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Islam: Experience of the Holy and Concept of Man
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
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Very rarely does the statement of its basic doctrines and demands truly define the individuality of a religion. It certainly does not in Islam. The particulars by which both believer and outsider will identify the Muslim faith are hardly of a kind to account for its striking distinctiveness. This distinctiveness is customarily circumscribed in terms of the so-called “pillars of the faith;” but to repeat for the thousand and first time that, to the Muslim, there is but one God whose Messenger is Muhammad, that five daily prayers are enjoined as are one month of fasting, an alms-tax and, when possible, the pilgrimage to the central sanctuary at Mecca, the Messenger's birth-place, will not convey much of the uniqueness and the unmistakability of Islam. Even when we realize that originality is not a value specific to the religious life—where innovation to be valid must always mean uncovery of, or recourse to, an eternal verity—the formulation of the “pillars” contains nothing that could have startled the world into which Islam was born long accustomed as it was to the ideas of monotheism and the prophetic messenger and the devotional practices of prayer, fasting and pilgrimage.
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- Copyright © 1964 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 For the survival of motifs cf., e.g., the idea of the shaikh as mediator, wasits, in Bash Tarzi, Kitab al-minah ar-rabbaniyya (Tunis, 1351), p. 92; the author is affiliated with the Rahmaniyya order; cf. G.-C. Anawati and L. Gardet, Mystique Musulmane (Paris 1961), p. 201, n. 65.
2 There does, however, obtain one major difference in interpretative meth odology. Both Christians and Muslims accept the principle that Biblical data preannounce the coming of the Christ and Muhammad respectively (including details of their appearance and circumstances connected with their coming) but only Christianity accepted the praefiguratio by dicta et gesta of the Old Testament of events reported by the New Testament. Already St. Paul speaks (Rom. 5: 14) of Adam as the typos tou mellontos, forma futuri, "the figure of him that was to come," and Hebr. 10:1 1 of the law as skian gar echon ton mellonton agathon, umbram enim habens futurorum bonorum, "having a shadow of good things to come." David as the typos of Jesus, his victory a victoria figurata et mystica of the victoria vera of the Christ, the incident with Bathseba and Uriah as the praefiguratio of Jesus' wresting the Church from the Devil or the Jewish people; or Christ sacrificed in Abel, the Church typified in Noah's Ark, and more generally, the events of the Old Testament as prefiguration of the work of salvation (S. Quodvult deus [d. ca 430] : Lex omnis est prophetia, Christum dominum sonuit et Eccle siam)—this approach has no systematic counterpart in Islamic ta'wil. From the historian's point of view praefiguratio is a means of integrating, or coming to terms with the Old Testament. Although the relationship of Koran and earlier Scriptures is not as close as that between Old and New Testament typology would have been useful in relating, e.g., the fate of earlier prophets to that of Muhammad (when actually Muslim interpretation confines itself to noting parallels with a view to confirming Muhammad's veracity by the similarities of his own and his predecessors' life patterns and tribulations) as well as in interdenominational arguments within Islam. Typology made possible a clear tracing of God's plan for mankind and thus the relating of the events of an otherwise meaningless or dead past to a permanent order from which they would receive their lasting significance. Isidore of Seville (d. 636) states this function of typology most clearly: Historia sacra legis non sine aliqua praefiguratione futurorum gesta atque conscripta est. (For the references to Church Fathers cf. H. de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale [Paris, 1959], pp. 463, 509, 500 and 493.) Instances of praefiguratio as an Ordnungsprinzip of religious thought may perhaps be found in the sayings of certain Muslim mystics, such as al-Hallaj (d. 922)—at least as understood by Massignon (cf. his "Perspective transhistorique sur la vie de Hallaj," 1955, reprinted in La Parole donnée (Paris, 1962], pp. 73-97, e.g., p. 83)—; it has, however, not even among "extreme" mystics served as a tool for the systematic interpretation of Revelation or the dicta of Sacred Tradition.
3 F. Masai, Pléthon et le platonisme de Mistras (Paris, 1956), p. 231; Masai is speaking of Greek polytheism.
4 Salvianus of Marseille, writing ca. 440 A.D., De gubernatione Dei, iv 9, still says: Although no evil deed has any rational foundation, since there is no bond between reason and wickedness … (trans. Eva M. Sanford, On the Government of God, New York, 1930, p. 114.)
5 Cf. also J. Nabert, Essai sur le mal (Paris, 1955), pp. 21-23.
6 Römische Geschichte, 14th ed., Berlin, 1931, II, 452; quoted by H. E. Stier, "Roms Aufstieg zur Vormacht im Mittelmeer," Die Welt als Geschichte, VII (1941), 9-51, at p. 10.
7 Magna Moralia, XXV, 9; cf. Dom Jean Leclercq, Dom Fr. Vandenbroucke and L. Bouyer, La Spiritualité du moyen âge, Paris, 1961.
8 It is significant how clearly Islam excluded the identification of the heavenly apparition who mediated the revelation to Muhammad with the Spirit of God. The sensivity to any danger of a possible hypostatic separation of God's mani festations (Wirkungsweisen) is never dulled.
9 Quoted by de Lubac, op. cit., p. 434. Cf. Mouroux, Le mystère du temps (Paris, 1961), p. 10: The Christ is "l'Evènement historique Absolu"; see also ch. vii, p. 144-147 ("Presence du Christ au temps"). Within Christianity itself, large groups of believers had felt it difficult to reconcile the basic position of Judaeo-Christian monotheism with the tripersonality of the Deity. Already Ter tullian, Adversus Praxeam, ch. 2, 3 and 8, is compelled to argue with the help of various comparisons (many rays / one sun; many rivers / one source; many branches/ one root) the distinction between structure and number (oikonomia and numerus), dispositio trinitatis versus divisio unitatis. The problem has recently been set forth with great clarity by J.-P. Brisson, Autonomisme et christianisme dans l'Afrique Romaine de Septime Sévère à l'invasion vandale (Paris, 1958), pp. 37 ff., esp. 37-38.
10 Cf. H. Fries (ed.), Handbuch theologischer Grundbegriffe (Munich, 1962-63), II, 709, s.v. Trinität.
The remoteness of theological doctrine from the consciousness of even the educated Christian makes it desirable to quote a contemporary statement on the nature of the Trinity. Summing up the teachings of the orthodox Fathers G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London, 1952), pp. 300-301, explains the need for the being of God to be justified on the philosophical plane as transcendent, creative and immanent. These three epithets "fairly express the special characteristics of the Three Persons, at any rate in relation to the universe, which is as far as human knowledge can very well expect to reach. The conception of the Father as anarchos arche, Source without other source than itself, safeguards the supremacy of God over created objects and His absolute distinction from the all. Whatever there was of religious value in the Gnostic assertion of a divine transcendence so complete that it could not bear direct contact with the world, is preserved when the divine agency in creation is assigned to God the Son; at the same time, because the Son is fully God, the truth is maintained that both creation and redemption (or re-creation) are acts of God. The immanence of the Spirit, in the special work of sanctification but also in the general guidance of the universe to the end designed for it, asserts the principle that God is not only transcendent in the fullest degree, not only active in controlling the world ab extra, but also operative in it from within…By a full use of the subtlety of Greek thought and language, it was laid down that God is a single objective Being in three objects of presentation. This may be paraphrased in the expression… that He is one object in Himself and three objects to Himself." In modern terms, this may be stated in the formula "that in God there are three divine organs of God-consciousness, but one center of divine self-consciousness. As seen and thought, He is three; as seeing and thinking, He is one. He is one eternal principle of life and light and love. Yet the life implies reproduction within the Trinitarian cycle of the divine being; the light is reflected in a social order of morality; and the love is embodied in a genuinely mutual activity."
An attempt to account for historicity within the deity was made by the Shi'a by developing the concept of bada', "the emergence of new circumstances which cause a change in an earlier divine ruling." This notion is meant in part to allow for the possibility of effective repentance but is also connected with the doctrine of abrogation, or naskh, according to which the Lord substituted certain injunctions in the Koran for earlier revealed precepts that had been tied to a particular situation. The tenet of verbatim inspiration created difficulties which the Latin Church found it easier to overcome in terms of a view strikingly formulated by Honorius of Autun (early twelfth century) in the sentence: Saepius mos Ecclesiae mutatus legitur, et secundum tempus variavit stylum suum Spiritus sanctus (quoted by de Lubac, op. cit., p. 17). For bada', cf. the article by Goldziher-Tritton, Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.; Leiden, 1960 ff.), s.v., I, 850-851, and G. E. von Grunebaum, Islam: Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition (2nd ed.; London, 1961), p. 86.
11 This is the meaning of the famous formula bi-la kaif.
12 Cf. Handbuch, II, 57, a.v. Liebe.
13 Cf. Anawati-Gardet, op. cit., pp. 78 and 161-62.
14 The Fathers of the Church were of course bound by the numerous statements in Scripture of God's love to man and man's obligation to love his Lord but the very basis of their position in the sacred text is significant.
15 By Richad of Saint-Victor (d. 1173) apud Handbuch, II, 711.
16 Koran 5:59.
17 Koran 3:29.—To forestall misunderstandings of the kind launched by Ch. Abdul Aziz, Karachi, against M. Lings, Islamic Studies (Karachi) II/1 (March, 1963), 155, where Koran 2:160, 5:59 and 3:29 are quoted and discussed completely out of context, let me state that a passage like Koran: 2 : 160 refers only to man's love of Allah. This love is, besides, assimilated to the love felt by unbelievers to other gods except that the believer's affection to God is said to be stronger. "Yet of the people are some who choose peers apart from Allah, whom they love with a love like that given to Allah; only those who have believed love Allah with a stronger love."
18 Reff. in Handbuch, II, 62.
19 Hujwiri (d. after 1072), Kashf al-mahjub, trans. R. A. Nicholson (Leiden and London, 1911), p. 308.
20 I. Mélikoff, Abü Muslim, le "porte-hache" du Korasan (Paris, 1962), p. 63 (where reff.).
21 Cf. also Acts 4: 13.
22 For the situation in Byzantium cf., e.g., P. E. Stephanou, Jean Italos, Philosophe et humaniste (Rome, 1949), pp. 21-34.
A sense of kinship of religious motifs on the one hand, of the relative ease with which patristic authority would allow the Byzantine theologian to integrate ecstatic "union" may be gained from the citations referring to man's "deification" which Prestige, op. cit., pp. 73-74, has culled from the great Fathers whose authority needed only slight retouching to become usable as support of the new enthusiastic piety. Mention should be made in this connection of the opposition engendered in Latin Christendom by the new scholasticism of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which was motivated by the feeling that the new questioning was giving preponderance to reason over faith; reff. have been conveniently assembled by de Lubac, op. cit., 104 ff. It would seem however, that this opposition never did reach the fury of certain anti-Mu'tazilite trends within contemporary Islam.
23 Kallistos and Ignatios, Directions to Hesychasts, No. 7, in Writings from the Philokalia in Prayer of the Heart, trans. E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. H. Palmer (London, 1951), p. 80.
24 What Dom F. Vandenbroucke (in the work mentioned above, note 7, pp. 425 and 446-447) has to say of the development of the spiritual life in fourteenth century Europe allows application to Arab Islam as well (where the date may, however, be somewhat advanced). "Ce siècle, en même temps qu'il voyait s'affirmer le divorce definitif entre théologie et mystique, connaitra de surcroit la séparation entre mystique et communauté, entre piété privée et vie liturgique et sacrementelle." (It must of course be remembered that, in Islam, the concept of sacraments does not exist. Also, as in the Latin West, the separation between mysticism and community must be understood as indicating a vast expansion of the organized mystical life distinct though it will remain from the circles unaffected by the new wave of piety.) "Le théologien devient le spécialiste d'une science indépendante de son témoignage personnel, indépendante de sa sainteté ou de son pêché. Et le spirituel devient un dévot qui n'a cure de la théologie et, à la limite, vit son expérience pour elle-même, sans égard au contenu dogmatique à explorer. Si d'autres tendent encore la synthèse, leur lecteur a tôt fait de dénoncer en eux des compilateurs…" For the growing of theology into a science, accomplished by St. Thomas, and the scope of scientific theology, of M.-D. Chenu, La théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1957), passim, but esp. pp. 9 ff.; the Western development sheds a good deal of light on the progress marked by a Juwaini or a Fakhr ad-Din Razi (d. 1209) in the technical aspects of Muslim theology.
25 Quazwini's (d. 1283) Cosmography (German tr. H. Ethé, Leipzig, 1868), can legitimately be compared with the various encyclopaedias of the thirteenth century in the West which have come to us under the picturesque titles of Specula, Thesauri and the like.
26 For convenience reference may be made to the relevant passages in Leclerq et. al., op. cit.; the wider context of the change is perceptively suggested by G. Duby in G. D. and R. Mandrou, Histoire de la civilisation française (Paris, 1958; 2nd ed.) vol. I, cf. esp. pp. 29 f., 106 ff., 181 ff.
27 Humanistische Reden und Vorträge (2nd ed.; Berlin 1960), p. 105.
28 Cf. de Lubac, op. cit., pp. 569-70.
29 The mentality which dominates the strivings of the modern West is well expressed by Gregory of Nyssa (d. ca. 395) when he speaks of the epekteinesthai of the human soul (in quest of assimilation to the divine). It is, to quote Jaeger once more, "das Sichdehnen und strecken nach dem Siel der Bahn in nimmer nachlassendem Eifer, über den schon erreichten Punkt hinauszudringen. Doch da das Ziel das Absolute ist, kann es in Wirklichkeit niemals erreicht werden." (Jaeger, op. cit., pp. 279-80.) For expressions of this outlook cf. G. E. von Grunebaum, Modern Islam. The Search for Cultural Identity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1962), 104 ff.
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