Redeemed wrote:What would you say, then, about the Islamic societies, past and present? Didn't those societies base their culture on the teachings of Mohammed? If I am correct, the laws and way of life of fundamental Islamic societies have stemmed from their holy book, the Quran, and their belief in Allah and his nature. The tenets of the Islamic faith are so much a part of how these cultures operate - how can students understand the culture if they if they don't understand the foundation?
In the case of Islam, you have a unique situation. Your question is perceptive--i referred to the cultural heritage of the "western" world. There is no priesthood in Islam, and the religion did not arise from the ruins of a former temple society. It was also born into a region with no strong temporal government, and which region had prospered for many centuries without a strong temporal authority. Those inhabitants of the Arabian penninsula who were not pagan were either christian (a tiny minority) or confessional Jews (i.e., they practiced Judaism, without respect to their ethnic origins--and the confessional Jews are thought to have been a bare majority of the population).
It is not to be assumed that Muslim society is based upon the Quran or the Hadith. The Hadith are the putative deeds and sayings of the Prophet and his Companions. The earliest Muslim universities arose from groups of scriptural scholars who studied and passed judgment on claims that something constituted a part of the Hadith, and on interpretations of the passages of the Quran. Sharia, "Islamic law," is not binding on anyone, although it is usually a basis for judicial decisions in Muslim societies. It was an effort to regularize interpretations of the Quran and the Hadith for judicial purposes which lead to the foundation of Muslim universities. In the final analysis, however, the
ulama are the social and moral authority in an Islamic community. An
alim (plural=
ulama) is a righteous man--this is a judgment of the community. Imams and mullahs are teachers whose word is considered to have greater weight based upon their familiarity with the Quran and the Hadith--but ultimately, an imam or a mullah who does not command the respect of the community will have no influence. An imam or mullah who does command the respect of the community will have quite a great deal of authority. It is ironic that within the Shi'ia, a far more spiritualistic community than Sunni Islam, the teachers and "elders" of the community exercise much more influence than in Sunni Islam.
Basically, there are two major types of Islam, Sunni Islam and Shi'ism. The "first Shi'ite" was Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, who had married his daughter Fatima. He was also the fourth Caliph (the Caliphs are divided into the "Orthodox Caliphs," and succeeding "dynasties" of Caliphs, although the members of the dynastic Caliphate successions were not necessarily a succession of fathers and sons--their dynasties were doctrinal and ethnic).
Because of the lack of a priesthood and an heirarchical organization, Islam fragmented into sects very quickly. Within twenty years of the death of the Prophet, Islam had split into Sunni Islam and Shi'ism. Sunni Islam takes its name from the
sunna. The
sunna is older than Islam, and refers to the
modus vivendi by which the fiercely proud and violent desert nomads of Arabia were able to move among the people of oases and cities, people whom they despised and would normally have been inclined to assault and/or murder out of hand. After the
hegira, the flight of the Prophet and the Companions, the Companions asked how they could live as righteous men among pagans. The Prophet responded by reference to the
sunna, and asserted that righteous men could live among pagans without pollution or violence, by the care with which they observed their religious orthodoxy, by the use of a new form of
sunna. The great quarrel between Ali--a legendary Holy Warrior who fought the Mother of All Battles in Persia, making Persia (modern Iran) a Shi'ite nation from the very beginning of Islam in Persia--and the Companions was over the toleration of infidels. The Companions held that whereas pagans could be given the choice of conversion or being put to the sword, the "peoples of the book," the Jews and Christians, were infidels, but not pagans, and could be tolerated, and allowed to live in Muslim communities, although suffering financial, legal and social debilities. Ali held that any infidel was no better than a pagan. Once again, ironically, the Persians came to be among the most tolerant of Muslims. It was to the advantage of Muslims to have Jews and Christians in their communities, also, because they could travel to "infidel" nations for diplomatic and commerical purposes, and they pursued professions valuable in the community which were either unknown to Muslims or prohibited to them (representative art is an example).
In North Africa, the Muslims created a powerful and lasting new sect named for the Prophet's daughter Fatima, known as the Fatimid. They also became a ruling dynasty. Although ostensibly Shi'ite, there was no warfare between them and the Sunnis as there had been between the followers of Ali and the supporters of the Companions. Shi'ism itself began to fragment within a generation of the death of Ali, considered the first Imam. They have broken down on the question of how many Imams there would be until Ali returns (and even whether or not Ali will return) and who qualifies as a "true Iman." Among the Sunnis, there are many sects who are distinguished by the emphasis they put upon what they claim to be orthodox practice. Basically, divisions in Sunni Islam arise from the imposition of beliefs in what constitutes "righteous" behavior. Things such as female infanticide and female infantile genital mutilation are ancient tribal practices imposed upon Islam, and not authorized by the Quran (although not specifically condemned, either). The Wahabbi clan of what is now Saudia Arabia have been very fanatical "fundamentalist" orthodox Sunni Muslims, and the intermarriage of the Ibn Saud clan with the Wahabbis nearly three hundred years ago turned into a devil's bargain by which the Ibn Saud's claimed reighteous authority in Arabia, and which accounts for fundamentalist militancy in modern Saudi Arabia.
Islam is a fascinating study, and a bewildering one for Jews and Christians accustomed to more exactly defined orthodoxy and hierachical power structures in religious communities. It is truly sad to see so many Americans, and, to a lesser extent, Europeans, assume that all Muslims are alike and think and act alike. There is just as much variety in Islam as there is in Christianity.
It is just as important to know the political and social history of any Muslim nation as it is to understand the basic tenets of Islam. Each Muslim society has made their own decisions about what the Quran means, and have applied their own interpretations of the Quran and the Hadith. Understanding Egyptian Muslims will tell you nothing about Persians, and nothing about Indonesians.
