Islam in Middle East Research Paper

1. Islam In Historical Context

Islam claims to be the direct word of the almighty and omniscient God (Allah), as directly revealed to His Messenger, Muhammad. Written down in the Quran, Allah’s commands provide Muslims (those who submit) with the final and authoritative pathway to salvation, as well as a code of proper conduct covering all aspects of ordinary life. Islam is arguably the fastest growing of all religions, daily continuing its rapid spread throughout every corner of the world. Yet, despite its cosmopolitan character, Islam remains inextricably linked in language and in character to its past in the desolate heart of Saudi Arabia, where it arose in the beginning of the seventh century AD (for standard histories, see Hodgson 1974, Lapidus 1988).

This arid place was an extraordinarily unlikely spot for a new world religion to bloom. In fact, Arabia had avoided conquest by the stronger surrounding powers primarily because of its geographical isolation and physical harshness. The marginalization of Arabia meant that none of the major religions of the surrounding world had gained ascendance there, although the Arabs traced their own genealogical charter back to Ishmael, the son of Abraham and Hagar, and therefore had a historical connection with Judaism and Christianity. But in practice they worshipped a plethora of local gods (who remain powerful today under the guise of jinns). These divinities offered their devotees protection from the unpredictable environment and acted as guardians during holy months when clan feuds were set aside and markets were organized on sanctified ground. One of these markets, according to many scholars, was to be found in the central Arabian crossroads of Mecca, site of the kaaba, the holy black stone that is now the goal of the hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage (for a contrary view, see Crone 1987).

There is great controversy among Western scholars over the accuracy of Islamic records concerning the early years of the religion (c.f. Crone and Cook 1977, Humphreys 1991, Wainsbrough 1977, Watt 1973, 1988), but most accept that Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, was born in Mecca in approximately the year 570 to a member of the Quraysh clan, the kin group that controlled the market and its gods. As a posthumous child he had to rely on the guardianship of his paternal uncle, Abu Talib, and in his later revelations Muhammad was especially concerned with the protection of widows and orphans. With the help of his first wife, the successful and much older tradeswoman Khadija, he eventually became a well-to-do merchant, much respected for his integrity, good judgment, and fairness by his fellows, who called him al-Amin, the trustworthy.

At the age of 40, during a meditative retirement on Mount Hira, Muhammad was gripped by the first of the uncanny revelations that would eventually be collected into the Quran. In his vision, the angel Gabriel spoke to him, commanding him to ‘Proclaim! In the name of thy Lord and Cherisher, who created—created man out of a leech-like clot.’ Later revelations occurred at intervals throughout his life. One hundred and fourteen of these revelations, presented in rhymed verse of surpassing beauty and novelty, were definitively collected and collated in sections or suras of descending order of length (not chronology) shortly after the Prophet’s death. These became the Quran, the central holy text of Islam. For the Arabs, whose major art form is poetry, the extraordinary aesthetic power of the Quranic verses was a convincing proof of their divine source. Oral recitation from the Quran remains today as the most important way for the faithful to experience the sacred (Nelson 1986).

According to Muslim hagiography, Muhammad’s revelations originally had little influence in Mecca. His first converts were Khadija and some of his closest relatives, including Abu Talib’s son Ali, who was later to marry Khadija’s daughter Fatima. But most of the early believers were those who were poor, disenfranchised, and humble. They were drawn to the Quran’s condemnation of excessive riches, to its advocacy of generous donations to care for the disadvantaged, and to its repudiation of the arrogance and selfishness of the wealthy. Yet the Quran also had a place for the interests of the upper strata. According to Muhammad’s revelation, wealth and power were not bad in themselves—only greed, arrogance and an absence of community responsibility.

Nonetheless, most of the Meccan populace were unwilling to follow the Islamic demand that they pay zakat (a tax to be redistributed to the community of believers), cease to hoard, participate in community charity, and refuse interest on loans. According to legend, many were especially angered at Islam’s absolute denial of the might of their clan gods in favor of the complete domination of Allah—a threat to the basic structure of their patriarchal society. Also galling for them was the Quranic demand that the great show submission by prostrating themselves in prayer to the Almighty God who would judge them on the Last Day.

After the death of his defender and uncle, Muhammad and his followers suffered increasing persecution in Mecca and looked for refuge elsewhere. Eventually, in 622 the Aws and Khazraj tribes of the agricultural oasis of Yathrib (later called Medina), anxious for a leader who could mediate their interminable feuds, begged Muhammad to migrate there. Fearing for his life in Mecca and hopeful of increasing his following, Muhammad accepted this invitation, and undertook the hijra to Medina with his followers—an event marked as the beginning of the Muslim calendar. It was there that he built the foundations of his holy empire, attracting converts from the surrounding tribes as he sought to conquer the Meccan confederation that had repudiated him. Following his inspiration, he rallied his following to struggle against the odds, defeating a much larger Meccan army at the battle of Badr in 624, successfully raiding Meccan caravans, and threatening Meccan commercial dominance. Finally in 630 the Muslim army occupied Mecca itself, as Muhammad’s Qurayshian cousins were obliged to convert to his cause. When Muhammad died in 632, his followers had conquered the whole Arab peninsula, and had begun their great and ultimately successful war against the surrounding Sasanid and Byzantine empires. All of these events remain in the forefront of Muslim imagination to this day.

The Muslim explosion which burst from the hinterlands of Arabia was historically unparalleled; it united the Middle East into one open trade area, paving the way for the rapid creation of new prosperity. At the same time, the radical Muslim message of the equality of all believers struck a cord with the common people of the empires, who, theoretically at least, were liberated from their inferior status by the simple act of conversion. The rise of Islam was thus both an economic and social revolution, offering new wealth and freedom to the dominions it assimilated under the banner of a universal brotherhood guided by the message of the Prophet of Allah. Of course, in practice the situation was more complex and ambiguous, as Arabs—proud of their early support of Muhammad —claimed superiority over the more recently converted Persians and Berbers, who in response demanded equal rights for themselves under the sharia or Muslim law. There was also rivalry between the old Qurayashian elite and the upstarts who had gone into exile with Muhammad, and now claimed special precedence for themselves. Nonetheless, Islam expanded rapidly, and soon predominated throughout the Middle East, from Morrocco to Afghanistan (for accounts, see Bulliet 1994, Gibb 1962, Shaban 1971, Wellhausen 1927).

In the Muslim imagination this was a period when the ‘City of God’ was actually realized in historical reality, under the authority of the Prophet himself and the four pious Caliphs after him: Abu Bakr (d. 634), Umar (d. 644), Uthman (d. 656), and his patrilateral parallel cousin Ali (d. 661)—who led Islam in its holy war against the unbelievers. To compare the Muslim experience with Christianity, it is as if Jesus had commanded an army that subdued Jerusalem, and Peter had become Emperor of Rome. Muslim thought is saturated with longing for a return of this idealized era when ordinary men and women worked together selflessly to realize the will of Allah under the leadership of just and divinely guided leaders, and were rewarded for their efforts by vast power and wealth.

Recalling their millennial past, the Muslim devout, unlike their Christian cousins, have never inwardly consented to the disjuncture between the religious experience of the community of believers (equal before God, led by the Prophet and his deputies) and the later reality of power-seeking secular rulers given to political intrigue and physical coercion. The remembered unity of politics and religion during the first years of Islam has always remained available as an inspiration to Muslim reformers and as a rebuke to politicians. That unity is evoked today by Muslim reformers, who inevitably decry the corruption of the times and call for a return to the pure faith and practice of the past (for an example, see Mitchell 1969).

To a great degree, the extraordinary victories achieved by early Islam were a result of the manner in which Muhammad’s message transformed and expanded the worldview of the tribesmen who became fighters for the faith. As in a tribe, within the Muslim community—the umma—co-responsibility was required, and all believers were strictly prohibited from exploiting, injuring, or enslaving one another; they were obliged as well to share their resources through charitable contributions redistributed to the community at large. They were also expected to unite together in holy war ( jihad ) against the enemies of the faith. Joining the umma was a voluntary matter, but once the faith was accepted then a Muslim was forever committed, just as a tribesman was forever linked to his kin.

Also ratified and transformed by Islam were the mercantile values Muhammad had grown up with in Mecca. The Quran does not repudiate commerce, nor did the growth of Islam destroy trade and markets. On the contrary, Muhammad’s message favored entrepreneurship, and integrated the ethics of the merchant into Islamic virtue. Profit, if fairly made and appropriately spent in the service of God and to help the deprived, is praised in the Quran, while the absolute right of individuals to own and dispose of personal property is assumed, as is the right to make contracts. In fact, the Quran is permeated with the imagery of the marketplace, which must have appealed directly to the individualistic mercantile values of the people of the time, both urban and rural, who were all so dependent on trade for their livelihoods (Rodinson 1973, Torry 1892).

Most importantly, the Quran emphasized the spiritual equivalence of all persons, who are held to be responsible for their own destinies and who will be judged as individuals by Allah on the Last Day. In principle, Islam is the least hierarchical of all religions: there are no priests, no church, no monks, no difference between clergy and laymen. Everyone is alike in the eyes of the transcendent and absolute God to whom all must submit. This aspect of Islam applied even to the Prophet, who was at pains to deny any sacred or superhuman status to himself. When doubters asked Muhammad to verify his revelation by miracles, he replied that the miracle of the Quran was sufficient, and that he was but an ordinary man, who had been singled out by God as the messenger of His word. In its egalitarianism and individualism, Islam accurately reproduced the dominant mores of its tribal and mercantile Arabian environment (Lindholm 1996).

Yet Muhammad’s community, though it reflected the surrounding culture, was also something completely different than had existed previously. In their own imagination of themselves, the early Muslims were not yet another tribal grouping gathered around a sacred marketplace; they belonged to the ‘party of God’—opponents were infidels. Nor was Muhammad one judge among many; he was the ultimate and final authority over a millenaristic nativist movement that aimed at nothing less than transformation of the world. Despite his protestations, for his followers Muhammad was not like everyone else; he was the perfect man who had actually seen the face of God (an event celebrated throughout the Muslim world).

In its prophecy, Islam followed in the tradition of the Middle Eastern exemplary religions already proclaimed by Moses, Jesus, and Zoroaster, who had all called for believers to submit to the moral codes imposed by an all-powerful yet personalized God: for them, faith and deeds, not heredity and power, were the true measure of spiritual enlightenment; the ethical action of individuals in this world was a prerequisite for passage into paradise (see Weber 1978 on the nature of exemplary prophecy). Far from wishing to repudiate his predecessors, Muhammad believed his mission as ‘the seal of the Prophets’ was to correct and complete these earlier revelations, which had been misinterpreted and garbled. Because Muslims believe that the Quran preserves God’s direct words in a pristine state, most are extremely reluctant to apply modern Western methods of textual criticism to the holy book.

1.1 The Rise Of Shi’ism

While Muhammad lived, the umma was united under his charismatic leadership, but after his death, it inevitably began to lose its moral cohesion. Rebellions and internal schism rent the community, and after the death of Ali in 661 the realm of Islam was plunged into a cycle of tyrannical rulers and foreign invasions, punctuated by intermittent religiously inspired insurrections. Ali’s own son, Husain, led one such revolt, but was pitilessly slaughtered in the battle of Karbela in 680—an event re-enacted and mourned today in the great self-lacerating celebrations of Muharram held among Shi’ites—the ‘partisans’ of Ali—who are the largest sectarian group in the Middle East (Chelkowski 1979). Today Shi’ites of different types compose nearly all the population of Iran, over 50 percent of the population of Iraq, 70 percent of Bahrain, and one-third of the populace of Lebanon. Altogether, the Shi’ites are estimated to make up 11 percent of all Muslims.

Ever since Husain’s martyrdom, uprisings against the corruption of the faith have periodically been undertaken in the name of Ali and his descendants, who were believed by their partisans to be the legitimate inheritors of Muhammad’s sacred authority. By restoring Ali’s line to the throne, the schismatics hoped to re-establish the realm of God on earth. Usually, these movements fell victim to repression by powerful rulers, and they also suffered from internal disorganization, as there was disagreement over which of the possible claimants deserved the title of the Imam—the divinely appointed ruler. Even when successful, Ali’s partisans suffered from problems of maintaining a sacred polity over several generations. For example, the great Fatimid dynasty of Egypt (969–1171) disintegrated over issues of succession, as one Imam denied his own divinity, while a later one had no sons (for a short history of Shi’ism, see Richard 1995).

The most successful Shi’ite strategy was followed by the so-called twelvers, who presently dominate in Iran. After their eleventh Imam died without issue, it was argued that the next Imam was actually living in occlusion, and would not return until the final judgement, though he could sometimes be contacted in dreams and visions. This sect then developed a complex and rigorous educational system that aimed to produce religious scholars capable of both interpreting sacred texts and of attaining mystical communion with the hidden Imam. Such men, acclaimed by their fellows for their special spiritual gifts, became exemplary figures in themselves, and were recognized as ayatollahs, ‘miraculous signs of God.’ Every ayatollah had his own loyal disciples, as well as access to endowments and to donations from followers; most importantly, each retained the right to independent judgment. Only with the political ascendance of Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1979 revolution was this pluralistic system overthrown, and a new centralized spiritual authority inaugurated by the state, which proclaimed itself to be the final arbiter of truth. The future of this experiment remains to be seen, but it must be noted that it flies in the face of twelver Shi’ite tradition (Arjomand 1988).

1.2 Sufism: The Mystical Path

A second reaction to the disintegration of the Caliphate was Sufism: so called, it is said, because practitioners wore rough woolen robes to indicate their unworldliness. Like the Shi’ites, Sufis also hoped for a renewal of the faith, but for them this could only be accomplished by a spiritual return to what they believed were the original practices of Islam. The more ardent of them withdrew into the wilderness where they practiced severe austerities in pursuit of an immediate experience of the divine. Many devoted themselves to repetition of devotional phrases (dhikr) which were combined with special breathing patterns and rhythmic movement to induce spiritual illumination (Arberry 1950, Schimmel 1975).

By the twelfth century, the Sufi pursuit of enlightenment had become institutionalized, as saintly figures (often called shaikhs) founded various lodges (tariqas) where they taught followers their own mystical practices. Students (murids) were immersed in a community of brothers detached from the ordinary world, obedient to the will of their spiritual guide, who alone could provide the blue patched ‘frock of blessing’ and dervish cap to pupils judged to have achieved a measure of divine grace. These newly enlightened individuals could then act as spiritual guides to their own pupils, adding to the silsila, or chain of knowledge, reaching back to the original teacher. While the Shi’ites argued for a hidden Imam, the Sufis claimed there was a qutb, a pivot of the universe, a perfect man veiled from ordinary men, to be discerned only by the spiritual elite, who themselves were organized in a secret hierarchical order of the ‘friends of God,’ manifested on the local level in the tariqas (Trimingham 1971).

Sufism had great influence throughout the premodern Middle East, and throughout the Muslim world, as wandering mystics furnished a cohesive vision of the cosmos in the face of a splintering polity while simultaneously providing new converts with an experiential religion suitable for an unsophisticated audience. Establishing their lodges in the hinterlands around the tombs of saints, Sufis regularly served as the mediators in local tribal disputes and as guardians of the peace, gaining disciples and considerable power —so much so that they could occasionally become leaders in revolts, uniting tribes against the state (Gellner 1981). The greatest historical example were the Safavids, who originated as followers of a Sufi saint, and who ruled Persia from 1501 to 1722. Sufism also found a receptive audience in the cities, where the ranked organizations of worker’s guilds and local clubs paralleled the hierarchical order of the tariqas. Military groups too found the Sufi message to their taste, while intellectuals and scholars were attracted to the controlled ‘sober’ forms of Sufism, so much so that it was quite common for an orthodox Muslim cleric to be a Sufi adept as well—the best known example being al-Ghazali (d.1111) (Watt 1953). In contrast, radical ‘drunken’ forms of Sufi worship appealed to the impoverished and sensation-seeking urban masses, who could lose themselves in ecstatic performances of dhikr (see Massignon 1982).

Sufism spread with Islam to the rest of the Muslim world, where it still is a powerful spiritual force. However, in the modern Middle East, Sufism has more or less lost its significance. It only remains powerful in Turkey, where the complete assimilation of orthodox Islam into the Ottoman state meant a repudiation of orthodoxy when that state lost legitimacy, leaving Sufism as the major alternative to secularism. Elsewhere, the oppositional role traditionally played by Sufism has been taken over by various fundamentalist groups which loudly accuse Sufis of being anti-Islamic saint worshippers. Yet, like Sufi tariqas, these groups too are founded by zealous individuals who believe they have direct access to a purer faith, and who demand the absolute and self-abnegating loyalty of a cadre of followers. The Sufic social structure thus lives on, even though its mystical content has been denied (Roy 1994).

2. Islam In Theory And Practice

While there has always been a powerful impulse in Middle Eastern Islam toward charismatic leadership, for the vast majority of Muslims the Quran remains the primal source of spiritual knowledge. Ideally there should be no need at all for human leadership when God has sent down rules to regulate and evaluate all human actions; rules which can be discovered by anyone who can read the holy text. But the Quran, being finite, does not and cannot explicitly cover all circumstances. There are many areas of behavior left out, some questions are not answered, other precepts are ambiguous, and sometimes there are contradictions or apparent impossibilities in the text.

In the face of these difficulties, some early Islamic thinkers (Mutazilites), influenced by Greek thought, attempted to force the Quran to conform to reason, but this effort was defeated in the ninth century by the ‘traditionalists’ led by the great theologian Ibn Hanbal (d. 855), who argued that the omnipotence of God meant that any constraints on Him and on His word—even the constraints of reason—were a form of idolatry. This did not mean that reason was banished —in fact, the use of analytic argument flourished in Muslim scholarship—but reason was firmly limited to explication of the legal implications of the sacred text; it could not be extended to put limits on God.

In place of an explanatory theology that attempted to unite logic and religion, Islam concerned itself with the obligations and prohibitions commanded by Allah: individual devotional practice and acceptance of the Word are what is crucial, not reflection or rationalization. In its emphasis on application, Islam has been appropriately described as a religion not so much of orthodoxy as of orthopraxy, reliant on ritual actions to reveal and inculcate faith (Smith 1957). The very word ‘Islam’ signifies an act—the initiatory act of surrender and submission to God. The essential practices required of all Muslims are five: the public profession of the faith (God is one, and Muhammad is his Prophet—recitation of this is sufficient for conversion), five daily prayers, the pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able, donation of zakat, and the month-long fast of Ramadan. Some Muslims now say holy war should also be seen as compulsory, but this is a matter of controversy, and in any case can be interpreted as a struggle against one’s own base instincts.

In all instances, these shared practices are simple, direct, and spiritually compelling. The aim of each is to infuse the faithful with the necessity of a willed subordination of the self to the dictates of the overarching Muslim community while offering in return both the promise of reward in the afterlife and immediate compensation in the here and now. The human rhythm of Muslim practice is clearest in the fast of Ramadan, which is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar. During this period it is strictly forbidden to eat, drink, smoke, or have sexual contact. However, fasting is not regarded by Muslims as a way of atoning for sins through suffering, as it is in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Rather, all restrictions are lifted as soon as the sun sets, so that a greater quantity of food is eaten during the evenings of Ramadan than during the rest of the year, and the meals are of higher quality. Ramadan feasts also involve celebratory gatherings of friends and family, and a public redistribution of alms and food to the needy.

The rhythm of constraint and release, solitude and community, culminates in the great Muslim festival of Eid al-fatr—literally the lesser festival, but in actuality the major celebration of the year (Eid al-attar, the ‘greater festival,’ is a re-enactment of Abrahamic sacrifice in which a sheep is slaughtered and shared out with family, dependents and the poor). Eid al-fatr is very much an affirmation of participation and renewal, as Muslims everywhere put on new clothes, visit, embrace, share food and drink, and gather for prayer. Forgiveness of all insults and enmity is mandated; debts are canceled and old enemies embrace to show their renewed brotherhood. The music and celebrations that marked the whole month are intensified, and the tombs of the ancestors are visited, reaffirming again the continuity of the community with its sacred past. High and low are leveled through the giving of alms; sharing in hunger gives the wealthy a sense of the contingency of their plenty and brotherhood with the impoverished, who, like all other Muslims, take part in both the fast and the feast. The egalitarian and individualist message of Islam is reaffirmed through action, as salvation is achieved by the deeds of individuals in this world, who unite with their fellows in the performance of socially and spiritually rewarding acts of self-sacrifice.

Within this theology of practice there is no original sin. Mankind has been placed on the pathway and given directions, he only needs to heed and obey. The Quran is a light to guide travelers as they work their way through the darkness of earthly life toward the climactic moment of the final judgment. Redemption, atonement, an irredeemable inner sense of evil—these aspects of Christian dogma are left aside in Islam where the punishment for turning away from the path is simple and terrible—God withdraws Himself, and leaves the individual alone to wander without a guide in the moral wilderness, destined never to reach paradise.

Yet despite the absence of original sin and the emphasis on practice, Islam is not a religion of positive thinking. Election to the ranks of the saved cannot be assumed to follow from proper practice or good works; salvation is solely a consequence of God’s ineffable and unpredictable grace. Fear of the utter power and unknowability of God is mitigated only by reliance on His positive qualities. In the Quran Allah has continually described Himself as merciful and compassionate, and Muslims hope for His forgiveness. Notwithstanding God’s compassion, the impossibility of pleasing an utterly transcendent, unpredictable, and indeterminable Deity necessarily leaves Muslims in a state of trepidation and perplexity as to the state of their souls.

2.1 The Primacy Of Memory

In their effort to please God, and fearing their own all-too-human fallibility and hypocrisy, Muslims have naturally sought other means to secure salvation beyond the study of the Quran and following its precepts. In particular, they have tried to emulate the actual practices of Muhammad and his followers (Sunna—the ‘trodden path’), reasoning that these must serve as the most reliable template for behavior approved by Allah. As a result, Islam, more than any other religion, has always been preoccupied with discovering, preserving, and imitating its own past. Such historical memories serve, with the Quran, as the major source for Muslim moral consciousness.

So it is that where other religions interpret their holy texts through the decisions of authoritative legislative bodies, or through deduction from general principles, Muslims instead discovered principles and authority through the collection of historical records of the words and deeds of the founder and his companions. This was the task of the preservers of reported history or, as they are conventionally known, the ahl al-hadith, people of ‘tradition,’ who at first were simply individuals who had lived in the original umma, and could report on its practices.

Over the generations, reciters became professionals who concentrated on developing their memories and eliminating personal biases so they could repeat, verbatim, what they had heard from those before them, without interpretation, comment, elaboration, or condensation. They also had to be moral exemplars, since hadith were judged reliable not only on the basis of historical criterion, but also on the basis of the integrity of the reciter. Those approved could then enter into the isnad, or ‘chain’ of reliable transmitters that was recited whenever the tradition was spoken. As Islam spread, the traditions were codified, validated, and published in six so-called ‘canonical’ collections, which served, with the Quran, as the basis for legal decisions.

2.2 Legalism And The Problem Of Interpretation

The jurists ( faqih) who interpreted the sacred texts at first overlapped almost completely with the ahl alhadith. Neither had any formal education, and both were devoted to the study of the Quran, the sunna, and the traditions. The difference was that the lawyers developed regulations for matters left unclear by scripture, such as the exact nature of a property transfer. They also had to clarify the weight of any particular rule: was a practice obligatory, merely recommended, or neutral; if obligatory, should failure be punished by men, or left to the discretion of Allah?

However, from the point of view of the traditionalists, the jurists’ use of reason and analogy to fill in lacunae or resolve apparent contradictions in the holy texts was frivolity at best, idolatry at worst. The potentially disastrous dispute between literalists and interpretivists was classically resolved by the theologian al-Shafi (d. 820), who argued that ijma, the agreement of knowledgeable scholars, ratified by the community itself, decides the manner in which ambiguities in sacred texts are to be understood. In other words, Islamic theological disputes ought to be decided democratically, by consensus—albeit a consensus arrived at over generations.

This consensus is never final, since an authoritative dissent can, in principle, cause a reopening of the debate if that dissent manages to gain scholarly sanction and public endorsement. Shafi’s compromise retained the egalitarian and populist character of Islam while simultaneously recognizing the importance of expert legal knowledge as the arbiter of tradition. Continuity through collective consensus still permitted the theoretical possibility for new interpretation—a possibility that continues to be the source of intense debate among contemporary Muslims.

Two centuries after Shafi’s reforms the legal schools or madhhab (literally a ‘chosen way’) were whittled down to four, each named after its supposed founder: al-Shafi, Ibn-Hanbal, Malik b. Anas (d. 795), and Abu-Hanifah (d. 767), and each teaching its version of the law in specialized colleges (madrasas), and producing scholar-judges (ulema—people of knowledge). After some violent wrangling, it was eventually accepted that the schools should be considered equally accurate in their interpretations of divine law, since ‘only God knows’ the truth (Makdisi 1981). Though ideally one could choose any school to follow, most Muslims accepted the madhhab prevalent in their area. The central Middle East remains Hanafite or Shafite, the Malikites prevail in North Africa, while the Hanbalite school remains fairly small, but is intellectually influential. Shi’ites too have their own legal schools, slightly variant from those of the Sunnis—in fact, the first college in the world, al-Azhar in Cairo, was founded in 970 by the Shi’ite Fatimids.

Even today, despite public efforts at rationalization, Islamic law has remained remarkably personalized and open to interpretation, since there is still no central ecclesiastical organization enforcing rules, nor any standard procedure for appeal to a higher ecclesiastical court (indeed, there is no hierarchy of courts whatsoever). For these reasons, different juristconsults can issue fatwas (legal opinions) at odds with one another—much to the confusion of Western observers (Coulson 1964, Goldziher 1981).

2.3 Muslim Resistance To The State

Efforts by Middle Eastern states to incorporate, rationalize, and secularize Islamic law have always met with ambiguous results, as the majority of Muslims remain suspicious of the motives of secular authorities. For a recent example, when al-Azhar was completely integrated into the Egyptian state in 1961, its graduates were increasingly seen as minions of the government. In response, many self-taught Muslims have opened their own local schools for the training of religious scholars (Gaffney 1994). Similar patterns have occurred elsewhere in the Middle East, where popular mistrust of the official ulema has periodically led laymen and reformers to try to find a pathway to a purer and more egalitarian form of Islam.

This is so much the case today that, except in Iran, those offering an ‘Islamist’ critique of the state are usually autodidacts self-consciously distancing themselves from the class of the traditionally religiously educated, who are tainted by their graduation from state schools. But although ordinary Muslims are suspicious of the state, they are equally distrustful of those zealots who say they have privileged access to the truth. The best course, they believe, is to avoid conflict with the secular authorities, submit to the precepts of the Quran, sunna, and hadith, and rely on Allah’s infinite mercy.

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