‘‘the people who choose’’), also known as the ‘‘those who loosen and bind’’ (
ahl al-hall wa’l-‘aqd
), varied from one elector being suffi- cient to the generality of the masses as electors. According to the theologian and political theorist Abu Bakr al-Baqillani (d. 1013
CE
), ‘‘those who loosen and bind’’ the people to the ruler are primarily the religious and legal schol- ars, whose role is to uphold justice and the integrity of Islam. In later doc- trine, the Imamate could be invalidated through loss of mental or physical fi and while the Shafi maintained that it could be forfeited through immorality, injustice, or heterodoxy, this doctrine was denied by others, including the Hanbalis and Hanafi The primary duties of the leader were to guard the faith against heterodoxy, enforce the rule of law, protect peace in the land and defend it against external enemies, receive the legal alms and taxes and distribute them in accordance with the law, and appoint honest and reliable officeholders. The Caliph’s duty to implement the rule of law and guarantee the personal security of his subjects trumped issues of his behavior and character.

Sunni thought on the Imamate continued to reflect political reality. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111
CE
), a noted jurist and theologian who lived under the powerful Saljuq sultanate in Iran (ca. 1038–1137
CE
), viewed the

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Voices of Tradition

Caliph as the head of the Islamic
Umma,
legitimized by a pledge of allegiance and necessitated by the importance of preserving the legality of the acts of governors and judges throughout the empire. After the fall of the Caliphate to the Mongols in 1258
CE
, Sunni thinkers affirmed that the legality of judi- cial acts could no longer depend on the presence of a leader from the tribe of Quraysh. Considering the exercise of power as essential to the Imamate, they vested its functions in the actual ruler—a position maintained by Sunni thinkers until the present time. The only difference is that modern Sunni atti- tudes toward leadership have shifted toward focusing on national govern- ments established by consultation (
shura
) and election (a modern interpretation of
bay‘a
) as the best way to establish legitimate rule.

Ibn Hanbal was concerned with political unity and confessional solidarity. Opposed to what might encourage disunity, he put forth the concept of con- sensus as an expression of group cohesion, which was wrapped in an ethical doctrine founded on service to God through faith. In opposition to the Murji’ites, who distinguished between faith and works, he confl these two aspects of belief, asserting that faith is itself an act: faith is ‘‘word, act, in- tention, and attachment to the Sunna.’’
32
No one may call himself or herself a believer without making an affirmation of faith in conditional form: ‘‘God willing, I am a Muslim.’’ This point was targeted against the Mu‘tazilite posi- tion that faith is completely determined by the human will. By granting the divine will an active role in determining human faith, Ibn Hanbal also inti- mated that Muslims cannot condemn another’s faith without expressing dis- pleasure with the divine will responsible for it—an unthinkable and absurd position.

Theologically, Ibn Hanbal was against the Kharijite principle of branding dissidents as unbelievers (
takfi
), and he encouraged an attitude of ‘‘strict construction’’ with regard to the interpretation of scriptural texts on this matter. In Ibn Hanbal’s opinion, even a Muslim guilty of a grave sin may not be excluded from the community except on the authority of a hadith account, which must be interpreted with restrictive literalism.
33
He cited only three sins that might involve the accusation of unbelief: nonobservance of prayer, consumption of fermented liquors, and the spreading of heresies contrary to the dogmas of Islam, among which he mentioned the
Qadariyya.
This latter term, which refers to believers in the doctrine of free will, included both the Mu‘tazilites and the Shi‘a. This position remains a source of tension between Hanbali literalists, such as the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, and con- temporary Shiites.

SPIRITUALITY IN THE PRACTICE OF THE AHL AL-SUNNA WA’L-JAMA‘A

Unlike the Shi‘a, who continued to invest their Imam with spiritual leader- ship, it was evident even before Ibn Hanbal’s time that the Sunni Caliphs

What Is Sunni Islam?
205

could not command spiritual mastery. Ibn Hanbal and the Sunni jurists who succeeded him created the ideational and institutional space to recognize spirituality as a separate fi d within the evolution of Sunni thought. Although the term ‘‘Sufi (
tasawwuf
) had not yet come into being, he contributed to the rise of a spiritual current within Sunni practice by drawing its essential aspects into his worldview. He regarded faith (
iman
) not as just a simple body of rites but as a system of moral convictions. This included the following elements: an attitude of sincerity brought to the service of God (
ikhlas
), renunciation of the world (
zuhd
), a spirit of poverty (
faqr
), spiritual and moral courage (
futuwwa
), and scrupulousness, which leads one to avoid questionable matters between the well-marked limits of the licit (
halal
) and the illicit (
haram
) in Islamic law. By seeding Sunni thought with such ideas, Ibn Hanbal laid the groundwork for the future rise of Sufi as a pillar of Sunni thought and practice.

Parallel to the theologians and jurists who developed the concept of the
Ahl al-Sunna wa’l-Jama‘a,
Sufi thinkers strove to articulate a coherent model of religious theory and practice stemming from the principles derived from the Qur’an and the Sunna. The discipline thus formed was called
‘ilm al-batin,
‘‘internal knowledge,’’ referring to knowledge of the inner self, as opposed to
‘ilm al-zahir,
‘‘outer knowledge,’’ which referred to the tradi- tional sciences of Hadith,
kalam
(theology), and
fiqh
(jurisprudence). Sufi regarded the development of internal knowledge as analogous to the devel- opment of outer knowledge, in that both sciences were grounded in the Pro- phetic Sunna but whose amplifi on as a discipline developed in the succeeding centuries. Sufis considered internal knowledge as more spiritually fundamental than outer knowledge because it deals with the essential, inner dimension of human faith. However, they recognized the Shari‘a and its affi iated disciplines as indispensable for Muslims seeking to lead God- fearing lives. This view reflected the spectrum of the Prophetic Sunna, since the performance of outer duties is part of the fulfi t of inner religious attitudes.

Rendering the internal knowledge ‘‘orthodox’’ and theologically coherent required the grounding of its principles in the normative practice of the Prophet Muhammad. At the same time as the theologians and the jurists developed the principles and structure of Sunni religious thought, the great Sunni scholars of inner knowledge authored treatises that developed the teachings and sayings of the masters of their own tradition.

Noteworthy among this literature is the work of al-Harith ibn Asad al- Muhasibi (d. 857
CE
), who worked in Basra and in Baghdad. His name al- Muhasibi, ‘‘He who Takes Himself to Task,’’ alludes to his development of a science of scrupulous moral introspection. This early form of Sufi psychol- ogy was based on the practice of certain Companions of the Prophet, who wanted more than just to strive after the outward observance of the religious law and the Prophetic Sunna. Paying attention to what was happening within

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Voices of Tradition

their souls through internal experiences, dreams, visions, and altered states of consciousness, they sought to relate these experiences to the ‘‘inner Sunna’’ of the Prophet, and adopted practices that favored this view, especially the Prophet’s meditative practices and prayers.

Renunciation of the world or asceticism (
zuhd
) was one approach of some early Sufi They saw the precedent for this in the Prophet Muhammad’s practice of retreating to the cave of Hira’ above Mecca for weeks at a time. These practices led to the appearance of the Angel Gabriel and the Revelation of the Qur’an. Renunciation and the performance of meditative practices were therefore analogous methods of connecting the human soul with spirit- or soul-knowledge and precipitating within the seeker’s consciousness the individual experience of enlightenment. The rise of the Umayyad and Abba- sid Caliphates, which brought with them a courtly luxury and materialistic emphasis contrary to the ideals of the original Islamic community, further prompted many God-fearing people to withdraw from the world into medi- tative retreats.
34

Devoting themselves to the ardent service of God, these early ascetics not only renounced involvement with the contentious issues of the time but also battled against the worldly seductions emanating from their own egos (
nafs
). They experienced the self as the seat of all evil lusts and as a source of spiritual faults such as egoism, pride, envy, hatred, greed, and ostentatious display. They therefore saw it as their task to look into themselves and exercise self-control, with the aim of transforming the ego and all the self-serving impulses emanating from it. They realized that as long as ‘‘self-ness’’ (granting the ego greater importance than God’s Self) dominates, complete submission to God’s will is not possible. Obliteration of the personal ego was experienced as an absorption or dissolution of being in God (
fana’
). The road or path (
tariqa,
later a term for the Sufi orders) on which the mystic travels leads to this goal. The early Sufi regarded this road as a journey toward which all of humanity is invited; however, only a special few are able to respond.