Between Heaven and Hell: Islam, Salvation, and the Fate of Others 9780199945412, 0199945411

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BETWEEN HEAVEN | AND HEEL. Islam, Salvation, and the Fate of Others

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MOHAMMAD

HASSAN. KHALIL =

With a Foreword by Tariq Ramadan

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Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

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Between Heaven and Hell

Between Heaven and Hell Islam, Salvation, and

the Fate of Others Sa

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Ldited by MOHAMMAD

HASSAN

KHALIL E

LDRAWN RECORDS THE OF

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OXFORD UNIVERSITY

PRESS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY

PRESS

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

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ISBN 978-0-19-994541-2—ISBN 978-0-19-994539-9 1, Salvation—Islam., 2. Islamic eschatology. 3. Islam—Doctrines. I. Khalil, Mohammad Hassan. BP166.77.B385 2013 297.2’2—dc23 2012018337

13579864. Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper

Contents

Foreword: Salvation—The Known and the Unknown TARIQ RAMADAN

Acknowledgments A Note on Conventions

Contributors

Introduction: Grappling with the Salvation Question MOHAMMAD HASSAN KHALIL

PART

I: Historical Dimensions

1. Failures of Practice or Failures of Faith: Are Non-Muslims

Subject to the Sharia? A, KEVIN REINHART

3

2. “No Salvation Outside Islam”: Muslim Modernists,

Democratic Politics, and Islamic Theological Exclusivism MOHAMMAD FADEL

35

PART II: Diversity and Mercy

3. The Ambiguity of the Qur’anic Command WILLIAM C. CHITTICK 4. Beyond Polemics and Pluralism: The Universal Message of the Qur'an REZA SHAH-KAZEMI

65

vi

Contents

PART III: Supersessionism and Mercy

. The Path of Allah or the Paths of Allah? Revisiting Classical and Medieval Sunni Approaches to the Salvation of Others YASIR QADHI

109

. Realism and the Real: Islamic Theology and the Problem of Alternative Expressions of God TIM WINTER

122

PART IV: Reconceptualizing Pluralism Nonreductive Pluralism and Religious Dialogue MUHAMMAD LEGENHAUSEN

153

. Oneself as the Saved Other? The Ethics and Soteriology of Difference in Two Muslim Thinkers SAJJAD H. RIZVI

180

PART V: Otherness and the Qur'an . The Portrayal of Jews and the Possibilities for Their Salvation in the Qur’an FARID ESACK 10.

Embracing Relationality and Theological Tensions: Muslima Theology, Religious Diversity, and Fate JERUSHA LAMPTEY

207

234

PART VI: Otherness and Inclusion/Exclusion . The Food of the Damned DAVID 12.

M.

255

FREIDENREICH

Acts of Salvation: Agency, Others, and Prayer Beyond the Grave in Islam MARCIA HERMANSEN

273

Contents

13. Citizen Ahmad among the Believers: Salvation Contextualized in Indonesia and Egypt BRUCE B. LAWRENCE

vil

288

Glossary of Select Terms

313

Index

317

Index of Qur’anic Verses

393

eRe a ivy

ac

——

Foreword SALVATION—THE

KNOWN,

AND

THE

UNKNOWN

Tariq Ramadan

THE CONTEXT OF Salvation is a key topic for any religion and is central for the understanding of the very essence of a religion, its teachings, and objectives. First, salvation helps us learn about God, to understand the concept of God within a specific religion and the relationship between God and human beings—not only for the people who follow that particular religion but also for humankind as a whole. Salvation helps us understand the rationale of religious success: within a religion there are people who will be elected and people who will be reprobate. This overall concept of the relationship between God, humanity, and His creation is central to everything concerning salvation and the teaching of religion. The second important aspect of salvation is to consider the priorities that can be drawn from the teachings and the very essence of the religion. Salvation provides us with the understanding of the relationship between God and the faithful. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, there are particular priorities that must be recognized in order to fully understand this relationship and its correlation with the truth and good behavior. This is what we very often distinguish in every religion as the difference between orthodoxy and orthopraxy—where orthodoxy is the priority and primacy of truth in the very essence of the religious teaching and orthopraxy relates to the actual practices and specific behavior. This second aspect is revealed and explained in any discussion about salvation. The third aspect of salvation relates to human responsibility—such that if God knows exactly what is in our hearts and our minds and knows of our intentions, then ultimately there is a human responsibility to seek salvation and to come close to God. It is the responsibility of all human

x

Foreword

beings, women and men, to strive toward truth and toward the right ethical behavior. This is essential in order to be saved. Let us consider the very essence and meaning of salvation within the mainstream Islamic tradition (both Shi‘i and Sunni traditions), referred to by some scholars as Islamic “orthodoxy.”' Since the very beginning and, most importantly, during the period of the great scholars in both the Shi'‘i and Sunni traditions (10th to 13th centuries), the mainstream position of the scholars was quite clear: there is no salvation outside the path of Islam. In the Qur’an, the verse “Truly the religion in the eyes of God is Islam (al-islam)” (3:19) might be understood in two ways. There is a generic understanding of islam, literally “submission,” which is beyond the specific religion (the final religion), whereby submission to God, surrendering to God, or entering into God’s peace is requested. (Judaism and Christianity were, in their respective times, the islamic truth.) The other understanding is clear-cut: the verse refers to the last message brought by the last Messenger Muhammad. One reaches this conclusion because, in subsequent verses, Christianity and Judaism are clearly distinguished from the Islamic tradition. So the understanding for centuries within the mainstream Islamic tradition was that, in order to be saved and to experience salvation with God, one must be Muslim. Having acknowledged this, there is also a suggestion from scholars, such as Abi Hamid al-Ghazali, that there will be a differentiation between those who will be saved and in the way in

which God will provide His judgment. Al-Ghazali was not the only scholar to suggest this idea: we find it within the mainstream tradition and among the Mu‘tazili rationalists and within the Sunni tradition, in both the Ash‘ari and the Maturidi trends. Al-Ghazali summarizes this concept, in relation to salvation, by characterizing three distinct groups of people. There are those people who have never heard of and are entirely ignorant of Islam—these people will be forgiven by God on the Day of Judgment. There are those people who are in touch with Muslims yet lack a clear understanding of Islam, so in fact are misinformed and do not have access to the right teaching—these people will also be forgiven by God. Then there are those people who,

despite having knowledge of Islam, have rejected it. These people will not be saved by God and will be punished for their rejection. So here is something that considers the relationship between truth and the knowledge that is given to every single individual: if you do not know, you cannot be judged, and if you do know and reject, then you will be reprobate. Therefore the only right path is Islam. You will be judged according

Foreword

xi

to what you knew about Islam and what you knew about the very essence of Islam. This is the mainstream Islamic thought and is drawn from the overall message of Islam. There are new trends now that refer to the pluralistic dimension. In exploring some of the verses and some of the traditions, these trends determine a relationship with God that is beyond Islam, beyond the final message. Within these trends, scholars consider it possible for people to be saved if they are Christians or Jews or even of another religious tradition. This creates an interesting concept of the relationship between our pluralistic society and religious teachings and the relationship with truth. It is explored within Rawls’ work on justice. Rawls suggests that within a democratic space people naturally open a path for their fellow citizens from other religions to be saved, since this is the only way to be equal, tolerant, and respectful. The contributors to this volume highlight and explore this concept, whereby a democratic society cannot be built by people who believe that they have a monopoly on truth and salvation. This is a modern perception based on the rationalist approach. Yet, as distinct from Rousseau (who thought it is a requirement of our living together to believe Others can equally be saved), Rawls argues that, in modern democratic society, the private and public spheres must be distinguished, and the specific relationship between the two is important. He suggests that, in order to accept that in your private belief or life you think that you know the truth and Others do not, you should acknowledge, in the public sphere, the rights for the Others to think that they are right and the only people who will be saved. The common and secular public sphere is protecting your right to think privately—and without imposing it—that you have a monopoly over truth. We notice here that this discussion of salvation is not only an internal discussion for religious scholars but that it also relates to pluralism within our society. Here we have two main philosophical positions. Some thinkers, following in the footsteps of Rousseau, suggest that in a democratic society you cannot claim that you have the only truth and that what Others believe is wrong. Other philosophers, such as Rawls, posit that pluralism should be the space within which you can claim that you have the only truth, provided that you acknowledge that Others have the same rights as yourself to claim the same. This discussion appears in some of the chapters of this volume—some chapters address the very essence of the religious tradition in Islam and other chapters connect it with the reality of our living together in our society. This is exactly where current thinking is on this

xil

Foreword

matter—we find discussions about the relationship with truth, who will be saved, and ultimately where, within the mainstream Islamic tradition,

it is said that only Muslims will be saved. What about people of other faiths? For Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and others, it seems that it is necessary to suspend judgment regarding their salvation because the final judgment is only for God; human beings cannot know what is in the minds and hearts of other human beings. This is part of your belief, the essence of your religion, to know that, while you are following the right path, you must suspend your judgment concerning what Others believe. There is a well-known saying in the Islamic tradition relating to this: “God knows best,” Allahu a‘lam. So, although you may recognize that there is only one truth and you are sincere about this, it is only God who can know the truth about Others. To believe for yourself that Islam is the right path, the only path, does not give you the final answer to the final judgment—this is God’s prerogative. Let us now consider the social dimension: living together as citizens. This is where the relationship between our personal belief and the beliefs of our fellow citizens is critical, and there are many positions concerning this. Some suggest that the only way to live with the truth of Others is to be able to relativize your own truth; others suggest that it is not a question of relativizing, but rather of knowing how to deal with Others in light of one’s own personal conviction—such that if you believe that you have the truth, then the only right choice in a public sphere within a democratic society is to protect yourself. It is indeed quite interesting that the public sphere can help you protect yourself from any dogmatic, social position. Within a democratic society, what may be a dogmatic theological position cannot be imposed as a dogmatic social or political view. In this way, the public sphere enables anyone to believe that she or he has the truth while respecting the equal rights and opportunities within that society. Salvation is a critical topic, one that allows us to address important theological and legal questions. In today’s discussions the mainstream Islamic tradition is only repeating what the Christian classical and Jewish orthodox traditions claim: that ultimately there is only one path toward God, and in order to achieve salvation you must look for and follow that

path. Salvation is a question of responsibility; you must search for the truth and recognize that there is only one path. Yet, as for the final judgment, there should be a difference between believing in one’s truth and condemning Others’ beliefs. It is not necessary to deny the essence of a religious truth (that is for the faithful coming

Foreword

xili

from God) but rather, as God asks human beings, to suspend one’s judgment. Thus the very essence of religious truth teaches every human being that while you might follow the truth yourself, you must not judge other people for their relationship with this very truth. This is where theological acceptance, understanding, and respect toward other people is essential. With the acknowledgment that there is a judgment that is beyond our understanding (and that our respect starts with our ignorance of this final judgment), we are protected from any dogmatic positioning. The theological dimension opens our minds to an essential intellectual humility. This is what we believe and that is what we ignore. In the name of our religious belief and truth, we should acknowledge the limits of our knowledge. The

unknown with salvation is a spiritual, living school of humility: to learn to believe firmly in our truth and, in the very name of that truth, to respect Others’ way toward the truth. Instead of being focused on being the only one saved, it would be good to consider that we all can be lost and reprobate. Instead of believers arrogantly assuming that they are “the known to be saved,” the discussion on salvation would be more intellectually and spirituality efficient if we were to consider the unknown and the common potentiality of failing. It reminds the faithful of one’s responsibility to look for the truth, to act accordingly, and to do one’s best instead of judging for the worst. Debates about salvation can reveal both arrogance (when one monopolizes the truth) and humility (when one serves the truth). As for the final judgment, our ignorance of the heart’s secrets leads us to the only cosmic truth: God knows best.

Note 1. Referring to the Islamic tradition, I prefer to speak about the mainstream tradition

rather than “orthodoxy,” as there is no central authority to define and determine it.

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Acknowledgments

MOST OF THE Chapters in this volume began as papers at an international symposium convened in April 2010 called “Islam, Salvation, and the Fate of Others.” This symposium was sponsored by the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) Department of Religion and cosponsored by, among other units, the University’s Office of the Provost, International Council, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Center for South Asian and Middle

Eastern Studies, Center for Global Studies, and School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics. I am extremely grateful to all who supported this initiative; the then head of the Department of Religion, Professor Rob-

ert McKim, for his encouragement and invaluable guidance; my other former colleagues in the Department of Religion—Professors Valerie Hoffman, Jonathan Ebel, Richard Layton, Alexander Mayer, Rajeshwari Pandharipande, Wayne Pitard, David Price, Bruce Rosenstock, Brian Ruppert, and James Treat—for their assistance and always useful suggestions; the symposium participants, including Professors Sherman A. Jackson, Asma Afsaruddin, Daniel A. Madigan, Muqtedar Khan, Amir Hussain, Patrice Brodeur, David Basinger, Emad han

Mirza,

Shadee

Cuno, Muhammad

Elmasry,

David

Shahin, Whitney Bodman, Ma-

Grafton,

David

Bertaina,

Kenneth

al-Faruque, Junaid Rana, and Behrooz Ghamari, not

to mention, of course, the contributors to this volume; the outstanding

individuals who deftly handled the logistics of the symposium, especially Richard Partin, Beth Creek, Joyce Roberts, Yvonne Knight, Sabrina Saw-

yer, Marita Romine, Cody Mayfield, Natasha Samreny, Michael Murphy, Jeffrey Rivera, and Craig Kreutzer; the thoughtful, helpful, and altogether wonderful students who completed my symposium-related spring 2010 course Salvation in Islamic Thought; the professional and talented staff of Oxford University Press, particularly Cynthia Read, Sasha Grossman, Leslie Johnson, and Jessica Prudhomme, and the affiliated copyeditors of TNQ Books and Journals, particularly Arun Sivaramakrishnan; the two insightful anonymous reviewers of an earlier draft of this volume; and last but certainly not least, my generous colleagues in the Michigan State University Department of Religious Studies, namely, Professors Arthur Versluis, Amy DeRogatis, Diana Dimitrova, Christopher Frilingos, Robert McKinley, Benjamin Pollock, David Stowe, and Gretel Van Wieren.

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A Note on Conventions

ARABIC NAMES ARE generally transliterated in full, except when referring to certain individuals living after 1950 whose names appear in widely available English works. In the latter case, names are written in accor-

dance with common English conventions, without diacritics (for example, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, instead of Yisuf al-Qaradawi). In addition, certain Arabic words that now commonly appear in English works are typically rendered without diacritics (for example, Qur'an, Sharia, ulama,

sura, Sunni, Shi‘). A glossary of select terms is provided at the end of the volume. Unless otherwise indicated, all dates given are Gregorian. Qur’anic passages are often cited numerically; for example, Q. 2:62 refers to sura (or chapter) 2, verse (or dya) 62. Qur’anic verses are numbered according to the standard Royal Egyptian edition. The typesetting of Qur’anic Arabic does not include any typographical indications of emphasis, so all italicized words in Qur’anic quotations represent an inserted emphasis.

Contributors

William C. Chittick is a professor of religious studies and the director of the Program in Religious Studies at Stony Brook University. He has lectured around the world and has published thirty books and one hundred fifty articles on Islamic intellectual history. His books include The Sufi Path of Love (1983), Faith and Practice of Islam (1992), The Self-Disclosure of God (1998), The Heart of Islamic Philosophy (2001), Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul (2007), In Search of the Lost Heart (2012), and, with Sachiko Murata and Tu Weiming, The Sage Learning of Liu Zhi (2009). Farid Esack currently serves as the head of the Study of Islam and Arabic program at the University of Johannesburg. He is a South African scholar of Islam who completed the Darsi Nizami, the traditional Islamic studies program, in madrasas in Karachi, Pakistan, and his Ph.D. at the Univer-

sity of Birmingham (UK). He has published widely on Islam, gender, liberation theology, interfaith relations, and Qur’anic hermeneutics. His works include Qur'an, Liberation and Pluralism (1997) and The Qur'an: A User’s Guide (2005). He was formerly a National Commissioner on Gender Equality appointed by President Nelson Mandela. Mohammad Fadel is an associate professor of law at the University of Toronto. He holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago (1995) and a J.D. from the University of Virginia (1999). He has authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on Islamic thought. He also currently serves on the advisory board of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. David M. Freidenreich is the Pulver Family Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at Colby College, where he teaches a wide range of courses on Judaism, Jewish history, and comparative religion. His research explores

XX

Contributors

attitudes toward adherents of foreign religions, primarily as these attitudes are expressed in ancient and medieval religious law. He is the author of various works, including Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law (2011). Marcia Hermansen is the director of the Islamic World Studies program at Loyola University Chicago, where she teaches courses in Islamic and religious studies in the Theology Department. Her books include Muslima Theology: The Voices of Muslim Women Theologians (forthcoming), Shah Walt Allah’s Treatises on Islamic Law (2010), and The Conclusive Argument from God: Shah Wali Allah of Delhi’s Hujjat Allah al-Baligha (1996). Dr. Hermansen was an associate editor of the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World (2003) and has contributed numerous

articles in the fields of Islamic thought,

Sufism,

Islam

and

Muslims in South Asia, Muslims in America, and women and gender in Islam. Mohammad Hassan Khalil is an assistant professor of religious studies at Michigan State University. Before returning to his hometown of East Lansing, Michigan, he was an assistant professor of religion and a visiting professor of law at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). He is the author of Islam and the Fate of Others: The Salvation Question (2012) and several articles. In April 2010 he organized an international symposium at the University of Illinois called “Islam, Salvation, and the Fate of Others’—the foundation for the present volume. Jerusha Lamptey is currently an assistant professor of Islam at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She previously taught at Georgetown University, where she also received her Ph.D. in Theological and Religious Studies. She is in the process of writing her first book, tentatively titled Never Wholly Other, on Muslima theological approaches to religious diversity, and she teaches courses on the same subject. Outside of Georgetown, she teaches courses on Islam, cultural diversity, and women’s issues for a variety of community, religious, and educational organizations. Bruce B, Lawrence is an emeritus professor of religion at Duke University. The Marcus Family Professor of Islamic Studies, he also served as the

inaugural director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center. He has authored, coauthored, edited, or coedited sixteen books, many of which have won prizes while also sparking debates in and beyond the academy. A Carnegie

Contributors

xxi

Scholar of Islam (2008-2010), he researched religious minorities as secular citizens in Africa and Asia, with special attention to Egypt, Ethiopia, Southern Philippines, and Indonesia. His essay in this volume is a partial result of that project. Muhammad Legenhausen is a professor of Western philosophy at the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute in Qom, Iran. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Rice University and taught philosophy at Texas Southern University from 1979 to 1989. He has authored numerous works, including Islam and Religious Pluralism (1999) and Contemporary Topics of Islamic Thought (2000), and is a translator of Jesus (peace be with him) through the Qur'an and Shi‘ite Narrations and of Ayatullah Misbah Yazdi's Philosophical Instructions.

Yasir Qadhi is a lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Rhodes College and Ph.D. candidate at Yale University. He holds a B.Sc. in chemical engineering from the University of Houston, and, having spent ten years studying in Saudi Arabia, a second bachelor’s degree in Islamic studies (with a specialization in the science of hadith) and a master’s degree in Islamic theology, both from the University of Medina. He has authored numerous books and articles about Islam and is the Dean of Academics for the Al-Maghrib Institute. Tariq Ramadan is a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University, UK, and Director of the Research Centre for Islamic Legisla-

tion and Ethics (CILE) at the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies, Qatar. He is active at both the academic and grassroots levels, lecturing extensively throughout the world on theology, ethics, social justice, ecology, and interfaith as well intercultural dialogue. He is the author of numerous works, including What I Believe (2009), Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation (2009), The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism (2010), and The Arab Awakening: Islam and the New Middle East (2012).

A. Kevin Reinhart is an associate professor of religion at Dartmouth College. Professor Reinhart’s scholarly interests are Islamic religion, in both the sociological and intellectualist aspects. He is author of Before Revelation: The Boundaries of Muslim Moral Knowledge (1995) and Lived Islam: Colloquial Religion in a Cosmopolitan Tradition (forthcoming). Sajjad H. Rizvi is an associate professor of Islamic intellectual history at the University of Exeter. Trained as a historian at Oxford and Cambridge, he

xxii

Contributors

specializes in the philosophy, theology, and hermeneutics of the SafavidMughal period, having authored two books on Mulla Sadra Shirazi (d. 1635) and coauthored a reader on Qur’anic exegesis. His forthcoming books include Mulla Sadra on the Soul, Mulla Sadra and Later Islamic Philosophy, and Mir Damad. His next projects include an intellectual history of Islamic philosophical traditions in India, 1500-1900. Reza Shah-Kazemi is a research associate at the Institute of Ismaili Studies. He has authored numerous works, including The Other in the Light of the One (2006), Paths to Transcendence (2006), Common Ground Between Islam and Buddhism (2010), and The Spirit of Tolerance in Islam (2012). He is also a founding editor of the Islamic World Report. Tim Winter is the Shaykh Zayed Lecturer in Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University, and Director of Studies in Theology at Wolfson College. He has authored and translated numerous works and is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology (2008). Additionally, he is the secretary of the Muslim Academic Trust (London) and dean of the Cambridge Muslim College.

Between Heaven and Hell

“wax

Introduction GRAPPLING

WITH

THE

SALVATION

QUESTION

Mohammad Hassan Khahl

A RECENT PEW Survey of American Muslims brought to light findings that some would consider astonishing: the majority (56 percent) believed that “many religions” can lead to Paradise; only one-third held that Islam “is the one, true faith leading to eternal life.”' But are these findings really all that surprising? After all, ours is a world of ever-increasing interconnectedness. More and more Muslims today work with, befriend, and marry non-Muslims. It is to be expected, then, that a significant number of American Muslims would choose to believe that God will save their Christian parents, Jewish spouses, Buddhist neighbors, Hindu friends, or even atheist coworkers. How, many wonder, could God possibly damn individuals who appear to be righteous, kindhearted, and, in some cases, saintly? What are the views of Muslim theologians on this matter? Most maintain that while faith in the fundamental doctrines of Islam is theoretically required for salvation, God will excuse non-Muslims who never encoun-

tered the divine message conveyed by the Prophet Muhammad. (Whether such “unreached” non-Muslims still exist is a subject of debate.) Some scholars go a step further and assert that God may redeem non-Muslims who were never exposed to the message in a manner that would prompt contemplation and encourage conversion. A third group of theologians— not the kind one would typically find at major Islamic seminaries and universities—argue that God may even save and reward non-Muslims who had a “compelling” encounter with the Islamic message yet chose to remain outside the fold.? But the diverse advocates of this last approach face a daunting task: demonstrating that their seemingly modern doctrine is in fact congruous with the Islamic ethos. This particular project typically

4

BETWEEN

HEAVEN

AND

HELL

involves distancing oneself from the controversial models of religious pluralism represented by the likes of British philosopher John Hick (d. 2012). Needless to say, numerous Muslim scholars vehemently object to this project, deeming it, like Hick’s pluralism, a modern, scripturally indefen-

sible innovation. As they see it, “proper” exposure to the Prophet’s message (however understood) necessitates adherence to his way. By the same token, many of these same scholars are careful to stress that only the “truly” reached are culpable, and only God knows who qualifies as such. Thus, no one can say with any sense of certainty that this Christian parent or that Hindu friend will be damned. In recent years, considerable attention has been devoted to this debate and, indeed, the larger question of non-Muslim salvation. This is a pro-

found topic, the implications of which are not merely theoretical. How one regards the Other undoubtedly affects how one interacts with the Other: Should I marry her? Should I call him to the faith? Should I pray for her even though she passed away a nonbeliever? Should we establish missions? Should we show our love to Others to encourage rectification or, given that their path is crooked, should we shun them?

With all this in mind, in April 2010, through the generous support of the University of Illinois and the invaluable help of numerous colleagues, coworkers, and students, a symposium called “Islam, Salvation, and the Fate of Others” was convened. This was possibly the first-ever international symposium on salvation in Islamic thought. The participants, prominent and diverse, were asked to address the following question: According to the Islamic ethos (however understood), what can be said about the status and eschatological fate of non-Muslims? Can Others be saved? The participants responded to this “salvation question” in different ways, reflecting their different backgrounds, specialties, and assumptions. Where there was overlap in approach, there was often disagreement. And where some saw certainty, others saw ambiguity. To be sure, the purpose of the symposium was to advance this crucial discourse without necessarily arriving at neat resolutions. Most of the chapters in the present volume began as papers at this symposium. Accompanied by a few new essays, this work aims to foster a deep appreciation for the diverse and distinctive approaches taken by scholars of Islam when addressing the consequential topic of soteriology (the discourse and doctrines of salvation) and the fate of Others.

Introduction

5

This book comprises thirteen chapters. The first two examine some of the ways in which Muslim scholars have historically treated the salvation question and its variants. In chapter 1, A. Kevin Reinhart looks at medieval

scholarly responses to the question, Are non-Muslims obligated by God to

adhere to His revealed law, the Sharia? In the process, Reinhart casts light on the exclusivist sentiments of theologians such as the Andalusian Ibn Hazm (d. 1064), who viewed Islam as a “universalist” faith, meaning, a faith to which every adult of sound mind desiring salvation must adhere. In chapter 2, Mohammad Fadel contends that the introduction of liberal democratic ideals in the Muslim world has fostered greater toleration of non-Muslims, both legally and soteriologically. Although medieval Muslim scholars often made it clear that those individuals who never received the message of Islam would be excused on Judgment Day, according to Fadel, they generally deemed non-Muslims who merely encountered this message (in its true form) culpable if they rejected Islam for any reason. In contrast, some of the most prominent modern theologians— living in contexts greatly affected by liberal democratic ideals—advocate a more liberal standard for excusing non-Muslims, although not at the expense of Islamic supersessionism. In the following series of chapters, contributors provide direct responses to the salvation question. In chapter 3, William C. Chittick invites the reader to move beyond the historical approaches to this question, and to reflect on the God of the Qur'an, who, out of His mercy and wisdom, desires that there be multiple religions. If diversity within Islam—the differences of opinion among scholars—is widely considered a mercy from God, then should we not also see diversity among the different religions as a mercy? If we are to have a good opinion of God, Chittick asserts, we should assume that divine mercy and guidance transcend religious boundaries. In chapter 4, Reza Shah-Kazemi argues that the Qur'an is intrinsically “universalist.” But, whereas Reinhart uses the term universalism to connote the triumphalist belief that all must submit to Islam to attain salvation, Shah-Kazemi uses the term to describe an ethos that celebrates religious diversity and all who are righteous, be they Muslim or otherwise.’ Thus, a Christian, for instance, need not convert to Islam to be saved, and this

is something that Islamic scripture itself explicitly universalist, then, inasmuch as it embraces all of Shah-Kazemi combines this universal approach emphasis on the normativity of the Islamic faith universality must include, rather than preclude,

afhrms. The Qur’an is the revealed religions. to salvation with an by arguing that a true particularity, going so

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far as to include a mode of exclusivism. This mode of exclusivism is identified by Shah-Kazemi, basing himself on the Sufi tradition, with an exclusion of all syncretism, that is, with an emphasis on the need to

pursue the spiritual life within the framework of Islam alone; and with the belief that Islam is the most complete religion, at least partly on account of its very universality—a paradigm-challenging articulation of Islamic “supersession.” In chapter 5, Yasir Qadhi takes us in a different direction, one that assumes a more familiar understanding of supersessionism. Qadhi invokes the Qur’an and its classical interpretations in order to demonstrate that any notion of religious plurality is scripturally indefensible. As Qadhi clarifies, however, this does not mean that all non-Muslims are damned to Hell: there are exceptions, including those for whom the Islamic message was never made clear. Further, and of critical importance, is his observation that Muslims can reject soteriological pluralism and still foster amicable relations with non-Muslims. In chapter 6, Tim Winter argues that Islamic monotheism is inherently at odds with the paradigm of religious pluralism as conventionally understood. According to the Islamic ethos, there can only be one God and one true reality. Mainstream Christian teachings about Jesus, for instance, simply cannot be reconciled with what we find in Islamic scripture. Yet again, the rejection of religious pluralism should not be conflated with the promotion of soteriological exclusivism, the notion that all nonMuslims are condemned to the Fire: according to the Qur'an and hadith corpus, the God of mercy may save righteous monotheists of other traditions, most notably through prophetic intercession. In chapter 7, Muhammad Legenhausen further challenges the pluralist paradigm according to which the major religions are only compatible if they are reduced to their commonalities. The fundamental problem with this “reductive” approach is that it dismisses what most adherents and theologians of a particular tradition would consider fundamental beliefs and doctrines. As an alternative, Legenhausen makes the case for “nonreductive pluralism,” a form of “pluralism” that accepts (with qualification) the salvific efficacy of paths other than Islam, while affirming Islamic supersessionism and giving preference to the truth claims of Islamic scripture. This “nonreductive” approach, Legenhausen submits, need not undermine attempts to promote interreligious harmony: differing conceptions of the truth should not lead to disrespect of the Other if there is widespread acceptance of and adherence to a collegial

Introduction

a

ethic of disagreement—an ethic that promotes respect toward advocates of rival theories and traditions. Much like Legenhausen, Sajjad Rizvi seeks to reconceptualize a pluralistic theology that is meaningful and philosophically sound. To this end, in chapter 8, he turns to the writings of two prominent contemporary Iranian thinkers, Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari and Abdolkarim Soroush. Although Rizvi is ultimately unsatisfied with aspects of Shabestari and Soroush’s handling of the multiplicity of truth claims, he finds that by placing them in dialogue with the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (d. 2005) he is able to establish a starting point for future discourse. The next two chapters invite us to rethink the category of Others altogether. In chapter 9, Farid Esack revisits some of the well-known Qur’anic condemnations of the Children of Israel. These passages are regularly employed in contemporary polemical discourse as a means of discrediting all Jews. According to Esack, there are other viable readings of these pasSages, readings that take account of the varied and qualified descriptions of the Children of Israel that appear throughout Islamic scripture and that leave the door of salvation open for at least some Jews. In our increasingly interconnected world, Esack asserts that such readings of the Qur’an may be necessary for its (the Qur’an’s) “salvation,” that is, its survival as a book

of guidance. In chapter 10, Jerusha Lamptey problematizes the widely held assumption that there exist “impermeable boundaries” between the various groups described in Islamic scripture. According to Lamptey, the Qur’an is dynamic, and much of its dynamism comes from its intentionally provocative complexity. With this in mind, and building on the work of feminist scholars of religion (hence the use of the feminine term Muslima in the title of her chapter), Lamptey attempts to move beyond the usual gridlock one encounters in soteriological discourse by viewing difference between (and within) groups in a positive light, and recognizing the potential for fostering relationships of mutual benefit. As for Qur’anic denunciations of particular groups, Lamptey reads these as condemnations of individuals characterized by certain beliefs, actions, and relation-

ships. Damnation, then, is not merely predicated on religious and denominational labels. What is more, only God knows who is or is not truly righteous. The last three chapters of this volume present reflections on the notions of Otherness and inclusion and exclusion. In chapter u, David M. Freidenreich argues that medieval Muslim legal and theological

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discussions concerning non-Muslims—even in those cases where scholars promote an inclusivist vision—typically demonstrate a lack of interest in the non-Muslim people who serve as the objects of their discourse. Whether one examines legal discussions concerning the permissibility of food offered by non-Muslims or soteriological discussions concerning their fate, one generally finds that, to quote Freidenreich, non-Muslims “function primarily as screens upon which those who speak on behalf of Islam project abstract ideas about the nature of Islam[.]” Freidenreich suggests that this remains the case in contemporary soteriological discourse, despite the fact that Muslim theologians today often demonstrate relatively more interest in non-Muslims as people. It is precisely concern for Others that defines chapter 12. Here Marcia Hermansen undertakes a Muslim theological reflection on a range of topics related to salvation that arise from an attempt to problematize the traditional prohibition of Muslims praying for deceased non-Muslims—a prohibition that can be especially disconcerting to those for whom nonMuslim individuals are near and dear. Invoking the prominent theme of divine mercy in the Islamic tradition, Hermansen concludes that there exist “enough tensions, ambiguities, and contextually specific elements within the evidence to make the performance of some forms of supplicative prayer a plausible option.” In chapter 13, Bruce B. Lawrence afhrms the existence of a seldom noted causal relationship between this-worldly social realities and nextworldly theological conceptions of salvation. In predominantly Muslim countries such as Egypt and Indonesia, Lawrence argues, we should expect resistance to the proposition that non-Muslims may be saved in the life to come (or, for that matter, that Muslims may pray for them after their passing), not necessarily on theological grounds, but due to the perceived status of religious minorities as second-class citizens. Accordingly, the Muslims of Egypt and Indonesia are much less likely to hold soteriological positions as inclusive as those favored by their American counterparts in the aforementioned Pew survey. Each of these thirteen chapters, as well as the foreword by Tariq Ramadan, enrich our understanding of Islam and the Muslim world, leaving us with food for thought—and room for debate. It is my hope that this volume will serve as an impetus for further research and discussion. As people throughout the world become increasingly interconnected and interdependent, it is vital that we pay closer attention to the reality of religious diversity and its theological and practical implications.

Introduction

9

Notes 1. See John L. Esposito’s brief discussion ofthis Pew survey (conducted in February 2008) in The Future of Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 177.

2. See my discussion of these disparate doctrines in Islam and the Fate of Others: The

Salvation Question (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). There I hazard that both exclusivism (the belief that all non-Muslims will be damned) and pluralism (the belief that there are several religious traditions that are equally salvific) represent minority positions in medieval Islamic thought. In addition, I show that influential scholars such as Aba Hamid al-Ghazali (d. un), Muhyi al-Din Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240), and Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) each felt compelled to make the case for the immediate /eventual salvation of certain/all non-Muslims. This was largely because of their belief in divine mercy— and despite their faith in the supremacy of Islam. I should add here that my assessments of these and other theologians are in some ways dissimilar to those of some of the other contributors to the present volume. 3. As Muhammad Legenhausen notes in chapter 7 of the present volume, the term universalism is also used—perhaps more commonly—to denote the belief that all of humanity will one day be saved.

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PART

ONE

Historical Dimensions

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I

Failures of Practice or Failures of Faith ARE

NON-MUSLIMS

SUBJECT

TO

THE

SHARIA?

A. Kevin Reinhart

Introduction Premodern Muslim scholars believed God perennially spoke to Muslims when they interrogated the legal sources (Qur’an, Sunna, consensus) in a disciplined way and applied that knowledge through the jurisprudential process to novel cases. The result of this effort, tellingly, was called khitab Allah, “God’s address” to Muslims.' But speech addressed has to have an addressee. Muslims are, of course, addressed in the divine discourse but

scholars also asked, “Are non-Muslims [kuffar/sing. kafir, those who reject God’s summons)’ addressed by revelation [al-shar] as well?” (Hal kana al-kuffar mukhatabina bi-l-shar’‘). The experts in usil al-figh (Islamic legal theory) frequently used odd problems and hypotheticals to get at complex theological, logical, linguistic, or practical questions. This particular problem is an odd one because it was settled doctrine among all madhhabs (“schools of law”) that the previous religious dispensations had had their own distinctive religious disciplines, with distinctive rituals and exemptions, and these had been displaced, in whole or in part, by the Islamic figh (“jurisprudence’”).’ Those from communities outside the People of the Book, whom we will call pagans, had no figh. (Lest someone cavil at the use of term kuffar to describe Christians and Jews—it was common practice, and for the most

part what the usilis [experts in usiil al-figh| meant when they spoke of kuffar—pagans having effectively disappeared where most jurists were writing.)

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For the jurists, there was no doubt that Christians and Jews ought to become Muslims and that living as non-Muslims was a moral failure. But did their moral failure simply lie in their refusing to enter Islam, or was that failure compounded by every prayer they failed to make, every fast they failed to perform, every illicit marriage they contracted, and so forth?* This was a regular topic of dispute in usdl al-figh texts from very early in the history of the discipline until usil al-figh lost its vitality as a discipline. In the context of the “salvation of Others,” an analysis of this discussion

allows us to learn something about Muslim views of the universal religious economy of salvation, that is, medieval Muslims’ views of Christians

and Jews and the nature of their failings; it also points to general theological considerations that must shape interreligious reflection whenever it takes place. This particular legal-theological discussion is not an easy resource for irenic reconciliation and religious ecumenism: it was certain to many medieval Muslims that non-Muslims were “salvationally challenged” and the assumption was that unless they mended their ways and become Muslims they were literally doomed.® As an example, ‘Ali ibn Ahmad Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) makes it clear that religious relativism is not a possibility when he says, What do you say about a monk in his hermitage, a devotee (murid) of God, with all his heart, a monotheist (muwahhid li-llah), he is not prompted to good but that he does it; nor to evil but that he avoids it. He is on an island of the Shashiyyin® at the far reaches of the world where he has never heard a single thing of Muhammad from any of the people of his region except falsehoods and terrible characterizations [of him]. He dies in that [state]; he is uncertain of [Muhammad’s] prophethood or denies it. Is his fate not the Fire? Eternally and forever, with no end? If anyone is uncertain of this, he [too] is a kafir, a mushrik [an associationist, one who associates partners with God], by the consensus of the Muslim community (umma).

Furthermore, what [do you say of] a Jew or a Christian who, whenever he is prompted to kill a Muslim and he can do it, he does it,... and there is no immorality he has not performed—fornication, sodomy—he has yielded to every temptation. Then he becomes certain of the prophethood of Muhammad and rids himself of every

religion save the religion of Islam. He affirms this with his tongue and dies immediately thereafter. Is he not one of the people of the

Failures of Practice or Failures of Faith

15

Garden? And without doubt one of the people of the Muslim community (umma)? If one is uncertain of that, one has repudiated [one’s membership in the Islamic community] (kafara).’ For Ibn Hazm and many other medieval Islamic jurists, the Fire is the presumptive fate of those who denied the prophethood of Muhammad, and that included all Christians and Jews.®

Earhest Witness and Doxography Our earliest complete work of usil al-fiqgh discusses this problem as if it were a given in the field, so we can assume a long prior debate on this question lasting through a good part of the fourth Islamic century, at least. Abi Bakr [al-Jassas] [d. 980] said, “The kuffar are morally responsible (mukallafiin) for the Islamic practices (bi-shara’i‘ al-islam) and its assessments, just as they are morally responsible for submission (al-islam).” And this is what our teacher Abi al-Hasan [al-Karkhi] [d. 952] says.° Al-Karkhi was a controversial figure often associated with Mu‘tazilism (though I believe instead he should be considered a “rationalist Hanafi’)."° To justify his position, he draws from Qur’anic commands to worship and pay the zakah (“alms”) tax. These commands did not specify that they apply only to those who are Muslim. These texts became, or already were, standard proof texts in the debate.

Proof of the correctness of [the notion that the kuffar are addressed by the shar] is that God the most high has condemned (dhamma) the kuffar for neglecting many [actions] connected with their being bound by the shar‘ (ta‘allag luzimahu bi-l-figh), such as His saying, “Those who do not give the zakah while they are rejectors (kdfirtin)” [Q. 41:7] ... [he provides other Qur’anic citations of punishment of the kuffar for neglecting various obligations]. This is evidence that they are prohibited (manhiyyin) from [the neglect of these duties] while they are in a state of kufr (unbelief). They deserve punishment for [neglecting these duties]. One deserves punishment [only] for neglecting obligations (wajibat).

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A further datum [supporting this position is] the obligation [to inflict] the hadd (statutory punishment) for fornication and theft; this [also] applies to [non-Muslim subjects] as punishment for their act. All this indicates what we have asserted: that the kuffar are addressed by the law and punished for neglecting it, quite apart from the punishment for kufr." In this early account, all the basic elements of the controversy are present. Al-Karkhi asserts in addition to faith in God—as understood by Muslims—that all other criminal and ritual Islamic practices are also incumbent on non-Muslims. This is his position, even though the faith that makes one a number of the Muslim community is usually considered a necessary precondition (shart) for at least the ritual acts of Islam (al-‘badat). In other words, in his view one is to be punished for failing to perform acts thought to depend upon a prior commitment to Islam for their validity.

Taxonomy and History The problem of the permeability of the moral boundary between those who were Muslim and those who were not Muslim was certainly recognized as a problem from an early date. The question of whether there could be actual merit in acts performed by non-Muslims shows up in the Musannaf of ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-San‘ani (d. 826) and then in later hadith collections. According to this account, Hakim ibn Hizam converted to Islam and asked the Prophet, “What do you think about the fact that | performed tahannuth” in the jahiliyya (the pre-Islamic period in Arabia), freeing slaves and looking after relatives: Is there any reward for this?” To which the Prophet replied “You became muslim along with what good you had previously done” (aslamta ‘ala ma salafa laka min khayr).® This hadith poses a problem for scholars of usil al-figh, at least Shafi'T ones, as al-Nawawi notes, since they are committed to the position that

conversion to Islam is, as it were, a moral creation ex nihilo.* Upon converting, most say, one does not have to atone (as we shall see) for prayers missed, fasts omitted, or criminal transgressions under the shar‘. So it would seem to follow logically that good deeds also, if they predate one’s conversion, would also be moot. The picture is further occluded by the account that follows in al-San‘anis Musannaf.

Failures of Practice or Failures of Faith

17

A man said to the Prophet, “What do you think about a man who

does good ‘in Islam’ (fi al-islam): Is he punished for what he did before the coming of Islam (in the jahiliyya)?” The Prophet said, “One who does well in Islam is not punished for what he did in the jahiliyya; and one who does evil in Islam is punished for the first and the last [for what was done before his conversion and what is done afterwards].”* There is no space for a full taxonomy of this problem, the full bibliography of which seems irrelevant here." In short, however, those who believed that the kuffar were not addressed by the shar‘ include the founding figures of the Hanafi school oflaw and their Central Asian (usually called “Bukharan’”) successors. From al-Shafi'‘l, as is so often the case, there are “two opinions [recorded] of which the more sound is that the kuffar are addressed” by the shar‘. With this “sounder opinion” his school agreed, with the exception of the Ash‘ari Abt Ishaq al-Isfara’ini (d. 1027).” The Malikis and Hanbalis™ whose opinions survive—without exception, as far as I can tell—assert that the kuffar are addressed by the shar‘. Joining those who believe in the duty to perform the Islamic obligations, regardless of status as a Muslim, are the Mutazili theologians, who give particularly clear testimony on the issue. In short, it is frontier Muslims who support the “not-addressed” position; to the

Muslims of secure Muslim territories it seems obvious that non-Muslims are commanded to do all the things Muslims are commanded to do. We can add one more point in sketching the prehistory of this discussion. Unlike some issues in usil al-figh, this one seems to have its origins in a practical problem—at least that is suggested by Mansir ibn Muhammad al-Sam‘ani (d. 1096) in his Qawati‘.® The Qur’an’s stipulations on licit marriage relationships (Q. 4:22—23) seem to imply the legal effectiveness of marriages that had become, after the coming of Islam, unacceptable under this new dispensation. So, for example, a woman who was married in a way illicit for Muslims was separated from her husband but still considered a “virtuous woman” (muhsana). When Muslims conquered Iran, they found a culture, at least among the elites, that actually encouraged brother-sister marriages, as well as other marriage forms abhorrent to Muslim marriage law. Marriages within the prohibited degrees may still have existed in Egypt in the seventh century c.r.” Consequently, Abi Hanifa, no doubt drawing on Q. 4:22-23, postulated a case in which a man, before his conversion, had married two sisters, A and B and, still before becoming a Muslim, divorced sister B. Abi Hanifa

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ruled that the Islamically illegal marriage had been nonetheless effective and the man was still married to A, and B was a muhsana, at least until her ‘idda (postdivorce waiting period) was completed. He argued as a principle that marriages valid before conversion remain in force after conversion.”! Consequently, dhimmi marriages (i.e., marriages among non-Muslims living under Muslim rule) are valid, even if the form of marriage does not conform to Islamic requirements (for example, the presence of witnesses). This view has an obvious implication: despite the coming of Islam, Christian, Jewish, and Magian rituals and norms remain in some sense efficacious. Islam therefore in this sense is not the radical transformation that Muslims had begun, by the third Islamic century, to see it as having been. For Abt Hanifa, the Muslim shar‘ is not efficacious until the person affirms the messengerhood (risdéla) of Muhammad and the subsequent abrogation of previous Sharias by the Islamic Sharia.” Only at that point does the Sharia of Muhammad supersede and nullify all the practices of the old dispensation. Yet until that point the non-Muslim rules continue to be in force, perhaps under the principle of istishab al-hal (“continuity of effect”).”

Jurists recognized that there were or had been important practical questions involved in this controversy,

or, as the jurists say, matters

dunyawi (“pertaining to this world”) not just ukhrawi (“pertaining to the next”). For example, how this question was framed could determine the efficacy of a particular divorce or manumission and could pose questions of ritual purity to determine whether non-Muslims can enter or pass

through a mosque or, in another example, whether a non-Muslim warrior who killed a Muslim would be subject to retaliation or torte damages.” We can imagine that, as a practical measure, the irenic practice succeeded, and as Magians, Christians, and Jews converted to Islam or Muslim norms were enforced, this more pressing problem ceased to have practical significance. Those who believe that intellectual discussions arise always from practical problems would expect this discussion to have died out. Far from it! In fact these practical questions stimulated theoretical discussions that persisted long after any practical questions had been settled. What had seemed practical and therefore obvious to Abt. Hanifa, who died in 767 C.E., was not so obvious to later Muslims—even Iraqi Hanafis such as al-Jassas and al-Karkhi and the later Hanafis of the Central Islamic lands (the “‘Iragiyytin”), let alone Shafi‘is, Hanbalis, and Malikis.

Failures of Practice or Failures of Faith

19

What Produced the Dichotomy Between the Practical and the Theoretical? The striking fact is that the legitimacy of non-Islamic dispensations, which were everywhere recognized in dhimmi-Muslim contracts of civil protection (dhimmiyya), was largely denied at the theoretical level. What accounts for this impractical, theoretical commitment to the categorical illegitimacy of non-Muslim practices and the unrestrained inclusiveness of the Muslim shar? As I have argued elsewhere, the fundamental change in the Islamic intellectual landscape occurred when Islam became less a tribal Arab cultus and more a universal, indeed perhaps the only, world religion.” More important, there was a change in the demographics of the Hijaz, then Iraq, then Iran, where Muslims moved from an utterly minoritarian status and became the dominant minority, the numerical equals, and finally the demographic majority in the population. By this process, I have suggested, the relativism that characterized a great deal of early Islamic thought was alchemically transformed into triumphalist universalism. As a result, while Muslims continued to concede the practical efficacy of non-Muslim legislation, most Muslim scholars increasingly asserted that not only was that efficacy ontologically nonexistent but at the level of theory the Muslim dispensation applied even to non-Muslims. Why was this? By the late third and fourth Islamic centuries, Islam was not an Arab ethnic religion; it was now a universal summons. It was this universalism

that governed the theoretical position of all but the Bukharan Hanafis. Those who argued the position that in reality, if not in practice, obligations of the shar‘ (including ritual ones) apply fully or in part to non-Muslims were motivated by two distinct forms of triumphalist universalism: kerygmatic and intellectualist.

Kerygmatic Universalism First the kerygmatic perspective. In the view of many Muslims after the second Islamic century, Islam came to all; Islam is the last religion and the best. Non-Muslim religious practices may be protected under law, but nonMuslims live in error merely on sufferance, a toleration mercifully dictated by God. Our witness here is Ibn Hazm, who captures the fervor and polemic zeal of the kerygmatic position.”° “No one,” said the Prophet, “was born except to this religion [Islam]. Children are then Christianized or Judaized

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or Magianed.””” For Ibn Hazm, the kuffar are a separate species (naw‘.’8 Yet, says Ibn Hazm, they fall under the universal Islamic kerygma, and he cites Q. 34:28 to prove it: “We have only sent you [Muhammad] as a bringer of good news and warnings to the whole of mankind.” The subject of God’s address then, surely, is “the whole of mankind,”

except as God

might otherwise dictate. So in this sense everyone is a Muslim—whether they know it or not, or acknowledge it or not. This does not—as with the doctrine of anonymous Christians—procure the salvation of non-Muslims. To the contrary, it secures their damnation. Only in the case of the truly unknowing is ignorance bliss. As for one to whom mention of [Muhammad] has not come, if he is a monotheist, he is a person of faith (mu’min) in the manner of the first fitra® with a sound faith; there is no punishment upon him in the next world; he is one of the people of the Garden. .. . In truth there is fundamentally no punishment on a kafir until the warning of the Messenger has reached him. [But if word reaches him but no one can inform him further about Muhammad’s message], he is obliged to leave [that place for somewhere where he can be informed].*” While theoretically such an uninformed person is possible, in reality there is no such person. {Muhammad/God] made faith incumbent on all who have heard his commands. Every mushrik (associationist) in the furthermost reaches of the south and north, and east and the islands of the sea, and the west, and the heedless of the world, has heard mention of [Muhammad]. He is thereupon obliged to inquire into [Muhammad’s] states and signs and to believe in him.,”! So although true ignorance of the law is an excuse, no one is really ignorant and there are, in reality, no excuses. This kerygmatic universalism means that all are called to become Muslims and, for Ibn Hazm, that call creates the obligation to act. Consequently,

the kuffar are obliged to perform the shara’i‘ (Islamic obligations) except for what is not accepted from them until after their

Failures of Practice or Failures of Faith

21

submission—such as salah (ritual prayer) and sawm (fasting) and hajj (the pilgrimage); in this they are like [someone who requires the major ablution before he can worship] (junub) or someone who has “lost his intention” or [someone who requires the minor ablution] (muhdath).»

It is noteworthy that Ibn Hazm exempts kuffar from ritual obligations— an exemption that seems coherent with the Islamic theory of ritual. For Ibn Hazm,

all other Muslim

acts, including all nonritual

obligations

(shar‘iyyat), were required. All obligations to do with property, for example, were incumbent upon the kuffar. This is so because, among Muslims (the norm for these scholars), “young and old, those ignorant of it and those

who know it, the insane and the sane—all have to pay zakah.”* In this world, says Ibn Hazm, kuffar should be punished with the hadd for fornication and wine drinking and we should spill their wine and slaughter their swine and void their interest-bearing transactions and require them to follow the Islamic rules in marriage, inheritance, sales, criminal law, and the rest of the shara’i‘.*

Ibn Hazm held a strongly interventionist view of the relation between Muslims and dhimmis—to say the least. His position is based, however, on a whole series of kerygmatic proclamations in the Qur’an that condemn the kuffar for their failure to pray and pay zakah—among other things— and depict them in the torments of Hell for their failures in this regard. This is Ibn Hazm at his most fervent, yet his view is quite inconsistent with most charters of protection (dhimmiyya) that allowed Christians and Jews and Magians to continue their own shara@’i—as well as otherwise prohibited practices such as making and drinking wine. The Quranic kerygma is often quite unambiguously universalist. O Children of Adam [in other words, all humans]! Look to your adornment at every place of worship. . . . (7:31) [God shall ordain mercy for] those who follow the Messenger, the nabi al-ummi,® whom they will find described in the Torah and the Gospel [which are] with them. He will enjoin on them [i.e., Muhammad will enjoin on non-Muslims] that which is right and forbid them that which is wrong (7:157).*°

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Ibn Hazm observes that “God establishes in these texts, as you see, that he punishes the ones who say that the Day of Judgment is a lie—these are the kuffar—no doubt—for their neglect of salah.”*” Most Muslim scholars lived in a binary world of Muslims and those who should be Muslim. No doubt the shrillness of Ibn Hazm and his anx-

iety about categorical separation or inclusion result from what he saw as the interdenominational laxity in his homeland, al-Andalus. Yet even in domains less fraught with Reconquista angst, Muslims took a binary view of the religious world. Is there no virtue that can be attributed to non-Muslims? Ibn Hazm

recognizes that there is and offers the comfort (confronted with a rather more irenic hadith) that the kuffar who are virtuous will suffer a milder form of punishment than those who did no good deeds.** And non-Muslim virtue in the world can affect one’s ultimate status as a Muslim. If you do good and then become a Muslim, that is accounted to you; but if you do bad as a kafir (before you convert to Islam), that is not accounted to you, and you are not punished for it.*? The first ideological location, then, of the claim that non-Muslims

were—at least theoretically—bound by the shar‘ is the perception that the Islamic summons is addressed to all, and that being Muslim is defined not merely by faith and belief but by practices (excluding ritual, according to others, including ritual too). That the kuffar did not perform these obligations added to their transgression as non-Muslims. In this view, kufr is the act of rejecting the summons of God and His Prophet. Accepting the summons of the Qur’an and Prophet is one of a set of acts incumbent on all human beings qua human beings. God summons all to submit, but likewise to worship, fast, make pilgrimage, and avoid wine and interestbearing transactions. Neglect of any of these is equally a punishable transgression, since all these are part of the Qur’an’s kerygmatic message.

Rationalist

Universalism

In the way that moderns see morality as universal, medieval Shafi‘is, Mu'tazilis, and the like saw even the details of criminal and property law as—at least in the domain of academic discussion—incumbent on everyone regardless ofcultic identity or degree ofreligious knowledge. This was another representation that motivated the belief that non-Muslims were charged with performing the Islamic obligations, and the belief that the

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Sharia was equivalent to rational morality. Abii al-Husayn al-Basri (d. 1044) the Mu'tazili, predictably, is less emotive and more dialectical than Ibn Hazm when he argues that the shar‘ addresses kuffar. Yet in his argument we see not only the kerygmatic universalism we saw in Ibn Hazm, but something else that produces the same effect, or reinforces it. The Mu‘tazili claim is that a universal rationality compels the belief that the

Muhammadan summons is valid and so requires all humans, rationally, to follow it. Not to do so is to flout nature itself. Abi al-Husayn al-Basr?s Qur’anic proof text, oddly, is, “God imposes on the people (al-ndas) pilgrimage to the house [in Mecca], for all who are able to undertake it” (3:97). This, he says, includes both kafir and Muslim since both are included in “the people.” And, he says, there is nothing either revelational or intellectual to prevent a kafir from being included in “the people.” The command applies to Muslims, of course, but the clause about capacity demonstrates that the command applies to kuffar because the way to do so is within their capacity, an objective measure of obligation distinct from religious identity.” Abi al-Husayn al-Basri draws evidence for his position also from consensus (ijma@') and inference: there is a consensus in the community that a kafir can be punished for the hadd crimes as a form of exemplary punishment. Yet hadd punishments are only for acts of gross rebellion against God (ma‘siya).

How could he be a “rebel”? The answer is that he or she must be included in the moral community of those summoned to obey the prohibition on hadd crimes. Were a non-Muslim not responsible for avoiding fornication, for instance, fornication could not be conceived of as an act of rebellion on his part. It cannot be that his act of rebellion lies merely in his kufr. He is not punished because he is a kafir, if, for example, he is Jewish. Were that the case, he could be punished before he commits fornication. But that is not the case.” In Mu‘tazili moral epistemology one is punished because one is responsible (yukallaf) to leave off fornication because one knows its reprehensibility. This is not because, in the first instance, the Islamic revelation is incumbent upon him. It is rather because he knows by the intellect, by reflection, by the universal moral capacity of humans, not to fornicate.” Moreover, punishment is not promised for things one cannot undertake or is not responsible to undertake. So the Qur’anic threats indicate the natural obligation to follow the Muslim shar‘ once it is revealed. The Mu‘tazilis grounded their ethics, in effect, on the dangerous platform of ethical naturalism. The practices of a particular community are inscribed

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on nature itself so that ethical rules are not just taboos but universal principles. In this view, it is a crime against nature to fail to pay zakah or to have two witnesses at a wedding. In his exposition of the status-of-non-Muslims debate, Abi al-Husayn al-Basris opponent objects that for a Christian to perform salah is pointless prior to his submission because itis not valid or accepted.* It is pointless because faith (al-iman) is a precondition (shart) for the validity of the act. Pointless acts for the Mu‘tazilis are reprehensible precisely because they are pointless. His opponent’s argument is telling, as we will see below, and Abt al-Husayn al-Basri anticipates this difficulty partly by asserting that faith is not a precondition for worship but a means to (wusla) the acts imposed by God, the shar ‘iyyat.” The standard analogy is that someone in a state of minor pollution (al-muhdath) is nonetheless obliged to worship. If he does not do so because he has not performed the wud@’ (ritual ablution), he is punished for not doing the wudi’, but also for neglecting the salah that was conditional upon doing the wudi’. Those who say the kuffar are included in the obligations of the shar‘ say that to assert that one is not punished for not performing the shara’i‘ but only for the failure to execute the precondition, that is, submission/faith (islam/iman), is absurd. If that were the case, someone who does not do the wuda’ and consequently cannot do the salah would only ever be punished for not performing the wuda’ and would be let off the hook for failing to perform the salah.* So, too, one is punished for neglecting the Sharia whose precondition is iskam. According to Abi al-Husayn al-Basri, God’s dispatch of messengers and the consequent obligations of the shar‘iyyat applied to all.“ Not to follow the Messenger and so not to perform the shara’i‘ is to ignore their self-interest (maslaha), which is a natural wrong. And since the burden of Muslim belief and practice falls on one by virtue of their universal human intellect and the obligation to reflect, to eschew these duties is to deserve punishment.” Ultimately, in best Mu‘tazili fashion, Abii al-Husayn al-Basri asserts that salah is a good, and one deserves punishment “| for] neglecting a good (maslaha).”** The epistemology of rationalism does not produce mere knowledge but also burdens one. If all humans are rational and compelled to exercise their rationality, it follows that their objective assertion that the Muhammadan summons is valid will lead to consequences. As van Ess says, “One must always keep in mind that knowledge also imposed a responsibility. It opened the way to salvation and was therefore itself effectual.””

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The assertion that neglect of the shar‘ deserves punishment is thus profoundly interconnected with other Mu‘tazili doctrines. Yet this is in fact a position shared with Shafi‘l-Ash‘aris, other rationalists who had a very different set of theological assumptions. This would suggest that its ultimate origin lies in the shared triumphalism of the fourth Islamic century in the central Muslim lands, and that rationalist universalism, rather

than any particular theological engine, led to this position. In other words, despite the imbrication of this doctrine with other theological doctrines, the justification comes after the commitment to the position. Ethical naturalism is perfectly comfortable with moral imperialism. This dispute, it must be repeated, rests at the level of the abstract, since the differences between the schools (on this matter) had no consequences on rulings in the world. If the kuffar performed the acts in a state of kufr they would have no efficacy, by agreement; and if they convert, they need not make up any of the rituals or other acts they have skipped, by consensus.” In other words, this dispute only has consequences with regard to the next life. Consequently, we must see this position as reflecting a kind of religious imperialism justified by the identification of moral responsibility with the practice of Islam. All humans are morally responsible, but only the practice of Islam satisfies that set of moral imperatives that one has by virtue of one’s humanity. This is the foundation of a novel rational intolerance that justifies

a new position within Islam—one

at odds, it would

seem, with the practices of the earliest Muslims.

Kuffar Ave Not Addressed Defenders of the older position offered a lively intellectual defense of their doctrine that, although faith and Islam were required of all, the figh did not apply to the kuffar before their submission.*' Those who denied the obligation of non-Muslims to perform Muslim acts appealed to a couple of praxic facts on which all jurists agreed. First, on conversion, a convert did not have to make up all the ritual observance he had, as it were, missed

before his conversion. This would seem to suggest they had not been previously incumbent on him. Second, the Bukharan Hanafis also pointed to the fact that a Muslim who temporarily entered into a state of kufr, thereby becoming a renegade (murtadd), was not required to make up the prayers that he missed when he was nominally outside the community; so these obligations must have “dropped off” during the intervening period.

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Those who exempt the kuffar from the burdens of the Sharia depend particularly on a hadith according to which Muhammad sends Mu‘adh to Yemen and says to him: “Summon them to bear witness that there is no god but God, and, if they respond to you, then (fa-) teach them that the five prayers are incumbent upon them every day and night.” This question, and especially the use of the conjugation of sequence (fa-), proves to the

Bukharans that the performance of the Islamic obligations follows upon the kuffar’s responding to that to which He summoned them—the foundation of the religion,’ namely submission (islam) and faith (iman). To require [fasting, etc.] is to obligate one to what is impossible, either because one has to do these acts in a state of kufr, which is a barrier (mani‘) to the soundness of the performance of an ‘ibada (an act of worship), or [these acts] must be required of a kafir after he becomes a Muslim. But this [saying it is required] is refuted because [the new convert] need not make up what was missed before he became a Muslim. To impose upon one the burden of performing that which is not within his capacity is permitted neither by revelation nor reason.°? Consequently, say the Bukharans and their supporters, obliging the kuffar to perform the acts of the shar‘iyyat amounts to requiring something of which the kafir is not capable—something inconceivable for God to do— since the obligatory acts of the shar‘, to be valid, must be done in a spirit of bondsmanship and of drawing near to God (‘ibadatan wa-qurbatan), which one cannot do in a state of kufr.* God does not require the impossible nor does He require something pointless. Hence the kuffar cannot be obliged to perform the shar‘iyyat. As one of Abt al-Husayn al-Basris opponents says, in effect: You can be a kafir (because you have rejected the Islamic summons) yet still refrain from fornication, hence there is punishment for fornication. But as a kafir you cannot, by definition, validly worship or fast, since if you do these acts, you are functionally a Muslim!>° It is clear that the triumphalist universalists were concerned about equity. Why should life be harder for Muslims than for kuffar? If the kuffar are not obliged to perform ritual and other mandatory acts of the shar‘ (which are incumbent upon them as Muslims) this amounts to a lessening of the burden, an amelioration, due to kufr. The rejection of God’s command is an invalid reason for amelioration. If you are ignorant or drunk,

there is still no lessening of the obligation; kufr is even worse! The fact that

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there is no need to make up missed rituals when you convert is no more than a merciful exemption granted by the Lord of Truth (or the Lord who has the right to command His servants).*° From the universalist point of view the unfairness of burdening the righteous and exempting the wrongdoers is corrected by making all humankind subject to the same laws—a state that will become clear in the next world.

Not at all, replies ‘Ala’ al-Din al-Bukhari (d. 1328), one of the most articulate of the Central Asian Hanafis.

The removal of the obligation to perform the shara’i‘ is not an amelioration. It is rather validation of the punishment and benefaction with regard to [the practices of the shar. [The kuffar] are disqualified from the rewards of God’s servants. This is because a command to perform the ritual conveys only information about the thing commanded. [It is not to specify] the one commanded. The kafir does not deserve the distinction [of performing the rituals] and the advantage [that would allow him to be rewarded]; [his exclusion] is a punishment to him for his kufr—how could this possibly be considered an amelioration?” To refute both the kerygmatic and the rationalist arguments, the Central Asian Hanafis then turned to a discussion of language (the imperative form of the verb and more generally the notion of “command”). Al-Bukhari asserts that a command cannot require both an act and something that is a necessary condition—a qualifier of the actor—for the act that is commanded. Everything commanded must be commanded explicitly and “in order.” First you must do this. If you are then qualified by this first thing, then you must do this second thing. In short, no command can effect with one verbal act an implied prior requirement and the thing that is explicitly commanded. To allow this would be to allow an imposition by implication. Imposition by implication is valid only if the implied act enables the consequent act in a physical sense. What is established by implication must necessarily be a consequent of the command. Some examples will make this argument clearer. To give a contemporary example: If I say, “Drive the car,” starting the car is implied in the command because it physically, not conceptually, enables the action required. That is a legitimate precondition. But if 1command someone to drive me to the university, this command does not confer a drivers’ license on the person I am commanding, because being licensed to drive is a separate fact, a conceptual

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basis, not actually a “condition” for the physical act of driving the car. A command, then, cannot confer a power or a status on the performer by implication. The power to do something legitimately is established in a separate set of facts. In our particular case, “faith (iman) is a requirement for worship and is the basis of being qualified [to worship], the grounds for the grace of the afterlife. Consequently, it is not right to implicatively describe [faith] as a condition for the obligation to perform the shara’i‘.”* It is impossible for God to command a person to have faith merely as a consequence of commanding him or her to practice the cultus. The first act must be explicitly commanded and fulfilled before another act that is conceptually dependent on it can be commanded and validly be required. Al-Bukhari draws on his readers’ knowledge that a basis for the legal capacity to have more than a single wife or to own a slave is the state of being free. Consequently, If a master said to his slave: “Free a slave on your own,” or “marry four women,” the order for him to manumit or to marry four, is

invalid because his freedom may not be established through a disconnected implication of the command to marry or manumit. [This is because, to repeat, freedom is the basis of the competence to

manumit or marry four.] These two things follow [the competence to do them, namely freedom]. The implied thing cannot be established by something consequent to it. Just so, in the case at hand.® That is to say, by commanding prayer one has not thereby implicitly commanded faith. Faith is a state in and of itself. Once it is attained, then

the command to pray can itself become relevant. Al-Bukhari and the Central Asian Hanafis’ attention to the formal features of the act of command—and its limitations—is complemented by an attention also to the actor. A discussion of qualification is al-Bukhari's other substantial point: ritual acts are not merely a matter of performance. Ritual acts are, on the face of it, pointless. There is, however, God’s assurance that they are useful. They are a means to an end, in this case, to salvation and eternal reward. “When [an act] is imposed, then the utility of

doing it is the acquisition of areward in the afterlife as a judgment of God most high,” he says.” It is the case that all of the shara’i‘, not merely the ones with an obvious social and personal benefit, have a purpose, namely, eternal reward for their fulfillment.

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This is a subtle argument but one that gets to the heart ofthe matter. The shara’‘ are a privilege, not a burden. They enable one to deserve the grace of the afterlife. Not performing or not having to perform salah is not a favor, an amelioration. It is a disablement, a disqualification that precludes one from the rewards of the next world. The Central Asian Hanafis are not worried that the kuffar might not be punished enough or might be getting off easy. They focus instead on the privilege of moral responsibility (taklif), a privilege denied to those who lack true faith. This of course is especially the case for ritual. The kafir, by virtue of the attribute of kufr, is not competent (bi-ahl) for a reward as the consequence of his kufr, as a judgment of God most high, just as a slave is disqualified from owning property. ... If the competence required for the performance is negated, then the [pseudo-]performance is negated; [it becomes pointless]; therefore

in the absence

of competence,

the obligation is not

established.“! Therefore the strong kerygmatic passages in the Qur’an that order humankind to worship are irrelevant to the kuffar. First, because a theory of command that implicitly made another command effective without the will of the agent would be incoherent. Second, the command applies only to those qualified and those entitled to rewards for those acts of worship commanded by God. Yet this doctrine does not lead al-Bukhari and the Central Asian Hanafis to a kind of religious relativism that gives value to the diverse forms of religious life. Everyone is legitimately commanded to faith, commitment, and engagement with God and His commands. Faith, unlike other aspects of the shara’i‘, is incumbent on everyone, kafir or not, because all compotes mentis are qualified to be members of the community, for it takes a willful act of belief to turn away from faith in the Islamic summons. Even nonMuslims are who monotheists but deny that they must conform to the Sharia are kuffar—every bit as much as if they denied God’s unity. Performing the Islamic obligations confirms faith—it does not create it. Yet faith without the shar‘is impossible. Affirmation (tasdiq) and confirmation (iqrar) of God’s unicity cannot take place while one denies a single item of the shara’i‘. For this, one is punished as much as for fundamental (asl)

kufr.”

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Conclusion This too cursory survey of a rich and subtle argument has suggested several things of direct relevance to the topics of this volume. The first is that triumphalist universalism—whether of the kerygmatic and unmodern sort like Ibn Hazm, or the more contemporary-seeming rationalist variety of Abii al-Husayn al-Basri—leads to a single place, and that is to a maximally critical understanding of those who are non-Muslims, and perhaps even to a denial of the limited tolerance of dhimmiyya covenants. Second, the space created by the earliest practices of Muslims allowed a conceptualization of non-Muslims that located their error solely in the lack of allegiance to God’s Messenger. Yet in the end, this too had the same effect, for Muslim scholars, as denying God’s unity. And this is crucial,

because at the root of this entire dispute is the categorical binariness of Muslims and non-Muslims. By construing a moral theology in which denying the practices of the figh was equivalent to denying God’s unicity, all non-Muslims become kuffar. That, it seems to me, is the root of the issue.

Notes 1. A. Kevin Reinhart, Before Revelation: The Boundaries of Moral Muslim Moral Knowledge (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1995); A. Kevin Reinhart, “Khitab: ‘Discourse’ in the Jurisprudential Theory of Ibn ‘Aqil al-Hanbali,” in Classical Arabic

Humanities in Their Own Terms: Festschrift for Wolfhart Heinrichs on His 65th Birthday, ed. Beatrice Gruendler with the assistance of Michael Cooperson (Leiden: Brill,

2.008), 165-175. 2. In certain contexts kuffar are to be distinguished from certain other sorts of “nonMuslims,” for example, Christians and Jews (kitabis). In legal discourse, however, the term kafir (pl. kuffar) is frequently used with examples that indicate Christians and Jews are being included within the scope of this term. Moreover, many scholars define “faith” (al-iman) as the antithesis of “unbelief” (kufr), and “faith” is precisely a commitment to the messengerhood of Muhammad (e.g., ‘Adud al-Din al-Iji {d. 1355], al-Mawadgiffi ‘ilm al-kalam [Beirut: ‘Alim al-Kitab, n.d.], 388). 3. To see how the doctrine of abrogation (naskh) functioned in interreligious contexts, see, for example, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, al-Mahsilfi usual al-fiqh, ed. Taha Jabir alAlwani (n.pl.: Jami‘at al-Imam Muhammad ibn Sa‘iid al-Islamiyya, 1981), vol. 1, and

3:442ff.; and Muhammad ibn al-Tayyib al-Baqillani, Kitab al-Tamhid, ed. Richard J. McCarthy (Beirut: Librarie Orientale, 1957), 160f. 4. ‘Abd al-‘Ali Muhammad Bahr al-‘Ulim al-Ansari, Fawatih al-rahmat sharh musallam

al-thubit (Beirut; Maktabat al-Muthanna/Dar Thya’ al-Turath al-‘Arabi, n.d.), 1:129: “Is

one punished for kufr (unbelief) or for kufr and ma‘siya (disobedience) as well?”

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. ‘Ali ibn Ahmad Ibn Hazm, al-Ihkamfi usal al-ahkam, ed. Ihsan ‘Abbas (Beirut: Dar

al-Afaq al-Jadida, 1980), 1:56. . Itseems obvious from the context that the “island of the Shashiyyin” is merely a place proverbial for its remoteness. ‘Ali ibn Ahmad Ibn Hazm, al-Ihkamfi usil al-ahkam, ed. Ihsan ‘Abbas (Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadida, 1980), 1:63. . On the theoretical possibility of a non-Muslim protected by his or her ignorance, see in this chapter the section “Kerygmatic Universalism.” But for Ibn Hazm and others, this is a purely theoretical concession. In reality, there is no one who knows nothing of Muhammad and his summons.

. Ahmad ibn ‘Ali al-Jassas, Usa al-figh al-musamma bi-l-Fusil fi al-usil, ed. ‘Ujayl Jasim

al-Nashami ((Istanbul]: Maktabat al-Irshad, 1994), 3:159-160. . A. Kevin Reinhart, Before Revelation: The Boundaries of Moral Muslim Moral Knowledge (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1995), 46. ll.

Ahmad ibn ‘Ali al-Jassas, Usiil al-figh al-musamma bi-l-Fusil fi al-usiil, ed. ‘Ujayl Jasim

al-Nashami ({Istanbul]: Maktabat al-Irshad, 1994), 3:159-160. . Tahannuth was a pre-Islamic (“jahilz’) ritual practice involving self-purification and

various other ritual acts, and it concluded with feeding the poor and needy. See M. J. Kister, “Al-Tahannuth: An Inquiry into the Meaning of a Term,” Bulletin of the School

of Oriental and African Studies 31 (1968): 223-236. . ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-San‘ani, al-Musannaf, ed. Habib al-Rahman al-‘Azmi (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1983), 10:453-454. For reasons I have outlined elsewhere, I am persuaded that al-San‘ani includes material that is at least two generations older than he, some of which dates to the late seventh century c.£. and plausibly to the time of the Prophet. See A. Kevin Reinhart, “Juynbolliana, Gradualism, the Big Bang, and Hadith Study in the Twenty-First Century,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 130 (20): 413-444. . Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi, Sharh al-Nawawi ‘ala Sahth Muslim (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab

al-‘Ilmiyya, n.d.), 2:140. . ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-San‘ani, al-Musannaf, ed. Habib al-Rahman al-‘Azmi (Beirut: alMaktab al-Islami, 1983), 10:454.

. A preliminary but by no means complete bibliography of discussions of the issue would include the following: ‘Abd al-‘Ali Muhammad Bahr al-‘Ulim al-Ansari, Fawatih al-rahmiat sharh musallam al-thubat (Beirut: Maktabat al-Muthanna/Dar Ihya’

al-Turath al-‘Arabi, n.d.), 1128; Abii al-Husayn al-Basri, al-Mu‘tamad fi usil al-figh, ed. Muhammad

Hamid Allah (Damascus: al-Ma‘had al-‘Ilmi al-Faransi li-l-Dirasat al-

‘Arabiyya bi-Dimashgq, 1964), 1:294-300; ‘Ala’ al-Din al-Bukhari, Kashf al-asrar ‘an

usiil Fakhr al-Islam al-Bazdawi (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1974), 4:243-248; ‘Ali ibn Ahmad Ibn Hazm, al-Ihkam fi ustil al-ahkam, ed. Ihsan ‘Abbas (Beirut: Dar

al-Afaq al-Jadida, 1980), 5:108-121; Ahmad ibn ‘Ali al-Jassas, Usal al-figh al-musamma bi-l-Fusil fi al-usil, ed. ‘Ujayl Jasim al-Nashami ({Istanbul]: Maktabat al-Irshad, 1994), 2:158-168; Mansiir ibn Muhammad al-Sam‘ani, Qawéati‘ al-adillafi usiil al-figh, ed. ‘Abd Allah ibn Hafiz al-Hakami ([Riyadh]: Maktabat al-Tawba, 1997), 2:369ff. (where he traces the origins of this problem to Abii Zayd al-Dabisi in Taqwim al-adilla);

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Sulayman ibn ‘Abd al-Qawi al-Hanbali al-Tafi, Sharh mukhtasar al-Rawda, ed. ‘Abd

Allah al-Turki (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Risala, 1987), 1:205-220;

Muhammad

ibn

Bahadur al-Zarkashi, al-Bahr al-muhit fi usil al-figh, ed. ‘Abd al-Qadir ‘Abd Allah

al-‘Ani and ‘Umar

Sulayman al-Ashqar (Kuwait: Wizarat al-Awqaf wa-l-Shu’in ibn al-Hasan al-Badakhshi, Mandahij

al-Islimiyya, 1992), 1:377-416; Muhammad

al-‘uqil sharh minhaj al-wusal fi ‘ilm al-usil (Cairo: Muhammad ‘Ali subayh, n.d.),

17.

1:128-134, There is some confusion with Abi Hamid al-Isfara’ini, but the correct person seems to be Abi Ishaq.

18, One of two accounts of Ahmad ibn Hanbal’s position says the kuffar are not included

“in commands regarding Muslim practices (al-furi') but they are for faith and prohibitions (al-nawahi).” See Al Taymiyya (Majd al-Din {d. 1255], Shihab al-Din [d. 1283], Taqi al-Din [d. 1328]), al-Musawwada, ed. Muhammad M. ‘Abd al-Hamid (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, n.d.), 46. An earlier Hanbali position, perhaps deriving from Ahmad’s, is that of al-Qadi Aba Ya‘la (d. 1066) who is reported to have agreed that the

kuffar are addressed when faith is commanded (ibid., 47). . Mansir ibn Muhammad al-Sam‘ani, Qawati‘ al-adilla fi usal al-figh, ed. ‘Abd Allah ibn

Hafiz al-Hakami ([Riyadh]: Maktabat al-Tawba, 1997), 2:385. 20.

That this is not fiction can be seen in Walter Scheidel, “Brother-Sister and ParentChild Marriage Outside Royal Families in Ancient Egypt and Iran: A Challenge to the Sociobiological View of Incest Avoidance?,” Ethology and Sociobiology 17 (1996): 319340; and Seymour Parker, “Full Brother-Sister Marriage in Roman Egypt: Another Look,” Cultural Anthropology 11 (1996): 362-376, and the sources cited there.

21.

Mansur ibn Muhammad al-Sam‘ani, Qawati‘ al-adilla fi usil al-figh, ed. ‘Abd Allah ibn

Hafiz al-Hakami ({Riyadh]: Maktabat al-Tawba, 1997), 2:386. 22.

Ibid.

23. The notion that a legal state (of innocence, of validity, majority, or whatever) is assumed to perdure unless something can be shown to have altered it. See Wael B. Hallaq, A History of Islamic Legal Theories: An Introduction to Sunni usil al-figh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 113-115.

24. Al-Husayn ibn al-Qasim al-Yamani, Hiddayat al-‘uqal ([Sanaa]: al-Maktaba al-Islamiyya, [1981]), 1:45.

PX, A. Kevin Reinhart, Before Revelation: The Boundaries of Moral Muslim Moral Knowledge (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1995), 177-179. 206. It might be argued that Ibn Hazm is not a good witness, since he is an adherent to

the extremely marginal Z.ahiri school oflaw at the fringes of Islamdom in Spain. Yet his is an influential voice, and what makes him significant is his precise and vigorous expression ofthe kerygmatic universalism that was one important voice in the forma-

tion ofclassical Sunnism,

27.

‘Ali ibn Ahmad Ibn Hazm, al-Ihkdm fi usiil al-ahkam, ed. Ihsan ‘Abbas (Beirut: Dar

al-Afaq al-Jadida, 1980), 5:10 (this hadith appears in the Sahih Muslim collection [in “Kitab

al-qadr”|). Ibn Hazm characteristically chooses the more exclusivist of the two variants (“born in this religion” [milla], rather than “in the primordial religion” [‘ala al-fitra)).

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28. Ibid., 5:109.

29. The fitra is the “natural religion” of all human beings, extraneous to any revelational summons, See A. J. Wensinck et al., Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane

(Leiden: Brill, 1969), 5:179ff.; somewhat helpful is Mohamed el-Tahir el-Mesawi, “Human Nature and the Universality of the Shari‘ah: Fitrah and Magqasid al-Shari‘ah

in the Works of Shah Wali Allah and Ibn ‘Ashtr,” Al-Shajarah (Journal of the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization [ISTAC]) 14 (2009): 167-205. . ‘Alt ibn Ahmad Ibn Hazm, al-Ihkamfi usiil al-ahkam, ed. Ihsan ‘Abbas (Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadida, 1980), 5:17-118. . Ibid.

. Ibid., 5109. . Ibid., 5:17. . Ibid., 5108-109. . For this problematic phrase, irrelevant to the present discussion, see Norman Calder, “The Ummi in Early Islamic Juristic Literature,” Der Islam 67 (1990): 11-123; and

Isaiah Goldfeld, “The Illiterate Prophet (Nabi Ummi): An Inquiry into the Development of a Dogma in Islamic Tradition,” Der Islam 57 (1980): 58-67. . ‘Aliibn Ahmad Ibn Hazm, al-Ihkam fi usil al-ahkam, ed. Ihsan ‘Abbas (Beirut: Dar

al-Afaq al-Jadida, 1980), 5:108-109. . Ibid., 5109. . Ibid., 5:6.

. Ibid., 5:14, and see the discussion above of the hadith transmitted by al-san ‘ani. . It is less than candid that he ignores the rest of the aya: “As for those who reject

[God’s commands], God has no need for anything in the worlds” (wa-man kafara fainna Allaha ghaniyyun ‘an al-‘Glamin). . Aba al-Husayn al-Basri, al-Mu‘tamad fi usal al-figh, ed. Muhammad Hamid Allah (Damascus: al-Ma ‘had al-‘Ilmi al-Faransi li-l-Dirasat al-‘Arabiyya bi-Dimashq, 1964), 1:294. 42. Ibid.; more generally see George Hourani, Islamic Rationalism: The Ethics of ‘Abdaljabbar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971); and A. Kevin Reinhart, Before Revelation: The Boundaries of Moral Muslim Moral Knowledge (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1995).

43.

‘Ala’ al-Din al-Bukhari, Kashf al-asrar ‘an usil Fakhr al-Islam al-Bazdawi (Beirut: Dar

44.

Aba al-Husayn al-Basri, al-Mu‘tamad fi usil al-figh, ed. Muhammad

al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1974), 1:187. Hamid Allah

(Damascus: al-Ma‘had al-‘Ilmi al-Faransi li-l-Dirasat al-‘Arabiyya bi-Dimashq, 1964),

1:294. 45. Ibid., 1:299-300; Abi Hamid al-Ghazali, al-Mustasfa min ‘ilm al-usil (Beirut: Maktabat al-Muthanna/Dar Ihya’ al-Turath al-‘Arabi, n.d.), u:91f. 40. Aba al-Husayn al-Basri, al-Mu‘tamad fi usal al-figh, ed. Muhammad Hamid Allah (Damascus: al-Ma ‘had al-‘Imi al-Faransi li-I-Dirasat al-‘Arabiyya bi-Dimashq, 1964),

47.

1:294. Ibid.

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48. Ibid., 1:299.

49. Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra: eine Geschichte des religidsen Denkens im friihen Islam (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991-), 4:667 (“Dabei helt man sich immer vor Augen, daf§ Erkenntnis auch eine Verplichtung

(taklif) war; sie offnete der Web zur Seligkeit und war damit selber bewertbar”). The

entire section is germane: 4:667—672. The discussion of moral responsibility (taklif), and also the problem of whether charging the kafir with action is a good when God knows he will reject that obligation, would be necessary for a full account of this topic from a Mu ‘azili point of view. See ‘Abd al-Jabbar [pseudo], [Ibn Mattawayh], al-Majmi‘ al-muhit bi-l-taklif (Cairo: Mu’assasat al-Misriyya al-‘Amma li-l-Ta Tif wa-l-Anba’ wa-lNashr, 1965), 2:203ff.; and al-Qadi Abi al-Hasan ‘Abd al-Jabbar [al-Asadabadij, al-Mughni fi abwab al-tawhid wa-l-‘adl, ed. Ibrahim Madkir al-Siqa (Cairo: Mu’assasat al-Misriyya al-‘Amma li-l-Ta’lif wa-l-Anba’ wa-l-Nashr, 1965), 11:159 and 183. It is obvious that all humans are obliged to do what the intellect knows to be good. See ibid., 14:149ff. There is also a substantial discussion of moral responsibility in ibid., vol. u, especially 58ff. Likewise, ‘Abd al-Jabbar asserts that it is not necessary that one ever know he is charged (ibid., 11:403). The place where ‘Abd al-Jabbar would have discussed this problem at length is most likely the lost part of volume 17 (al-shar‘iyyat) of the Mughni.

50. ‘Ala’ al-Din al-Bukhari, Kashf al-asrar ‘an ustil Fakhr al-Islam al-Bazdawi (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1974), 4:243. 51. —

In this they took advantage, I believe, of the greater degree of flexibility that might be possible in a doctrine that focuses on khitaba, “addressedness,” as opposed to moral responsibility (taklif). If one is not addressed, then there can be no obligation to

respond to commands that are conveyed by that act of addressing. 52 ‘Ala’ al-Din al-Bukhari, Kashf al-asrar ‘an usiil Fakhr al-Islam al-Bazdawit (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1974), 4:243-244. 53. Ibid., 4:244. 54. Abi al-Husayn al-Basri, al-Mu‘tamadfi usual al-figh, ed. Muhammad Hamid Allah

(Damascus: al-Ma ‘had al-‘Ilmi al-Faransi li-l-Dirdsat al-‘Arabiyya bi-Dimashq, 1964), 1:294. 55: Ibid., 1:398. 56. ‘Ala’ al-Din al-Bukhari, Kashf al-asrar ‘an usa Fakhr al-Islam al-Bazdawi (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1974), 4:243. 57. Ibid., 4:244. 58. Ibid. (emphasis added). 59: Ibid. 6o. Ibid. 61. Ibid.

62. Ibid., 4:243.

a

“No Salvation Outside Islam” MUSLIM

MODERNISTS, ISLAMIC

DEMOCRATIC

THEOLOGICAL

POLITICS,

AND

EXCLUSIVISM

Mohammad Fadel

Whoever dares to say there is no salvation outside the Church should be chased out of the State, unless the State

is the Church, and the prince is the pontiff.’

—JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU The Social Contract

Book IV, Chapter VIII

Introduction Jean Jacques Rousseau, speculating on the relationship of religion to a democratic political order, famously denied the difference between civil and theological intolerance: “It is impossible to live at peace with people whom one believes are damned. To love them would be to hate God who punishes them. They must absolutely be either brought into the faith or tormented.”* He thus concludes that democracies cannot tolerate a religion that teaches an exclusive doctrine of salvation, saying that such a dogma is fit only for a theocratic government in which “the State is the Church, and the prince the pontiff.” Contemporary democratic practice, however, rejects this proposition and instead maintains a broad distinction between the freedom to believe (which is taken as absolute)* and the freedom to manifest religious beliefs in practice, which all democracies take as a legitimate object of public regulation, albeit with different approaches to when a state may legitimately regulate the manifestation of religious practices.°

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John Rawls, in both A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, in contrast to Rousseau, defends the contemporary approach to religious freedom; he insists that freedom of belief—including a belief in an exclusivist salvation religion—is not only consistent with the stability of a democratic regime and democratic principles of toleration but is also one that these principles demand. Contrary to Rousseau, Rawls concludes that the freedom to hold intolerant doctrines should be circumscribed only in very limited circumstances. However, Rawls clearly expects that the popularity of exclusivist doctrines of salvation will wane in a democratic state, with the result that Rousseau’s concern regarding the deleterious effects that such doctrines have on civic peace will be effectively, even if not theoretically, dissipated. Indeed, one might speculate, following

Rawls, that exclusivist theologies

of salvation,

once

transplanted to the soil of a democratic polity, tend toward the development of a more inclusive theology of salvation, one that mimics the civic tolerance of democracy.’ Rawls relies primarily on psychological arguments to justify his expectation that liberal democracy saps the strength of exclusivist theologies, arguing that a citizenry that has become accustomed to productive cooperation with nonbelievers is likely to become more optimistic regarding the prospects for their salvation, despite their nonbelief. This essay proposes to test Rawls’ hypothesis regarding the tempering effects of democracy on theological exclusivism by considering the arguments of twentieth century Muslim modernist theologians regarding the fate of non-Muslims in the next life. As this paper will show, the teachings of this group of theologians provide an important historical case confirming Rawls’ prediction that a tolerant political regime can very well have a profound impact on a religion’s theology of salvation; and one result of that theological development is that it becomes easier for believers to engage in good-faith political cooperation with nonbelievers. Indeed, the example of twentieth-century Egyptian modernist theologians provides an even stronger case for Rawls’ arguments: their doctrinal revisions were formulated substantially as a reaction to the prospect, and not the actual realization, of either a democratic Egypt, on the one hand, or substantial equality in international relations between Muslim states and their former colonizers, on the other hand. A comprehensive study of tolerance in the Islamic tradition, however, is beyond the scope of this paper. Instead, I propose to explore the question of theological tolerance and its relationship, if any, to the political

“No Salvation Outside Islam”

37

terms of legitimate Muslim—non-Muslim political relationships from the perspective of Islamic speculative theology (kalam). This chapter begins by describing the dominant medieval theological position, which can be fairly characterized as one having a strong commitment to the notion of “no salvation outside of Islam,” subject only to a relatively undeveloped concept of excuse that preserved the theoretical possibility that non-Muslims, despite their theological errors, would neyertheless be saved from punishment in the next life. The chapter then explains how that doctrine derives from medieval theology’s epistemological commitments, in particular, its distinction between knowledge (‘ilm), the domain of dogma, and considered opinion (zann), the domain of practical ethics. From a political perspective, this distinction between theological error, for which all humans are culpable, and ethical error, for which they are not, justifies a hierarchical political relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims. This hierarchy receives its practical manifestation in the twin statuses of non-Muslims under medieval Islamic law: the protected non-Muslim dhimmi (who, while equal to Muslims in many respects, is excluded from exercising political rights), and the hostile nonMuslim enemy (al-harbi), who neither enjoys rights nor is subject to any obligations arising out of Islamic law, and against whom Muslims are either permitted or obligated to wage war (armed jihad).° It also justifies a relationship of equal tolerance between Muslims, meaning that whatever theological errors they commit or violations of the law they incur, they continue to enjoy the absolute protection of Islamic law unless such theological errors or legal violations, in each case, are sufficiently grave as to constitute repudiation of Islam. This chapter contrasts the medieval doctrine of “no salvation outside Islam” with two different theological positions that are more open to the salvation of non-Muslims. The first of these views belongs to two relatively early Muslim theologians who denied the moral distinction between errors of dogma and errors in practical ethics, thus enabling them to articulate a theory of salvation that included non-Muslims who knowingly, but in good faith, rejected Islam. The second are the views of a group of twentieth-century Egyptian Muslim reformist theologians, a movement whose origins can be traced to the last quarter of the nineteenth century in the teachings of the modernizing Egyptian theologian, Muhammad ‘Abduh (d. 1905). The views of this latter group constitute the focus of this study. This chapter demonstrates that these modernist theologians, by radically expanding the medieval notion of excuse and recognizing the

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moral worth of the deeds of non-Muslims, rejected medieval theology’s insistence on adherence to truth as a condition of salvation in favor of a less demanding theology whose focus is moral virtue, that is, adherence to just norms, rather than theological virtue, that is, recognition of theological truth. In contrast to early theological expressions of tolerance for theological error for whom no obvious political consequences flowed from their capacious theory of salvation, these twentieth-century reformist theologians were also active in reformulating traditional Muslim conceptions of political relations with non-Muslims, including, inter alia, revising historical conceptions of jihad in order to promote the possibility of an enduring peace between Muslim and non-Muslim powers in the international arena." The most recent of these theologians, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, appeals to this line of reformist theology to justify a political relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims that appears to transcend the medieval conception of hierarchical tolerance to one grounded in values of theological restraint and an ethic of mutual respect grounded in an assumed universal conception of justice that applies equally to Muslims and non-Muslims.

Theoretical Knowledge, Practical Knowledge, and the Possibility of Toleration in Medieval Islamic Theology The medieval theological doctrine of “no salvation outside Islam” is in large part a function of the epistemology underlying speculative theology (kalam). This tradition is grounded in the distinction between knowledge (‘ilm) and considered opinion (zann) and is so fundamental that moral culpability for error is dependent on it.” If aquestion is not amenable to rational proof, in the case of matters related to creed (usil al-din), or is not regulated by incontrovertible textual proof (dalil qat‘t), in the case of practical religious doctrine, error cannot result in sin.’’ Conversely, if a question is amenable to rational proof or is regulated by incontrovertible textual proof, error is tantamount to sin. For this reason, speculative the-

ology traditionally made a distinction between the elements of Islam’s creed—which were said to be based on certain knowledge—and Islam’s practical elements (furi‘ al-din), that is, the rules of right conduct— which, with the exception of the so-called “necessary elements of religion” (ma ‘ulima min al-din bi-l-dariira), it was generally agreed, were based on reasoned opinion.

“No Salvation Outside Islam”

39

Whereas dogma, because it deals with ontological matters, is the domain of unitary truth, normative pluralism is the defining characteristic of practical ethics, the fur‘ al-din.* With respect to the latter, all considered opinions regarding rules of conduct were either theologically valid in themselves (on the assumption that God did not decree a specific rule for all events) or some opinions were substantively correct (on the assumption that God had decreed a discrete rule for each event), while others were not, but such errors did not entail sin (because they were reasonable, even if mistaken, attempts to discern God’s actual ruling). This system of normative pluralism in the realm of ethics was encapsulated in the saying, “Every [qualified] interpreter is correct” (kullu mujtahid musib), and in the saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad that every interpreter who correctly describes God’s will receives two rewards while those who advance an erroneous judgment receive only one.” As described in greater detail later, this commitment to ethical plu-

ralism did not apply to questions of dogma because Muslim theologians believed one true answer existed for those questions and that such answers were accessible to all rational beings. Typical of this stance is the opinion of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, a twelfth/thirteenth-century Transoxianan theologian and jurist who wrote that “God, may He be glorified, has placed conclusive evidence for these matters [of dogma] and has endowed rational beings with the capability of knowing them.” With respect to matters of dogma, individuals are strictly liable for even their good-faith errors in reasoning, the only qualification being that some kinds of dogmatic errors result only in sin whereas other, more serious errors (such as failing to recognize the existence of God or the truth of the Prophet Muhammad) result in a judgment of unbelief that could, unless otherwise excused, result in eternal punishment in the next life. The views of Abt Hamid al-Ghazali and Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi, jurists and theologians from the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, respectively, exemplify medieval Islamic theology’s epistemological distinction between theoretical truth and practical ethics, and its insistence that theoretical virtue in the form of recognizing dogmatic truth is a condition precedent to recognizing practical virtue. Both al-Ghazali and al-Qarafi adhered to a version of the doctrine that held that the conclusions of all moral reasoning (ijtihad) undertaken in good faith were in some sense ethically valid;” however, they both deny that the substantial ethical freedom that exists in the realm of practical conduct—the branches of religion—applies to Islam’s dogmas. Accordingly, both of them

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reject the theologically “tolerant” position that a mistaken, but good-faith, rejection of Islam could be excused.* The medieval theological tradition attributed that position, namely, that good faith errors regarding the dogmatic elements of religion could be excused, to two relatively early Muslim theologians, the eighth-century judge and theologian ‘Ubayd Allah ibn al-Hasan al-‘Anbari (d. 785) and the ninth-century Mu‘tazili theologian and littérateur ‘Amr ibn Bahr al-Jahiz (d. 869). According to the medieval theological tradition, both al-‘Anbari and al-Jahiz denied that error could be attributed to any person who made a good-faith effort to study the claims of Islam but then erroneously, but honestly, rejected them.” Neither al-Ghazali nor al-Qarafi could take their argument literally. Dogma, as a matter of logic, entailed the pos-

sibility of only one correct answer: God either exists or does not; either the Prophet Muhammad is truthful in his claims or he is not. Instead, they both understood al-Jahiz and al-‘Anbari to have articulated a theory of excuse pursuant to which God would forgive individuals who erroneously, but in good faith, rejected Islam. Al-Ghazali, however, denied that individuals’ subjective sincerity is relevant to the question of their moral culpability for error with respect to these questions. Even though he granted that reasoning to the truth was an arduous process in which individuals could make good-faith errors, al-Ghazali believed that God had obliged us not only to use our reason in considering questions of religious truth but also to do so correctly.” Because it was possible through the diligent and correct use of reason to arrive at a true conception of God and other questions of dogma (such as the truth of the Prophet Muhammad), good-faith errors in theological reasoning could not excuse a person’s failure to adhere to true doctrine.” Although al-Qarafi rejects the notion that all human beings are capable of reasoning their way to theological truth (women and certain barbarian peoples that inhabit the extreme north and south being the prime examples of groups that he assumes lack the capability of understanding theological argument), he nonetheless accepts the distinction between the inapplicability of tolerance to matters of dogma and its permissibility in matters of practical ethics.” Instead of defending this difference on epistemological grounds, however, he argues that toleration arises only in matters over which humans have a legitimate interest. Thus, while it is true that Islam is gracious with respect to matters of practical ethics, he states, it cannot tolerate errors regarding the divinity. The difference

between the two is that errors with respect to practical ethics inevitably

“No Salvation Outside Islam”

4l

implicate the claims of human beings, a fact reflected in their legal classification as “the claims of people” (huqiq al-‘ibad), whereas theological error implicates ontological truth and thus the “claims of God” (huqiq Allah).?> Because of the instrumental character of ethical rules in furthering human well-being, al-Qarafi maintains that it is within our power, as human beings, to forgive others their violations of our rights. Toleration, in al-Qarafis analysis, is conceptually akin to forbearance and thus finds its moorings in the notion that individuals, as bearers of rights, have

the capacity to waive violations of their own rights. Toleration in the domain of practical ethics, therefore, simply does not raise a principled problem from the perspective of al-Qarafi’s theology. This analysis does not apply, however, with respect to matters of dogma such as the oneness of God or God’s transcendence. Theological truths, in contrast to rules of conduct, lack an instrumental nexus to our well-being as such; they are simply ontological truths that we are obliged to recognize. Accordingly, humans do not have the capacity to forgive transgressions against God; moreover,

God has positively indicated, specifically

through the obligation of jihad, that theological error is not, in the first instance, to be tolerated. For al-Qarafi, recognition of the dogmatic truths of Islam is the prerequisite to enjoying the practical toleration that characterizes Islamic substantive law.” Al-Qarafi’s theology in turn influences his theory of jihad. Although al-Qarafi noted the existence of several different legal theories of jihad, only one of which required the Islamic state to conquer non-Muslim territory whenever feasible, al-Qarafi interpreted the obligation of jihad to be a specific instance of the general religious obligation “to command the good and forbid the evil.” And because there was no greater evil (mafsada) than theological error, it was the obligation of Muslims to remove this evil whenever they were reasonably capable of doing so.” Al-Qaraffs theory of jihad, however, while it provides a coherent theory for jihad, becomes problematic from the perspective of the Islamic doctrine of dhimma—permanent protection of non-Muslims who have submitted to the jurisdiction of the Islamic state. For al-Qarafi, the rationale for the relationship of protection was to give non-Muslims an opportunity to become Muslim, even as he acknowledges that experience confirms that only a minority of them will, in fact, abandon their false religion for

Islam. The fact that Islamic law nevertheless permits them to continue to enjoy the protection of Islamic law despite their persistence in unbeliefis therefore, from the perspective of al-Qarafi’s legal analysis, an anomaly,

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because Islamic law usually considers ordinary experience to be determinative of the contents of legal rules.** Accordingly, dhimma is a legally exceptional relationship, and al-Qarafi can only account for it by invoking God’s grace.” If medieval theology did not countenance error with respect to theological propositions, it nevertheless continued to adhere to a conception of excuse, albeit one different from that attributed to al-Jahiz and al-‘Anbari. In certain circumstances non-Muslims could be morally absolved for their blasphemous beliefs about God in the next life if they had not received a fair opportunity to consider the truth of Islam. This theological doctrine was known as “communication of revelation” (buligh al-da‘wa). In brief, this doctrine posited that, in the absence of a fair opportunity to learn true Islamic teachings, a person who dies as a non-Muslim could still be eligible for salvation. Al-Ghazali, even though he accepted the familiar position that good-faith errors in matters of dogma are not exculpatory, nevertheless elaborated a doctrine of excuse capacious enough to conclude that God would save the majority of Christians and Turks (pagans), despite their erroneous beliefs.”7 The scope of excuse that could arise from the absence of an opportunity to learn about Islam, however, was substantially reduced by the independent obligation of all human beings to inquire and use their reason in a diligent effort to discover the truth about God, an obligation known in medieval Islamic theology as “the obligation of inquiry” (wujab al-nazar); indeed, according to many theologians, this obligation was the first obligation of all human beings. While those who discharged this obligation yet nevertheless failed to become Muslim would certainly be saved, those who neglected it entirely could certainly be subject to punishment in the next life for that failure.’? Even nominal Muslims were under the obligation to inquire, and some theologians, such as al-Qarafi, accordingly raised the possibility that most nominal Muslims were also to be punished in the next life on account of their failure to discharge this duty.*° This doctrine of excuse, however, like the closely associated doctrine obliging inquiry, applied only to the next world. No medieval theologian (to my knowledge) used the doctrine of excuse, or for that matter, the doctrine of inquiry (with its ambiguous implications for Muslims), to suggest that the distinction between Muslim and non-Muslim, as a matter ofpractical politics, whether for the application of Islamic law within the boundaries of the Islamic state or for purposes of international relations, was unsound. Accordingly, despite the theological possibility that at least some

“No Salvation Outside Islam”

43

non-Muslims would be saved in the next life (because Islamic teachings had never been communicated to them or because they discharged the duty of inquiry, even if they had not yet become Muslims), and some Muslims would be damned (because of their failure to inquire), medieval Muslim theologians permitted, even if they did not unanimously oblige, the Islamic state to wage war against non-Muslims to bring them into the Islamic commonwealth.

Twentieth-century reform-minded theologians, however, would take this limited doctrine of excuse, expand it, and then ultimately use it to

justify important revisions in Islamic substantive law in an attempt to provide a theological foundation for both permanent peace with non-Muslim powers and for Muslim and non-Muslim political cooperation. To the extent the doctrine of excuse expanded, the associated doctrine of inquiry receded in significance and almost disappeared entirely, in favor of a new Islamic duty—conveying Islamic teachings—and a new focus: the practical ethical virtues of non-Muslims, particularly, their willingness to live in peace with Muslims and permit Muslims to practice and teach Islam. This chapter takes up these themes in the next part.

The Modern Concept of Excuse and the Possibility of Toleration Evidence for the importance of this expanded concept of excuse can be found in the proceedings of a roundtable discussion (nadwa) published in the magazine of the prominent al-Azhar mosque college, Liwa’ al-Islam, in 1955.’ Two of the most important mid-twentieth century Egyptian modernists participated in this roundtable, Muhammad Abt Zahra and Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahhab Khallaf.* The question posed to the roundtable was the fate of those non-Muslims who, through their practical (largely scientific) accomplishments, had made great contributions to “humanity,” and whether, despite those contributions, they would be punished in the next life on account of their failure to embrace Islam.** The discussion quickly developed into two different, although closely related, theological questions. The first was the general fate of non-Muslims in the next life, that is, whether or not they were eligible for salvation despite their failure to embrace Islam, and the second was whether God would reward non-Muslims for their practical contributions to secular human welfare, despite their failure to have a proper religious intention (niyya).™

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The roundtable participants generally agreed that moral culpability for the failure to embrace Islam could not attach unless several stringent requirements were first met, most notably that an invitation to become a Muslim had reached the individual in an “appropriate fashion” (‘ala wajhiha).*° This modernist theory of culpability can be appropriately described as an “actual notice” doctrine because it focuses on the circumstances of the individual non-Muslim and asks whether he or she can be held blameworthy for his or her nonadherence to or rejection of Islam. Unlike premodern theologians, who were generally satisfied with what amounts to a doctrine of “constructive notice” in order to conclude that non-Muslims are morally culpable, these theologians went to some lengths to establish what the actual communicative requirements for culpability were. Thus, Khallaf said, “And what we mean by ‘appropriate fashion’ is that the invitation reaches him [the non-Muslim] in a clear fashion, accompanied by supporting argumentation with evidence and proof that is sufficient to cause him to investigate it [i.e., the call to Islam] and to submit to it. As for those non-Muslims who have never heard of the Islamic call, or they have heard of it only from [Christian] missionaries or from those who distort (yushawwihiin) Islam, the Islamic call has not reached such persons appropriately. . . They are in the judgment of Islam to be saved from punishment despite their nonbelief and lack of [true] faith.”*° Abt Zahra, meanwhile, pointed out that Muslim theologians are of

two opinions with respect to this question. The first, which Abi Zahra states is accepted by many theologians, is that the Prophet Muhammad communicated Islam perfectly to his companions, who then, after his death, spread out throughout the world, east and west, to the point that, “Every person now has the ability to understand [Islam], and so therefore, ignorance cannot be an excuse because it is within each individual’s power to know it, for the names ‘Qur’an’ and ‘Islam’ have spread far and wide to

all areas [of the earth].”*” On the “constructive notice” view, the moral culpability of non-Muslims in the next life does not turn on whether they have received a detailed and accurate account of Islam and its doctrines;** rather, it is a function of their ability to discover the truth of its message, a

notion rooted in the doctrine of the obligation of inquiry. This traditional position was advocated most forcefully by one of the roundtable’s participants, ‘Abd al-Halim Basytini. He stated in response to Abii Zahra and Khallaf that, “Every individual is under an obligation to search for the true

religion [and] embrace it, because religion is necessary for every individual. Accordingly, these inventors, given their vast culture and deep

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45

learning, are capable of grasping the truth about Islam, its principles and its teachings. Therefore, their ignorance is no excuse, given the ease with which truthful information about it can be obtained.”” Aba Zahra attributes the second opinion, that of the “the actual notice” doctrine, to Muhammad ‘Abduh. According to this doctrine, moral culpability for rejection of Islam arises only when an individual unreasonably rejects Islam after having received a subjectively appropriate invitation to adopt Islam. Abii Zahra said,

Islam—and it is the natural law (al-qanin al-‘adi)—can only consider this question from the perspective of truth and justice: is it possible for a human being to say that a person in the depths of Africa or North or South America or in the far reaches of Europe who [subjectively] knows nothing of Islam, to the point that some of them call it “the Turkish religion” instead of Islam [is to be condemned as an unbeliever]? If they know nothing of Islam except that it is “the Turkish religion,” justice requires that we conclude that they are not accountable and not culpable. Indeed, if there is accountability it is for those who have been negligent in calling [people to Islam in the proper manner]. Accordingly, it is the obligation of Muslims to spread Islam’s true teachings among the nations of the world. ... And if we have been negligent, we are the sinners; they are not sinners on account of their ignorance.” Two features of the “actual notice” doctrine are striking when compared to the “constructive notice” doctrine. First, the majority of the participants in the discussion are concerned that no one should be subject to punishment in the next life until they have had a fair opportunity to understand the teachings of Islam, something that includes communication of Islamic teachings in their own language.*' For Abii Zahra, it is a matter of natural justice that precludes God from punishing anyone in the next life except for what amounts to a knowing or reckless rejection of truth. Second, the medieval doctrine of the obligation to inquire, is no longer categorical, but rather springs into existence only after a non-Muslim learns enough about Islam from reliable sources to cause him or her, as a subjective matter, to grasp Islam’s possible truth. Only at that moment can one begin to speak of moral culpability; until that time, it is Muslims who are morally culpable. Accordingly, it is Muslims who bear the burden of teaching Islam to

non-Muslims and no longer the burden of the non-Muslim to discover

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Islam’s truth through diligent inquiry. The replacement of the “constructive notice” conception of non-Muslims’ moral culpability with the “actual notice” doctrine explains in important part the centrality that the concept of da‘wa (calling people to the truth) has come to play in regularizing, from a theological perspective, the presenceof Muslim minorities in liberal democracies.” The roundtable also articulated a substantial revision of Islamic ethical doctrines regarding what, from a religious perspective, constitutes good works.

The classical position, which

Khallaf endorses,

is that, in the

absence of sound faith, an individual’s good deeds lack religious merit (although such individuals are entitled to receive secular rewards, such as public acclaim and a good reputation). This is so because revelation stresses repeatedly the notion that religiously meritorious conduct is a combination of correct conduct conjoined with the intention to worship God through performance of the act. It would seem impossible to satisfy the second condition of a religious act if the person is motivated by the desire to serve humanity rather than God.* Abt Zahra generally follows the same line of reasoning as Khallaf, with the following important qualification: Abi Zahra made clear that the deeds of non-Muslims, performed for the sake of humanity, are religiously meritorious in themselves, at least in circumstances in which the non-Muslim is not culpable for not adhering to Islam. Even as Khallaf defended the traditional insistence on the necessity of a religious intention for a deed to have religious merit, however reluctantly,*® Khallaf’s colleague Muhammad al-Banna appeared willing to go beyond the views of Khallaf and Abi Zahra and to grant religious significance to good deeds performed simply for the sake of “humanity” rather than out of religious motivation, even when the non-Muslim had been adequately informed of Islamic teachings and was thus morally culpable for his failure to embrace Islam.“ For al-Banna, the pivotal figure from Islamic religious history with respect to this question is that of Aba Talib, the Prophet Muhammad’s uncle. Despite never becoming a Muslim, Abi Talib continued to protect his nephew during the worst period of persecution the nascent Muslim community experienced in Mecca. In recognition of Abt Talib’s pivotal role in protecting the early Muslim community, the

Prophet Muhammad was reported to have declared that Abii Talib’s punishment would be substantially mitigated in the next life.” Aba Talib’s theological significance lies in the fact that Islam, without doubt, had been communicated

to him adequately, yet he did not become a Muslim.

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Al-Banna suggests that the most plausible explanation for Abi Talib’s reduced punishment is the notion that the good deeds of even the theologically culpable have religious value. Although al-Banna suggests this conclusion, he was content with concluding that the religious worth of the deeds of modern non-Muslims who contribute to the welfare of humanity, even if they are theologically culpable for their failure to become a Muslim, is a question that should be left to God (tafwid), a position that is, on its own terms, a substantial departure from traditional Islamic theology that denied any religious significance to the deeds of culpable non-Muslims.* It is safe to assume

that, for al-Banna,

nonculpable

non-Muslims,

a

fortiori, would receive better treatment than Abt Talib in the next life. As Mustafa Zayd, one of the participants to the roundtable observed, discussions of the fate of non-Muslims in the next life and whether their deeds had any religious significance was not really the point of this roundtable; rather, “the question of the roundtable has a noble goal, and it is our relationship to those [non-Muslims who were the subject of the roundtable’s discussion] and other [non-Muslims]’” and how long (or under what circumstances) are Muslims obliged to maintain a posture of dialogue, based on peaceful invitation of Others to Islam? In other words, what we are really interested in is the practical political consequences of these theological discussions. This chapter now turns to that question, first discussing the doctrine of jihad and then the possibility of political cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims in light of these theological controversies.

Jihad Revisionism as a Reflection of Theological Revisionism From the theological perspective, the critical doctrinal developments within the thought of the twentieth-century Egyptian modernist school with respect to the status of non-Muslims can justly be described as the elevation of practical virtue—what Rawls would recognize as the “political virtues”—over the theoretical virtue of attaining true knowledge of God that the medieval theologians had emphasized. This is reflected in the evisceration of the duty of inquiry, the corresponding increased weight given to the duty to convey adequately Islam’s teachings, and, at a minimum, the de facto recognition of the religious merit of nonbelievers’ good deeds.

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One witnesses a parallel development in twentieth-century reformers’ writings on the law of jihad, warfare with non-Muslims.” Although it is often assumed that medieval Islamic law imposed jihad in the sense of offensive warfare as a duty on Muslims as part of their obligation to spread Islam, limited only by temporary truces,’ prernodern Muslim jurists in fact expressed a variety of positions with respect to the precise contours of the duty of nondefensive jihad.* No Sunni writer in the premodern period, as far as I know, however, argued that Islamic restraints, in the

absence of a treaty, prohibited wars to acquire the territory of peaceful non-Islamic states. Twentieth-century reformist Muslim theologians in al-Azhar, however, argued for precisely this position, beginning in the interwar period and later in the aftermath of World War II and the establishment of the United Nations. Their theory of jihad in turn was premised on a certain conception of Islam as a rational religion that wins adherents through rational dialogue and invitation, da‘wa, and a conception of persons as autonomous and rational beings who have the ability to recognize and accept truth, simply by virtue of a rational examination of the evidence. This revisionist doctrine of jihad complements the revisionist theory of excuse described above: because religious truth could be discovered through open discussion, an aggressive conception of jihad was morally incoherent. For these twentieth-century modernist scholars, Muslims’ obligation to fight non-Muslims was not a matter of their nonbelief in Islam, but rather the duty to fight turned on whether a particular non-Muslim power refused to enter into mutually respectful relations with Muslims, including, critically, its recognition of Muslims’ right to practice their religion freely, teach Islamic doctrines, and call Others to it. These reformist theologians therefore proposed an interpretation of jihad that was always limited to self-defense: either defense against invasion by non-Muslims, or defense of the right of Muslims to teach Others about Islam. Ahmad al-Maraghi, son of a former rector of the Azhar seminary, argued in his multi-volume commentary on the Qur'an published in 1946, that Q. 2:256—which provides, “There is no compulsion in religion. Truth is clearly distinguished from error, so whoever rejects false gods and believes in God has grasped tightly to the firmest bond which shall not be

split. God is all-hearing and all-knowing’—established two fundamental principles. The first is that religious faith is based on evidence and proof, not compulsion. The second is that it prohibits Muslims from demanding of non-Muslims either that they accept Islam or choose war.” Verses such

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as Q. 9:29—which states, “And fight those who do not believe in God nor in the Last Day, who do not prohibit that which God and His Messenger have prohibited, such ones of the People of the Book who do not follow the religion of truth, until they pay tribute, out of their property, after their submission,” and which has been used to justify an obligation upon Muslims to fight non-Muslim political powers—were in fact responses to aggression from neighboring scripturalist powers, such as Byzantium, and accordingly, only laid out the rules of warfare for fighting hostile scripturalists. These rules differed from the rules that applied to the Arab pagans, for whom no choice was given but to renounce their paganism and become Muslims. The conditions on which Muslims may fight scripturalists, however, remain “aggression against you or your territories, oppression or religious persecution of you, or threats against your security and safety, as the Byzantines had done.” Mahmoud Shaltout, who was a reformist rector of the Azhar in the 1950s, developed a similar line of argument in two books, the first in 1933 titled al-Da‘wa al-Muhammadiyya wa-l-qital fi al-Islam (“Muhammad’s mission and fighting in Islam”), and the second in 1948 titled al-Qur’an wa-l-qital (“The Qur’an and fighting”). Shaltout argued that the traditional method of exegesis, which applied a verse-by-verse method, was faulty and erroneously led some commentators to assert, in connection with their commentaries on verses treating fighting, that seventy verses in the Qur’an had been abrogated. In contrast to the traditional method, Shaltout argued that a more faithful reading of the Qur’an required the exegete to gather all the verses that were relevant to a certain topic—in this case fighting—and interpret them together. By doing so, Shaltout hoped to dispel the misconception that the Qur’an’s message was concerned solely with the relationship of individuals to their Lord, and to affirm the Qur’an’s “desire for peace and its aversion against bloodshed and killing for the sake of vanities of this world.”™ Appealing to the evidence of numerous Qur’anic verses that appeal to human beings’ reason as the basis for affirmation of God’s oneness, he argued that Islam is built on the concept of free faith. Thus, the Qur’an makes consistent appeal to human reason as the basis for accepting its truth, even eschewing appeal to the miraculous as a proof of the Prophet’s truthfulness.” Accordingly, Shaltout asserted that the core Qur’anic teaching on fighting is that it is permitted to prevent religious persecution, including persecution of the followers of other religions.®' For this reason, fighting must cease when religious persecution comes to an end.” As for Q. 9:29,

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Shaltout argued that this verse is not a command (or even a grant of permission) to fight unbelievers solely on account of their unbelief; instead, that verse applied only to those groups of unbelievers, which included some scripturalists, who participated in the religious persecution of Muslims® or otherwise indicated their intention to resist the call to Islam violently.” Shaltout concluded, therefore, that the Qur’an permits fighting for only three reasons: defending against aggression, protecting the Islamic mission, and defending religious freedom.” Accordingly, Shaltout argued that Qur’anic teachings regarding requiting evil with good (41:34) and calling people to Islam with wisdom and beautiful admonition (16:125) remain applicable, despite the revelation of verses permitting, and at times obligating, armed conflict, but on the condition that adherence to those principles of “forgiveness and pardon . . . do not infringe on pride and honor.”

Yusuf al-Qaradaw: Theological Kuft, Lega/ Kufr and the Prospects for Muslim—Non-Muslim Political Cooperation While al-Maraghi and Shaltout develop the political consequences of this revised theological conception of non-Muslim culpability in the context of international relations, Yusuf al-Qaradawi applies it to the problem of political cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims within a single state. For al-Qaradawi, kufr (typically translated as “unbelief”) operates on two different levels, the theological and the legal.” Whereas the question of the theological status of non-Muslims is ultimately one for God on the Last Day, for purposes of Islamic law, all persons are either Muslims or non-Muslims, the latter being anyone who does not explicitly affirm the Islamic declaration of faith. The significance of this classification is effectively jurisdictional: by stating that only those who affirm Islamic theological doctrines are legally Muslim, he exempts all-who do not affirm these truths from the substantive norms of Islamic law. Theologically, however, legal kufr is not the same as theological kufr: because of the doctrine that culpability only arises after a person has education about Islamic teachings in an “appropriate fashion,” it is the case that many non-Muslims who, as a matter of Islamic law, take the status of kafir (typically translated as “unbeliever”), nevertheless may be saved on the Last Day. Al-Qaradawi, moreover, adopts a subjective notion of “appropriate fashion” so that all but the obstinate are eligible for salvation in the next life.

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With al-Qaradawi'’s and Shaltout’s limitation of theological unbelief to obstinate rejection of Islam, the theological doctrine of excuse comes fullcircle: whereas al-‘Anbari and al-Jahiz suggested in the first centuries of Islamic theology the possibility that good faith theological error can be tolerated, a position that implied that non-Muslims were only morally culpable if they obstinately rejected Islam’s truth, mature Muslim theology, as represented by theologians such as al-Ghazali, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, and al-Qarafi, expressly rejected the possibility that only the obstinate were to be condemned by God.® Yet this is precisely the position Shaltout and al-Qaradawi adopt. | Why does al-Qaradawi adopt an early theological doctrine that had been expressly repudiated by the mature theological tradition? The answer appears to lie in the political context of the argument. Al-Qaradawi made this argument in response to a claim that Jews and Christians could not be deemed to be non-Muslims for purposes of Islamic law, and thus had to be deemed to be Muslims or some category other than Muslim or nonbeliever. The basis of this claim was that, because Islamic substantive law permitted Muslims to establish relatively strong bonds of social solidarity and cooperation with adherents of these two religions, the Qur’an’s correspondingly strong condemnation of unbelief could not refer to them.” Al-Qaradawi’s distinction between theological unbelief (which is quite narrow) and legal unbelief (which is quite broad) serves his political aim of preserving a meaningful role for Islamic law for the governance of Muslims while establishing legitimate grounds for wide political cooperation with non-Muslims. Accordingly, his capacious interpretation of the theological doctrine of excuse allows him to argue that verses in the Qur’an that counsel Muslims to be suspicious of, if not hostile to, non-Muslims, applies only to non-Muslims that are fanatic in their hostility to Islam. The Islamic solution to the political problem of religious and doctrinal pluralism, therefore, is not doctrinal syncretism, as suggested by the article that prompted his response, but rather the recognition that Islamic substantive law treats just, peaceful non-Muslims differently from those who are unjust and hostile to Islam.” He finds scriptural support for this distinction in two verses of the Qur’an, which he calls the “effective constitution governing [Muslims’] relations with non-Muslims.”” The first verse declares, “God does not forbid you from loving and behaving justly towards [non-Muslims] who did not wage war on you on account of your religion or expel you from your homes, for God certainly loves the just” (60:8). The second and

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succeeding verse declares, “God only forbids you from taking as allies those who waged war on you on account of your religion, expelled you from your homes and assisted in expelling you [therefrom], and whosoever makes alliances with them, they are the unjust” (60:9). Implicitly, verses of the Qur’an suggesting hostility between Muslims and nonMuslims—for example, “You will not find people who believe in God and the Last Day manifesting love for those who contend with God and His Messenger, though they are their fathers, or their sons, or their brothers or their clan” (58:22)—are limited to those non-Muslims who are unjust and actively hostile toward Islam. His distinction between hostile unbelievers and just unbelievers, combined with the distinction between theological and legal unbelief, then allows al-Qaradawi to develop a new ground for political cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims that does not appear to be based on the doctrine of dhimma.” The Islamic grounds he identifies for political cooperation with non-Muslims are as follows:

The Muslim’s belief that each individual has dignity without regard to his or her religion, race, or color

The Muslim’s belief that religious difference is part of the divine plan that granted human beings freedom and choice Muslims are not obligated to judge nonbelievers on account of their nonbelief or to punish them on account of their error; instead, account-

ability is for God on the Day of Judgment, and their reward (or punishment) is left to God A Muslim’s belief that God commands justice and loves fairness, and that He hates injustice and punishes the unjust, even if the perpetrator is a Muslim and the victim a polytheist.” Although al-Qaradawi does not explicitly renounce the medieval doctrine of dhimma in this fatwa, it is notable that he does not mention it; moreover, the tenor of the argument suggests that the medieval justification for the relationship no longer exists in his mind. For example, he states that it is impermissible to address non-Muslims using the term kuffar (unbelievers), even though for purposes of Islamic law they are unbelievers, stating that “the Qur’an did not address any group of[Arab] polytheists or others, with a term [derived from] ‘polytheist’ or ‘unbelief’; instead, when it addresses polytheists it states ‘Oh people!’ or ‘Oh Children of Adam!’ or with a similar phrase, just as it addresses Jews

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and Christians with a title that draws hearts close, not [one] that creates distance between them.”” In the premodern era, the political function of dhimma was to generate some morally relevant basis upon which non-Muslims would become subject to the rules of Islamic law and thus establish peace between Muslims and non-Muslims. While peace was guaranteed between Muslims by virtue of their moral commitment to abide by the rules of Islam, this did not provide a basis for peace between them and non-Muslims, because Islamic law, by its terms, did not apply to the conduct of non-Muslims, at least not in a political sense. The relationship of dhimma solved this problem by establishing a contractual basis for legal relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, pursuant to which the latter agreed to abide by the nonreligious elements of Islamic law, and the former agreed to provide them all the civil (but not political) rights of Islamic law and defend them against all aggressors. Al-Qaradawi, however, seems to imagine that Muslim—non-Muslim relations can take place in the domain of justice, which, although commanded by God (e.g., Q. 60:8), may not necessarily be defined exclusively by revelatory norms and is therefore something that is, implicitly at least, shared and universal. Al-Qaradawi's implicit commitment to a normative conception of universal, mutual standards of justice that exists logically prior to the ethical knowledge imparted by revelation is also consistent with the position he attributes to Shaltout regarding the scope of Islamic law. Shaltout’s description of the domain of Islamic norms limits its application to two spheres, the ritual duties that Muslims owe God and the religious duties (e.g., performance of funeral rituals) that Muslims owe one another. As for the other rules of Islamic law (e.g., contract law and tort law), they do not appear to be “rules of Islam” or at least not “rules of Islam” in a religiously significant way. This again suggests that the domain of Islamic law dealing with secular matters, the so-called mu‘dmaldt, are in reality nothing other than a specified conception of the justice commanded by God in the Qur’an, but because justice in these matters is effectively universal and exists prior to revelation, it seems that for both Shaltout and al-Qaradawi, there is a kind of looseness in the determination of the relationship of secular rules to revelation that would be consistent with the existence of a just, nonsectarian law that governs secular relationships. Conversely, however, whatever the precise content of just non-Islamic law,

it could not interfere with the religious obligations Muslims owe God or to one another, for those are, in principle at least, nonnegotiable.”

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Conclusion Twentieth-century Muslim reformisttheologians, beginning with Muhammad ‘Abduh, developed a new Islamic theory of religious toleration that allowed for possibilities of political toleration that went beyond the medieval theory of hierarchical toleration as manifested in the concept of dhimma. This theological revisionism was achieved largely through a reworking of the premodern doctrine of “the communication of revelation.” This revisionist theology in turn produced a much more robust notion of excuse than their premodern predecessors would have recognized. In addition to narrowing the theological scope of unbeliever drastically, they also revised ethical theory to grant prima facie religious significance to acts performed by non-Muslims with the intent of serving “humanity.” The details of their arguments not only involved revision of core Islamic theological and ethical doctrines, but also involved revisionist interpretations of scripture, in particular, reading the Qur’an to prohibit aggressive warfare against peaceful nonMuslims and expanding the notion of a religious intention to include humanistic motivations.” The fact that these scholars advance theological and ethical arguments in favor of toleration, however, does not mean that their arguments are categorical: they remain historically contingent to the extent that it requires the existence of “reasonable” non-Muslims, which, from the perspective of these Muslim theologians, means the recognition by non-Muslims of not only the secular rights of Muslims, but also their religious right to discharge their Islamic obligations openly; to teach Islam internally to the Muslim community; and finally, to call Others to Islam. This chapter began with the debate between Rousseau and Rawls on the question of whether a democratic government can tolerate salvation religions that teach an exclusive doctrine of salvation. The case of modernist Muslim theology provides an interesting case study for this debate. Even though the Egyptian theologians who participated in this debate were not citizens of a fully independent liberal state, all of them, with the exception of al-Qaradawi and ‘Abduh, lived much of their adult lives during Egypt’s liberal age between the world wars. And although this experiment was cut short by nationalist struggles that culminated in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, the theological achievements of Egypt's liberal theologians were preserved and, in important ways, expanded by al-Qaradawi, even as his thought continues to show strong connections to nationalist anticolonial movements in the Muslim world, in particular, the Palestinians’ struggle against Zionism.”

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Al-Qaradawi'’s nationalist and pan-Islamist political sympathies, how-

ever, should in no way obscure or diminish his liberal theology and the prospects that it contains for peaceful political cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims.” Indeed, the fact that al-Qaradawi has these twopersonas, one of liberal reformer, and the other of strident Arab nationalist and pan-Islamist, makes his example and that of the Egyptian modernists even more relevant to the debate between Rousseau and Rawls: to the extent that they accept the possibility of a transnational (or domestic) order that is consistent with Islamic conceptions of justice, they were willing to become more tolerant of non-Muslims’ erroneous beliefs about God and envisage them as likely recipients of divine grace in the next life. However, as al-Qaradawi's strident nationalism makes clear, the theological and political toleration Muslim modernism offers is not without demands of its own; but unlike the theological demands of a medieval theologian such as al-Qarafi, their demands are political.®° To paraphrase the words of Shaltout quoted earlier, civic and religious toleration are realistic possibilities, but only on the condition that adherence to those principles “do not infringe on pride and honor.”®! Given the aspirational norm of liberal democracy to create a political community that is consistent with the individual dignity of all citizens (or among states in the international order), it is unsurprising that the prospect of the creation of an international and domestic political order reflecting this ideal served as a catalyst for the theological innovations achieved by this group of Egyptian theologians in the twentieth century. Twentieth-century Muslim Modernist theology, therefore, provides an important historical example in support of Rawls’ contention that not only can democracies tolerate theologies that teach “No salvation outside the Church,” but also that, far from subverting the stability of a democracy, liberal democracy, if anything, is more likely to subvert theological exclusivity.

Notes —

. Jean Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract with Geneva Manuscript and Political Economy, ed. Roger Masters, trans. Judith Masters (New York: St. Martin’s Press,

1978), 131-132. 2 1Did., 131) 3. Ibid. 4. See, for example, Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S., 877 (1990), and Layla Sahin v. Turkey, E.C.H.R., Application no. 44774/98 (November 10, 2005) 4 107.

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. See, for example, Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S., 877 (1990) (permitting the restriction of a religious practice by an otherwise valid generally applicable law provided there is no discriminatory animus in the legislation), and Layla Sahin v. Turkey, E.C.H.R., Application no. 44774/98 (November 10, 2005) § 107 (permitting restriction

on the freedom to manifest religion if the restriction is prescribed by law, in furtherance of a legitimate aim, and necessary in a democratic society). . Such circumstances would arise when the intolerant doctrine or dogma poses a reasonable threat to the public order; the existence of that threat is “supported by ordinary observation and modes of thought’; and the threat to the public order is reasonably imminent. John Rawls, Theory ofJustice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 213.

John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), xxvii (“Perhaps the doctrine of free faith developed because it is difficult, if not impossible, to believe in the damnation of those with whom we have, with trust and confidence,

long and fruitfully cooperated in maintaining a just society.”). . Such a study would entail surveying not only the theological and legal treatises, exegetical works of the Qur’an and the Sunna, but also the views of other Islamicate traditions, whether religious such as Sufism, or secular, such as literature (adab). It would also need to take into account informal religious practices and celebrations as well as secular institutions that comprised Muslim “civil society.”

. There is also a third category, that of the non-Muslim who is protected by a grant of safe passage, referred to alternatively as mu’amman, musta’min, or mu‘Ghad. I have omitted discussion of this third classification because in classical and medieval Islamic law, this status was transitory, and would ultimately resolve itself by the nonMuslim adopting Islam, becoming a dhimmi, or returning to his status as an enemy (harbi). . For a detailed treatment of Muhammad ‘Abduh’s thought and his impact on both religious and secular reformers in the twentieth century, see Albert Hourani, Arabic

Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939 (Cambridge University Press: New York, 1983), 1330-192 and 222-244.

. Some of the modernist theologians whose arguments on the fate of non-Muslims will be discussed in the present chapter also wrote on modern international relations from the perspective of Islamic law in an attempt to reconcile the secular system of international law with the historical Islamic law of international relations. See Mahmoud Shaltout, al-Qur’an wa-l-gital (“The Quran and fighting’) (Nazareth: Matba‘at al-Nasr wa-Maktab Ittihad al-Sharq, 1948), and Muhammad Aba Zahra, al-‘Alaqat al-dawliyyafi al-Islam (“International relations in Islam”) (Cairo: al-Dar al-Qawmiyya li-l-Nashr, 1964). . Mohammad Fadel, “The True, the Good and the Reasonable: The Theological and Ethical Roots of Public Reason in Islamic Law,” Canadian Journal of Law andJurisprudence 21 (2008): 5, 21-23 (describing the scope of theology in the Islamic tradition). . See, for example, Aba Hamid al-Ghazali, al-Mustasfa (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya,

1993), 347-348.

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14. Muslim ethics are largely defined through the discipline of jurisprudence—usil alfigh—and is encapsulated in breaking down all human acts into one of five moral categories: obligatory, prohibited, recommended, disfavored, and indifferent. Aba Hamid al-Ghazali, al-Mustasfa (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1993), 23-27 (giving an overview of the relationship ofjurisprudence to Islamic ethics). . Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani, Fath al-bart: Sharh Sahih al-Bukhari, ed. Abd al-Aziz Ibn Baz

(Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1989), 13:393-396. . Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, al-Mahsialfi ‘ilm al-usal (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1988), 2:500. Aba Hamid al-Ghazali, al-Mustasfa (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1993), 352; Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi, Sharh tanqih al-fusil, ed. Taha ‘Abd al-Ra’tif Sa‘d (Cairo: Mak-

tabat al-Kulliyyat al-Azhariyya, 1993), 438-444. 18. Aba Hamid al-Ghazali, al-Mustasfa (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1993), 349;

Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi, Nafa’is al-usiil fi sharh al-mahsil, ed. ‘Adil Ahmad ‘Abd al-Mawjiid and ‘Alt Muhammad Mu‘awwad (Riyadh: Maktabat Nizar Mustafa al-Baz,

1997), 9:4052-4054. . Abi Hamid al-Ghazali, al-Mustasfa (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1993), 349; Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi, Nafa’is al-usal fi sharh al-mahsil, ed. ‘Adil Ahmad ‘Abd al-Mawjtid and ‘Ali Muhammad Mu‘awwad (Riyadh: Maktabat Nizar Mustafa al-Baz,

1997), 9:4026. . Aba Hamid al-Ghazali, al-Mustasfa (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1993), 349. 21. Ibid. Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi, Nafa’is al-usil fi sharh al-mahsil, ed. ‘Adil Anmad ‘Abd

22.

al-Mawjtid and ‘Ali Muhammad Mu‘awwad (Riyadh: Maktabat Nizar Mustafa al-Baz,

1997), 9:4053-4054. 2

. On the distinction between the “claims of people” and the “claims of God,” see Anver

Ww

Emon, “Huqtq Allah and Huqiiq al-‘Ibad: A Legal Heuristic for a Natural Rights Regime,” Islamic Law and Society 13 (2006): 325. 24. Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi, Nafa’is al-usil fi sharh al-mahsal, ed. ‘Adil Anmad ‘Abd al-Mawjid and ‘Ali Muhammad Mu‘awwad (Riyadh: Maktabat Nizar Mustafa al-Baz,

1997), 9:4053-4054. 2

. Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi, al-Dhakhira (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1994), 3:385-

wn

386. Al-Qarafi reported the following opinions on the obligation of jihad in addition to his own: (1) it lapsed upon the Prophet Muhammad’s defeat ofthe pagans in Arabia

except in circumstances where the ruler declares war on an enemy state; and (2) it is satisfied whenever the ruler defends the frontiers and fortifies them so as to deter effectively enemy incursions. Al-Qarafi reported no difference of opinion that Mus-

lims are required to engage in military conflict to repel an enemy in circumstances where the failure to do so would threaten the lives of Muslims. 26. Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi, al-Furiig (Beirut: Dar al-Ma‘rifa li-l-Tiba‘a wa-l-Nashr, 1974),

4:104 (al-asl i‘tibar al-ghalib wa-taqdimuhu ‘ala al-nadir wa-huwa sha’n al-sharia).

27.

Ibid., 106 (al-shari‘ .. . athbata hukm al-nadir rahmatan bi-l-‘ibad).

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28, Aba Hamid al-Ghazali, On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abu Hamid

al-Ghazali’s Faysal al-Tafriqa, trans. Sherman Jackson (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 126.

29. Mohammad Fadel, “The True, the Good and the Reasonable: The Theological and Ethical Roots of Public Reason in Islamic Law,” Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 21 (2008): 34n117,

30. Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi, al-Furig (Beirut: Dar al-Ma‘rifa li-l-Tiba‘a wa-l-Nashr, 1974), 4:104. ; 31.rary “Nadwat Liwa’ al-Islam,” Liwa’ al-Islam 9 (April-May 1955): 61-70. 32. Other participants included Muhammad al-Banna, ‘Abd al-Wahhab Hammida, ‘Abd al-Halim Basyini, Muhammad ‘Ali Shatta, and Mustafa Zayd. Aba Zahra and Khallaf

were particularly influential as well in recasting the classical legal tradition into the legal system of modern Arab states. See Monique C. Cardinal, “Islamic Legal Theory

Curriculum: Are the Classics Taught Today?,” Islamic Law and Society 12 (2005): 244. . “Nadwat Liwa’ al-Islam,” Liwa’ al-Islam 9 (April-May 1955): 61.

. Ibid. . Ibid., 70.

. Ibid., 61-62. . Ibid., 64.

. . . . .

43.

Ibid. Ibid., 65. Ibid., 64-65. Ibid., 68. On the centrality of da‘wa in modern justifications for Muslims living as minorities in non-Muslim lands, see Andrew March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Quest for an Overlapping Consensus (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 221-229. “Nadwat Liwa’ al-Islam,” Liwa’ al-Islam 9 (April-May 1955): 62. Basytini defended the traditional position, arguing that, whenever a person is morally culpable for not becoming a Muslim, his rewards “are in this world, in accordance with the good that they did, in terms of wealth, comfort, and other such things.” As for the worth of those deeds in the next life, they will be, according to Basyiini, who quoted the Qur’an, “like a mirage in a plain; the thirsty believes it to be water, but when he arrives, he discovers it is nothing.” Ibid., 65-66.

44. Ibid., 65. 45: Ibid., G2. 40. Ibid., 63.

47. Ibid., 63 (innahufi dahdah min al-nar). 48. Ibid. (al-‘aql al-mutlag yara anna ha’ula’i al-nas yufawwad amruhum li-khalig al-nas). 49. Ibid., 69. 50. Ibid., 70.

“No Salvation Outside Islam” 51. re

59

The term jihad, which literally means “struggle,” has many meanings, only one of

which refers to armed conflict with non-Muslims. In Islamic law, however, the term is used exclusively to refer to warfare between Muslim and non-Muslim states. 52. See, for example, Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1955), 16-17 (stating that prosecution ofthe jihad was obligatory upon Muslims until they had subdued the entire non-Muslim world). 53° One such interpretation of jihad, for example, maintained that it was satisfied if the frontiers were adequately defended. See Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi, al- Dhakhira (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1994), 3:385-386. 54 That this modernist interpretation of jihad is dependent upon a conception of the person as enjoying autonomous reason is confirmed by the modern interpretation of jihad by those Muslim scholars who maintain that offensive jihad is a duty whenever possible. For those scholars, truth, especially religious truth, is not likely to be discovered discursively; rather, it must be experienced in some sort of manifest way. Even if it is not impossible for non-Muslims to discover the truth of Islam discursively, the average person will not be in a position to recognize Islam’s truthfulness until he or she experiences it by living in an Islamic order, something that necessitates incorporation of non-Muslim states into an Islamic state, even if that requires force. See, for

example, ‘Abd al-Karim Zaydan, Majmi‘at buhiath fighiyya (Baghdad: Maktabat al-Quds,

1975), 62-63. 55: Ahmad al-Maraghi, Tafstr al-Maraghi (Beirut: Dar Ihya’ al-Turath al-‘Arabi, 1974), 3:16. 56. Ibid., 10:95. 57: This latter work has been translated by Rudolph Peters and is included in his book Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2005). 58. Ibid., 61-62.

59: Ibid., 62-64. Go. Ibid., 68-Go.

61.Pt Ibid 73. 62. Ibid., 74-75. 63. Ibid., 77-78. 64. Ibid., 98-99. Shaltout referenced in this context the murder of the Prophet Muhammad’s ambassador by Shurahbil al-Ghassani, a vassal of the Byzantine ruler, and the decision of the Persian emperor to tear up the Prophet's letter inviting him

to Islam.

65. Ibid., 79. 66. Ibid., 81.

67. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Fatawa mu ‘asira (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 2003), 3:151-191. 68. Ibid., 3:154-155. As authority for this subjective conception of culpable unbelief, alQaradawi quotes approvingly a long passage from his teacher, the aforementioned

Shaltout. Ibid., 3:155-156, quoting Mahmoud (Cairo: Dar al-Shuriiq, n.d.), 19-20.

Shaltout, al-Islam ‘agida wa-sharva

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69. Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, al-Mahsal fi ‘ilm al-usil (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1988), 2:500 (noting that most of the Prophet's enemies were not obstinate, but rather

chose to continue to follow their own religions solely out of deference to tradition and authority); Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi, Nafa’is al-usal fi sharh al-mahsul, ed. ‘Adil Anmad ‘Abd al-Mawjiid and ‘Ali Muhammad Mu‘awwad (Riyadh: Maktabat Nizar Mustafa al-Baz, 1997), 9:4052-4054 (obstinate refusal to embrace Islam, although it exists, is

rare and that no excuses are sufficient to negate the sin arising out of errors regarding doctrine); and Abi Hamid al-Ghazali, al-Mustasfa (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya,

1993), 349 (while accepting the rational plausibility of the view that only the obstinate will be punished, concluding that revelation rejects that view and holds even those

who reject Islam without realizing its truth, as nevertheless culpable). 70. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Fatawa mu ‘Asira (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 2003), 3:184. ilkPas Ibid., 3:184-185. FPA: Ibid., 3:185. 73: Even though he does not explicitly renounce the notion of dhimma, his substantive position on the political relationship of Muslims and non-Muslims is inconsistent with medieval conceptions of this relationship.

74- Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Fatawa mu Asira (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 2003), 3:189-191. 75: Ibid., 3:187-188. 76. In other words, a Muslim could not abandon adherence to those rules except in circumstances where he or she is excused from compliance by virtue of an extrinsic

factor, for example, compulsion or the like. 77. While a thorough review of premodern commentaries on the relevant Qur’anic verses is well beyond the scope of this paper, it is sufficient to point out that whether the verses cited by Shaltout and al-Qaradawi as representing the “constitution” for the

Islamic view of Muslim relations with non-Muslims were legally relevant to Muslims’ conduct at all is a matter of historical controversy, since at least some interpreters believed they were abrogated by Q. 9:29 (i.e., they lacked legal force, even if they remained part of scripture). This was the view of those interpreters who obliged Muslims to wage war against non-Muslim powers whenever practically possible. See, for

example, Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Jami‘ al-baydn ‘an ta’wil ay al-Qur’an (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1968), 28:66 (refuting the argument that Q. 9:29 abrogated Q. 60:8-9 and the conclusion that Muslims were prohibited from maintaining friendly relations with non-Muslims, even in circumstances when no peace treaty existed between the Muslim state and those non-Muslims, provided that relationship resulted neither in humiliation nor weakening of the Muslim state). 78, Of course, al-Qaradawi is best known (and vilified) in the West for his opinion that

Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli targets inside the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel are a legitimate form of self-defense. He also has a fatwa, how-

ever, in which he criticizes those Muslims who believe that the struggle against Zionism is a religious war rather than about justice. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Fatawa mu ‘asira

(Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 2003), 3:198-199.

“No Salvation Outside Islam”

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79. Ibid., 3:197 (noting that Islamic brotherhood is not exclusive and can be consistent

with other kinds of brotherhood, such as Arabism, patriotism, and humanism). 80. Ibid., 3:199 (denying that the fight against Zionism has anything to do with Jewish religious beliefs but is rather because “they have seized our land and cast out our people”). 81. Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2005), 81.

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PART TFWO

Diversity and Mercy

S

Lhe Ambiguity of the Quranic Command Wilham C. Chittick

Introduction According to a well-known hadith, “The disagreement of my community is a mercy” (ikhtilaf ummati rahma). Whether or not this hadith is sound, it throws a positive light on a phenomenon that is familiar to every reader of classical—not to speak of modern—Islamic literature: the Muslim community does not agree on much of anything. This is obvious in every field of learning—Qur’anic exegesis, hadith, jurisprudence, kalam (dogmatic theology), Sufism, philosophy, ethics, and so on. One of the many issues on which scholars disagree is how exactly to understand the disagreement. Certain approaches to Islamic teachings find it offensive and try to explain it away, sometimes by claiming exclusive validity for one position and often citing the hadith, “My community will divide into seventy-two sects; all but one will enter the Fire.” Other approaches are more inclined to think that disagreement is the result of divine wisdom and compassion. They may cite the hadith in the version, “My community will divide into seventy-two sects; all but one, the zindigs, will enter the Garden.”! One of the common tactics of those who are offended by disagreement is to claim consensus (ijm@‘) on their own favorite interpretation, but there is certainly no consensus on the meaning of consensus. Any claim that there is amounts to choosing one of the “seventy-two sects” as the only right position and maintaining that those who do not toe the party line belong to the lost sects—“They are not true Muslims.” This charge, of course, has been leveled at countless great scholars and sages over the centuries.

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Consensus seems originally to have been a notion invented by jurists to help them codify the Sharia. Later, some scholars applied it to faith (iman), specifically the objects of belief that Muslims should accept. If there is any consensus on faith, however, the most it can mean is that

Muslims over history, by and large, have had faith in “God, the angels, the scriptures, the messengers, and the Last Day”; or, they have had faith that the Qur’an is God’s speech. Where consensus starts to break down is in the definition of words—faith, God, angels, scriptures, messengers, etc. All these words are and have been up for grabs, and theologians and thinkers of various stripes have argued over what exactly they signify. Given the obvious diversity of opinion on the Qur’an and Muhammad, the twin foundations of the tradition, how can Muslims escape disagreement? Some ulama (traditional scholars) have suggested that the only safe path is to proclaim, “I have faith in the Qur’an as God understands it” and leave it at that. By definition, however, exegetes, jurists, theologians, and scholars cannot take this position. They need to clarify the meaning of the text for their constituencies, and the moment they try to do so, they are in fact articulating their own understanding, not God’s. Here I would like to look at the “theological” reasons for this disagreement among the ulama. If we can see why such disagreement is not only inevitable but also providential, we may be able to find reasonable grounds for concluding that the enormous diversity of religions in the past and the present has also been providential. For the most part I will refrain from quoting the opinions of the ulama and instead focus on the basic issue of Islamic thought, that is, God, the ultimate source of all multiplicity and difference. Specifically, what is it about God that leads to never-ending diversity?

Theology Theological positions underlie religious (and nonreligious) views of Self and Other. By “theology” I do not mean kalam, but rather knowledge of God, or of the Ultimate Reality, or of reality per se. In the Islamic context, discussion of the Ultimate Reality went on in diverse ways among many schools of thought, of which kalam represents one broad type (with subdivisions such as Ash‘aris, Mu'‘tazilis, Maturidis, and TwelveImam Shi‘is). Experts in kalam sometimes claimed for themselves the exclusive right to talk about God, and they tended to deal with other approaches by filing them away among the lost sects. Needless to say, the

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other approaches—specifically the two commonly labeled as “philosophy” and “Sufism’—did not take the self-magnifying claims of the kalam experts seriously. Moreover, as Islamic history unfolded, these three approaches tended to overlap. Without getting into their similarities and differences,’ let me turn to some of the issues that many if not most theologians, whatever their approach may be, take into account when discussing salvation, whether that of themselves or of Others. Islamic teachings about God are grounded in the two foundational truths voiced in the shahdda, the testimony of faith: “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is God’s Messenger.” One of the roots of the ambiguity inherent in the Qur’anic message is that the truth about God is absolute, and the truth about Muhammad is relative. In other words, the reality of God takes priority over everything else, because the universe and all it contains are created by God and contingent upon Him. Muhammad and the Qur’an depend utterly on God and, like everything else found in the world, they are not God, and hence they lack reality in some profound way. The long-standing debate over the exact status of the Qur’an in relation to God Himself has in view precisely the ambiguity that arose the moment the divine speech entered into the realm of contingency, which we call time and history. The theological significance of the shahdda is reflected in the fact that the first two principles of Islamic thinking are tawhid, the assertion of God’s unity, and nubuwwa, prophecy, the notion that God sent guidance to all peoples. Tawhid explains the divine absoluteness, and nubuwwa explains the relativity of the prophetic messages. A corollary of the second principle is that the last prophet received special favors that bestowed superiority on his message. The quickest way to understand Islamic thinking about divine unity is to reflect on the formula, “There is no god but God,” typically considered unity’s most succinct expression (kalimat al-tawhid). Given that God is one and that He is the creator of the universe, tawhid means that there is no creator but God. Given that He is merciful, it means that there is none merciful but God. Given that He is just, it means that there is none just

but God. Given that He is al-Haqq, the Real, the Truth, it means that there is nothing truly real or really true but God. All creativity, mercy, justice, truth, and reality are the exclusive province of God. Anything other than God, in and of itself, is not creative, merciful, just, or real. In other words,

the universe and all it contains are utterly contingent on absolute reality. Any reality that things do display—and no one would dispute that they do have some sort of reality—derives from God.

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In the Qur’an, this foundational doctrine of tawhid is ascribed to all prophets. It is depicted as a universal, self-evident truth that is understood by any healthy intelligence. Among its more obvious implications is that everything comes from God, everything is sustained by God, and everything sooner or later goes back to God. “Going back” (ma ‘Gd) is the third of the three major principles of Islamic theology, after tawhid and prophecy. The issue of salvation and its opposite, damnation, arises in discussions of this third principle—do people go back to God in a happy way, or do they go back in a miserable way? Do they encounter God as merciful and forgiving, or do they meet Him as angry and vengeful? In the texts, the contrast between salvation and damnation is frequently expressed in terms of “felicity” (sa‘dda) and “wretchedness” (shaqa’), a pairing derived from a verse about the Resurrection: “The day it comes, no soul shall speak save by His leave; some of them shall be wretched and some felicitous” (Q. 11:105). Discussions of prophecy address the human situation in relation to the Absolute Reality. God sent prophets because He created human beings weak and forgetful—not out of neglect or malicious intent, but because creation is weak and forgetful by definition. Nothing is truly strong but God and nothing truly remembers but God. The universe and everything it contains are evanescent and ephemeral. When Adam forgot and ate the forbidden fruit, this was only to be expected, for it is human nature to forget. Adam and his children need to be saved precisely because of forgetfulness and its attendant ills, such as ignorance, self-centeredness, hatred, and misdirected love. Salvation means to be delivered from these ills and to reach the state of health and happiness that is called understanding, compassion, and peace. Everything that people truly want is in fact a divine quality, for the simple reason that no one understands but God, no one is compassionate but God, and no one is happy but God. In other words, there is no salvation and felicity outside of God. Failure to end up

in harmony with the divine attributes that define felicity is precisely the meaning of wretchedness. Thus, in the Qur’an, those who reach Paradise “gaze” upon God (75:23), and those who fail to reach it are “veiled” from God (83:15). The function of prophecy, then, is to clarify the path that leads to felicity. God instituted this path at the beginning of the human race, and it will remain until the end of time. The Qur'an stresses that all prophets were guided by God and all guided to God. Their specific function is precisely “guidance” (huda), though this is contingent on the fact that there is no guide but God. Thus Muhammad is addressed with the words, “You do

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not guide whom you want, but God guides whomsoever He wants” (28:56). In anumber of verses the Qur'an says that God guides to “a straight path.” This is not necessarily the same as “the Straight Path” (al-sirat al-mustagim) to which Muslims aspire in their daily prayers. Straight paths are diverse, given the diversity of human beings, the diversity of prophets, and the fact that nothing is one but God. The Qur’an presents the general picture that those who follow prophetic guidance will reach salvation. But, what exactly does “following” (ittiba‘) mean? Here the messages delivered by the various prophetic messages inserted ifs, ands, and buts, and scholars of each religion have taken on the task of explaining these conditions. In the Qur'an, it is fairly clear that the most basic condition for achieving felicity—to the extent that it depends on human activity—is obedience to the divine command (amr). Hence we have the fundamental binary notion of obedience (ta‘a) and disobedience (ma‘siya), one of the most basic Arabic words for “sin.”

The Divine

Command

The Qur’an distinguishes between two sorts of commands. The first is universal, absolute, and compulsory because it addresses all things and nothing can disobey it: “His only command, when He desires a thing, is to say to it ‘Bel’, and it comes to be” (Q. 36:82). The second is particular, relative, and voluntary, because it addresses specific human beings as possessors of free will, telling them to do good and avoid evil. It designates certain activities, attitudes, and traits of character as the means to salvation, and it

warns against other activities, attitudes, and traits that may lead to damnation. People can obey or disobey this command at their discretion—in stark contrast to the first command, where disobedience is impossible. “Sin” makes sense only in terms of the second command. The promise here is that if you follow the command, you will reach felicity, but if you do not, you will end up in wretchedness—unless God’s mercy and forgiveness intervene. Jurists and theologians try to clarify the implications, caveats, and conditions of this command. If we look at the broad contours of this discussion, we can call these two commands “the ontological imperative” and “the moral imperative.” These two have been constant issues throughout history and underlie all discussions of free will. The issue is much more than simply “religious,” of course. Modern physicists, for example, like to think that the ontological

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imperative determines all things and that human freedom is an illusion. The social and psychological sciences have had many proponents of this idea, most famously B. F. Skinner. Islamic theology employs several pairs of terms to speak about the two commands. Here I will stick to “the creative command” (al-amr al-kawni) and “the religious command” (al-amr al-dini).* By making this distinction, theologians acknowledge that all things do what they must do and that, at the same time, certain things, human beings specifically, have enough free will to make decisions that will have repercussions beyond death. People are neither forced to do what they do, nor are they completely free. In any case, they cannot avoid the implications of their freedom. They are, as al-Ghazali (d. 1111) put it, “forced to be free” (majbar ‘ala al-ikhtiyar).° The creative command is absolute, because there is no god but God, no creator but God, no power but God, no actor but God. God issues the creative command to all things, and the net result is the universe and everything it contains. In contrast, the religious command is relative, because it addresses a small minority of creatures, specifically human beings and jinn, but not, for example, animals or angels. Moreover, it has assumed a great diversity of forms, each of which has been appropriate for specific circumstances. Every prophetic message was custom-designed to fit the needs of the people to whom it was addressed. As the Qur’an puts it, “We have sent no messenger save with the tongue of his people” (14:4). The truth of each message is relative to the historical and social context in which it appeared. It is not a truth for all times and places, but a truth for a context (which may very well extend to the end of time). As for why a message is “true,” this is not just because it was sent by the Truth Itself, al-Haqq, but rather because it provides the means to reach salvation. It is worth remembering that the word haqq in the Qur’an and Hadith means not only truth but also reality, appropriateness, rightness, right (as in “human rights”), and responsibility (as well as the corresponding adjectives). Moreover, al-Hagq functions as one of the basic divine names, a virtual synonym for Allah. A well-known saying of the Prophet suggests the function of “truth” in Islamic thought: “O God, I seek refuge in Thee from a knowledge that does not benefit.”° “Truth” is beneficial knowledge, because it is haqq—“right, appropriate, worthy” for the goal of human life, which is precisely to reach salvation. When theologians discuss the creative command, they bring out various implications of tawhid, the fact that there is no one in charge but God. When they discuss the religious command, they clarify various aspects of

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prophecy, the fact that God alone provides guidance, though by means of human intermediaries. Prophecy is contingent on tawhid, because there is no guide but God and none merciful and just but God. God guides because He knows perfectly well that He created human beings forgetful and ignorant, and He also knows that He bestowed upon them enough awareness of their own inadequacy to want to escape from it. In other words, God gave man both a sense of self and the free will that goes along with it. In response to the suffering that arises from this sense of self, God responds with compassion by sending the prophets. The prophets remind people who God is and who man is, and they point the way to escape from the blights of contingency. The Qur’an differentiates between two basic functions of prophecy. First, prophets remind (dhikr, tadhkira) people of what they have forgotten, which is the universal and timeless truth of tawhid, woven into their very nature (fitra). This truth, though expressed in human language, is independent of history and social context, for the simple reason that it voices the timeless reality of God Himself. The second function of the prophets is to guide people to employ their free will in trying to achieve conformity with God as the Truth, the Reality, the Right, the Appropriate—a conformity that results in nearness (qurb) and felicity. People, however, though they cannot avoid obeying the creative command, find it easy to disobey the religious command, for they were created weak, forgetful, and heedless. The two functions of prophecy are reflected in both the shahada and the two commands. Bearing witness that there is no god but God expresses the primordial and universal truth of tawhid; one way to express its implications is to speak of the creative command. Bearing witness that Muhammad is God’s Messenger acknowledges the historical, relative truth of the Qur’anic path that is expressed as the religious command. In short, the prophets taught that despite God’s absolute authority, people can avail themselves of His guidance and have a positive effect on their own becoming, or at least on the manner in which they perceive and experience their own becoming. The distinction between the two commands is closely related to the discussion of rahma, “mercy,” one of the most basic divine attributes.

Almost every chapter of the Qur’an begins with the formula of consecration, reminding readers of mercy’s primacy: “In the name of God, the All-Merciful (al-Rahman), the Ever-Merciful (al-Rahim).” This formula suggests a point made by many theologians: If it were possible to express the reality of “God” in a single word, it would be rahma. It is well to

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remember this word’s etymology, which is obvious to any Arabic speaker. Rahma is an abstract noun derived from the concrete noun rahim, “womb.” Mercy is the nurturing quality of a mother. God, as we know from the Qur’anic name “the Most Merciful of the merciful” (7:151) is “more merciful to His servants than a mother to her child” (as the Prophet said).’ In the divine scheme of things, mercy is primary, since in contrast to any other divine attribute except knowledge, it “embraces everything” (e.g., Q. 40:7). God’s attribute of mercy tells us that He has absolutely no need for anything whatsoever, that everything has need for Him, and that He responds to all things by freely giving them what they need. The universe and all that it contains are gratuitous gifts. As the Qur’anic name “the Most Merciful of the merciful” suggests, God wants only the best for His creatures. According to one hadith, God created mercy in one hundred

parts and sent one part to creation, keeping ninety-nine parts with Him-

self. With that one portion of mercy the beasts nurture their young and mothers take care of their children. And, as we know, no human mother, though she embodies only a faint trace of one part of God’s mercy, will cease loving her children. (If she does, that only goes to show that she does not deserve the name mother; we would need to “rectify her name,” as Confucius would say.) On the Day of Resurrection, the hadith goes on to say, God will join that one part of mercy to those ninety-nine parts.* Mercy is ambiguous in keeping with the ambiguity of the divine command. This comes out in discussions of the two primary names of mercy, All-Merciful and Ever-Merciful. Grammatically, both words are adjectives derived from the word rahma. Theologians generally say that the mercy designated by the name All-Merciful is omnipresent, and the mercy designated by the name Ever-Merciful is more specific and related to prophetic guidance. Put simplistically, this can mean that the All-Merciful drives the creative command, and the Ever-Merciful drives the religious command. The All-Merciful’s mercy is all-embracing, but the EverMerciful’s mercy needs to be earned. Both sorts of mercy seem to be mentioned in the Qur’anic verse, “My mercy embraces everything, but I shall write it out for those who are God-fearing and pay the alms, and

those who have faith in Our signs, those who follow the Messenger” (7:156). When God “writes out” the mercy of the Ever-Merciful for those who follow the religious command, this does not mean that He effaces the mercy of the All-Merciful from those who do not follow it. What it does suggest is that obedient servants receive an additional mercy, over and above the all-embracing mercy.

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The saying, “The disagreement of my community is a mercy,” clearly implies that God approves of diversity and disagreement. His approval is also suggested by the great variety of religious commands given to different prophets, for these cause disagreement the moment they interact. Ambiguity and disagreement can thus be read as a manifestation of mercy’s infinite reach. It extends to all people, who are endlessly diverse and who cannot possibly conform to some procrustean bed of teachings and practices. The merciful diversity of divine guidance appears in many ways, not least in the differing stress that the ulama place on the two commands. To simplify this discussion, one can talk about two basic approaches to salvation. The first gives priority to tawhid and finds the path to salvation in recovering the innate human knowledge of the One and acting in accordance with the truth that is known. The second approach gives priority to prophecy and finds the path to salvation in unquestioning acceptance of the creed and observance of the concrete instructions specified by the Sunna. In extreme cases of this second approach, salvation will be achieved only by those who follow a specific group’s leader with blind devotion. In the first approach, teachers stress the creative command and the manner in which the ontological imperative drives all things to reach their own fulfillment. Human beings achieve their specific perfection by actualizing their God-given intelligence—that is, the intelligence that by nature knows tawhid. The path to salvation aims at realization (tahgiq), which is perceiving and finding al-Haqq—the Real, the Truth, the Right, the Appropriate. This is an individual quest that aims for inner transformation and conformity with al-Hagq in thought and deed. It amounts to obeying the prophetic instruction, “Give to each that has a haqq its haqq”: Give to everything that has something rightfully due to it exactly what is due to it. The traditional discussion of “the rights of God and man,” an expression that can also be translated as “the responsibilities of God and man,” owes a

good deal to this approach. Most ulama situated themselves somewhere between the two extremes,

but it is easy to see that the writings of jurists and the masters of the science of usil al-figh (Islamic legal theory) tend to claim that the only valid path to salvation is the one established by the religious command in its Qur’anic form. Those theologians who allied themselves with the jurists, especially the experts in kalam, acknowledged the diversity of prophetic paths but also claimed that the legitimacy of other paths came to an end with the coming of the Qur’an; Islam, in other words, abrogated (naskh) all previous religions. In contrast, Sufis and philosophers, who generally

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stress the importance of knowing al-Hagqq and achieving transformation of the human substance, have been more likely to make statements that acknowledge the providential diversity of religious forms, not only in the past but also in the present.

Religious Authority In striving to reach felicity, people need criteria whereby they can judge what sort of knowledge is true, reliable, and trustworthy. “Guidance,” after all, is expressed as knowledge that saves. In fact, however, it is difficult to distinguish between knowledge and ignorance, or between beneficial and harmful knowledge. In classifying the various sorts of knowledge, many scholars divided knowledge into two basic categories, “intellectual” (‘aqli) and “transmitted” (naqli). Intellectual knowledge, like arithmetic, is accessible to us without outside help, because it pertains to the very nature of our intelligence. Transmitted knowledge, like language, can only be received from others. Once we move beyond the verbal expression of tawhid, the question arises as to how tawhid can be known and understood. Generally, theologians held that it can be known simply by pondering the signs (@ydt) of God, which are present in the universe and the human

soul. In other

words, tawhid is an intellectual truth, because it is accessible to intelli-

gence without exposure to a prophetic reminder. The religious command, however, voices many truths that cannot be discovered without God’s help. No one can decide on his or her own how to say the daily prayers or how to fast in keeping with God’s good pleasure. No one can determine that wine and pork should be prohibited—these are strictly matters of the religious command. The fact that apologists in modern times have tried to show that these prohibitions are “scientific” merely demonstrates confusion as to the difference between intellectual and transmitted knowledge. To claim that we have discovered God’s true wisdom in any given command is an act of arrogance on our part. This is why, when commentators try to discover the wisdom, they typically cite several opinions, and end up saying, in effect, wa-llahu a‘lam, “And God knows best.” Discussions of the two sorts of knowledge highlight a point that is fairly obvious, though typically ignored: some truths are true because they are true, and others are true because someone says they are true. Intellectual truths are true in themselves, regardless of who may have voiced

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them. In contrast, transmitted truths are true because the person who

uttered them is trustworthy. The religious command is true because it was voiced by God and His prophets, not because it is self-evidently true. One of the major problems faced by forgetful human beings is that they do not know how to tell the difference between intellectual and transmitted knowledge and, even if they do, they do not know where to find trustworthy transmitted knowledge. Not only that, but intellectual knowl-

edge typically comes first in the form of transmitted knowledge, which is to say that we learn about it from others before we recover it from inside ourselves. In fact, transmitted knowledge provides the mythic framework for our cultural worlds—that is, language, history, and worldview, not to speak of scientific facts. Despite the claim that modern science provides objective and universal truth, all of us, including scientists, learn the vast

bulk of scientific facts and theories by way of transmission, trusting in the scientific enterprise. Everyone follows authority figures and, in this respect, religious and nonreligious knowledge is the same. Nonreligious types like to claim that “science” has the status of the papacy, and religious types cling to their own favorite leaders—if not the pope, then preachers or teachers of one sort or another. People tend to ignore the fact that blind acceptance stifles intelligence. They want to be spoon-fed the truth and do not like to hear that some truths need to be understood by their own struggle—this is a phenomenon that most professors will be happy to confirm. ‘Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, alluded to the distinction between intellectual and transmitted knowledge when he said, “Look not at him who spoke, but look at what he said.”® Clearly, ‘Ali had in view intellectual knowledge, where the only issue is the truth or falsity of the statement, not the authority of the speaker. In transmitted knowledge, the issue is the speaker’s trustworthiness, so it is important to know if the source is the Qur’an, or the Hadith, or something else. In the case of transmitted knowledge, it is perfectly legitimate to make ad hominem attacks. Investigating the truthfulness and moral fiber of the speaker is part of the methodology of ‘lm al-rijal—“the science of the men,” the study of the biographies of hadith transmitters. By way of contrast, ad hominem attacks in the intellectual sciences are considered an affront to intelligence, an illegitimate tactic used to avoid thinking about what we have chosen to believe. Following the authority of those who transmit the religious command is often called taglid, “imitation.” In matters of the Sharia, where the issue

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is how to act rightly, imitation is perfectly normal. One must get instructions on ritual practices and on commandments and prohibitions from God and the Prophet. These instructions have typically been conveyed by the jurists, who have made the study of the Sharia their vocation. In issues of faith (iman), however, imitation is generally considered unacceptable to God, for faith belongs only marginally to the realm of transmission. People may accept a creed or a catechism on the basis of the transmitted sources, or they may quote scripture, but this does not prove that they have faith in what they are saying, because faith demands understanding. Discussions of the word imdan typically point out that it means to acknowledge or assent to a truth that one knows (tasdiq). This is most obvious in the foundational issue of tawhid, which has little to do with belief and much to do with understanding. Faith, then, is not simply to recite a creed or to voice a catechism.

People have the obligation to understand what they believe. The recited words are pointers to the truths articulated in the revealed message. One must grapple with faith. Who exactly is this God in whom I have faith and why exactly is He “one”? Not to ask oneself these questions and not to strive to improve one’s understanding is to disregard the repeated Qur’anic commandments to think, reflect, ponder, and use one’s head.

The issue of imitating transmitted teachings is especially relevant in statements about salvation made by people who claim religious authority for themselves. Often such people say that certain passages in the transmitted texts have decided the issue once and for all, and no one has a right to question the received interpretation—“There is consensus on this issue,” they tell us. In other words, the authorities have already done the

thinking, and people should imitate their betters. The basic difficulty with this claim is that, no matter how unavoidable imitation may be in performing the right practices, no one can understand for you.

The Ambiguities of Interpretation Claims to possess categorical knowledge about salvation and damnation stand on the slippery ground ofinterpreting the divine Word. Here I use the word interpretation not to mean tafsir, but rather all forms of literature that quote and explain Qur’anic verses. This literature has not only been enormous but also endlessly insightful. In studying it, one becomes aware that the only issue that the Qur’an leaves unambiguous is the fact

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that God is. Every statement that the Qur'an makes about who God is or what God is depends upon designating Him by a name, attribute, or description. At that point the meaning of the designation has to be explained. Many preachers and teachers would like you to think that the discussion is now closed. But there can be no consensus on meanings understood from words, because that pertains to consciousness, the living substance of the soul. The only possible place where consensus might exist is in the

expression of meaning. In short, no one can imitate someone else’s awareness of God. Here especially, as al-Ghazali said (as noted above), people are forced to be free. With good reason, exegetes often strive to remove ambiguity in the religious command. They want to clarify the path of reaching felicity and avoiding wretchedness, so subtlety appears to them as an enemy. The underlying tactic is to claim that the religious command, which by nature is relative and contingent, has the status of the creative command, which is absolute and incontrovertible. This tactic seems to be found in all religions (and it is also employed by other claimants to authority, such as ideologues and popularizers of the scientific worldview). In effect, every religious community takes its own messenger or message as the unshakable point of reference, the uniquely adequate lens through which to view the Absolute Reality. The relative truth of a specific religious command becomes a de facto absolute truth for those who follow that command. Nor are people wrong to see this relative truth as “absolute,” for truth lies in the efficacy of a message to bring about salvation and, for the members of a specific community, the religious command that founded their community shows the way. In the case of the Muslim community, the ulama had no good reason to argue in support of Qur’anic references to the universality of religious truth, verses like “Every nation has its messenger” (10:47). If they had suggested that Others might be following legitimate ways, they would have been diluting the absolute authority of the religious command designated by the Qur’an and the Sunna. Once theologians have given absolute significance to the relative truth of the religious command, they necessarily remain within the symbolic universe of their own tradition, within which the religious command plays the role of the immutable and irrefutable center. When they look at other communities, they do so with the presupposition that any other religious command—if they accept that there is such a thing—can at best have a limited and contingent value, of no interest when contrasted with the absolute truth of “the command.”

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In premodern times, discussions of religious differences like those that can be undertaken past did not have what religions and a wealth interpreted what little

today were impossible. The great authorities of the we now take for granted: access to peers in other of books and information. Premodern scholars they knew about other religions in terms of the

absolute truth of their own religious command. Practically no one had the means or the interest to look at the actual teachings of other religions or to learn about them by talking with their qualified representatives.” As a result the ulama classified “Others” under various categories established by the Qur’an and the Hadith, and the Qur’an’s negative statements about the Others were taken as superseding any positive statements. Terms like “Jews” and “Christians” were understood as designations for misguided perspectives, with no questions asked. The Others were in effect straw men, set up for the sake of reminding coreligionists that God had done them a great favor by providing them with the Qur’an and the Sunna. The Qur’an provides numerous references to the absoluteness of God and the relativity of His messages, and many verses giving Muslims good reason to think that they have received the best deal. Nonetheless, all these verses have an essential ambiguity that grows from the inescapable contradiction between the creative command and the religious command. Examples are numerous, and the exegetical literature is full of attempts to ignore the ambiguity, explain it away, or bring out the merciful wisdom lying behind it. Three examples will have to suffice. First, when we ask what God wants from human beings, the most basic answer provided by the Qur’an accords with tawhid and the creative command: God wants from people exactly what they are doing. “He created you and what you do” (Q. 37:96). Another answer has the religious command in view: God wants people to change what they are doing. Within the confines of the religious command, the ambiguities multiply, because the exact details of the worship and service that God wants from His servants have never been clear. If they had been, there would have been unanimity among the ulama on the issue, whereas it has been contested constantly. Moreover, it is obvious that God does not want the same thing from everyone, as in the differing requirements for men and women, or for children, adults, and old people. In various slightly different formulations the Qur’an says, “God does not burden a soul except to its capacity” (2:233, 2:286, 61152, 7:42, 23:62). “To burden” here is taklif, that is, to prescribe; to issue the religious command. Each person’s capacity to take on the burden is necessarily unique, because each of God’s creatures is

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unique. Hence, no two people have the same burden in God’s eyes. I recognize that all these issues are discussed extensively by the ulama, but that is precisely the point. The ulama have not reached and cannot reach unanimity, because that would contradict tawhid, the axiom that “Nothing is truly one but God.” If God’s “Speech” is one, that is only inasmuch as it is nothing other than God Himself. The multiple verses of the Qur’an (not to mention other scriptures) show that the One Speech, once it enters into manifestation, takes myriad forms, because all that is not God—including scriptures and prophets—is many by definition. Second, the Qur’an’s use of the word islam provides an obvious example of ambiguity. Muslims and non-Muslims throw this word around without bothering to explain what they are talking about. Using the word to designate the religion itself, however, is barely supported by the Qur’an, where its basic sense is “submission” or “surrender” to God’s command, whether religious or creative. Since the religious command has taken diverse forms, the Qur’an calls various pre-Islamic prophets, such as Abraham and Joseph, and their followers, such as the apostles of Jesus, muslims. The word islam can also designate the absolute, universal, compulsory submission of all things: “To Him has submitted everything in the heavens and the earth, willingly or unwillingly” (Q. 3:83). If someone claims that the Qur’an says that only “Muslims” will be saved, this could mean that everyone in the heavens and the earth will eventually be saved—a notion, by the way, that is far more in keeping with God’s universal, all-embracing mercy than any of the other options. As for the usual objections—“What about Hitler?,” etc.—one needs to remember that there is no need to deny punishment or staying in Hell forever when we acknowledge the absoluteness and finality of God’s all-embracing mercy. God has all the time He needs to mete out “the appropriate recompense” (Q. 78:26), and, given His infinity, there is plenty of time to spare for the All-Merciful to receive all His creatures in a loving embrace. Based on the repeated Qur’anic usage of the terms islam and muslim,

the statement that only “Muslims” will be saved would most likely mean that all the prophets and all those who follow them adequately will be saved. This is not to neglect the fact that God will intercede and save many who followed inadequately or who never followed at all, even pulling a group of people out of the Fire “who never did any good whatsoever,” as the hadith has it." The weight of the interpretive tradition, naturally enough, falls on the least ambiguous of the possible meanings, namely

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that only those who submit to the teachings and practices established by the Qur’an and the Prophet will be saved. This tendency to narrow down the meaning reaches a further extreme when we meet the common idea that only the speaker’s sect of Islam will be saved, and the other seventyone sects are doomed to Hell. | Another word central to the Qur’anic notion of obeying the divine command is ‘abd, “servant,” which is the general designation for a person who responds appropriately to God and conforms himself to what God wants from him. From the same root we have ‘ibdda, “worship” or “service,” which designates all the appropriate activities of the servants as set down by the prophetic instructions. The Qur'an says that every prophet is given the same underlying message: “There is no god but I, so worship/serve Me” (21:25). Here we see the two basic functions of the prophets: reminding people of the truth of tawhid and providing guidance, that is, acts of “worship” and “service” that lead to felicity. Nonetheless, the Qur’an also uses the word servant to designate the fruit of the creative command. In other words, everything is God’s servant by definition, because everything does what He wants it to do. An obvious example is the following verse, which alludes to the all-embracingness of the divine mercy: “There is none in the heavens and the earth that does not come to the All-Merciful as a servant” (19:93). Or, take the verse, “Your Lord has decreed that you worship none but Him” (17:23). Jurists and kalam experts read this decree (qada’) as a religious command, but it can just as well be read as a creative command. Elsewhere the Qur'an says, “When He decrees something, He says to it

‘Bel’ and it comes to be” (3:47). Read as a creative command, the first verse means that God created everything as His compulsory servant, so all things worship Him by doing exactly what He created them to do. All creatures, as Avicenna (d. 1037) and others put it, love their Creator, and the entire universe is filled with the energy of divine love, spurring each thing to strive for its own specific perfection in the overall scheme of God's wisdom.” In distinguishing between compulsory and voluntary servanthood, some scholars say that compulsory servanthood earns no wages. So, even if things do worship God by nature, they are not rewarded for it. They are embraced by the All-Merciful mercy but not the Ever-Merciful mercy, so they will go to Hell and be deprived of the second mercy. In this understanding, reward—that is, felicity—comes only by following the religious command. Nonetheless, the creative command to worship God can still be

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read as an afhrmation of the notion that sin, which is contingent and rel-

ative, is of no account when God’s absolute mercy and forgiveness appear, a point suggested by various hadiths and Qur’anic verses. Perhaps most explicit is the verse, “O My servants who have been immoderate against yourselves, do not despair of God’s mercy. Surely God forgives all sins!” (39:53).') Kalam experts would like you to think that this verse applies only to “Muslims.” Yes, of course, but which “Muslims”? Why not compulsory muslims as well as voluntary muslims? Why not Hindus as well as followers of the Qur’an? And how can you be sure?

The Path to

Salvation

I said that experts in transmitted learning hold that the path to salvation lies in obedience to the religious command—belief in the right creed and performance of the right practices. The goal is to reap the reward of the Garden and to avoid the punishment of the Fire. Many theologians call this attitude that of “wage-earners” (ajir). Without denying its legitimacy, they point out that it can be contrasted with another attitude that looks at salvation in terms of self-knowledge or love. In this case, seekers will certainly follow the religious command, but their goal will not be to avoid punishment and earn reward but rather to achieve purity of soul and the furthest possible degree of human perfection. Love plays an especially prominent role in this second approach to the Sunna. The Qur’anic rationale is fairly obvious: “Say [O Muhammad]}: ‘If you love God, follow me, and God will love you’” (3:31). Wage-earners see this verse as an exhortation to observe the activities designated by the religious command. Lovers and knowers of God see the verse as an exhortation to follow the Prophet on all levels. It means not only observing the concrete instructions of the Sharia, but also striving to see things as they actually are, actualizing the fullness of our God-given intelligence, and living in the light of tawhid. In mythic terms, one does so by climbing in the Prophet’s footsteps on the “ladder” (mi‘raj) by which he ascended to 9”?

God and then back down to his community. Everyone acknowledges that,

in the case of the Prophet’s followers, such an ascent, if possible, can be

accomplished only in the realm of soul, spirit, heart, and intelligence. The countless books written on purification of the soul (tazkiyat al-nafs) all point to this inner realm. In a verse addressed to the Prophet, the Qur'an refers to the invisible realm of soul, spirit, and heart as khulug, “character”: “Surely you have a

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magnificent character” (68:4). Khulug is derived from the same root as khalgq, “creation,” and written the same way in the normal, unvowelled Arabic script. Character is, in effect, the configuration of the soul rather

than that of the body. The creative command brings into being a beautiful creation, for God “created everything that He created beautiful” (32:7). The prophetic command reminds people that, however beautiful their created appearance and their fitra, their original nature created in the image of God, when they fail to conform to God’s guidance, this will obscure their innate beauty and bring about ugliness. The Prophet prayed, “O God, You have made my creation beautiful, so make my character beautiful too!” Transformation of character is part of the process that is initiated and sustained by the creative command and that simultaneously asks for the human participation of freely following the religious command. The jurists discuss ethics (akhlaq, the plural of khulugq, “character”) in terms of the commandments and prohibitions of the religious command, but Sufis and philosophers point out that the deepest meaning of ethics lies in the soul's actualization of its potential as an image of God. The philosophers talk of this actualization as al-tashabbuh bi-l-ilah, “becoming similar to God,” or al-ta’alluh, “deiformity.” Theologians like al-Ghazali prefer the term al-takhallug bi-akhlag Allah, “becoming characterized by the character traits of God.” These character traits—God’s “ethics’—are designated by His “most beautiful names” (al-asma’ al-husnad). The quest for moral perfection is the attempt to achieve beauty of character, in keeping with the Prophet’s supplication: “Make my character beautiful too!” The function of the religious command is to provide the means for people to bridge the gap between God and the universe, a gap that was opened up by the creative command. The energy for this process, whether on the human or the divine side, is often called love, as in the already cited verse, “Say: ‘If you love God, follow me, and God will love you. Following the Prophet in both his deeds and character brings about a transformation defined in terms of the most beautiful character traits of God, for He alone is merciful, He alone is compassionate, He alone is just, He alone is wise. Such qualities can accrue to human beings only as divine bestowals, and the way to attract such bestowals is to follow the religious command on all levels, outwardly and inwardly. A sound hadith qudsi (a saying of the Prophet in which he quotes the words of God) refers to the fruit of man’s love for God and God’s love for man. Those who love God, it is understood, follow the religious command as embodied in the Sunna, hoping to gain nearness to God so that He will 997

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love them in return. The text reads, “When My servant comes near to Me

through good deeds, I love him, and when I love him, I am his hearing with which he hears, his eyesight with which he sees, his hand with which he holds, and his foot with which he walks.” Separated lovers, as everyone knows, want to come together. Many theologians held, not least with reference to this hadith, that this coming together of God and man could take place before the entrance into Paradise. In saying so, they never forgot the fundamental distinction between God and man, for God alone is truly

real, and the servant has access only to what God bestows. Indeed, the notion that acts of obedience or traits of good character are “mine” contradicts the truth of tawhid and represents not only pride, but also, on a much deeper level, “hidden associationism” (shirk khafi). The truth is, “My success comes only through God” (Q. 11:88), not through my own efforts. In short, those Muslims who have kept themselves focused on tawhid and the creative command, or on the Wage-giver rather than the wages, have generally striven for inner transformation, trying to overcome their blindness and ugliness and aiming to open themselves up to God’s beautiful character traits, which were most fully manifest in the Prophet's “magnificent character.” Those Muslims who have focused on the practices specified by the religious command have striven to observe the Sharia in all its minutiae and paid less attention to knowledge and self-realization.

Having a Beautiful Opinion of God Let me conclude by offering a few suggestions as to how one might try to give God His hagq—what is rightfully due to Him—while also trying to avoid seeing the religious command simply in terms of what one thinks that God should and should not say. To me it seems obvious that those who are utterly contingent on God, when they want to say something appropriate about Him, should speak with a view toward the mercy and love that gave rise to the universe in the first place. However useful a hermeneutics of suspicion may be in this realm of relativity—the world with its enormously flawed people and institutions—a hermeneutics of trust makes much more sense in dealing with the only reality that truly is. Having a beautiful opinion (husn al-zann) of God means taking tawhid seriously. Both the transmitted sources and the intellectual sciences tell us that God is wise, generous, and just and that His mercy and compassion predominate over all other attributes. This means that there is none knowing and wise but God, none merciful and generous but God, none

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just and equitable but God. In other words, God alone truly knows what He is doing, and the rest of us are only along for the ride. God is not a bum-

bling oaf, nor does He bother telling us more than we need to know. When He does a job, He does it in a manner that gets it done as it should be done. In all this, He takes into account human forgetfulness, ignorance, injustice, and incapacity, and He makes use of all of these to further His own ends, which are defined by His infinite compassion, wisdom, and love. When we apply the absolute truth of tawhid to the relative truths of prophecy, we can be excused for keeping our beautiful opinion and thinking that, when God sent all those prophets and set up all those religions, He did so as the Most Merciful of the merciful, with much more

tenderness toward human beings than any mother has ever had toward her children. To suggest that people, who are God’s compulsory servants in any case, have been able to foil His purposes and pervert His messages such that only one valid message remains is to suggest that God has resigned from His office—this, by the way, is the “Deism” championed by thinkers of the Enlightenment (the closest Arabic equivalent of Deism is ta‘til, an archetypal heresy). To think like this is to reach the conclusion that what God really wants for almost everyone is to inflict pain and suffering through the inescapable darkness of their own nature, a nature that He bestowed upon them. It means to imagine that God sent as His final message a religion that has failed miserably in the task of convincing people of its exclusive truth. If Islam—or any other religion—were the unique saving message, then God would turn out to have been totally incompetent. To think this way is—putting it mildly—to have an ugly opinion of God.

Notes 1. Both hadiths are cited as sound (sahih) by the eleventh-century scholar al-Raghib

al-Isfahani, al-Dhari‘a ila makarim al-sharv‘a, ed. T. ‘Abd al-Ra’iif Sa‘d (Cairo: Maktabat al-Kulliyyat al-Azhariyya, 1972), 132 (there is no agreement on the identity of the zindigs). No doubt the second hadith is quoted much less than the first, but my point is simply that well-known scholars do in fact cite it. 2. Given the internal diversity of these three broad approaches, it is always misleading to lump their various subdivisions together. For an elementary, heuristic attempt to

highlight the main differences and similarities in these three approaches to understanding God, see Sachiko Murata and William C. Chittick, The Vision of Islam (New York: Paragon, 1994), ch. 6.

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. Failing to translate the Arabic word Allah (God) in this sentence leads both Muslims and non-Muslims to egregious misunderstandings of Islamic theology. It ignores, among other things, the basic Quranic principle of God’s one-and-onlyness, the fact

that “Our God and your God is one God” (29:46). The claim that Allah should not be translated because it is a proper name is baseless, given that its meaning can be understood from its etymology, which is not the case with proper names. . This is what Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350) calls the two commands. Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) prefers the word irdda (desire) to amr (command). The two are also called

amr al-takwin and amr al-taklif, terms which, according to Harry Wolfson, go back to the Mu'tazilt Aba al-Hudhayl (d. ca. 841). See Harry Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 141.

. Al-Ghazali, Ihya’ ‘ulim al-din (Beirut: Dar al-Hadi, 1993), 4:370 (Book 35: “Kitab al-tawhid wa-l-tawakkul”). . The hadith is found in standard sources, such as Sahih Muslim (in “Kitab al-dhikr”).

See A. J. Wensinck et al., Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane (Leiden: Brill, 1969), 6:5n1. This statement appears in well-known hadith collections, such as Sahth al-Bukhari (in “Kitab al-adab”) and Sahih Muslim (in “Kitab al-tawba”). . This hadith appears in, among other places, Sahth Muslim (in “Kitab al-tawba”); a partial version of it appears in Sahih al-Bukhart (in “Kitab al-adab”). . La tanzur ila man gala wa-nzur ila ma gala. Al-Jahiz, al-Kalimat al-mi’a min hikam amir

al-mu’minin al-imam ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, http://www.tebyan.net/index.aspx?pid=31143& BookI D=26978&Pagelndex=o&Language=2 (saying #u; last accessed on September 20, 2011).

. Al-Birain’s (d. ca. 1048) great study Tahgig ma li-l-Hind, translated by Edward Sachau in the nineteenth century as Alberuni’s India, has sometimes been cited as an exception because of the manner in which he engaged Hindu pandits in conversation.

Nonetheless, al-Birtini often condemns Hindu religious teachings out of hand and shows no attempt to understand their logic within the Hindu universe. A great deal of what he says is remarkably insightful, and perhaps the book is indeed a first foray into “comparative religion,” but he paid far more attention to the mathematics of Indian astronomical theories than to myth, philosophy, or theology. . This hadith appears in Sahih Muslim (in “Kitab al-iman’). 12.

See, for example, Risdla fi al-‘ishq, translated by Emil L. Fackenheim, “A Treatise on Love by Ibn Sina,” Medieval Studies 7 (1945): 208-228. The Ikhwan al-Safa’ had already made the point in their Risdla fi mahiyyat al-‘ishg, and the notion became fairly standard in both philosophy and Sufism. See William C. Chittick, Divine Love:

Islamic Literature and the Path to God (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming). . Lest anyone think that this is simply my personal understanding, let me cite one of

many possible passages from well-known scholars that make the same basic point.

It is found in the great ten-volume Persian exegesis of the Qur'an, Kashf al-asrar,

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completed in 126 by the staunchly Sunni theologian Rashid al-Din Maybudi, a con-

temporary of al-Ghazali and follower of the famous Hanbali Sufi ‘Abd Allah Ansari (on Maybudi, see Annabelle Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006]). The passage follows a long exegetical section quoting the opinions of

various authorities on Q. 25:20-44. Maybudi then turns to explaining the “allusions” (isha@rat) that can be discovered in these verses by someone with deep insight into their meaning. In the previous section of the commentary, Maybudi had explained

that the verse in question refers to the terrible punishment that will be meted out on the Day of Resurrection to those who do not follow the religious command. In this section, he applies the principle of tawhid and points to the foundational significance of the mercy that drives the creative command. The verse is this: “We [God] shall

advance on what work they have done and make it scattered dust” (25:23). One of the shaykhs of the Path said, “No verse in the whole Qur'an makes me

as happy as this verse. When God throws these tainted works of ours into the

wind of His utter lack of needs (istighna’), He will act toward us with His bounty alone. What He does with His bounty will be worthy of His generosity, and that is better than what is worthy of our works.” Then he said, “God has rights (hagqq) against us, like obedience and worship, but in our makeup we are destitute (muflis), and it is He who has decreed our destitution. When the decreer decrees that someone be destitute, the plaintiff can have nothing against him. ... Whenever someone is destitute, it is incumbent to give him respite so that he can acquire some capital. But we will never acquire any capital until the next world, when He will pour the treasury of

bounty on our heads. We have no riches through our own being—we are rich through His attributes. Nothing comes from us or our works. When some affair is opened up for us, it is His bounty that opens it up. When He accepts us, He does not accept us because of the form of our practice. He accepts us because of our readiness that He saw in His beginningless knowledge. Everything in the cosmos is subordinate to that readiness. Wait until tomorrow [the Resurrection],

when He will make the readiness apparent and open up the doors of the treasuries. He will give the treasury of mercy [e.g., the All-Merciful mercy] to the disobedient and the treasury of bounty [e.g., the Ever-Merciful mercy] to the destitute and thereby let them discharge His rights with His treasury, for the ser-

vants cannot discharge His rights with what belongs to them.” (Kashf al-asrar wa-‘uddat al-abrar, ed. ‘Ali Asghar Hikmat [Tehran: Danishgah, 1952-Go], 7:40; for a much briefer version, see ibid., 2:23). 14. This hadith appears in the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal.

15. This hadith appears in Sahih al-Bukhari (in “Kitab al-riqaq’).

4

Beyond Polemics and Pluralism THE

UNIVERSAL

MESSAGE

OF

THE

QUR’AN

Reza Shah-Kazemi

And they say: “None entereth Paradise unless he be a Jew or a Christian.” These are their vain desires. Say: “Bring your proof if ye are truthful.” Nay, but whosoever submitteth his purpose to God, and he is virtuous, his reward is with his Lord. No fear shall come upon them, neither shall they grieve. (Q, 2:111-112)

Introduction This passage from the Qur’an demonstrates clearly the spiritual sterility of polemics and the logical absurdity of religious chauvinism. The Qur’an does not allow us to play the game of polemics. It is not possible to claim that only those called “Muslims” in the confessional sense enter Paradise; rather, we are called upon to stress heartfelt submission to God, together with the practice of virtue in consequence of that submission, as being the foundation upon which one can legitimately hope for that divine grace by means of which, alone, one enters Paradise. In other words, the logic of this riposte to narrow-minded polemical claims compels us to rise to a higher level of discourse, one that transcends theological perspectives based on sentiment and vanity; or on what the Qur’an refers to in this

verse as amani, plural of umniyya, which can be translated as “vain desire’—vain both in the sense of “conceited” and in the sense of being “in vain,” that is, futile. It is important to note that this word is also used in

relation to the Muslims, in the following passage, which reinforces the message of Q. 2:11-112:

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And those who believe and do good works, We shall bring them into Gardens underneath which rivers flow, wherein they will abide forever—a promise of God in truth; and who can be more truthful

than God in utterance? It will not be in accordance with your vain desires, nor with the vain desires of the People of the Book. He who doth wrong will have the recompense thereof. ... And whoso doeth good works, whether male or female, and is a believer, such will

enter Paradise, and will not be wronged the dint of a date-stone. Who is better in religion than he who submitteth his purpose to God (aslama wajhahu li-llah), while being virtuous, and following the religious community of Abraham the unswervingly devout? (4:122-125)

Spiritual justice, stemming from divine wisdom, takes priority over selfish desire, stemming from religious chauvinism. These and similar verses invite us to rise above the vanity of particularist polemics and contemplate the sphere of universal metaphysics. In effecting this shift of consciousness from form to essence, from the outward to the inward, from the particular to the universal, the Qur’an helps us overcome the limitations of religious exclusivism, that is, the attitude expressed in one of the tenets of traditional Catholic doctrine: extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“no salvation outside the church”). In our times, this attitude has resulted in countless intelligent people, in all parts of the world, losing their faith in their inherited religion. In traditional civilizations, such an attitude of exclusivism was more tenable and justifiable, given the fact that religious communities were so clearly distinct from each other, and lived almost as self-contained communal worlds, even when they were coexisting in the same lands. However, the same attitude becomes difficult to maintain, if not completely untenable, in the contemporary world, where religious boundaries have all but dissolved. We live in a global religious village, the different faith communities intermingling in a manner that would have been inconceivable in the premodern period. In this context, sensitive and intelligent people cannot help perceiving virtue, faith, beauty, and holiness in the adherents of religions other than their own. Are these people to deny the validity of the faiths that give rise to these flowers of holiness, in order to uphold their belief in the exclusive validity of their own faith, and thereby risk denying with their will that which is self-evident to their heart? Or should they affirm the validity of other faiths, doing so at the price of diluting the absoluteness of their commitment to their own faith?

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Religious thinkers in the West have struggled with this “problematic.” Speaking in the most general terms, traditional polemics are being confronted by modern pluralism, the doctrine chiefly associated with the Christian scholar John Hick. According to Hick, all religions are equal, and equally salvific; one must abandon traditional claims to be the sole possessors of the truth, and one must affirm the equal truth of all religions. But this shift from polemics to pluralism has brought with it an inevitable dilution of commitment to the specific, unique forms of one’s

own faith, as we shall see shortly. The question that I intend to address in this chapter,' then, can be

expressed as follows: how can one answer to the urgent need to transcend

conventional

exclusivism

and

open

up to the Other, without

relativizing or diluting one’s own faith and identity? How can one go beyond absolutist polemics without falling into the pitfall of relativistic pluralism? The argument I make here is that the universality of the Qur’an provides us with the most effective answer to this question. This presentation of the universal message of the Qur’an is based on the tradition of Sufi metaphysics, in particular the school of thought deriving from Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240). It also benefits from the insights of the contemporary school of thought known as the “perennial philosophy,” associated chiefly with the name of Frithjof Schuon (d. 1998), and the most important contemporary scholarly exponent of which is Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

Beyond Polemtcs As regards the first issue, it is surely one of the greatest ironies of our times that the scripture that is most tolerant of other religions, indeed,

that is unique in its recognition of, and reverence for, other religions, should be used as the basis for the most fanatical acts of intolerant violence. In the West, new interpretations of scripture are required in order to move away from traditional exclusivism. Now this exclusivism is based on the literal meaning of key verses of the Bible; by contrast, when we look at the Qur’an, it is precisely the literal meaning of dozens of verses that incontrovertibly uphold a universal perspective on religion. One often needs to resort to complex strategies of interpretation and abrogation in order to move away from the literal, universal meaning toward an imposed, exclusivist reading of these verses.

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In order to highlight, as succinctly as possible, the universal message of the Qur’an let us imagine an interview between a Western inquirer and a Muslim. The interviewer asks the following six basic questions, and the Muslim must answer in the form of one or two verses from the Qur'an. It is striking that these simple short answers cannot avoid universality; they cannot but express some aspect of the universal scope of the Qur’anic

message. Question 1: What is your credo; what do you believe? The answer to this must include Q. 2:285: “The Messenger believeth in that which hath been revealed unto him from his Lord, and [so do] the believers. Every one believeth in God and His angels and His scriptures and His messengers—We make no distinction between any of His messengers. ...” Indeed, it is an essential part of Muslim belief to affirm

the truth of all the messengers of God, making no distinction between any of them. Belief in all revealed religions is stressed here as an integral and not merely optional aspect of Islamic faith. Question 2: According to your faith, who is saved? Again, the answer is astonishingly universal: the Qur’anic verse 2:62 reads as follows: “Truly those who believe, and the Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians—whoever believeth in God and the Last Day and performeth virtuous deeds—surely their reward is with their Lord, and no fear shall come upon them, neither shall they grieve.” Rather than give an exhaustive list of all religions, the Qur’an instructs us that the essential prerequisites for salvation are faith and virtue. These are essential but not sufficient conditions for salvation, since, as the Prophet said, nobody enters Paradise on account of his deeds, but only through the mercy of God. Nevertheless, this verse informs us that faith and virtue will be rewarded by the Lord who is merciful and just. Question 3: Why is there a diversity of faiths? Again, rather than requiring some elaborate interpretive strategy, the Qur’an gives us the explicit divine purpose behind the diversity of revelations and religions. The latter half of Q. 5:48 reads as follows: For each We have appointed a Law and a Way. Had God willed, He could have made you one community. But that He might try you by that which He hath given you [He hath made you as you are]. So vie with one another in good works. Unto God ye will all return, and He will inform you ofthat wherein ye differed.

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This view stands at the opposite of the pluralist thesis, according to which the diversity of faiths is the result of human responses to God. The Qur’an tells us on the contrary that God is Himself the source of religious diversity, and that we as members of different faithcommunities should engage in healthy competition: to outstrip each other in goodness.’ Question 4: What is the quintessence of the religious message? If one were to choose a single Qur’anic verse to answer this question, it might well be 21:25: “And We sent no messenger before thee but We inspired him [saying]: ‘There is no God save Me, so worship Me.” This quintessence is by definition universal; whatever is added to this message is specific to time and place and other conditions. Universality takes precedence over particularity, in the measure that essence takes precedence over form.3 Question 5: To whom is this message addressed? The whole of humanity has received this message, according to the Qur’an: “For every community (umma) there is a messenger” (10:47).* Question 6: What is the purpose of warfare in your faith? The answer to this question would have to contain what many commentators regard as the very first Qur’anic passage revealed in relation to warfare, 22:39-40: “Permission [to fight] is given to those who are being fought, for they have been wronged. .. . Had God not driven back some by means of others, monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques— wherein the name of God is oft-invoked—would assuredly have been destroyed.” This defense of all places of worship resonates with the explicit function of the Qur’anic revelation as a musaddigq, “confirmer,” and a muhaymin, “protector”: “And unto thee We have revealed the Scripture with the Truth, confirming whatever scripture was before it, and a protector of it” (Q. 5:48). In the light of these illuminating verses, the explicit denunciation of religious exclusivism in Q. 2:111-112 cited at the outset, assumes greater significance. This denunciation of exclusivism should be situated within a universal, all-embracing Qur’anic perspective on the nature of revealed truth, on the one hand, and an objective, nonconfessional perspective on the conditions and requirements of salvation on the other. It remains to be seen how one is to integrate this universal vision within a framework that does not violate the uniqueness, specificity, and normativity of the Islamic faith.

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Beyond Pluralism The majority of Muslim scholars who have attempted to bring the message of the Qur'an into this debate have done so by submitting to the rules of the pluralist game, such as this game has been defined by John Hick. Several writers have stressed the universality of the message of the Qur’an, but in

doing so, they have truncated and reduced the message of the Qur'an in conformity with the pluralist model.’ The pluralism of John Hick calls upon fellow pluralists, in their own religions, to dismantle those aspects of their beliefs that would assert the uniqueness of their religion: for to be unique is to lay claim to superiority, and to claim superiority breaks the rules of the pluralist game.° The pluralist model thus aims at including all, but ends up excluding most: that is, the overwhelming majority of believers in any religion, those who practice that religion precisely because they believe it to be the only true religion, or at least the best religion. In other words, the would-be inclusivist excludes exclusivists, and thus

ends up as an exclusivist himself, in a manner that logically undermines his claim to inclusivism. In contrast, the “universalist” becomes a particularist precisely by excluding particularism. To give just one example, Hasan Askari, a notable Muslim scholar associated with Hick, goes so far in asserting Islam’s universality that he claims that “Islam,” in the sense of primordial and universal submission, abolishes “the particular and the historical Islam.” Instead of integrating the particular within the universal and seeing the universal as embodied within the particular, the pluralist is forced to sacrifice or belittle the particular for the sake of the universal. If, however, one has recourse to Sufi metaphysics, one is able to transcend this false dichotomy between the particular and the universal and to see each in the light of the Other. This is the vision that flows from the spiritual perspective of thinkers like Ibn ‘Arabi, for whom the universal has no meaning without the particular, and vice versa. His great statement on the nature of being can furnish the foundation both for a resolution of the particular within the universal and for an effective mode of interpreting verses of the Qur’an in a manner that does not exclude exclusivism: “Part of the completeness of existence is the existence of incompleteness within it; otherwise, the completeness of existence would be incomplete by virtue of the absence of incompleteness within it.”* In the light of this metaphysical principle, Ibn ‘Arabs hermeneutics can help us to present the universal message of the Qur’an in such a way

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as to transcend both the explosive fanaticism that is fed by conventional exclusivism, on the one hand, and the corrosive relativism that is the product of modern pluralism, on the other. The key hermeneutical principle of Ibn ‘Arabi, as far as our argument is concerned, is expressed as follows: Every sense (wajh) which is supported by any verse in God’s Speech (kalam)—whether it is the Qur’an, the Torah, the Psalms, the Gospel, or the Scripture—in the view of anyone who knows that language (lisan) is intended (magsiid) by God in the case of that interpreter (muta’awwil). For His knowledge encompasses all senses. ... Hence every interpreter correctly grasps the intention of God in that word. ... Hence no man of knowledge can declare wrong an interpretation which is supported by the words (lafz). He who does so is extremely deficient in knowledge (ft ghaya min al-qusir fi al‘ilm). However, it is not necessary to uphold the interpretation nor to put it into practice, except in the case of the interpreter himself and those who follow his authority.° From this key principle one can approach the Qur’anic message of universality in a manner that is truly all-inclusive: one includes even the exclusivist reading as a legitimate possibility. This need not be seen as contradicting universality but rather, as expressive of universality, and indeed, proving its all-encompassing nature. For example, consider the verse, “Truly, religion with God is Islam (al-islam)” (Q. 3:19). The question as to whether “Islam” is to be understood here universally (as the principle of universal submission, as Askari would stress), or only as the particular religion revealed to the last prophet, can be resolved without any need for mutual exclusion. A truly universalist understanding of the meaning of “Islam,” or of religion as such, both affirms and transcends the particular meaning. One can see the particular religion not just as an embodiment of the universal principle but also as a path leading to that essence of which it is a formal embodiment. The universal essence manifests in and as the particular form; it is not contradicted by it. This universalist hermeneutic of Ibn ‘Arabi also helps us to address the problematic issue of abrogation. We cited earlier Q. 2:62 in response to question 2: “Who is saved?”: “Truly those who believe, and the Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians—whoever believeth in God and the Last Day and performeth virtuous deeds—surely their reward is with their

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Lord, and no fear shall come upon them, neither shall they grieve.” The literal meaning of this verse cannot be disputed; however, for the majority of the classical commentators, the meaning is circumvented by recourse to the strategy of abrogation. The verse is deemed to have been abrogated by Q. 3:85, which reads: “And whoso seeketh’a religion other than Islam, it will not be accepted from him, and he will be a loser in the Hereafter.” Among these commentators, however, it is noteworthy that al-Tabari (d. 923) and the Shi‘i commentator al-Tabarsi (d.1153) both reject the idea that the verse can be subject to abrogation. Before turning to Ibn ‘Arab/s view on abrogation in general, and applying his hermeneutical principles to this verse in particular, it is worth noting what al-Tabari says on this question, particularly in his commentary on Q. 2:106: “We abrogate no verse, nor do We cause it to be forgotten, but that We bring one better than it or like it.” As regards the principle of abrogation (naskh) al-Tabari writes as follows: Thus, God transforms the lawful into the unlawful, and the un-

lawful into the lawful, and the permitted into forbidden into the permitted. This pertains commands and prohibitions, proscriptions withholding and granting authorization. But they cannot abrogate nor be abrogated.”

the forbidden, and the only to such issues as and generalizations, as for reports (akhbdr),

In regard to Q. 2:62, he writes that the literal meaning of the verse should be upheld, without being restricted in its scope by reference to reports of its abrogation, “because, in respect of the bestowal of reward for virtuous action with faith, God has not singled out some of His creatures as opposed to others.”" Turning now to Ibn ‘Arabi, let us note his position on the issue of abrogation in general. Most Muslim scholars assert that Islam “abrogates” the previous religious dispensations, in the sense that its revealed law supersedes the laws promulgated in pre-Qur’anic revelations.” Ibn ‘Arabi ac-

cepts this position but then nuances the notion of abrogation in such a way as to transform it into an affirmation of the continued validity of the “abrogated” faiths. Abrogation does not imply nullification or invalidation, neither does it imply that the religions “superseded” by Islam are rendered inefficacious in salvific terms. He stresses that one of the reasons for the pre-eminence (the “supersession,” literally, the quality of being “seated above”) of Islam resides precisely in the fact that Muslims must

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believe in all revelations and not just in that conveyed by the Prophet of Islam. We return to the universalist answer given to question one above: “What do you believe?” All the revealed religions are lights. Among these religions, the revealed religion of Muhammad is like the light of the sun among the lights of the stars. When the sun appears, the lights of the stars are hidden, and their lights are included in the light of the sun. Their being hidden is like the abrogation of the other revealed religions that takes place through Muhammad’s revealed religion. Nevertheless, they do in fact exist, just as the existence of the lights of the stars is actualized (muhaqqaq). This explains why we have been required in our all-inclusive religion to have faith in the truth of all the messengers and all the revealed religions. They are not rendered null (batil) by abrogation—that is the opinion of the ignorant. To believe that pre-Qur’anic religions lose their efficacy is thus to render meaningless the avowed function of Islam to be a “confirmation” and “protection” in relation to those religions: if the religions are inefficacious as vehicles of salvation, there is no point in confirming and protecting them. They should simply be cast into the dustbin of religious history along with other degenerate religious traditions, according to the logic of those who believe that “abrogation” equals “nullification’—the “ignorant,” as Ibn ‘Arabi calls them. In contrast to this logic one should argue robustly as follows: the Sharia grants protection to believers of other religious traditions precisely because the essential, saving spirit of the revelations inaugurating those traditions is granted recognition, protection, and confirmation by the Islamic revelation. If the revelations pertaining to preQur’anic religions were rendered null and void by the Qur'an, the legal protection accorded to them by Islamic law would be at best paradoxical, at worst, illogical. However, when we apply the hermeneutical principle of Ibn ‘Arabi to the specific issue of the abrogation of Q. 2:62 by 3:85, we observe that a universalist hermeneutic must allow for this particularist interpretation, even at the price of paradox. In other words, since the literal meaning of 3:85 does indeed allow for the interpretation that would deem all preQur’anic revelations unacceptable to God, the universalist cannot simply dismiss this interpretation as being wrong or unfounded. For, to quote [bn

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‘Arabi again, “no man of knowledge can declare wrong an interpretation which is supported by the words. He who does so is extremely deficient in knowledge.” In defense of this inclusion of exclusivism, one might say the following:

there will always be a category of Muslims who must believe in this kind of exclusivism if they are to believe in Islam; and this exclusivist meaning, being supportable by the literal words of this and other such verses, was surely intended (magsid) by God. That is, He wished this meaning to be inferred by those who need it in order to uphold key spiritual and intellectual concomitants of their faith in Islam. One might say that their faith in Islam is supported by pillars of exclusivism. Remove the exclusivism, and the edifice of faith collapses. But let us also recall the words that complete this passage from Ibn ‘Arabi: “However, it is not necessary to uphold the interpretation nor to put it into practice, except in the case of the interpreter himself and those who follow his authority.” So the universalist will grant the exclusivist his right to interpret the words of Q. 3:85 in this manner, while not being under any obligation to concede that this is the one and only meaning of the verse. Rather he would politely refer to the preceding verse, 3:84, and argue that the “Islam” mentioned in 3:85 can also be understood as universal submission rather than simply as the particular religion inaugurated by the Qur’anic revelation; and that this universal submission is in fact

described in the verse immediately preceding 3:85. This verse, 3:84, reads as follows: Say: “We believe in God and that which is revealed unto us, and that which is revealed unto Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and that which was given unto Moses and Jesus and the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and unto Him we have submitted.” We thus return to the idea of “Islam” as universal and primordial submission, and uphold this interpretation as being more satisfactory than the exclusivist interpretation. Let us recall that Askari argues that this universal Islam “abolishes the particular and the historical Islam.” Such an “abolition” of particular and historical Islam ironically shares a great deal with the kind of exclusivism it is supposed to be transcending; for this “abolition” is a kind of pluralist mirror image of the traditional “abrogation”

resorted to by exclusivist Muslims. Both pluralist “abolition” and exclusivist

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“abrogation” are avoided by the true universalist. The particular and historical form of Islam is doubtless to be situated at a lower level than the universal and timeless essence, but the particular is not to be trivialized,

marginalized, or invalidated by the universal. On the contrary, the particular is elevated and ennobled in the very measure that it is deemed to be an expression of the universal—the form becomes more, not less, essential to the extent that it is grasped as an embodiment of the essence and a vehicle leading to the essence. In other words, a vision of the universal essence of Islam, its haqiqa, can, and indeed must, go hand in hand with adherence to the specific form of Islam, the Sharia. The uniqueness and irreducible character of the Islamic form is thereby not sacrificed at the altar of universality, in the name of the false god of pluralism; rather, the uniqueness of its form is articulated, precisely, in terms of its universal ramifications. To apply a key principle expressed in a different context by Frithjof Schuon, referred to as a “formidable scholar” by the late Shaykh of al-Azhar, Abdel-Halim Mahmoud,” one might say: far from diminishing our participation in the particular treasures of the Qur’anic revelation, a universal perspective bestows upon those treasures a compass that touches the roots of existence.” This conception of the relationship between the form and the essence is far more likely to engage the traditional exclusivist; it has more chance of persuading him to move from a “harsh” to a “gentle” form of exclusivism.'© The Hickean pluralist is bound to provoke defensive reflexes from the conservative upholders of Islam, for this type of pluralism challenges the very normativity of Islam. The universalist, by contrast, upholds that normativity, while aerating it with a tolerant, respectful vision of the Other, a vision based on a plausible reading of many verses of the Qur’an. This vision is made less unacceptable for the exclusivist in that the normativity of Islam is not undermined, but rather enriched, by this perspective. One of the most important concomitants of this presentation of Qur’anic universalism concerns the sensitive question of da‘wa (calling people to the faith). Traditional Muslims have shied away from presenting the universality of the Qur’anic message for fear of its implications regarding da‘wa: if all religions are still valid, on what basis do we invite people to Islam? However, those who wish to “bear witness” to the normativity of the Islamic faith have nothing to fear, for the universalist will not

dismiss or deny the right or the duty to engage in da‘wa. For strict Hickean pluralists, of course, there can be no da‘wa, because the pluralist cannot assert that his religion is “better” than anyone else’s. The Muslim

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universalist, however, can argue that one of the best forms of da‘wa lies, precisely, in expounding the universal message of the Qur’an: one’s invitation to Islam can be made all the more compelling in the measure that this universal dimension of the Qur’an is brought to the fore. In an age dominated by the false dichotomy between fanatical exclusivism and secular inclusivism, the revealed universality of the Qur’an constitutes the ideal antidote to both errors. Against so dark a background, the Qur’an stands out with dazzling clarity as the only revealed scripture in which other faiths are explicitly accorded spiritual reverence and not just juridical tolerance. Diatribe can thus give way to dialogue, and dialogue, in turn, can be appreciated as a form of da‘wa—for those who feel the need to engage therein. The exclusivist can present Islam as the best religion, precisely because it recognizes and respects all religion. This is one aspect of the shift from “harsh” to “gentle” exclusivism noted above: one encourages the exclusivist to move from the position that says, “Islam is the only true religion,” to the position which says, “Islam is the best religion.” The first is based on a harsh rejection of all faiths but Islam,” while the second is based on Ibn ‘Arabf?s principle: “We have been required in our all-inclusive religion to have faith in the truth of all the messengers and all the revealed religions.” This combination of universalism and particularism permits those practicing Muslims who are aware of the presence of holiness, truth, beauty, and virtue in religions other than Islam to do justice to their perception or intuition or “taste” of the religions of the Other, without compromising fidelity and commitment to their own religion. As noted at the outset, there are many believers in today’s multicultural world who cannot,

in good conscience, believe that the right to salvation and the realization of spiritual truth is the preserve of one religion only and that all other religions are intrinsically false. The Qur’an speaks to such individuals precisely through its universality, a universality that ensures that it also speaks to those who, on the contrary, cannot commit themselves to Islam unless they believe it to be the best, and, for yet others, the only religion. As Schuon observes: “Every religion by definition wants to be the best, and ‘must want’ to be the best, as a whole and also as regards its constitutive elements; this

is only natural, so to speak, or rather ‘supernaturally natural’.”"8 It is “supernaturally natural” because of the element of absoluteness that makes religion what it is: that absoluteness has a right to impose

itself upon the believer, and it does so in myriad ways, including the universality that resides at the mystical core of every religion. One of the

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distinguishing features of the Islamic revelation, however, is that this

universality pervades even the exoteric form of the religion, that is, its very founding scripture. Martin Lings makes this point very clearly: All mysticisms are equally universal . . . in that they all lead to the One Truth. But one feature of the originality of Islam, and therefore of Sufism, is what might be called a secondary universality, which is to be explained above all by the fact that as the last Revelation of this cycle of time it is necessarily something of a summing up. The Islamic credo is expressed by the [Qur’an] as belief in God and His Angels and His Books and His Messengers.

He then proceeds to cite Q. 5:48, saying that “nothing comparable to it could be found in either Judaism or Christianity.” He continues this passage by pointing to another aspect of the universality of Islam, namely, its primordiality: There is a certain coincidence between the last and the first. With Islam “the wheel has come full circle,” or almost; and that is why it claims to be a return to the primordial religion, which gives it yet another aspect of universality. One of the characteristics of the {Qur’an] as the last Revelation is that at times it becomes as it were transparent in order that the first Revelation may shine through its verses; and this first Revelation, namely the Book of Nature, belongs to everyone.” This helps us to see the way in which adherence to a universalist perspective can go hand in hand with upholding the normativity of the Islamic faith. It can help us to see that universalists such as Ibn ‘Arabi and Rami (d. 1273) are not compromising their universalism when they refer to Islam as the best religion, when they describe the Prophet as the best of all prophets, and when they invite non-Muslims to embrace Islam. In perhaps the most oft-cited of all of Ibn ‘Arabi lines of poetry in the West we read about the “religion of love” (din al-hubb): My heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks, And a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s Ka‘ba and the tables of the [Torah] and the book of the [Qur’an].

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I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love’s camels take, that is my religion and my faith.”

But much less well known is his own interpretation of this “religion of love”: No religion is more sublime than a religion based on love and longing for Him whom | worship and in whom J have faith... . This is a peculiar prerogative of Muslims, for the station of perfect love is appropriated to Muhammad beyond any other prophet, since God took him as His beloved.” Similarly, with regard to Rimi, we are presented with this paradoxical combination between universalist vision and an invitation to embrace Islam. He, also, refers to the “religion of love” (millat-i ‘ishq), saying in his poetry: The religion of Love is separate from all religions. For lovers, the religion and creed is—God.” But this does not prevent Rimi from appealing to a Christian, Jarrah, to embrace Islam, and to cease believing that Jesus is God. When Jarrah says that he believes that Jesus is God because this is what “our books” tell us, Rumi replies: That is not the action or the words of an intelligent man possessed of sound senses. God gave you an intelligence of your own, other than your father’s intelligence, a sight of your own other than your father’s sight, a discrimination of your own. Why do you nullify your sight and your intelligence, following an intelligence that will

destroy you and not guide you?. .. . Certainly, it is right that . . . the Lord of Jesus, upon whom be peace, honoured Jesus and brought him nigh to Him, so that whoever serves him has served his Lord, whoever obeys him has obeyed his Lord. But inasmuch as God has sent a Prophet superior to Jesus, manifesting by his hand all that He manifested by Jesus’ hand and more, it behooves him to

follow that Prophet, for God’s sake, not for the sake of the Prophet himself.’

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Conclusion If one wishes to define the universality of the message of the Qur’an in a manner that appeals not only to liberals, pluralists, and universalists, but also to the vast majority of practicing Muslims, together with their conservative representatives, one cannot afford to ignore or dismiss the principle and the power of religious exclusivism. If, on the contrary, one’s universalism is predicated upon a truly inclusive perspective, one that includes even the exclusivist perspective, then instead of alienating the exoteric scholars of Islam, one has at least a better prospect of winning over some of them. One also has a realistic chance of changing the attitudes of those who adopt a harsh, intolerant attitude toward the non-Muslim Other, encouraging them to take up a more gentle, tolerant attitude toward adherents of faiths that are granted recognition in the Qur’an™ and must be accorded protection according to the Sharia. As regards dialogue with the West, such a nuanced presentation of universalism will serve two causes: first, it will demonstrate the unparalleled breadth of vision opened up by a spiritual perspective on the Qur’an, doing so in a manner that avoids both the pitfall of secular pluralism and the polemics of religious fanaticism. This will show that fervent faith in one’s religion can go hand in hand with a universal vision of all revealed religions. Second, it will disprove the argument made by those who claim that Islamic “universalism” is but the preserve of a privileged elite, having no resonance with grass-roots Muslims. In this connection, the following argument by Richard Neuhaus should be noted: As for conferences, it is not hard to get “Muslim spokespersons.” There are teams of them flitting from conference to conference all over the world. .. . I have met them in Davos, Switzerland, where top CEOs and heads of state annually gather with select intellectuals to chatter about the state of the world in the esperanto of an internationalese that is not spoken by real people anywhere. The Muslims in such settings are for the most part westernized, secularized, academic intellectuals who are there to “represent the Muslim viewpoint,” but have little more connection with living Islam than many Christians and Jews.”

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A pluralist presentation of the universal message of the Qur’an falls into precisely this trap. The result is that non-Muslims in the West cannot take seriously the supposed universality of a message that is apparently upheld only by a tiny minority of Western-educated liberal Muslims. By contrast, one cannot fail to take seriously this universal message if it be presented in terms that are truly universal, and not simply nominally so. To be truly universal is to open up to the Other, but not at the expense of the Self—the community of believers which one belongs to and that one ostensibly represents in dialogue. Universality comprises and is expressed by specificity; it is not undermined or contradicted by it, as Ibn ‘Arabi's metaphysical and hermeneutical perspectives demonstrate with such compelling force. On the one hand, we have the universal principle of divine ubiquity: “Wherever ye turn, there is the Face of God” (Q. 2:115); and on the other, the specific—exclusive— orientation that expresses, embodies, and enlivens the transformative power of the universal principle: “Turn thy face toward the Sacred Mosque, and wheresoever ye may be, turn your faces [when ye pray] toward it” (Q. 2:144).

Notes =

. This chapter summarizes the principal points in my book The Other in the Light of the

One: The Universality of the Qur'an and Interfaith Dialogue (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2006). This is an expanded version of a paper that was read at a conference

organized by al-Azhar in Cairo, January 5, 2009: “Al-Azhar and the West—Bridges of Dialogue.” 2. Cf. Q. 22:67: “Unto each community We have given sacred rites (mansakan) which they are to perform; so let them not dispute with thee about the matter, but summon

them unto thy Lord”; and Q. 2:148: “And each one hath a goal (wijha) toward which he turneth. So vie with one another in good works. . . .”

3. One might also add these verses, which further confirm that the message conveyed to the last prophet contains nothing essentially new: “Naught is said unto thee

[Muhammad] but what was said unto the messengers before thee” (Q. 41:43); “Say: ‘I am no innovation among the messengers . . .’” (Q. 46:9). 4. Cf. Q. 40:78: “We sent messengers before thee; among them are those about whom

We have told thee, and those about whom We have not told thee.” 5. See, for example, Farid Esack, Qur'an, Liberation and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld,

1997); Abdulaziz Sachedina, The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Hasan Askari, “Within and Beyond the Experience of

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Religious Diversity,” in The Experience of Religious Diversity, ed. J. Hick and H. Askari (Aldershot: Gower Press, 1985). . Thus, Hick cannot affirm belief in the Christian dogma of Jesus being God incar-

nate, for this would be making a claim to uniqueness: “If Jesus was God incarnate, the Christian religion is unique in having been founded by God in person.” The Metaphor of God Incarnate: Christology in a Pluralistic World (London: SCM Press, 1993), 87 (cited by Adnan Aslan, Religious Pluralism in Christian and Islamic Philosophy: The Thought of John Hick and Seyyed Hossein Nasr [Richmond: Curzon Press, 1998], 250). . Hasan Askari, “Within and Beyond the Experience of Religious Diversity,” in The Experience of Religious Diversity, ed. J. Hick and H. Askari (Aldershot: Gower Press,

1985), 199. . Ibn ‘Arabi, al-Futahat al-makkiyya, cited in William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 296 (translation modified).

. Ibn ‘Arabi, al-Futahat al-makkiyya, cited in ibid., 244 (translation modified). . Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Jami‘ al-bayan (Beirut: Dar Ihya’ al-Turath al-‘Arabi, 2001), 1:546. id,a

Ibid., 1:373. Al-Tabarsi, for his part, argues in his commentary, Majma‘ al-bayan fi tafsir al-Qur’an, that “abrogation cannot apply to a declaration of promise. It can be allowed only in respect of legal judgments that may be changed or altered with any

changes in the conditions of general welfare.” Cited in M. Ayoub, The Qur'an and Its Interpreters (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), 1:10. In the contemporary period, both Rashid Rida (d. 1935) and Allamah Tabataba’i (d. 1981) likewise uphold the literal meaning of the verse, and reject the possibility that it is subject to abrogation. See the discussion of this issue in Farid Esack, Qur’an, Liber-

ation and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997), 162-166; and in Abdulaziz Sachedina, The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 29-34.

. See the article “Abrogation,” by John Burton in Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, ed. J.D. McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 1:13. . Ibn ‘Arabi, al-Futahat al-makkiyya, cited in William C. Chittick, Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity (Albany: State University of New York, 1994), 125 (translation modified). . See Abdel-Halim Mahmoud, Qadiyyat al-tasawwuf: al-madrasa al-shadhiliyya (Cairo:

Dar al-Ma‘arif, 1999), 297. It is interesting to note that Shaykh Abdel-Halim, one of the most highly revered Shaykhs of al-Azhar of modern times, spoke in glowing terms

about the founder of the perennial school of thought, René Guénon (d. 1951). He went so far as to say that Guénon was one of those personalities who have rightfully taken up their place in history and that “Muslims place him close to al-Ghazali and his like” (yada‘uhu al-Muslimin bi-jiwar al-imam al-Ghazali wa-amthalihi) (ibid., 301).

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. See F. Schuon, Light on the Ancient Worlds (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2006), 57 for the full citation in context.

. See Shah-Kazemi, The Other in the Light of the One: The Universality of the Qur'an and

Interfaith Dialogue (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2006), 210-278, for elaboration on this argument. . This harsh rejection of all other faiths, which all too often characterizes the ultraorthodox puritanical flag-wavers of Islam, can in our times easily descend into militant jihadism, which is an illegitimate aberration, not least from the point of view of the Sharia—whence the importance of recognizing the stabilizing role played historically by the kind of “tolerant exclusivism” that has traditionally been fostered by principled adherence to the Sharia. . F. Schuon, “The Idea of ‘The Best’ in Religions,” in his Christianity/Islam—Essays on Esoteric Ecumenism (Bloomington: World Wisdom Books, 1985), 151. Recent works in religious philosophy in the West have been reevaluating the intellectual

credibility of religious exclusivism. See for example, David Basinger, Religious Diversity: A Philosophical Assessment (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). The most salient point made in this book seems to be the following, which develops some powerful arguments made by Kelly James Clarke (in “Perils of Pluralists,” Faith and Philosophy 14 [1997], 303-320): exclusivism is justified insofar as the grounds for afirming the truth and validity of one’s own tradition are stronger than those for affirming “transformational parity,” that is, the equality of the power within all religions to transform and re-center consciousness, the central function of religion—posited by the pluralists as the premise for their acceptance of all religions as equally true and valid. Basinger proceeds to argue that “while an exclusivist can never justifiably deny that there is actual transformational parity among diverse religious perspectives on ihe basis of experience alone, she [sic] can justifiably deny such parity if the denial follows from (or is required by) other beliefs within her perspective that she justifiably affirms” (64). See Reza Shah-Kazemi, “Civilizational Dialogue and Sufism: The Holy Qur’an and the Metaphysics of Ibn al-‘Arabi,” in Universal Dimensions of Islam, ed. Patrick Laude (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2011), for discussion of the possibility of an esoteric revalorization of religious exclusivism.

. Martin Lings, What is Sufism? (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975), 22-23. . Ibn ‘Arabi, The Tarjuman al-Ashwagq: A Collection of Mystical Odes, trans. R.A. Nicholson (London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1978), 52. 21.

22.

Ibid., 69.

The Mathnawt ofJaldlu’ddin Rumi, trans. R.A. Nicholson (London: Luzac, 1926), 2:312, line 1770. The following line from Ramis Diwan-i Shams al-Din Tabrizi is also to be noted here: “O lovers! The religion of love is not found in Islam alone.” Quoted by Ashk Dahlén, “Transcendent Hermeneutics of Supreme Love: Ramis Concept of Mystical ‘Appropriation’,” in Orientalia Suecana 52 (Uppsala, 2003).

23; Discourses of Rumi, trans. A.J. Arberry (London: John Murray, 1961), 135-136.

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24. See Reza Shah-Kazemi, Common Ground Between Islam and Buddhism (Louisville:

Fons Vitae, 2010), and the article by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf therein (“Buddha in the Qur’an?”) for ways of extending this recognition to a religion not explicitly mentioned in the Qur'an.

25. From his review of The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to

Dhimmitude by Bat Ye’or, in First Things 76 (October 1997): 93.

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Lhe Path of Allah or the Paths of Allah? REVISITING APPROACHES

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Introduction Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes, on the very last pages of his work On the Social Contract, Those who distinguish between civil and theological intolerance are mistaken in my opinion. Those two types of intolerance are inseparable. It is impossible to live in peace with those one believes to be damned. To love them would be to hate God who punishes them. It is absolutely necessary either to reclaim them or torment them. Whenever theological intolerance is allowed, it is impossible for it not to have some civil effect . . . [Whoever] dares to say outside the church there is no salvation ought to be expelled from the state, unless the state is the church and the prince is the pontiff.! To be sure, the issue of salvation is not merely a theoretical one; rather,

it goes to the very core of a person’s values, of how he or she will define and treat others. It is, therefore, an issue that has theological, philosophical, moral, and political ramifications. My focus here is on the theological dimension, though | will also touch on the practical ramifications of Islamic soteriology. This chapter is divided into two sections, followed by a conclusion. In the first section, I delineate the positions of major Muslim theological

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movements regarding the salvation of Others and their primary Qur’anic evidences for their respective positions. In the second section, I examine specific evidences that some modern reformists have used to challenge the classical approaches to this subject and point out some problems that arise from their interpretations. In the conclusion, | offer my own reflections.

An Overview of Muslim Theological Approaches to the Salvation of Others It shall come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Islamic tradition that all of the major theological movements in classical and medieval Islam viewed their religion as being the sole path to God. This was, after all, a time in which such a particularistic view was the norm in other religious traditions. In fact, far from allowing salvation outside of the religion, most Muslim sects spent their energy debating whether members of other Muslim groups would be forgiven for their heresies. Many Mu'‘tazilis declared the Ash‘aris unbelievers, many Ash‘aris declared the Hanbalis unbelievers, all of

the above declared the falasifa (the “philosophers,” such as Avicenna) and the batiniyya (“esoterists”) unbelievers, and so forth. But intra-Muslim polemics do not concern us here; the fact of the matter is that religious communities not belonging to Islam, the true “Other” in our vernacular, were assumed to be outside of God’s grace and in need of His guidance. The possibility of finding salvation in another religion while consciously and knowingly rejecting Islam was generally deemed unthinkable in premodern Islamic theology. The main theological issue that concerned classical and medieval theologians was not the salvific potential of other faiths—the absence of which was simply taken as a given—but rather the fate of those who had never heard of Islam or been exposed to its teachings. With regard to those who had never heard ofthe message (the common term used was tabligh al-risdla), the rationalist-inclined Mu‘tazilis and Maturidis, on the one hand, generally gave much weight to the intellect, hence they believed that a person would be legally responsible (mukallaf) to reject idolatry and affirm a general belief in an all-powerful God. Failure to do so warranted eternal punishment and damnation. The Ash‘aris, on the other hand, typically reactionaries against Mu'‘tazili doctrines, claimed that those who had not heard of the message would be forgiven, even if they were idolaters. This was based upon their theological premise

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that good and evil cannot be known without recourse to revelation (for example, for the Ash‘aris murder is not known to be inherently evil until God says it is); hence, in the absence of revelation no one could be culpable of any sin, including idolatry. The tripartite categorization of non-Muslims by Abi Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 111) best illustrates this point: 1. People who never heard of the message, who live in far away lands, such as the Byzantines (“Romans”). These will be forgiven. 2. People who were exposed to a distorted understanding of Islam and have no recourse to correct that information. These too will be forgiven. 3. People who heard of Islam because they live in neighboring lands and mix with Muslims. These have no hope of salvation.’

The Hanbali position, manifested in the writings of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), was that the intellect could indeed discern right from wrong, and thus a sane,

rational mind should logically come to the conclusion that there is only one all-perfect God who alone is worthy of worship. However, according to Ibn Taymiyya, God, out of His infinite mercy and justice, will not punish those who were never exposed to a prophetic message. Ibn Taymiyya based this doctrine on Qur’anic verses such as, “And We never punish until We have sent a messenger” (17:15). According to Ibn Taymiyya, those who did not receive the message or received a distorted version would be tested on Judgment Day.’ From this spectrum of views, we see that the contested question is whether God might forgive one who has not been properly exposed to Islam or had the opportunity to learn about it. The underlying principle for all of these traditions is that Islam is the only path to God; other religions are simply not acceptable, including Christianity and Judaism. In fact, when considering the topic of apostasy, the established doctrine in all four of the major Sunni schools of law was that any person who claimed that another religion was acceptable was simply not a Muslim, even if he or she claimed adherence to the religion.‘ Belief in the validity of another religious system was seen, quite sincerely and casually, as a rejection of Islam.° The question arises as to why there was such unanimity on this matter. It would be unfair to explain away this overwhelmingly popular position as the outcome of fear of the Other, or a selfish motive of wanting God’s mercy to be only with one’s own group. Although premodern Muslim theologians were bold enough to discuss various controversies, including the nature and attributes of God, they came together in their rejection of

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religious pluralism. The reason for this appears to be clear and explicit Qur’anic evidences. These verses are so numerous that we cannot discuss

them individually, but rather in categories. I concentrate on three such categories:

1. Verses That Indicate That the Religion of Islam Is the Only Religion Acceptable to God In the third sura of the Qur’an, which deals with the status of Jews and Chris-

tians, there appear a number of verses that have historically been interpreted in an exclusionary manner. Most prominent among them are the following: “And whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it shall not be accepted

of him, and he shall be of the losers in the Hereafter” (3:85). This verse follows a discussion of the errors of the Jews and Christians, and an afirmation that one must believe in all the prophets of God. “The religion in the eyes of God is Islam” (3:19). In the very next verse, the People of the Book are criticized.

The key term used in Q. 3:19 and 3:85 is al-islam, translated in the preceding passages as “Islam.” Although this term may linguistically mean “submission,” it cannot be interpreted in an abstract manner in these passages. Here al-islam (or capitalized as al-Islam) is a proper noun and connotes reified Islam. This is made clear by the context in which it appears in the Qur’an. Given that the surrounding verses mention both the Jews (Yahiid) and the Christians (Nasdra), criticizing aspects of their faiths, the verses commanding them to accept al-islam cannot be interpreted as mere exhortations to submit to God in some kind of unspecified manner. With this in mind, consider Q. 2:137: “So if they (i.e., the Jews and the Christians) believe as you have believed, only then are they guided, but if they turn away, they are in confusion.”

2. Verses That Indicate ‘That a Rejection of the Prophethood and Message of Muhammad Is ‘Tantamount to a Rejection of God In Q. 3:81, in the context of discussing the People ofthe Book, there is a

reference to a “covenant” that God made with the prophets preceding Muhammad, that they would believe in any subsequent prophet that God

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sends. Implicit in this covenant is one of the central tenets of the Qur’an:

belief in all of the prophets is inextricably linked to belief in God; the Qur’an commands that “no distinction” be made between them (2:285). In over 50 verses, various peoples throughout history are criticized specifically for belying the messengers of God (with the verb kadhdhaba); and divine punishment results directly from rejecting these messengers: “All of them belied the messengers, so the punishment was due on them” (38:14); “They belied My messengers, so how severe was My reckoning” (34:45). In another passage, the people of Hell are asked, “Did not a prophet come to you?,” to which they respond, “Yes, a warner came to us, but we belied him and said that God has not revealed anything” (68:9). As such, the significance of the Prophet Muhammad cannot be understated. God repeatedly commands people to “believe in God and in His Messenger [i.e., Muhammad]” (as in Q. 57:7). In the seventh sura of the Qur’an, much of which discusses the Children of Israel, we read,

I shall prescribe my Mercy for those who are righteous, give of their charity, and believe in Our signs. Those who follow this unlettered prophet, whom they find mentioned in their own scriptures of the Torah and the Gospel . . . so those who believe in him, and support him, and aid him, they are the [only] successful ones. [Prophet], say: O Mankind, I am a messenger of God to all of you. . . so believe in

God, and His words, and follow him [i.e., the Prophet], in order that you may be successful. (7:156-158)

Even more explicit is the following verse: “And whoever opposes the Messenger after the guidance has been made clear to him and follows a path other than that of the believers, We shall lead him to what he has chosen and cause him to enter the Fire” (4:15). And in the same chapter we read: “Nay, by your Lord, they shall not have faith, until they take you [i.e., the Prophet] as a judge in all of their matters, and they find no objection in their hearts to what you have decreed, and they submit wholeheartedly” (4:65). According to Q. 48:13, “whoever does not believe in God and in His Prophet—verily We have prepared for the unbelievers (kafirin) a blazing torment.” God also threatens those who refuse to acknowledge the divine origin of the Qur’an with eternal punishment (Q. 2:23-24). In Q. 2:89—-91, the Jews who rejected the prophets are chastised, cursed, and accused of unbelief for rejecting the divine Book. In short, true belief in God goes hand in hand with belief in His Prophet and His final revelation.

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3. Verses That Criticize the Beliefs of Other Faiths Numerous verses in the Qur’an criticize the beliefs of idolaters, Chris-

tians, and Jews—the three main groups with which the early Muslims interacted. The criticism of Arab paganism is a central theme of most Meccan revelations—the pagans are castigated not only for specific social practices but also for heterodox and superstitious beliefs, which are viewed as deviations from the true religion of their forefather Abraham. As for the People of the Book, although the Qur’an acknowledges the authenticity of the Torah, Psalms, and Gospel, it presents both the Jews and the Christians as having concealed or deviated from the true teachings of their prophets. This would explain the need to reveal a final message through a universal prophet. The Qur’anic criticism of key Christian concepts is quite pronounced and often involves the use of the verb kafara or a noun derived from it, kufr (unbelief)—the very antithesis of faith. In Q. 9:30, God’s curse is placed on those who claim that the Messiah is a Son of God; according to Q. 5:72-73, “They have blasphemed (kafara) those who say God is the Messiah, son of Mary” and “those who say God is the third of a trinity (thalith thalatha)”; and in passages such as Q. 9:31 and 5:16, the Christian deification of Jesus is equated with shirk, the unforgivable sin of associating partners with God.°® Along with the passages that chastise the People of the Book for their respective theological positions, there are, of course, contentious verses, such as Q. 9:29, which commands Muslims to fight those People of the Book “who do not believe in the religion of truth,” and to “take the jizya [tax] from them.”’ Consider also Q. 61:9: “He is the one who has sent His Prophet with the Guidance, and the True Faith, so that it may manifest itself over all other faiths, even if those of other faiths do not like this.”® Any interpretation of any Qur’anic verse that seems to promote pluralism

must take into account the aforementioned passages. Before proceeding, it must be pointed out that evidences from the hadith literature have been completely sidelined. It is simply not possible to formulate a pluralist interpretation of Islam except by neglecting or rejecting the hadith corpus.? In addition to scriptural evidences and the principle of ijma‘ (consensus), there is also a logical argument that Muslim theologians often employ: the claim that more than one religion is simultaneously valid is

illogical because each religion has tenets that would be deemed blasphe-

mous by the other. Put simply, they cannot all be right at once.”

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All this is not to suggest that there were no medieval Muslim pluralists whatsoever. The fact of the matter, however, is that the overwhelming ma-

jority of medieval Muslim theologians generally felt little or no pressure to produce comprehensive refutations of a doctrine they considered to be

both rare and obviously problematic. For instance, the traditionalist Ibn Taymiyya, not surprisingly, mentions and rejects a view ascribed to the philosophers and some Sufis that, although it would be best to be a Muslim, it is permissible for a man to be a Jew, a Christian, or even an idolworshipper." What is significant is that Ibn Taymiyya felt no need to refute them by quoting Qur’anic verses or hadiths (which is generally the case when he refutes other groups); he considers their view to be self-evidently preposterous. In this light, and given what we know of the various epistemologies of medieval philosophers and Sufis, one could assume that their arguments for pluralism often relied heavily on extra-scriptural arguments and assumptions that were not recognized by most theologians. Needless to say, another group that has championed claims of salvific plurality (or “universality”) is modern reformers. Some of them, such as Reza Shah-Kazemi, have explicitly championed the model of Sufis such as Ibn ‘Arabi.” Reformers belonging to the perennialist (or traditionalist) school have incorporated Sufi notions and infused them with other thoughts, in particular those of Frithjof Schuon (d. 1998). (Among their esteemed members are Seyyed Hossein Nasr and William Chittick.) Other voices of the modern reformist camp stand outside of this Sufi message, or at least do not openly reference it. Perhaps the most famous among these are Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988) and, today, Abdelaziz Sachedina and Farid Esack. This last group, in particular, is extremely significant, since it is the first and only group (to the best of my knowledge) to argue that a message of pluralism is derived directly from a straightforward, nonesoteric reading of the Qur'an.

A Scriptural Case for Plurality? The Qur’anic verse 2:135 indicates that being a Christian or a Jew is not what guarantees salvation (kini hidan aw nasara); what matters is one’s adherence to Abrahamic monotheism (millat Ibrahim hanifan). Therefore, argues the pluralist proponent, anyone who submits to the will of God, whatever their religious beliefs, is a “muslim” with a small “m,” that is, “one who submits” to God. This conclusion is presumed to be congruous with

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Q. 2:n-u2: “And they say that none shall enter Paradise unless he be a Christian or a Jew... . Rather, whoever submits (aslama) his face to God, while he is righteous, shall have his reward with his Lord.” Farid Esack has written extensively on this in his book Qur'an, Liberation and Pluralism, in which he attempts to redefine the key terms of iman (belief or faith), islam (submission), and kufr (unbelief or rejection of faith).” As we have seen, however, the Qur’an draws a connection between

submission to the will of God and submission to certain key tenets, in particular, belief in the prophets, the divine books, the angels, and the Day of Judgment. In numerous passages, the Qur’an describes the believers as those who have faith in these basic tenets (as in 2:285). In addition, in numerous other verses (some of which have already been quoted), rejecting one or more of these tenets is considered kufr. Thus, to suggest that the three monotheistic faiths are all subsumed by a larger faith called “islam” with a small “i” (i.e., “submission” to God), and that this is the islam that the Prophet came to preach is to ignore numerous Qur’anic passages that show the contrary. These include verses that mention the alleged infractions and deviations of the existing Jews and Christians, some of which appear in the very context of the verses that mention the path of Abraham (or milla Ibrahimiyya). For instance, we read in Q. 2:137 (in reference to Jews and Christians), “So if they believe as you believe, then they are rightly guided, but if they turn away, then they are in opposition”; and in 2:145, “And if you were to bring every evidence they would not follow you—but if you were to follow their desires (ahwa’) you would be of the transgressors.” What is more, the Qur’an itself describes the path of Abraham as that of the Prophet: “The people who are closest to Abraham [or: who have the most right to be affiliated with Abraham], are those who followed him, and this Prophet and those who have faith”

(3:65~71). A key passage that the pluralist camp often invokes is Q. 2:62: “Those who believe, and the Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in God and the Last Day, they shall have their reward.” In his dis-

cussion of this verse, the pluralist Fazlur Rahman expresses his surprise that most commentators of the Qur’an could not see what, to him, is quite

clearly an affirmation of soteriological pluralism.“ Premodern commentators understood this verse in a number of ways. Some, citing a report ascribed to the Prophet’s companion Ibn ‘Abbas, held that this verse (revealed early in the Medinan phase) was “abrogated” by other passages revealed later. Other commentators claimed that the

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first phrase in the verse (“Those who believe”) is a reference to hypocrites who profess belief but are not true believers. Thus, the verse has nothing to do with plurality and merely indicates that hypocrites, Jews, Christians, and Sabians must all take the important step of professing true faith in God if they wish to achieve His pleasure. Many other commentators understood this verse to apply to communities in their chronological time frames (that is to say, the Muslims during and after the Prophet, the Christians during and after Jesus but before the Prophet, the Jews before Jesus, and so on). This, by and large, has long been the dominant interpretation and one that appears in Tafsir Muqdtil, the earliest commentary to come down to us. Advocates of this interpretation indicate that Q. 2:62 was revealed as a response to the question posed by the Prophet's companion Salman al-Farisi regarding the fate of his pious Christian teachers who never encountered the Prophet. Fazlur Rahman’s reading of Q. 2:62 simply never occurred to the generality of classical and medieval exegetes. And for good reason: the exegetes understood that any interpretation derived from this one verse had to be in accordance with the rest of the Qur’an.

Conclusion The claim that the Qur’an itself promotes a vision of soteriological pluralism cannot be supported. It is difficult to repudiate the accusation that a pluralist interpretation of the Qur’an requires a selective reading of certain ambiguous verses which are then viewed with tinted lenses. No matter how politically correct or theologically generous or ethically pleasing such a reading may be, in the final analysis, it is a reading that simply does not emanate from the Qur’an but rather from external judgments of how things ought be. They emanate from a personal sense of unfairness and from individual experiences with righteous Others. Such genuine and sincere feelings might well form the basis of one’s personal convictions, but it would be problematic to project such sentiments onto the Qur’an. Moreover, the assertion that some vague, undefined submission to God earns salvation flies in the face of the entire message and life of the Prophet. Even the pagan Quraysh—the Prophet's sworn enemies— submitted to God in some abstract sense; the Qur’an itself clearly shows that they believed in God, prayed to God, considered Him to be all-powerful and all-merciful and all-knowing. Yet they were not considered guided, not

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because each and every one of them murdered infant girls or ate the property of orphans or perpetrated other social crimes—although these transgressions were also worthy of criticism. Quite clearly, the pagan Quraysh were deemed deniers of God primarily because they submitted to God in the wrong manner (by worshipping others alongside God) and by refusing to submit to the Prophet of God and believe in the Book of God. Further, a pluralistic vision contradicts the very purpose of sending a prophet or revealing a book. Imagine a book claiming to be God’s final revelation, and a prophet being commanded to announce his prophethood to all of mankind, but the message is that there is no need to believe in the message—a rather superfluous endeavor, to say the least. My frankness may cause some discomfort, but for the sake of my conscience it is a price I am willing to pay.” But my frankness leaves two very real problems that nonpluralists must confront. The first of these concerns the treatment of the Other, a problem to which Rousseau refers in the quote appearing at the beginning of this chapter: How can one treat another person with dignity knowing full well that God has damned him or her? To answer this question, we first must admit that a nonpluralistic view could very easily lead to prejudice and intolerance. But this certainly need not be the case. In fact, the opposite can and often does occur, and this is a tangible reality that those within the Muslim community witness on a daily basis. A nonpluralist Muslim might actually treat a non-Muslim better than he or she would a Muslim, possibly with the opportunistic intention of showing the nonMuslim the beauty of Islam and eventually winning him or her over to the faith. Although it is true that a fringe minority of Muslims—and the same applies to people of other faiths—have deemed it a part of their religion to treat the Other with disdain and perhaps even harm their lives and properties, the undeniable fact is that mainstream Muslims, Sunnis and Shi'is,

have not adopted such a bleak worldview and have often managed to live cordially with people of all faiths throughout history and across geographic regions. The second problem that nonpluralists must confront is far more profound: Does such a narrow view of salvation entail an intolerant and unmerciful God? How could a just and merciful and loving God unconditionally assign His wrath to those who might have theological views other than our own but who nonetheless have much good in them? As Farid Esack points out in Qur'an, Liberation, and Pluralism, many of those who suffered in the fight against South African apartheid seemed to exemplify

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Islamic values and were often more involved in the campaign for justice than were many ultra-isolationist Muslim clerics. What is one to make of the clear examples of saintliness found in other religions? To phrase the question bluntly, does Saddam Hussein get to go to Heaven while Mother Teresa burns in Hell? The standard Sunni position is that religion requires not just orthodoxy

(righteous belief) but also orthopraxy (righteous actions). It is a combination of both, not an either/or, that will earn God’s mercy. Hence, to answer this question, some might say that neither would technically qualify. Yet even an orthodox, traditionalist understanding of Islam can provide some glimmer of hope—not the bright shining light that many reformers would like to see, but a glimmer nonetheless. According to a straightforward reading of the Qur'an, God’s punishment awaits only those who have received and understood the prophetic message and then willingly and knowingly rejected it. This can be seen in two passages we have already encountered: (1) “And We never punish until We have sent a messenger” (Q. 17:15); and (2) “And whoever opposes the Messenger after the guidance has been made clear to him and follows a path other than that of the believers, We shall lead him to what he has chosen and cause

him to enter the Fire” (Q. 4:115). Thus, punishment is predicated on bayan (the message-made-clear), and then rejection or takdhib (to belie the message). What this means is that those who have not been exposed to Islam, or not exposed to it properly, might possibly have an excuse on the Day of Judgment. And only God can fully judge whether someone has been exposed to Islam in a proper and correct manner. No one can know whether John or Jenny ever heard the real message of Islam, and this is especially true if their understanding of the religion was derived from, say, a twenty-four-hour news network such as Fox News. Accordingly, the going view—certainly in the Sunni tradition—is that no one other than God can assign a judgment of Heaven or Hell on a particular individual, no matter how righteous or evil that individual may

appear to be. A specific non-Muslim living in our times is never said to be in Hell, for God alone judges individuals. This is made clear in verses such as Q. 13:40: “Your job is to convey, Ours is to judge.” Accordingly, one must speak in generalities (for example, “Those who reject the Prophet are doomed to God’s wrath”), rather than discuss the fate of specific individuals (for example, Mother Teresa and Saddam Hussein). When Muslim theologians affirm the supremacy of their own tradition, they are not claiming that they are going to Heaven, and those following

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other paths are all damned. Rather, what they are asserting is that the path they follow leads to God’s mercy, while the other paths lead to damnation—a view that is congruous with what we find in Q. 6:153: “And this is My path, the straight path, so follow it, and do not follow other paths, for they will take you away from His path. This is what He has commanded you, that you may achieve God-consciousness.” This theological claim, however, does not preclude the possibility that well-meaning Others who never discovered the Islamic path might be saved. Again, God knows best.

Notes 1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hacket, 1998), 226-227 (emphasis in the original). 2. Abii Hamid al-Ghazali, Faysal al-tafriqa bayna al-Islam wa-l-zandaga, ed. M. Bijt (Damascus: M. Bijit, 1993), 84. 3. See Ibn Taymiyya, Majmii‘ fatawa Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyya, ed. Muhammad ibn

‘Abd al-Rahman al-Qasim (Riyadh: n.d.), 3:303-304. He based this on the following hadith: “There are four (who will protest) to God on the Day of Resurrection: the deaf man who never heard anything, the insane man, the senile man, and the man who died during the fatra (the gap between prophets). The deaf man will say, ‘O Lord,

Islam came but I never heard anything.’ The insane man will say, ‘O Lord, Islam came but the children ran after me and threw stones at me.’ The senile man will say,

‘O Lord, Islam came but I did not understand anything.’ The man who died during the fatra will say, ‘O Lord, no messenger from You came to me.’ He will accept their promises of obedience, then a word will be sent to them to enter the Fire. By the One in Whose hand is the soul of Muhammad, if they enter it, it will be cool and safe for them.” This hadith was reported by Ahmad ibn Hanbal in his Musnad.

4. Tim Winter, “The Last Trump Card,” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 2 (1999): 147. 5. A number of Sunni scholars have pointed out that there is consensus regarding this issue, one of them being al-Ghazali. In our times, Yusuf al-Qaradawi writes, “So the unbelief (kufr) of the Jews and Christians is of the most apparent ofall matters to any Muslim who has even the slightest knowledge of the religion of Islam; in fact this is a matter that the entire community (umma) has agreed on, regardless ofits sect or

group; throughout the centuries, no Sunni, Shi‘i, Mu‘tazili, or Khariji disagreed with this. And the reason for this is that the unbelief of the Jews and Christians is not established through one or two verses, or ten, but rather through dozens of verses and dozens of hadiths.” He goes on to clarify, however, that this does not mean that they will necessarily be punished in the hereafter, for God might have mercy on those among them who did not hear of Islam properly. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Fatawa Mu ‘asira

(Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 2003), 31154.

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. The Jews are not free from castigation either: the Qur’anic verse 2:75, referring to the Jews, reads, “Do you [Prophet] hope they will believe in you, despite the fact that a group amongst them would listen to the words of God and then distort it, even while they know.” The Jews as a whole are criticized even though it was only a “group” that

distorted the message, presumably because the rest knowingly accepted this distortion. . As even Jane McAuliffe, a scholar who could not be accused of wishing to propagate reified Islam, notes on the Qur’an’s attitude toward the closest Other: “In no way, then, does biblical Christianity remain a fully valid ‘way of salvation’ after the advent

of Muhammad.”

Jane McAuliffe, Quranic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and

Modern Exegesis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 290.

. See also Q. 4:136: “O you who believe! Believe in God and His Apostle and the Book which He has sent down to His Apostle and the Book which He sent down before; and whoever decries God and His angels and His books and His apostles and the Last Day has indeed strayed off, far away.” . Perhaps the most explicit hadith reads, “I swear by Him in whose hands is my soul,

there is not a single Jew or Christian who hears about me and then dies not having believed in my message, except that he shall be of the denizens of Hell” (reported in Sahth Muslim, in “Kitab al-iman”). 10.

Of the classical theologians, the Ash‘ari Abt al-Mu‘in al-Nasafi (d. 1114) pointed this out in his work Tabsirat al-adilla, ed. Claude Salama (Damascus: 1999), 22. . Ibn Taymiyya, Kitab al-radd ‘ala al-mantigiyyin (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya,

2003), 282. . See Shah-Kazemis

chapter in the present volume, as well as his book The Other in the Light of the One: The Universality of the Qur'an and Interfaith Dialogue (Cambridge:

The Islamic Texts Society, 2006). . Farid Esack, Qur'an, Liberalism, and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997).

. Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes ofthe Qur'an, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica,

1994), 165-166. . Here I cannot help pointing out the rather duplicitous attitude that I myself have

encountered from those Muslims who argue for a pluralistic interpretation. It is not uncommon for this group to label Muslims who disagree with this pluralistic interpretation with pejorative adjectives (“bigoted,” “intolerant,” and “scared” are some that I have come across). Surely, those who argue for accepting others’ viewpoints should just as readily be willing to accept a view that disagrees with their own.

6

Realism and the Real ISLAMIC

THEOLOGY

OF ALTERNATIVE

AND

THE

EXPRESSIONS

PROBLEM OF

GOD

Tim Winter

Introduction This chapter will argue that religious pluralism, understood as the belief that the world religions represent a tapestry of differing but salvifically valid truth claims, is incompatible with Islamic monotheism.

A defin-

ing and indispensable feature of belief in one God is rejection of the idea that a plurality of objects of worship, specific to different human groups, mediates between individual worshippers and the ineffable Absolute. Such a problematic idea characterized many forms of ancient paganism, with which the monotheisms, not least Islam, are in ineluctable tension. However, it will be suggested that Islam’s insistence that conflicting claims about divinity cannot concurrently be true does not lead to a triumphalist assurance that Muslims alone will be saved or to a worldview that endangers rather than reinforces ethics.

The Pagan Paradigm A characteristic of the pagan order in the ancient world was a kind of henotheism or monarchian polytheism. Romans and Greeks often believed in an ultimate deity but were sure that this deity became accessible to human minds and hearts only when manifested in the form of a particular cult

figure. The ultimate was beyond all human knowing or linguistic expression, but its goodness ensured that it accepted the partial, but still pleasing, characterization of its nature in the personae of the classical pantheon. When he encountered unfamiliar gods among different peoples, the educated

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Roman was neither scandalized nor impelled to dismiss the new gods as fictions but applied what Tacitus called the interpretatio Romana:' different nations worship different personifications of the Ultimate, and these are very many, although finite in number.’ Caesar, during his conquest of Gaul, did not condemn the Gaulish pantheon but assumed that Toutatis, Taranis, and Belenos were simply local names for Mercury, Jupiter, and Apollo.’ Since no metaphysic can sum up the divine nature (Roman philosophers typically despised dogma), local cults were to be left in peace. Even where a local god was worshipped for which a Roman equivalent could not be identified, the Roman custom was to devise a Latin name for itand assume that it, too, was a name that led to the Absolute. Hence

a Carthaginian god, Baal Addir, became Mercurius Sylvanus, a deity unknown in Italy.‘ The interpretatio Romana not only suited philosophers but was politically helpful to emperors whose subjects worshipped a large variety of deities. The Roman pagan vision had become part of the structure of the state when the emperor Commodus determined that all the various pantheons of his empire should be officially united as manifestations of the supreme deity: Jupiter summus exsuperantissimus. To the old Palatine gods were officially added Isis, Serapis, and the Syrian idols, and others followed in a generally tolerant and unproblematic fashion.° This religious pluralism was in many respects the foundation stone of the Pax Romana. This pagan approach, which appears as far back as Herodotus’ and was defended on a theoretical level by Plutarch’ and then by Plotinus,® was upheld as a virtue by pagan philosophers as they sought to persuade the emperors of the seriousness of the Christian threat. The neoplatonist Porphyry, in his Philosophy from Oracles, dating from around the year 305, held that the various philosophies and popular cults all converged on the same Absolute and were all valid ways of approaching it. He was able to include Judaism as one of the “paths to the One”; and he excepted only Christianity, since its claims for Jesus broke the consensus of all true paths to God, and threatened the stability and harmony of the world.? Christianity turned humanity away from belief in the unity of the Ultimate, and its doctrine of a unique and universal savior was outrageous and politically lethal.” By the late fourth century the conflict between classical paganism and the new cult of Christianity had reached the point at which pagan worship was being actively suppressed. Romans loyal to the old gods found themselves pleading for toleration throughout the empire. The pagan philosopher Themistius, one of the most urbane and thoughtful advocates of

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the old pluralism, urged the emperor Jovian to celebrate, and not suppress, religious diversity, in these terms: It is as if all the competitors in a race are hastening towards same Judge but not all on the same course, some going by route[,] others by that; thus you realise that, while there is only Judge, mighty and true, there is no one road leading to him, but is more difficult to travel, another more direct, one steep and

the this one one the

other level. All, however, tend alike towards that one goal and our

competition and our zealousness arise from no other reason than that we do not all travel by the same route. . . . May it never be displeasing to God for such a harmony to exist among men... . The creator of the universe also takes pleasure in such diversity." In Rome itself, a delegation of pagans, led by the chief prefect Symmazchus, formally petitioned the new Christian emperor Valentinian II to continue to tolerate the practice of the city’s ancient faiths. Symmachus put his case as follows:

Everyone has his own customs, his own religious practices; the divine mind has assigned to different cities different religions to be their guardians. Each man is given at birth a separate soul; in the same way each people is given its own special genius to take care of its destiny... . If long passage of time lends validity to religious observances, we ought to keep faith with so many centuries, we ought to follow our forefathers. . . . It is reasonable that whatever each of us worships is really to be considered one and the same. We gaze up at the same stars, the sky covers us all, the same universe compasses us. What does it matter what practical system we adopt in our search for the truth? Not by one avenue only can we arrive at so tremendous a secret.” For Symmachus, pluralism was both religiously coherent and socially helpful. A diverse empire could and must worship the Supreme Being through the mediation of different faiths and a vast diversity of gods and

goddesses. But his plea was rebuffed by the great Christian theologian St. Ambrose, who wrote to the emperor to warn him against extending toleration on such specious grounds. It was evident that the pagan sacrifices were vain, and the gods false. “Salvation is not sure,” he wrote, “unless

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everyone worships in truth the true God, that is the God of the Christians,

under Whose sway are all things: for He Alone is the true God, Who is to be worshipped from the bottom of the heart.” As for the pagan idea that there might be many roads to truth, this merely testified to their lack of clarity about that truth, a consequence of the absence of revelation and scripture. Ambrose concluded by declaring that “what you seek through vague hints, we have found through the real wisdom and truth of God.”

Abrogation (naskh) Islam appeared on the scene when the Christianization of the empire was largely complete. Muslim theologians, pondering the appeal of the paganism that God had now supplanted, could look back with a fairly accurate sense of the logic of the ancient world. For Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209): Some people hold that humanity is not competent to worship the Supreme Deity, and that the most that can be aimed for is for men to worship an angel. As the angels are worshippers of the Supreme Deity, every man adopts and worships an idol in the belief that it is a likeness (mithal) of that angel which directs the affairs of his city.” But that immemorial state of affairs was now decisively at an end. The theologians recognized the monotheistic rejection of pagan pluralism as a central leitmotif of the Islamic scriptures, which continued the Jewish and Christian struggle, this time against local epigones of the pagan world (al-Lat had been identified in Hellenized circles with Athena, while al-‘Uzza was the Arabian form of Aphrodite). For the Qur’an, revelation has disclosed foundational truths, and God has “sent His Messenger with guidance and the true religion to make it prevail over all religion” (9:33); earlier local and tutelary deities were mere falsities, the decayed remnants, perhaps, of a once more valid reverence for a prophet or an angel whose prayers God had heard. The arrival of Islam asserted in a particularly firm way the monotheistic exclusion of a plurality of truths; for Ibn Qayyim alJawziyya (d. 1350), “the ways to Hell are many, but the way to Heaven is one.”!© The Qur’an asked its bearer to proclaim: “This is my path, upright; therefore follow it, and do not follow the paths, lest they divide you from His path” (6:153); the right path is found by responding positively to the Prophet of the age.”

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Pagan gods were not the only target of God’s new intervention. Major symbolic events of the Prophet's ministry show him refuting Christian clergy, who are not representatives of minor heresies, but appear as leaders of mainline Chalcedonian churches. The first example is the Prophet’s engagement with the Bishop of Najran, who had been heavily patronized by the Great Church in Constantinople. The sira literature’s long accounts of the encounter in the Prophet’s mosque are built around a series of Qur’anic citations, employed by the Prophet to refute the priests’ doctrines one by one, summoning them to Islam, until he “deprived them of their

argument.” Crucial was the Prophet's use of Q. 3:59: “The likeness of Jesus with God is as the likeness of Adam. He created him of dust, then He said to him: ‘Be!’ And he was.”"8 Jesus, like Adam, is nothing but creature. Another iconic moment in the Prophet’s ministry to Christians came when he dispatched letters to contemporary rulers, summoning them to Islam. The best known of these was sent to the Emperor Heraclius. According to the hadith collector al-Bukhari (d. 870), the message ran as follows: In the name

of God,

the Compassionate

and

Merciful.

From

Muhammad, God’s slave and messenger, to Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium. Peace be upon he who follows the guidance! To proceed: I invite you with the summons of Islam: be Muslim and be saved, and God shall give you your reward twice over. But if you turn away, then the sin of the peasantry shall be upon your shoulders.” It is an archetypal monotheistic summons. The Prophet’s theology is foundational: his claims are true. The Christian religion, here in its Orthodox Chalcedonian form, differs from them and is to be overturned, and the emperor himself and his flock must join Islam in order to be saved. He will have his “reward twice over,” since he will be rewarded for his followers’ conversion as well as his own;” if he will not accept Islam, then he and those who follow him will incur sin. Orthodox Christianity, as the commentators affirm, has suffered alterations from the original teachings of Jesus, and God has brought something new that supersedes it. The same hadith continues by recording that, upon receiving this message, the emperor and his entourage, fearing the loss of their power and prestige, grew angry and turned away; the Persian Chosroes, who received a similar letter, furiously tore it to pieces.”! For later Muslims such egotism and rage sufficiently explain the enmity directed at Islam by representatives

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of earlier traditions, who intuit that God has spoken again but whose hard-heartedness and pride prevent them from submitting. Here is the Muslim Neoplatonist al-‘Amiri (d. 992), heir to Porphyry but a trenchant denier of his pluralism: As the religion of Islam, expressed with the utmost beauty and elegance, abrogates all other religions and challenges all other authorities, hearts are filled with rage against it as it has demolished the thrones of the scholars of the two books [of Christianity and Judaism], and the thrones of the kings and rulers. It is hardly surprising that its enemies should be so many and that their delirious attacks on it should be so abundant.” The Qur’an and its Prophet are clear that the reason for a new prophetic dispensation is the corruption of its predecessor. Their critique of Judaism and Christianity presupposes that present-day versions of those faiths would have been unacceptable to their founders and their communities. In particular, hadiths narrated by al-Bukhari and Muslim (d. 875), which describe the Second Coming, present Jesus as a breaker of crucifixes and a killer of swine,” indicating his anger at innovations introduced among Christians after his time on earth. One sign of the end-times will be that the Muslims will follow the customs (sunan) of the Jews and Christians;* a sign that they have distorted their message will be their unwarranted interpretation (ta’wil) of their scripture, a hermeneutic distortion of the texts that will permit corrupt financial practices, the lending of money at interest, and homosexuality.” Other hadiths assume this critique by urging Muslims not to err as some earlier believers had done. They had praised their founders so extravagantly as to raise them to a superhuman status: “Do not praise me to excess, as the Christians praised Jesus the son of Mary; for I am only

God’s slave and messenger.””° Overall, classical Sunnism was clear that “the Qur’an informs us that the Torah and Gospel were distorted and changed after being revealed to them.””’ It is for this reason that the Prophet is to strive to ensure that all mankind accepts the unity of God and his apostleship.” For Sunni Islam it is a matter of consensus (ijma@‘) that the Prophet’s religion abrogates those of his predecessors. The teaching was based on

numerous hadiths that together reached the status of tawdtur, being attested by multiple parallel chains of transmission back to the Prophet.

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[Abrogation] is proved by consensus (ijma‘) and scripture (nass). The community (umma) has agreed completely (qatibatan) that the law of Muhammad (may God bless him and grant him peace) has abrogated the laws of those who came before him, either entirely, or in those matters in which it differs from them.”

Much of the section devoted to issues of prophecy (nubuwwat) in classical theology (kalam) manuals deals with Christian and Jewish denials of Islam’s abrogation (naskh) of the earlier faiths. The manuals note that while Christians accept the possibility of abrogation (since their religion claims to abrogate Judaism), Jews deny that God’s laws, as set down in the Torah, could ever be abrogated or changed, since their divine author cannot change His mind.*® However, as the Qur’an puts it, “God erases and establishes whatsoever He will” (13:39); with changing times, the interests of His servants change, and thus religious laws (as opposed to doctrines) may be amended by a new episode of prophecy, “as in the case of fasting, which God has now commanded to be in the daylight hours only, and not at night.”*' Abrogation resembles the decision of a physician to replace one treatment with another, in the case of a patient whose condition has changed. Some energy was devoted to refuting the claim of a messianic Jewish sect, the ‘Isawiyya, which believed that Muhammad was

a prophet to the Arabs alone, and not to the Jews.”? Classical Islam, divided on several key issues, was thus remarkably united in its insistence that not only paganism but the earlier monotheisms, were distorted remnants of an original pristine teaching and had therefore been superseded by the new revelation of Islam. This unanimity is hardly startling, since any affirmation of the continuing validity of Judaism and Christianity would have demolished the raison d’étre of the Qur’an and of the civilization that confidently arose on its foundations. Put differently, if earlier traditions were not decayed, the Prophet would simply have joined Judaism or Christianity and would certainly not have written his letters to Heraclius and Chosroes; similarly, if Islam had simply come to refute heretical margins ofthe earlier faiths, then the Qur’an would not have presented its message as a new

religion. It is not irrelevant that those heretical margins were already on the wane, thanks to vigorous imperial persecution, and the places where they maintained a shadowy existence, as with the ongoing sympathy for Arianism among the Germanic tribes, were far from Islam’s center of operations.

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The “Names ofthe Essence” (asma’ al-dhat) In this section we explore in more detail the logic of Islamic theology in its historic view of other versions of faith, paying particular attention to its rejection of the key pagan assumption that language about the divine nature delivers purely relative information, and is hence effectively nominalist. Doctrine purports to be an account of a true state of affairs, in a uni-

verse in which entities have certain fixed qualities™ from which systematic analogies can be proposed. Whatever difficulties may inhere in the use of human language when it offers predications about the divine, an axial religion must have a formal set of propositions about the immaterial realm that it takes to be true. As a corollary, to be itself, such a religion must consider propositions that are evidently contrary to its own to be false. This foundationalism, certainly assumed in the Qur'an, is a maxim of Islam’s formal metaphysic, ‘ilm al-kalam (the science of kalam). The centrality of this discipline to normative, that is to say, majoritarian, Sunni scholarship cannot be disputed, despite occasional attempts to present Hanbali fideism as the default theology of Sunnism.*® Ash‘arism and Maturidism are the most widely followed doctrinal systems of the Muslim religion and presuppose that their core doctrines of God, their prophetology, and their eschatology represent exclusively true accounts of metaphysical and future historical fact. In this, Islamic theology follows the evident logic of monotheism itself, which throughout the Biblical and Qur’anic narratives presents salvation history as a conflict between true and false accounts of deity and of human becoming. It is an axiom of kalaém that claims about reality are either true or false on their own terms. The category of true doctrines (haqq) is expounded by the kalam theologians: an example would be the proposition that “God is Uncreated.”

Other doctrines are taken to be entirely false (batil), as with the claim that images of Aphrodite or Hubal are true representations of a demiurgic power whose worship is effectual. It is significant that no Muslim theologian has yet proposed a full pluralism, that is to say, one that embraces the validity of classical or Arabian paganism as an alternate account or theophanic aspect of “the Real.” Pluralism has been, in an Islamic context, only selective.*° It would, presumably, choose to stand with Ambrose against Symmachus and the humanistic pluralism of ancient Rome. Such a pluralism, however partial, will still claim that the kalam insistence that the attributes of God as known in Islam are objectively true is

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only a partial, denominational perspective. The Qur’an has established nothing more than another of the many divine personae. The Real (al-Haqq) transcends all predication, which, unable to share in the absoluteness of the Real, must be relative and contingent, and must hence permit the possibility of alternatively valid predications. In this, Muslim pluralists have often come close to the Kantianism of John Hick, who proposes that all speech about the divine comprises a set of purely human projections upon the noumenon.” Unfortunately for proponents of this approach, Kant’s noumenon is not the Islamic Haqq. The earliest Muslim debates over the divine predicates were held between Mu'‘tazilis, who refused to allow that they could be anything more than aspects or modes of the divine life, and the emergent Ash‘ari and Maturidi thinkers, who reacted strongly against the idea often known as ta‘til: the negation of the reality of the divine predicates. The resultant Sunni perspective was the well known apparent paradox that God is not identical to his attributes but is not other than them either (laysa bi-ghayr aw bi-‘ayn al-dhat).** This, in turn, emerged from the Qur’anic insistence that, although “nothing resembles Him” (42:11), He may be described by names that convey real sense to the readers of scripture; after all, the same verse continues, “and He is the Subtle, the AllAware.” The other celebrated scriptural afrmation of divine ineffability, “Perceptions (absdr) cannot attain Him” (6:103), ends with the same affirmation of the same divine names. The copula “and” here seems implicitly to serve as a qualification: “however.” A related distinction between Mu'‘tazilism and Sunnism concerns the nature of religious language. For Mu'‘tazilis, particularly of the Basra school, and for the Karramis, the qualities by which God is described may be sufficiently derived by analogy with the predicates of created entities. By perceiving human power (qudra) and recognizing it as a perfection, we may attribute power to the divine nature; and so on with the other qualities of perfection. In fact, we are obliged to do so. On this epistemically optimistic view, reason sufficiently and correctly recognizes the qualities of the divine. The mind may determine which of the adjectives linguistically established in connection with created things (muhdathat) may appropriately be applied to their source; hence, for al-Qadi ‘Abd al-Jabbar (d. 1025), one is obliged to hold that God is “Knowing” (‘Grif), but can validly detect the inappropriateness of calling Him “Understanding” (fahim). Committed Basran Mu'tazilis could even use their judgment to reject names of God explicitly attested in the Qur'an, such as al-Matin (“the

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Firm”), or al-Wakil (“the Trustee”). Mu'‘tazili preoccupations with Arabic semantics tended to facilitate this epistemological confidence. The background to this discussion was the very early argument over the origin of language (mabda’ al-lugha). The Qur’an (2:31) had determined that God “taught Adam all the names,”" and this was widely held to indicate that all human language was known by Adam, so that linguistic signifiers were authentically, rather than conventionally or speculatively, linked to the objects and concepts they signified. Many later Mu‘tazilis contested this interpretation, but the generality of Ash‘aris maintained it. Language truly signifies, because it is an integral part of the totality of creation as determined by God.* The Sunni position, and in particular the majority position of Ash‘arism,* held that the divine predicates “are taken from revelation” (ma’khidha min al-tawgif), which may initiate our knowledge of God or may (for al-Juwayni) give us permission (idhn) to use certain divine predicates; and they said that “no name may be applied to God which is derived through analogy. The only names which may be applied to God are those supplied through revelation in the Qur’an, the sound Sunna, or which are the subject of the community’s consensus (ijma‘).”* For Abi’ Hamid al-Ghazali (d. um), however, names applying to qualities extrinsic to the divine essence may legitimately be determined by the human mind by analogy, although qualities of the essence may be established only through revelation. This is distinguished from the predication applied to created entities that many Sunnis held may validly be determined by analogy and reason. The names of the Prophet constituted a further puzzle; but even here, later Ash‘arism tended to conclude that his names, also, were known only through revelation (tawgqif), and could not be simply invented (wad. A further distinction comprised the Ash‘ari belief that God’s essential names are eternal (gadima); again, this was held against the Mu'‘tazili belief that they came into being in time (haditha).” The locutions used for the attributes may be contingent, but the predicates themselves could always be described by such words; hence the predicates are not subject to the words’ contingent status. This Ash‘ari simple realism was contested by Mu‘tazilism, and consequently by Twelver Shi‘ism, which tended to follow ‘Abd al-Jabbar in denying any natural connection between signifier and signified; al-Shaykh al-Mufid can do no more than state that “they are linked by the purpose (qasd) of the one who names.”* The implications of Sunni realism for the relevance of the Kantian noumenon/phenomenon

dichotomy are far-reaching. Importing Kant’s

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postscholastic metaphysics into an Islamic context, on the assumption that the ineffable noumenon is what the Qur’an means by stating that “nothing resembles Him,” allows a range of powerful alternatives to classical Sunni doctrine to become entrenched. For our purposes, one of the most significant is that the replacement of the Sunni belief that a simple either-or will not do in divinis, but that the attributes “are not identical to

the Essence, and are not distinct from it,” with a simpler dichotomy assuming the validity of a law of noncontradiction applied by “reason alone,” is the reduction of the divine predicates to a purely contingent ontological and epistemic status. Once theologians accept that the divine predicates exclusively qualify the phenomenal deity, the way is open to treating them as purely contingent consequences of wad‘. On such a radical view, it will be hard to avoid a lapse into complete nominalism, since the divine names are left in flux, and cannot be said to represent true universals. This was, of course, precisely the position reached by Kant. Ash‘arism, however, is not this. An axiom of classical Sunni orthodoxy is that the Real may be truly qualified by names that partake in the immutability of the divine rather than the flux of creation. Hence the category of asma’ al-dhat (“names of the essence”). The practice is fraught with paradox, which is grappled with in the major texts of Islamic metaphysics,” but what matters for our argument is that it exists and is insisted upon. Moreover it is enabled by the denial that our naming of God is in fact our naming; we use, exclusively, names that are known to be true not through fallible and contingent processes of human negotiation with other objects in creation, but through divine confirmation. In particular, the attributes of knowledge, power, and will, which are the core predicates of the “personal” deity of monotheism, are affirmed as authentic qualities of the Real, by virtue of the fact that the Real has disclosed these qualities in revelation. They are God’s qualities irrespectively of what human thinkers may say of them. The fact that the scripture that reveals them partakes of the eternity of God strengthens this position further. If Islam, to be itself, insists that the Real has certain qualities that are intrinsic, then the pluralism that insists that the monotheistic divine qualities are merely human inferences projected upon the noumenon will

fall away. So the idea that “different faiths constitute different ways of experiencing, conceiving and living in relation to an ultimate divine Reality which transcends all our varied visions of it’*° cannot be sanctioned by mainstream Sunnism. In a Mu'tazili context, in which the divine names are established by human reason and analogy, the qualities of God must

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be susceptible to redefinition as the perceptions and world experience of the human subjects change. As the theologians ask, “What about some-

one who lives in an area where he sees only black people, or surrounded by a lake in which he gets to know only fresh water: must he conclude from this that there are only fresh water and black people?”®' To define God through analogy and a supposedly pure reason is to impose our own culture upon Him; Ash‘arism was always aware of the way in which Mu‘tazilism limited God to that which could be affirmed by analogy with a finite and finitely encountered creation. Theology insists on the unitive absoluteness of al-Hagqq, but it also discloses the need to affirm qualities of the Real that are more than just humanly experienced modes of the Real’s operation toward the “object” that is creation. Such a doctrine must be falsified by the pluralists. Let us cite a single example, of crucial importance to Sunnism: the doctrine of the uncreatedness of the Qur’an. This purports to describe an aspect of the divine in terms of communication that is inseparable, even on non-

Hanbali readings, from specific predicates: the Qur’an is qualified by eternity, by the quality of divine authorship, by the quality of initial directedness to a particular historical context, and by an actual or intended relation to the Arabic language.” To adopt a Mu‘tazili or Twelver°? denial of the eternal subsistence of God’s speech widens the gulf between the Real and the contingent, allowing a potentially indefinite range of alternative interpretations of deity, including, inevitably, postmodern deconstructions of the very idea of transcendence (the link between such a radical relativism and the Mu‘tazili ta ‘til has been made explicit by Muhammad Arkoun).* Pluralism, then, cannot admit the orthodoxy of Islam to be true. It is

likely to be similarly intolerant of the truth claims of any monotheism. Not only must it deny Sunni formulations about the objective reality of the divine qualities (since these falsify the pluralist thesis by clashing with other traditions, particular those of India); it must no less insistently falsify mainline Christian definitions of the internal life of God. For Christians, God is three persons, eternally coexisting through bonds of absolute mutual love. To be a Christian is to affirm this as the true account of deity. Because the pluralist holds that the Real is beyond any attribution of internal differentiation (least of all into “persons”), the pluralist must hold that Christian theology, like Muslim theology, is not relatively wrong but is absolutely wrong. The above treatment has sought to demonstrate that the orthodoxy accepted by general consensus in Islam (and Christianity), which follows

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naturally from the monotheistic revolt against paganism, is radically incompatible with the pluralist belief that doctrines are not factual. It seems necessary, however, following the strategy commended by al-Ghazali (in his Tah@fut al-falasifa), to press the argument further. Pluralists may, on occasion, claim not to contradict orthodoxy but, in some sense, to “transcend” it. Orthodoxy, even of the fabulously intricate kind beloved of the late Ash‘aris and Maturidis, is seen as a populist discourse, built on the childlike assurance that the poetic language of scripture gives in some sense a reliable account of the Absolute. However, the Absolute is, despite the witness of the scriptures, impersonal, and in consequence the monotheisms must finally be regarded as purely human constructs. In this, the modern pluralists resemble the pagan philosophers of antiquity, who were similarly indulgent toward the specific beliefs of the various cults, holding that they all, or almost all, pointed toward the One.

It is not so clear, however, that the pluralist position properly establishes the Real’s ineffability. Even the sparsest via negativa (tariq al-nafy) will allow all but the most hard-boiled pluralists to affirm certain firstorder truths about the allegedly unknowable Haqq. The supposedly unqualified One is, the great majority of pluralists aver, indeed qualified by a significant number of predicates. Few disagree that it is One, and that it is Good. So far, so Platonic. But by evolving a belief that world religions represent cultic and social forms “approved” or “validated” by the Real, the same ground of being is typically given more anthropomorphic qualities than Plato would have allowed. For many pluralists, the Real has “willed” the religions, or at least “accepted” them; moreover, because the world religions are all taken to be soteriologically effective, lifting human subjects from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness, it is difficult to escape further predications: this Real has designed a cosmos in which actions and intentions are morally assessed. The Real is also able in some sense to reject, or at least be dissociated from, the worship and form of life of certain “false religions,” such as the Aztec sacrificial cult or the “German Christianity” of the Nazi era. The most defensible pluralist response is likely to be that the Real is not to be anthropomorphized in this way, except as a kind of popularizing

metaphor. A certain way of looking at Buddhism, for instance, might admit mate insist ment

as “saving means” (upaya) anthropomorphic approaches to the ulti(Amidism would furnish the most obvious example) but would still that pure Being cannot have will; that the wheel of moral assessand rebirth is not “willed” by a consciousness but is simply part of

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the structure of reality whose larger teleology must remain unexplored. Pluralism may advocate such a fideism, but if it does so, it will not easily escape the accusation that in its determination to develop a metaphysic that will affirm the radical soteriological and symbolic efficacy of all the world religions, it has proposed a doctrine that substantively prefers pagan, or perhaps Indic, over monotheistic types of belief. Of all religious versions, monotheism seems the most uncomfortable to the pluralist hypothesis; to maintain belief in its usefulness to pluralists it must be subject to more extreme “interpretation” than either classical paganism or the religions of India. In fact, its most evident guiding impulse probably needs to be subverted in a way that need not apply to many Indic and pagan traditions. To secure this radical deconstruction of the Qur’an and Muslim orthodoxy, pluralists frequently seek a recourse to traditions of Sufi hermeneutics (ta’wil), which they understand as authorizing ways of “transcending” orthodoxy. The plain sense of scripture seems to oppose pluralism, and so do orthodoxy and the ijma‘. To circumvent this, an elite of true metaphysicians must propose an esoteric deepening of the Qur'an that, while indulgent toward the simplicities of orthodoxy, which is at least sufficient for salvation, seeks to relativize all declarations of revelation concerning the divine nature insofar as these might create antinomies with the evident sense of rival traditions. Isma‘ilism, despite its historic belief in the unique validity of the Imam’s instruction (taTim), has sometimes paradoxically but effectively used its own esoteric ta’wil to generate a form of religious pluralism. In a more Sunni context, Muhyi al-Din Ibn ‘Arab? (d. 1240) system has been proposed as a possible basis for a relativizing of Islam that could allow the affirmation of other traditions, since all religious forms and objects of worship are, in a sense, instantiations of divine properties. However Ibn ‘Arabi's views on other religions, including paganism and Christianity, are not as accommodating as some readings would wish.” Accusing Christians of unbelief (kufr), he condemns the idea that Jesus represents a divine incarnation (hulal) rather than a manifestation (tajalli) of divine qualities, a critique that is taken up and developed by the commentators; moreover, he finds it unacceptable that God’s self-manifestation should have been restricted to only one entity.°* William Chittick offers the following interpretation of this:

If the Shaykh’s pronouncements on other religions sometimes fail to recognize their validity in his own time, one reason may be that, like most other Muslims living in the western Islamic lands, he had

little real contact with the Christians or Jews in his environment.”

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However this may be, Ibn ‘Arabis reluctance to recognize the validity of non-Muslim religions was perhaps influenced by the Sufi Ibn Barrajan, who was known to have opposed the idea that Jews and Christians might be saved; and this was mirrored by one of his best-known interpreters, ‘Abd al-Karim al-Jili (d. 1428), who was able to accuse Christians of grievous metaphysical error.*! Overall, the idea that Ibn ‘Arabis school commended a religious pluralism of a kind acceptable in late modern Europe seems to ignore both the nature of religion in the medieval world and the specific teachings of the Shaykh himself. But even were a pluralist reading of some passages in Ibn ‘Arabi deemed allowable, these would amount to no more than a moment in his playful discourse, in which opposite premises which briefly appear amidst limitless determinations, forever collide.

The Doctrine of Intercession: Islam’s Copernican Revolution To medieval Sunnis, it seemed that the Mu‘tazili tail did not only deny the reality of God’s “essential attributes” of knowledge, power, and will; it challenged any true attribution of compassion (rahma) to God. Despite the Qur’anic emphasis that “God has written rahma upon His own self” (6:12), a declaration specifically linked to the final judgment, the Mu'‘tazili determination to treat God as an abstract Real, a “cosmic justice machine” driven by a thoroughly abstracted “justice” to deliver an exactly calibrated reward and punishment, seemed closer to Indic ideas than to the personal deity established by the monotheistic scriptures. Such a context, which seemed to strip the Real of any true predication, was barren soil for any theology that sought to affirm the salvation of sinners or offer hope for those whose doctrines were mistaken. Perhaps the most emblematic aspect of this was the frequent Mu'tazili denial of the possibility that the Prophet might intercede for sinners or unbelievers. Intercession (shafa‘a), for such thinkers, might perhaps mean that those already in Paradise would experience an elevation in their rank, but it was not possible for a God ofjustice to forgive those who had

committed grave offenses against His majesty. For the Sunnis, the large corpus of hadiths describing the Prophet's intercession clearly ruled out this cold and impersonal soteriology. The Ash‘ari and Maturidi deity was absolutely just, but His justice could be

transcended by His compassion without being thereby diminished by it.

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It was realized that, but for this, there would be little justification for any prayer for forgiveness, although the Qur’an has enjoined its readers to pray for this (3:135, 27:46, 8:33). The Prophet’s intercession at the Judgment is hence simply the perfect expression of the practice of prayer on behalf of others and forms an aspect of his nature as “a mercy to the worlds” (211107); indeed, this was thought to be the “Praiseworthy Station” (al-maqam al-mahmid) promised him in scripture (17:79). This frequently appeared in the context of the early Sunni agreement that no one with a grain of monotheism in his heart at the time of his death could remain eternally in Hell, and a rich exegesis developed in the interpretation of hadiths that appeared to speak of the end of Hell’s punishment, the “rain at the end of Hell.”® For orthodoxy, rahma has the last

word. The hadiths describing the Intercession were complex, and it required considerable care to sort out the exact sequence of anticipated events. The doctrines proposed were very numerous, but only three beliefs were typically deemed “necessary” (wdjib): that the Prophet would intercede, that God would accept his intercession, and that his intercession would be

prior and superior to the intercession of all other prophetic and angelic intercessors.% Beyond this, a range of secondary beliefs was explored. It was generally agreed that the Prophet would intercede not once but on a series of occasions. Two in particular were described: the first was the General Intercession (al-shafa‘a al-‘amma), which would embrace all humanity before final judgment was given. By this prayer the Prophet saves the blessed and the damned alike from the torment of waiting to know their final fate, in a context vividly described as one of nakedness and great heat. A well-known hadith describes humanity moving from prophet to prophet, beginning with Adam, followed by Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, but finding that only the Prophet Muhammad is able to pray for them: I go before the Throne, and fall down in prostration before my Lord. Then God inspires in me such praises and great glorification of Him as were never inspired in anyone before me, and it is said, “O Muhammad! Lift up your head! Ask, and you will be answered; plead for intercession and it will be granted you.””

Through this General Intercession, according to another hadith, “I shall intercede for the greater part of what is on the face of the earth.”®

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In these hadiths one is struck by the repeated juxtaposition of the Prophet’s ontological primacy and his historical role as “seal” of the prophets (Q. 33:40), with his privileged right of intercession at the Judgment. As summarized by Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-Khafaji (d. 1659), the Prophet enjoys the privilege of primacy in all things: he was the first to receive prophecy in the World of Spirits (‘@lam-al-arwah) and shall be the first to intercede, the first to open the door of Heaven and the first to enter it, and the first to cross the Sirdt [i.e., the bridge to Paradise] with his community.” In one text the Prophet is presented as saying, “I am given the Interces-

sion; and, while each Prophet [before me] was sent to his own people alone, I am sent to the entirety of mankind.”” The literature clearly presents the Prophet’s unique intercessory powers as a consequence and sign of his simultaneous affirmation of, and primacy toward, the earlier reli-

gious founders. Because of his status as “first of creation,” and as “seal of prophecy,” he is to intercede for members of their communities as well as for his own; as he is prior to Adam, all humanity is his ummat al-da‘wa, the community that he summons and which is implicitly and ultimately his flock. As this belief would indicate, the hadith, by describing how humanity will hurry to other prophets before him, clearly indicates that this General Intercession is to include non-Muslims. All humanity, according to Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Qurtubi (d. 1273), will at this time recognize the Prophet through divine inspiration; the “praiseworthy station” is merited only by the one who will be praised by all the nations. At that time, even unbelieving communities will behold his unique standing with his Lord and his selfless concern to intercede in the face of the divine anger. Jesus, Moses, and others had been unable to intercede for their own flocks; but Muhammad pleads for them with God. At last, they see that it is through him, who Qur’anically is “a mercy to the worlds” (21:107), that God has finally shown His mercy.”! As well as discussing this General Intercession, most scholars came to identify a Special Intercession (al-shafa‘a al-khassa), which referred to the various events reported in the hadith literature whereby the Prophet, following the Judgment, “harrows Hell” by again pleading with God, this time for the forgiveness of sinning monotheists who have been condemned. This was the intercession that so exercised the Mu'tazilis.”

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Although many of these hadiths were regarded as entirely canonical (sahih), their volume and the proliferation of variants obliged the scholars to acknowledge that they were open to discrepant and even contradictory interpretations.”’ Centuries of Sunni discussion focused on how many such episodes of prophetic intercession could be hoped for, and for exactly which categories of humanity; and by the twelfth century a set of rival interpretations had become fairly standard.“ Debates were also pursued over the possibility that others could also exercise intercession; the conclusion was usually in the affirmative: other prophets, angels, and the Prophet Muhammad’s companions, could all plead with God on behalf of sinners who had entered Hellfire.” Muhammad alone exercises the General Intercession, but many others will intercede for their followers following the entry of sinners into Hell.” Various views arose over the extent to which non-Muslim monotheists might be incorporated in the Prophet’s own intercessions, taking their cue from a set of hadiths that ran, “My intercession is for whoever testifies that

there is no god but God,”” as well as the hadith that promised that “anyone in whose heart was a grain of faith shall depart from Hell.”” Intercession applies to those who afhrmed God’s unity, professing the first shahada (la ilaha illa Allah);” an idolator (mushrik) cannot benefit from intercession, as shown in a hadith in which Abraham is forbidden to intercede for his father.® The Prophet’s hope that his uncle Abt Talib would be benefited by his intercession is said to be explained by the fact that Abi Talib, although not a Muslim, was a monotheist who had shunned the idols of his people; alternatively, his was a special case, an exception to an otherwise universal rule.*! Apart from idolators, however, hadiths as interpreted by the theologians indicate that non-Muslim believers in God’s unity may be saved from Hell by the prayers of their various intercessors.” There also seemed to be evidence to suggest that the Prophet could intercede for sinners of earlier religions who had died before Islam.*? One view held that the Prophet’s intercession sought by the followers of earlier religions applied to his pleading with God at the time of determining (fasl al-qada), the dispatch of some to Heaven and others to Hell.% Al-Murtada al-Zabidi (d. 1791) held that it is “possible” (yuhtamal) that the Prophet’s intercession will include non-Muslims in Hell, just as it helped them at the Judgment.® In a similar vein, a saying attributed to Ibn ‘Abbas suggested that the Prophet’s major intercession, and his Praiseworthy Station, referred to his intercession for unbelievers who had entered Hell:

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When the people of Hell have entered Hell, and the people of Heaven have entered Heaven .. . the former shall call out to their Lord and pray to Him, and this will be heard by the people of Heaven. So they ask Adam, and then others, to intercede for them;

however, each one offers apologies, until they come to Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, who intercedes for them. This is the Praiseworthy Station.*° Again, the fact that these sinners approach other prophets before Muhammad seems to indicate that they are non-Muslims who seek the Prophet’s intercession on behalf of their coreligionists in Hell. The intercession of the Prophet for non-Muslims, while variously interpreted in the literature, makes sense most fully as an expression of his universality. The doctrine of the Muhammadan primacy, implicit in the story of the Ascension (mi‘raj), acknowledged in the hadith, and developed particularly in the Sufi literature, presents the Prophet not only as primal man, fully mirroring the qualities of God, but also as the first entity to be created (he was a prophet “when Adam was between body and spirit”*”). From his light proceeds the light of all the future prophets.

Every miracle which the noble Messengers brought Was theirs by virtue of his light alone. For he is the sun of virtue and they are its planets. Amid the shadows, they display its rays to humanity.**

This is, perhaps, Islam’s “Copernican revolution.” Instead of a universe of religions only one or a few of whose founders were the recipients of fully saving divine guidance, Islamic theology has proposed a cyclical and universal history that constructs the Prophet as the sun, and other religions’ founders as other celestial bodies, which, like planets, revolve around it. The light of the Prophet (al-nir al-Muhammadi), which is the basis of their own light, is not his own but is the reflection of the divine

glory: the Prophet is the ultimate and most inclusive manifestation of all the divine names. To be sure, the full implications of this were not set out explicitly in kalam theology, any more than a doctrine of full Muhammadan intercession for unbelieving monotheists was made explicit in the formal doctrine; but the implication cannot be said to be absent. It is as source and final solace of humanity that, at the Judgment, he will say, “I am the master of Adam’s children, and I do not boast.”®?

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Conclusion In monotheism, truth matters. It is disclosed, not constructed, and thus it stands in competition with rival verities that are only alleged. “If orthodoxy is true,” as one traditional Jew observes, “then non-orthodoxy is false. Pluralism and relativism are concepts that have no place in a religion of revelation.” Challenging the relativism of the ancients, the monotheisms triggered a revolutionary epistemic shift by claiming that true statements about ultimate reality could be made, and that this had immense implications for human acceptability to Heaven and for one’s fate in the afterlife. This assurance prevailed until Kant launched his attack on traditional metaphysics, when, in one of many partial reversions to the practices of antiquity, the older epistemic pessimism and a consequent religious pluralism were slowly able to reassert themselves. On this Kantian model, the focus is typically not on metaphysics but on ethical “imperatives”; the result is often, as with the system of Paul Knitter, a “performative soteriology.” By acting according to certain principles that are deemed to be moral universals, we demonstrate our true orientation to the Real, and this is enough to allow us to describe religions that help us to do this as salvific mediators. The ethical impulse that invites many modern thinkers to challenge older soteriologies is thus further reinforced by the postmetaphysical and pragmatic focus on ethical outcomes. The contemporary drive toward pluralism is often informed by a critique of monotheism that sees it as irreducibly unethical, because it is divisive and conflictual. Regina Schwartz has been a particularly influential advocate of this view. Monotheism replaced the relatively irenic, pluriform cults of the ancient world with a jealous God; and she sees Judaism as the initiator of this dichotomizing and violent transformation. If one’s own people are chosen, then Gentiles must be rejected: “The Other against whom Israel’s identity is forged is abhorrent, abject, impure.”” By passing out of Egypt, with its many gods, into a brutallyconquered promised land, Israel inaugurated a new type of collective identity. Where paganism forged identities through analogy, Judaism created its own through rejection,” inventing “a particularism so virulent that it reduces all other gods to idols and so violent that it reduces all other worshippers to abominations.”™ The Christian suppression of the larger pagan world was the culmination of this logic: in the New Israel, extra ecclesiam nulla salus.

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Schwartz sees monotheism as instinctively allergic to difference and ambiguity. For her the Babel legend is iconic: the divergence of human languages, and hence cultures, is Biblically constructed as a punishment and an enduring sign of divine displeasure: In this remarkable myth, the division of people into peoples is not in their interests, but in the interest of maintaining the power of a tyrannical, threatened deity jealously guarding his domain. How did the victorious monotheistic party miss that one, we might well ask? Or better, when can we stop perceiving it as victorious, and instead heed the sentiment of the prophet, “Let every people walk, each in the name of his god.” [sic]”° When we turn to Islam, we note that important aspects of this polemic do not apply. While hardly less insistent on the unique truth of a jealous God, the Ishmaelite strand of Abrahamic commitment strangely valorizes and even sacralizes diversity. The Babel legend itself is absent from the punishment narratives of the Qur’an, which proposes the differences in human languages and colors not as a curse but as tokens of God’s benign creative power (30:22). With regard to religious diversity, Islam’s assurance of its abrogation of earlier religions initially appears to place it squarely alongside Christianity in its traditional stance toward earlier versions of faith. This is misleading, however. While historic Christianity typically regarded membership in the church as a condition for salvation, Islam has held to a noncategoric supersessionism rooted in a belief in a kind of cyclical prophecy, which widens the implicit scope of providence since the beginning of time to include the founding stories of all peoples. “Every people has been sent a guide,” the Qur’an states (14:7), and “there has never been a nation among whom a warner did not pass” (35:24): the doctrine brought by each was necessarily the same, since God does not change; but their laws were often different. With the passage of time, communities lost part or all of the original monotheistic message (5:13), and forms ofidolatry and vice arose, finally necessitating the dispatch of a new prophet. The Prophet Muhammad brings these lesser cycles to a close, as the only prophet who is “sent to the entirety of mankind”; all humanity is in principle obligated (mukallaf) by the commandments he brings, once his message has been conveyed.” As the hadiths show, the Prophet, as “mercy to the worlds,” discloses God’s nature and purpose in a way that reaffirms and recapitulates the

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salvation once offered by earlier versions of faith. The doctrine of the Intercession presents this clearly. He pleads on behalf of others even if they are not of his own confession, by virtue of his universal mission and his particular representation of God’s rahma. Thus it is that members of abrogated traditions may hope for salvation. This, combined with the Ghazalian insistence that nonbelievers who have not culpably rejected the call to Islam may be saved, so that “most of the Christians of Byzantium and the Turks of this age will be covered by God’s mercy,” allowed Ash‘ari theology to reconcile the primary predicate of God’s mercy with His justice. Mu'‘tazilism stressed only the latter, and a certain antinomian relativism today may stress the former in an unbalanced way that negates justice and the logic of monotheism; but here Sunnism establishes itself as a middle way that seems to stand in no urgent need of esoteric or liberal amendment. A further point about ethics needs to be made. Islamic metaphysics, by refusing the Kantian shift with its deeply secularizing logic, does not only claim to present real and foundational truths about God and the world; it allows the religious Other to claim to do the same. The neopagan model of a vast range of concretized masks over the Real may seek to promote respect among the religions by denying any of them superior propositional or soteriological status, but it also opens the way to a Humean cynicism as to whether any of them are in fact true. It is hard not to see this as a type of deism, which, while seeking to respect religions, in practice denigrates them by assuring them that their claims cannot be true on their own terms. It is probably more respectful to allow a non-Muslim to claim foundational truth for his or her doctrines, even if they are to be judged largely false, than to refuse to consider them on their own terms. The Other must not be denied the right to offer truth claims as objects of serious assessment, rather than as merely relative and phenomenal captures of an Ineffable. Otherwise, there can be no serious debate or any other conceptual engagement with the religious Other, save insofar as this debate is presumed to have as its goal the disclosure of a truth that shows all religions as human constructs, anal-

ogies trapped by human language and its cultural framework (wad). As a zeitgeist theology responsive to contemporary unease over realist truth claims, pluralism is characteristically modern in claiming to affirm diversity while in practice subverting it. Professing to liberate parochial religions from a purblind and partial view of the Real, it often maintains a covertly imperial determination to conform all religions to an Enlightenment model of metaphysics and ethics. Positioned against the spectrum of world religions, it may, in some of its expressions, be less objectionable

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to certain Indic and pagan possibilities. However, such a system, which

cannot truly preserve the integrity of the Other in his difference, is still Eurocentric and turns out to be a subaltern discourse, subversive of true religion and ethics, and hence unlikely to deliver real liberation.”

Notes _

. Tacitus, Germany, trans. Herbert W. Benario (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1999), 54 (XLIII:3).

2. For the interpretatio

Romana,

see Alain Cadotte,

La Romanisation

des Dieux:

L’interpretatio romana en Afrique du Nord sous le Haut-Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

3. Julius Gaius Caesar, trans. H. Edwards, The Gallic War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 6, 17-18. 4. Alain Cadotte, La Romanisation des Dieux: L’interpretatio romana en Afrique du Nord

sous le Haut-Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2007), xiii. 5. Robert M. Berchman, Porphyry against the Christians (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 92; Eric Orlin, Foreign Cults in Rome: Creating a Roman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

6. Herodotus, vol. II, trans. A.D. Godley (London: Heinemann; and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 3:37-38. 7. Plutarch held that the Egyptian pantheon, carefully studied, demonstrated that the Egyptians worshipped the same gods as the Greeks. R.M. Jones, The Platonism of Plutarch (New York and London: Garland, 1980), 23-25. 8. Heinrich Dorrie, Platonica Minora (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1976), 390-405. g. Robert M. Berchman, Porphyry against the Christians (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 10. Ibid., 10, 14. See also R.I. Wilkes, “Pagan Criticism of Christianity: Greek Religion and Christian Faith,” in Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition, ed. W. L. Schoedel and R. L. Wilkes (Paris: Beauchesne, 1979), 117-134.

u. Themistius, Oration 5, cited in Peter Heather and David Moncur, Politics, Philosophy and Empire in the Fourth Century (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), 168.

12. Cited in R. Barrow, Prefect and Emperor: The Relationes of Symmachus A.D. 384 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 39-41. 143. Brian Croke and Jill Harries, Religious Conflict in Fourth-Century Rome: A Documentary Study (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1982), 42. 14. Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, Ma‘dlim usal al-din (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1984), 81. 15. Glen Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan

Press, 1996), 20.

16. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Hadi al-arwah ila bilad al-afrah (Cairo: al-Madani, 1978), 72. 17. Ibid. 18. Alfred Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasiil

Allah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), 276.

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145

. This version of the hadith appears in Sahih al-Bukhari (in “Bad’ al-wahy’”). “Peasants” translates arisiyyin, which according to Ibn Hajar may also mean princes, the downtrodden, or tax-collectors. Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani, Fath al-bari sharh Sahih al-Bukhari

(Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1959), 1:42-43. 20, 21,ra 22.

Ibid., 1:42. Ibid., 1:49 (Sahih al-Bukhari, “Kitab al-‘ilm’”). Abii al-Hasan al-‘Amiri, al-I‘lam bi-mandaqib al-Islam, ed. Ahmad

‘Abd al-Hamid

Ghurab (Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1967), 194. The theme of envy and a desire to retain leadership positions as motives obstructing the People of the Book from

accepting Islam is widely stressed; see for instance Isma‘il Bursawi, Rih al-bayan fi tafsir al-Qur’an (Istanbul: Eser Kitabevi, 1970), 1:179.

23, These hadiths appear in Sahih al-Bukhd@ri (in “Kitab al-mazalim”) and Sahih Muslim (in “Kitab

al-iman”);

cf. Mishkat

al-Masabih,

trans.

James

Robson

(Lahore:

Sh.

Muhammad Ashraf, 1981), 2:1159. 24. Muhammad ibn Abi Jamra, Bahjat al-nufiis wa-tahalliha bi-ma‘rifat ma laha wa-ma

‘alayha (Beirut: Dar al-Jil, 1972), 4:51-52. 25 Ibid., 4:52. 26. This hadith appears in Sahih al-Bukhari (in “Kitab ahadith al-anbiya’”).

am Muhammad

ibn Abi Jamra, Bahjat al-nufiis wa-tahalliha bi-ma‘rifat ma laha wa-ma

‘alayha (Beirut: Dar al-Jil, 1972), 1:131; see the commentaries on Q. 2:79, including Nasir al-Din Muhammad al-Baydawi, Anwar al-tanzil wa-asrar al-ta’wil (Istanbul: al-Matba‘a al-‘Uthmaniyya, 1911), 16-17. See further Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds: Medi-

eval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 20. 28. For the famous hadith, see Muhammad ibn Abi Jamra, Bahjat al-nufiis wa-tahalliha

bi-ma ‘rifat ma laha wa-ma ‘alayha (Beirut: Dar al-Jil, 1972), 3:132. 29. Abt Hamid al-Ghazali, al-Mustasfa min ‘ilm al-usiil (Bulaq: al-Amiriyya, [1904)), 1:11. 30. Sayf al-Din al-Amidi, Ghayat al-maram min ‘ilm al-kalaém (Cairo: Lajnat Ihya’ al-Turath al-‘Arabi, 1971), 341; cf. Ibrahim al-Bayjtiiri, Tuhfat al-murid sharh Jawharat al-tawhid (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1983), 137. 31. rant

Sayf al-Din al-Amidi, Gh@yat al-maram min ‘ilm al-kalam (Cairo: Lajnat Ihya’ al-Turath

al-‘Arabi, 1971), 358. 32. Isma‘Il Bursawi, Rih al-bayanfi tafsir al-Qur’an (Istanbul: Eser Kitabevi, 1970), 1:201. 33: Sayf al-Din al-Amidi, Ghéyat al-maram min ‘ilm al-kalam (Cairo: Lajnat Ihya’ al-Turath al-‘Arabi, 1971), 359; for the ‘Isawiyya, see Wilferd Madelung, Religious Trends in Early Islamic Iran (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 75-76.

34.

This is the key kalam premise that haqda’iq al-ashya’ thabita (Mas‘td ibn ‘Umar al-Taftazani, Sharh al-‘aqa’id al-nasafiyya (Istanbul: Iqdam, (1908)], 19).

35: Khaled El-Rouayheb, “From Ibn Hajar al-Haytami (d. 1566) to Khayr al-Din al-Alisi (d. 1899): Changing views of Ibn Taymiyya among Non-Hanbali Sunni Scholars,” in Ibn Taymiyya and His Times, ed. Yossef Rapoport and Shahab Ahmed Oxford University Press, 2010), 269-318.

(Karachi:

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36. Which is why “universalism” is even less helpful a description, implying as it does a validation of all religious forms. 37. Most recently in his set of responses to his critics: John Hick, Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 38. Ibrahim al-Bayjiri, Tuhfat al-murid sharh Jawharat al-tawhid (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1983), 79; the same doctrine is found among the Maturidis: ‘Ala’ al-Din al-Usmandi, Lubab al-kalam, ed. M. Sait Ozervarh (Istanbul: Tiirkiye Diyanet Vakf, 2005), 85-88.

,

39- Daniel Gimaret, Les noms divins en Islam: exégése lexicographique et théologique (Paris: Cerf, 1988), 40. . Ibid., 41.

= . Al-Tabari, The Commentary on the Qur’an, vol. 1, trans. J. Cooper (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 228-230.

. Bernard Weiss, “Medieval Muslim Discussions on the Origin of Language,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft 124 (1974): 33-41. . Ash‘ari dissenters included, most significantly, Muhammad ibn al-Tayyib al-Baqillani (d. 1013); cf. Ibrahim al-Bayjari, Tuhfat al-murid sharh Jawharat al-tawhid (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1983), 89. . Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwaynfs (d. 1085) Irshad, cited in Daniel Gimaret, Les noms divins en Islam: exégése lexicographique et théologique (Paris: Cerf, 1988), 39. . ‘Abd al-Qahir al-Baghdadi, Usil al-din (Istanbul: Madrasat al-Ilahiyyat, 1928), 16. . Ibrahim al-Bayjtri, Tuhfat al-murid sharh Jawharat al-tawhid (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1983), 16-17. The reason seems to have been the status of the Prophet’s virtues as images of God's predicates.

. Ibrahim al-Bayjiri, Tuhfat al-murid sharh Jawharat al-tawhid (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1983), 87. . Martin J. McDermott, The Theology of al-Shaykh al-Mufid (d. 413/1022) (Beirut: Dar El-Machreq, 1978), 135-136.

49.

Perhaps the most satisfying treatment of this classic Ash‘ari paradox is supplied in Muhyi al-Din Ibn ‘Arabi, Insha@’ al-dawa’ir, in Kleinere Schriften des Ibn al-‘Arabi, ed. H.S. Nyberg (Leiden: Brill, 1919).

50. John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), 236. 5ray. Tilman Nagel, The History of Islamic Theology from Muhammad to the Present (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2000), 155, 156.

oe Wilferd Madelung, “The Origins of the Controversy Concerning the Creation of the Qur’an,” in Orientalia Hispanica sive studia F.M. Pareja octogenario dicata, ed. J. M. Barral (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 504-525. 53: Martin J. McDermott, The Theology ofal-Shaykh al-Mufid (d. 413/1022) (Beirut: Dar El-Machreq, 1978), 135.

54.

Richard C. Martin and Mark R. Woodward with Dwi S$. Atmaja, Defenders of Reason in Islam: Mu‘tazilism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997), 204-206.

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55: Although classical paganism was eliminated by monotheism, polytheism continued to thrive elsewhere. Most notably, in India, a set of religious traditions that might also

be styled henotheistic, directed worshippers toward the abstract Brahman through a vast plurality of personae. The Rg Veda (1.164.46) affirms “Truth is One, although the wise know it variously”; while the Bhagavad Gita (4.11) has Krishna say, “As men come to Me, so I receive them. All paths lead to Me.” Cf. also the Jain doctrine of anekantavada, “nonabsolutism,” which is as naturally akin to modern pluralisms as Semitic monotheism is foreign to them. Agustin Panikar, El Jainismo: Historia, sociedad, filosofia y practica (Barcelona: Kairés, 2001), 368-372. 56. Alyssa Gabbay, Islamic Tolerance: Amir Khusraw and Pluralism (London: Routledge, 2010).

57: Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Hakadha takallama Ibn ‘Arabi (Cairo: al-Hay’a al-Misriyya

al-‘Amma li-I-Kitab, 2002), 126-159. 58. ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Qashani, Sharh Fusiis al-hikam (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1966), 216; and see the entire Fass of ‘Isa. See also Ibn ‘Arabs denunciation of Christian ideas of divine filiation in al-Futihat al-Makkiyya (Cairo: Bulag, [1877]), 4:499 (wa-llahi ma walada al-Rahman min walad, etc.). Cf. Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 27, 84, 275-276, 313, where Corbin

depicts Ibn ‘Arabi theosis doctrines as a thoroughgoing rejection of Paulinism. 59: William Chittick, Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 125. Whether the well-travelled and perennially curious shaykh was in fact so ignorant of local Christian and Jewish belief and ascesis may well be doubted. Go. Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Qurtubi, al-Tadhkira fi ahwal al-mawta wa-umir al-akhira

(Cairo: al-Qudsi, [1933}), 323.

61.= ‘Abd al-Karim al-Jili, al-Nadirat al-‘ayniyya, ed. Yusuf Zaydan (Cairo: Dar al-Amin, 1999), 18-119; see also al-Nabulus?s comments on al-Jilfs view in the same volume, p. 196; cf. Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 139-140, who describes al-Jili as accusing Christians of polytheism. 62) Khalid Blankinship, “The Early Creed,” in The Cambridge Companion to Classical

Islamic Theology, ed. Tim Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 50.

6 . Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi, al-Minhaj fi sharh Sahih Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-Misriyya, 1929), 3:35. 64. For the identification, see Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi, al-Minhdj fi sharh Sahih Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-Misriyya, 1929), 3:57; other views are listed by Ww

Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Qurtubi, al-Tadhkira fi ahwal al-mawta wa-umir al-dkhira

(Cairo: al-Qudsi, [1933]), 247-248. 65. Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi, al-Minhaj fi sharh Sahih Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-Misriyya, 1929), 3:36-37; Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Bayhaqi, al-Ba‘th

wa-l-nushiir (Beirut: Markaz al-Khadamat wa-l-Abhath al-Thaqafiyya, 1986), 103. For a detailed defense of the doctrine of the noneternity of Hell’s punishment, see Ibn

Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Hadi al-arwah ila bilad al-afrah (Cairo: al-Madani, 1978), 344-379.

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66. ‘Abd al-Salam ibn Ibrahim, Irsh@d al-murid sharh Jawharat al-tawhid, published in the

margin of Hashiyat al-amir ‘ala sharh ‘Abd al-Salam ‘ala al-jjawhara fi ‘ilm al-kalam (Cairo: Muhammad ‘Ali Subayh, 1953), 140. 67. This hadith appears in Sahih al-Bukh@ri (in “Kitab ahadith al-anbiya’”); Aba Hamid

al-Ghazali, The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife, trans. T. J. Winter (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1989), 214. 68. Ahmad ibn Muhammad

ibn Hanbal, al-Musnad (Cairo: al-Maymaniyya,

[1896)),

5:347; cf. Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-Khafaji, Nasim al-riyad fi sharh Shifa’ al-Qadi ‘Iyad (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2001), 3:220; Aba Hamid al-Ghazali, The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife, trans. T. J. Winter (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1989), 212. 69. Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-Khafaji, Nasim al-riyad fi sharh Shifa’ al-Qadi ‘Iyad (Beirut:

Dar al-Kutub al-‘IImiyya, 2001), 3:217. For the Sirat, see Abi Hamid al-Ghazali, The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife, trans. T. J. Winter (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1989), 205. 70. This hadith appears in Sahih al-Bukhd@ri (in “Kitab al-tayammum’); Sahih Muslim (in

“Kitab al-masajid”); Abi’ Hamid al-Ghazali, The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife, trans. T. J. Winter (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1989), 211. 71.= Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Qurtubi, al-Tadhkira fi ahwal al-mawta wa-umir al-akhira

(Cairo: al-Qudsi, [1933]), 245, 247. Note, however, that according to a hadith reported by al-Tirmidhi (in his Sunan, in “Kitab sifat al-qiyama”; cf. Abi’ Hamid al-Ghazali, The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife, trans. T. J. Winter [Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1989], 219; Muhammad

ibn Ahmad al-Qurtubi, al-Tadhkira fi ahwal

al-mawta wa-umir al-akhira (Cairo: al-Qudsi, (1933)], 308), each prophet will have a

pool (hawd), where the saved of his community shall congregate before the final committal to Heaven; the Prophet Muhammad is here not unique, but declares, “I hope that I shall have the most people at my pool.” 72. The Mu'tazili views are summarized

in Muhammad

ibn al-Tayyib al-Baqillani,

al-Tamhid (Beirut: Maktabat al-Turath al-‘Arabi, 1987), 427-429. 73. Cf. Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-Khafaji, Nasim al-riyddfisharh Shifa’ al-Qadi ‘Iyad (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2001), 3:220. 74. Discussions proposed that these would include (i) the Prophet’s intercession for those who would enter Heaven without reckoning, (2) those whose sins made them deserving of Hell but who were preserved from entering it, (3) a raising of degree for

some of the blessed in Heaven, etc. Ibrahim al-Bayjiiri, Tuhfat al-murid sharh Jawharat al-tawhid (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1983), 187; al-Murtada al-Zabidi, Ithafal-sada

al-muttagin bi-sharh asrar Ihya’ ‘ulim al-din (Cairo: al-Amiriyya, [1894]), 10:494-495. 75. Ibrahim al-Bayjtri, Tuhfat al-murid sharh Jawharat al-tawhid (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub

al-‘Ilmiyya, 1983), 187; Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Bayhaqi, al-Ba ‘th wa-l-nushar (Beirut: Markaz al-Khadamat wa-l-Abhath al-Thaqafiyya, 1986), 56; Aba’: Hamid al-Ghazali, The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife, trans. T. J. Winter (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1989), 215.

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70. Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Qurtubt, al-Tadhkira fi ahwal al-mawta wa-umir al-akhira (Cairo: al-Qudsi, [1933}), 249, 343. 77. Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-Khafaji, Nasim al-riyadfisharh Shifa’ al-Qadi ‘Iyad (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2001), 3:200-201. 78. Ibid., 3:200,

79: Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Bayhaqi, al-Ba‘th wa-l-nushiir (Beirut: Markaz al-Khadamat wa-l-Abhath al-Thaqafiyya, 1986), 55; Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Qurtubi, al-Tadhkira

fi ahwal al-mawtaé wa-umiir al-akhira (Cairo: al-Qudsi, [1933]), 347. 80. This hadith appears in Sahih al-Bukhari (in “Kitab ahadith al-anbiya’”); Anmad ibn

al-Husayn al-Bayhaqi, al-Ba‘th wa-l-nushir (Beirut: Markaz al-Khadamat wa-l-Abhath al-Thaqafiyya, 1986), 98. 81. Sahih Muslim (“Kitab al-tman’); cf. Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Bayhaqi, al-Ba‘th wa-l-

nushar (Beirut: Markaz al-Khadamat wa-l-Abhath al-Thag§afiyya, 1986), 59, 61; ‘Abd al-Salam ibn Ibrahim, Irshad al-murid sharh Jawharat al-tawhid, published in the mar-

gin of Hashiyat al-amir ‘ala sharh ‘Abd al-Salam ‘ala al-jawhara fi ‘lm al-kalam (Cairo: Muhammad ‘Ali Subayh, 1953), 146; Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi, al-Minhdj fi sharh

Sahih Muslim ibn al-Hajja@ (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-Misriyya, 1929), 1:214-216. However, al-Qurtubi holds that the Prophet brought Abt Talib back to life, so that he could believe in him (Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Qurtubi, al-Tadhkira fi ahwal al-mawta

wa-umir al-akhira [Cairo: al-Qudsi, (1933)], 15). 82. Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Qurtubi, al-Tadhkira fi ahwal al-mawté wa-umir al-akhira

(Cairo: al-Qudsi, [1933]), 343. 83. Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-Khafaji, Nasim al-riyad fi sharh Shifa’ al-Qadi ‘Iyad (Beirut:

Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2001), 3:201. 84. Ibid., 3:199, 200.

85. Al-Murtada al-Zabidi, Ithafal-sada al-muttagin bi-sharh asrar Ihya’ ‘ulim al-din (Cairo: al-Amiriyya, [1894]), 10:495. 86. ‘Tyad ibn Masa, al-Shifa’ bi-ta‘rif huqig al-Mustafa (Damascus: Dar al-Wafa’, [1972)), 1422-423. This hadith appears in Sunan al-Tirmidhi (in “Kitab al-manaqib’); Ahmad ibn 87. Muhammad ibn Hanbal, al-Musnad (Cairo: al-Maymaniyya, [1896]), 4:66. See also the interpretation of Q. 26:218-219 (“He sees you when you stand, and your turningabout among those that prostrate”): “This signifies your descent through the loins of your ancestors, Adam, Noah and Abraham, until He brought you forth as a prophet.” Al-Hakim al-Nisabari, al-Mustadrak ‘ala al-Sahihayn (Hyderabad: D@irat al-Ma‘arif

al-‘Uthmaniyya [1915-1924]), 2:338; see also the sound narration in ‘Ali ibn Abi Bakr al-Haythami,

Majma‘ al-zawa’id wa-manba‘ al-fawa’id (Cairo: Maktabat al-Qudsi,

[1933-1934]), 7:36 and 8:214. Sharaf al-Din al-Busiri, trans. Abdal Hakim Murad, The Mantle Adorned (Cambridge: 88. Quilliam Press, 2009), 6g. For more on Sufi conceptions of the Prophet’s ontological primacy, see Michel Chodkiewicz, Seal of the Saints: Prophethood and Sainthood in the Doctrine of Ibn ‘Arabi (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993), 60-73.

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89. This hadith appears in Sahih Muslim (in “Kitab al-fada’il”); Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-Khafaji, Nasim al-riyad fi sharh Shifa’ al-Qadi ‘Iyad (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2001), 3:217-218. go. Jonathan Sacks (ed.), Orthodoxy Confronts Modernity (Hoboken, NJ: K’tay, in associa-

tion with Jews’ College, London, 1991), 13, citing J. David Bleich. Qi. pay

Paul Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility (Oxford: Oneworld, 1996).

92. Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 18. 93. Ibid., 19. 94. Ibid., 33. 95. Ibid., 38.

96. Cf. Tim Winter, “The Last Trump Card: Islam and the Supersession of Other Faiths,” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 9 (1999): 133-155.

97. Ibrahim al-Bayjairi, Tuhfat al-murid sharh Jawharat al-tawhid (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1983), 135-136; Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, Ma‘alim usil al-din (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1984), 11.

98. Sherman A. Jackson, On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abi Hamid al-Ghazali’s Faysal al-Tafriga (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 126. The Turks in his time would for the most part have been Buddhists or Nestorians. 99. Gavin D’Costa (ed.), Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic

Theology of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990), ix.

PART

FOUR

Reconceptuahzing Pluralism

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Nonreductive Pluralism

and Religious Dialogue Muhammad Legenhausen

Introduction There is a wide variety of theological positions that may be included under the heading of “religious pluralism.” By “nonreductive religious pluralism” is meant a recognition of some values (soteriological, alethic, moral, etc.) that religious traditions may have that cannot be reduced to common factors among them. Motivation for the acceptance of a version of nonreductive religious pluralism may be attempted by considering the authoritative sources within a given religious tradition. In this regard, for example, nonreductive religious pluralism may be defended on the basis of Islamic sources. Further motivation for nonreductive religious pluralism may appeal to more general ethical, epistemological, and theological argumentation. These considerations lend credence to the possibility of interreligious theological support for nonreductive religious pluralism. Nonreductive religious pluralism thus itself may be defended in terms of argumentation that may be shared by the adherents of different traditions, as well as forms of argumentation specific to each particular tradition. Differences between any two religious traditions, presuming the possibility of a sufficiently accurate identification of such differences, are either practical or theoretical. These differences may be evaluated from the perspective of either of them. Theoretical differences may be divided initially into two categories: (a) disagreement, where one tradition denies what the other affirms; (b) complementarity, where one tradition affirms (or denies) a proposition that has not been affirmed or denied by the other. Such complementary differences may be evaluated negatively or

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positively. More subtle theoretical differences may also be discerned, as when two traditions appear to agree on a given proposition that functions differently in the space of theological reasons of the respective traditions, for example, because of differences in the interpretation of some terms, differences in the importance accorded to the proposition, differences in the structures of the theological systems in which the proposition is embedded, or differences in the emotions associated with the proposition. Analogous sorts of practical differences may also be categorized. Attention to these sorts of differences should enrich religious dialogue among adherents of different traditions.

What Is Nonreductive Religious Pluralism? There are many forms of religious pluralism.’ One way to divide the types of religious pluralism is with respect to values. A religious pluralist with respect to some value, V, holds that there is a plurality of religions that have V. Examples of values that might be substituted for V are truth, spiritual value, salvation, a way to nirvana, good moral teachings, good institutional organization. Sometimes the values are related to one another. If the truth will set you free, then the value of truth will enable one to achieve the value of liberation. The relations among values, however, are complex and should not be confused. Another way to divide types of religious pluralism is with regard to the extent to which different traditions have some given value. Hegel, for example, thought that spiritual value could be found in each of the major religious traditions of the world but that Christianity, particularly Lutheran Christianity, and, even more particularly, Lutheran Christianity with Hegel’s own philosophical interpretation, possesses this value to the highest degree. We could say that Hegel is some sort of religious pluralist with regard to spiritual value, for he is willing to grant that there is spiritual value in a variety of religions, but he is not an equality pluralist. Since he holds that the measure ofthis value increases in a dialectical progression leading to his own religious views, he could be called a degree pluralist.’ Yet another division may be made between religious pluralisms: they may be reductive or nonreductive. The reductive religious pluralist with respect to value V holds that a plurality of religions possess V because they share the same common elements, say, e,, €,, and e,, for example. Take, for

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instance, the value of salvation. Those who are religious pluralists in this regard hold that more than one religion provides a means to salvation; usually it is claimed that the major religious traditions all provide a means to salvation. Equality pluralists hold that the various religious traditions they find acceptable all provide equally good ways of obtaining salvation. Equality pluralists with regard to salvation who are also reductive pluralists will hold that the various religions provide equally good ways to salvation because of some set of elements they all share. Suppose that two of these elements are what Rudolf Otto (d. 1937) called the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, that is, a mystery that evokes trembling awe and one that evokes an overpowering attraction. Some might hold that any religion that has these two elements has sufficient means to provide the believer with a way to salvation. (I do not think that Otto would have endorsed such a view, but the example may help clarify the distinctions described here.) It does not matter how much mysterium tremendum et fascinans a religion has. Maybe one religion is heavier on the tremendum side and another on the fascinans side; it does not matter, as long as the basic elements are present, there is a way to salvation. One might be a reductive pluralist with regard to salvation, but not an equality pluralist. A degree pluralist will hold that, as long as the basic elements are present, there is a way to salvation, but when the elements occur in a proper balance and with the right amount of intensity, one finds a religion with a better way to salvation. So, one can be a reduc-

tive equality pluralist or a reductive degree pluralist with regard to any ofa variety of values that are attributed to some group of religions. A nonreductive pluralist will hold that some value may be present in different religious traditions for different reasons. Consider three traditions: R,, R,, and R,. It may be that R, has the salvation value because of elements ¢,, €,, and e,, each of which is needed for R, to provide a way to salvation. R, might have the salvation value because of elements ¢,, e,, and

e,, each of which is needed for R, to provide a way to salvation. In that case, there would be no common elements shared by R, and R, that are sufhcient to provide a way to Heaven, for each needs an element the other lacks. Maybe another religion, R,, provides an independent way to salvation by means of elements that are not found in any of the other religions. This sort of pluralist is called nonreductive because the elements by virtue of which several religions possess some value cannot be reduced to what is shared among them. Needless to say, a nonreductive pluralist may be an equality pluralist or a degree pluralist.

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One might well find all such discussion of the measuring and ranking of elements to be misplaced. Equality and degree pluralisms are not the only options available to the religious pluralist, for another way of estimating the possession of some value among several religions is to say that the value to be found in each is incommensurable with the others.’ One might be a reductive incommensurability pluralist or a non-reductive incommensurability pluralist. In either case, the incommensurability pluralist will claim that the value V cannot be said to be possessed to an equal degree by several religions nor in differing amounts, because the measure of Vin each is incommensurable with its measure in the others, or is not the sort of thing that can be measured or described in quantitative terms at all. Since believers claim various merits for their own denominations, one might be some sort of a pluralist with respect to one such merit and another sort of pluralist with regard to another, and reject any kind of pluralism with regard to a third. Nevertheless, in most discussions of reli-

gious pluralism, the values are lumped together. Consider, for example, the definition of religious pluralism given by Michael Murray and Michael Rea in their Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion: There is no reason, all things considered, to think that one of these religions has managed to discover more of the truth about religious matters than the others, or that God or the gods prefer one set of

rituals over the others, or that one is significantly morally superior to the others. This position is called religious pluralism.‘

The values with respect to which these authors describe religious pluralism are three: (1) the truth about religious matters; (2) satisfying God or the gods with rituals; and (3) being morally acceptable. These values are considered in disjunction, so that, to be a pluralist, one should deny that any of the accepted religions is significantly superior to another with regard to (1), (2), or (3). Notice that Murray and Rea do not define pluralism in such a way as to require strict equality, at least not with regard to value (3), morality, since they allow that, as long as one does not think that one religion is significantly superior to another, the condition for pluralism in this regard will be satisfied. Murray and Rea also introduce an epistemological element into the description of pluralism. They say that one is a pluralist if one holds that there is no reason, all things considered, to think that one of the religions is

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significantly superior to the others with regard tioned values. A person might deny pluralism, any particular reason for thinking one of the others, but merely because of emotional ties. It

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to any of the three menhowever, without having religions superior to the might not be hard to find

persons who think their religion is the best religion in the world but are at a complete loss to provide reasons for thinking so. Some people might be fideists about their belief in the exclusive superiority of their own tradition over others with regard to truth, ritual, and ethics, and hold that their faith is not rationally grounded but is accepted as a gift of divine grace. It would be better to call such people exclusivists than pluralists, although they need not hold an exclusivist position with respect to salvation. A second reason for objecting to the way Murray and Rea define religious pluralism is based on a general principle: one should not define a theological or philosophical position as the view that there is no reason, all things considered, to think that the conjunction of beliefs characteristic of those who claim to hold this position is false. One should not define Marxism, for example, as the view that there is no reason, all things considered, to think that the teachings of the Marxists are false. After all, one might be a skeptic who holds that sufficient reasons are lacking to show that the teachings of any of the major schools of political philosophy are false. There are many ways one could be led to deny there is any reason, all things considered, to think that one religion is superior to others with regard to V while not being a religious pluralist. One might be an atheist, and hold that the religions are equally valid ways to God, because there is no God and they are all invalid. It is much more straightforward to define a position in terms of the positive claims that may justifiably be considered to support it. Yet a third reason for jettisoning the epistemological clause from a definition of religious pluralism may be found in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s (d. 1781) play Nathan der Weise. Lessing has the Jewish merchant, Nathan, tell a parable of a king who gives a magic ring to one of his sons and indiscernible counterfeits to the other two sons. No one has any reason to think any particular son’s claim to possess the magic ring is superior to the claim of either of the other sons. But they do not think, because of this, that the rings are of equal value. They know that one of the rings is magical and the others are not, but they cannot discern which is the magic ring. In the play, Nathan admits that he thinks that his own religion, Judaism, is the right one, and not Christianity or Islam; but he also admits that

he has no reason that he could give to convince anyone who thinks differently. I think that we should consider Nathan to be an exclusivist, since he

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believes that at most one of the three Abrahamic religions is the right one, the one with the value of having been ordained by God. According to the definition of Murray and Rea, however, Nathan would have to be considered a pluralist, since he admits to having no reason for thinking any of the three is significantly superior to the others.°

Motivations for Religious Pluralism William P. Alston turns to the problem of religious diversity in his book Perceiving God in a manner that has set the tone for much subsequent discussion in the philosophy of religion (at least as practiced in the analytic tradition). Alston introduces the problem of religious diversity as the most difficult problem for his own view of how religious belief can be reasonable, that is, that religious beliefs are reasonable when they are

acquired through Christian mystical doxastic practice. The problem Alston sees in religious diversity is, to oversimplify, that people in different traditions have religious experiences that seem to support contradictory religious positions, and when a practice for the acquisition of beliefs, a doxastic practice, in Alston’s terms, leads to the formation of contradictory beliefs, that is normally good reason to be dubious about the reliability of the practice. For Alston, this problem is very serious, since his entire epistemological project in the philosophy of religion is to show that religious belief can be justified (in the sense of being based on a reliable doxastic practice) even in the absence of belief that the traditional proofs for the existence of God are sound or convincing. How can beliefs be formed in a reliable way if they are not backed up by rational proofs? When they are backed up by experience? The problem is that religious experiences conflict with one another. One way to get out of this pickle would be to trim off all the elements of the traditions that are not common to all and allow that there is reliable justification by religious experience only for the common denominator. If three people look at a sign, but each says that it has something written on

it other than what the others read, we might doubt all the readings, but we could at least be justified in concluding that there is a sign and that something is written on it. Alston credits John Hick for working out this sort of pluralistic solution to the epistemological problem of religious diversity, but he finds it contrary to his purposes. His project is to show how religious beliefs may be reasonably based on religious experience. Hick’s

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project will allow for the justification of religious beliefs only if they are reinterpreted to fit Hick’s rather peculiar theological views. Alston concludes his discussion of Hick’s pluralism as follows:

Therefore, since I take my task to be the analysis and evaluation of real life religious doxastic practices, not the reform, or degradation, thereof, I will not avail myself of Hick’s way out. I will continue to take the major systems of religious belief to be making (noumenal) truth claims that are logically incompatible with each other.° With these words Alston joins the ranks of all those who have found fault with philosophical accounts of religious belief on the grounds that the philosophical understanding does not correspond to that of the ordinary believer. One might object that religious language is symbolic, with various levels of profundity, so that the views of ordinary believers should not be taken as a criterion. Alston sees this objection coming, so he qualifies himself on the same page by saying that he recognizes the importance of analogy and symbol for the expression of religious truth. (Alston is neither a literalist nor a fundamentalist, although he does argue that it is crucial to religious belief to be able to make some literally true statements about God.) He distinguishes his position as a form of realism as opposed to Hick’s Kantianism. Regardless of the differences between Hick and Alston over the interpretation of religious language, the examination of their positions provides insight into the motivation for some of the philosophical opposition to Hick’s version of religious pluralism, as well as the motivation for accepting it. Opposition is motivated by the idea that Hick’s religious pluralism is incompatible with religious realism and with the views of ordinary believers, and that the theory threatens our ability to refer to God. Motivation for accepting this sort of pluralism, naturally enough, may accompany a rejection of religious realism as simplistic, the idea that ordinary believers generally have mistaken theological views, and the idea that reference to God is not as straightforward an affair as reference to the objects of the sensible world. Hick’s own motivation for advocating religious pluralism was the conviction that non-Christians could be “saved,” meaning that they could enter Heaven, without becoming Christians.’ Since Hick considered salvation for non-Christians to be incompatible with the idea that Christianity alone is true in all claims in which it stands contradicted by some other creed, he sought a way to allow all of the major traditions to be equally

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valid responses to the Ultimate. Hick and many others who have been attracted to some version of religious pluralism have expressed the view that pluralism may provide a basis for religious toleration that is not found in traditional views. It is suggested that exclusivist views lend themselves to bigotry, so there is a moralistic flavor to the advocacy of pluralism. Numerous Christian writers have argued, against Hick, that what motivated him to adopt pluralism does not provide a good logical argument for doing so. First, there is the idea that pluralism provides a theological grounding for toleration. This may or may not be true, but it does not imply that the only possible grounding for toleration is some form of religious pluralism. Exclusivist Christian writers have defended religious toleration while maintaining exclusivist claims about religious truth, salvation, or both. The fact that fanatics have used exclusivist claims to justify violence against Others does not imply that the fault lies with exclusivism. Sometimes a religious pluralism of one sort or another is defended on the grounds that some candidate for the essence of religion is proposed that is alleged to be equally present in all the great traditions. Wayne Proudfoot has argued against this sort of maneuver as it is articulated in the works of William James, to the effect that, although religions might differ in their institutions and doctrines, it is associated religious feelings that constitute the essence of religion, and such feelings are universal.* Proudfoot argues that the sorts of feelings to which James appeals are just as diverse as the doctrines that divide the denominations—well, maybe not quite that diverse, but diverse enough to scotch any hopes that an underlying unity of religions could be secured by that route. Proudfoot argues that, because our descriptions of doctrines are more articulate than our descriptions of feelings, the illusion is created that there is a uniformity of religious feelings across denominational borders that does not match the diversity of creeds. In fact,

however, religious experiences and feelings are colored as much by cultural factors and training as by statements of creed, and, if examined carefully,

reveal just as much diversity. Other writers have also observed that phenomena such as “holiness” may be so diverse that what counts as saintly in one tradition might not be considered worthy of religious merit in another. Another idea is that, since what appear to be epistemic peers have disagreed about religion for ages with no resolution in sight, might this not be taken as evidence for religious pluralism? It would seem rather odd, however, to think that because believers of different denominations each think

that all the others are wrong, we should conclude that they are all right!”

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Finally, one might be led to a form of religious pluralism through religious antirealism. Antirealists are not antagonistic toward religion. They are not like the new atheists who claim that religious belief is irrational and/or immoral. Religious antirealists merely claim that religious beliefs do not have any credible metaphysical import, and to interpret religious beliefs that seem to describe a transcendent reality in a metaphysical way is to somehow miss the whole point. Expressions of religious belief should be seen instead as markers for a religious way of life. In a religious way of life, from time to time it is appropriate to give utterance to statements

about God and angels, but there is no need to think that this means that there is any sort of reality, ultimate or otherwise, to which these beliefs

correspond. The first thing to notice about this position is that it will not help very much to find a rationale for letting people outside one’s own faith group into Heaven, that is, soteriological pluralism. Second, it might not be much help in efforts to bring about tolerance and peace, for, after all, it might be part of a religious way of life to be hostile toward Others. At most, antirealism might be used to justify some sort of religious pluralism about truth claims. However, the price to pay for antirealism is that one must admit that most religious believers, even the best representatives of

their traditions, literally do not know what they are talking about. Paul Griffiths has argued that a minimal principle of charity will require us to allow that the best representatives of each faith tradition mean what they say, and if they understand themselves to be disputing what is claimed in other traditions, they should be taken at their word.” If good reasons in support of some form of religious pluralism are to be found neither in attempts to base the rationality of religious belief on religious experience, nor in the need for tolerance, nor in irresolvable difference, nor in antirealism, nor in any other proposed essence of religion, then should it be abandoned? Since there are too many varieties of pluralism to consider all of them, I propose to focus on the issues of salvation and truth.

Salvation Salvation is a Christian concept. Prior to Christianity, the notions of a “savior” (sotér, owrnp) and of “salvation” (sdtéria, owTnpia) can also be found, but the terms were generally used with respect to worldly misfortunes and oppression. According to Catholic teachings, however, one is saved from

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original sin through baptism. Due to a confusion of views and profound disagreement over the nature of salvation at the time of the Reformation, the Council of Trent (1547) explicitly stated that salvation is no guarantee of entry into Heaven. One could sin and forfeit one’s salvation, which could be regained through penance. The debate about salvation was rehearsed through varying conceptions associated with the term justifica-

tion. For Catholics, justification included both an event and a process: the event of being saved through the redemption offered by Christ, and the process of cleansing or regeneration through the Holy Spirit. Protestants, on the other hand, called the first element justification and referred to the second as regeneration or sanctification.” In any case, it is generally agreed among Christian theologians that salvation is no guarantee of escape from eternal damnation. Salvation only makes eternal felicity possible; it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for entering Heaven. In discussions of religious pluralism, however, salvation is usually taken to mean being able to get into Heaven, and exclusivists are condemned for believing that God will send all outside their own denomination to eternal torment in Hell.” If Christianity provides a way to get into Heaven, it seems horrible to deny that non-Christians can get into Heaven, so it is concluded that there must be salvation available through other religions. John Hick offers his own account of salvation designed to accommodate a diversity of religions, and even such ideologies as Marxism, given sufficient replacement of specific with general terms. In language designed to accommodate the monotheistic traditions used for an Iranian audience, Hick explains salvation as follows: By salvation, as a generic concept, I mean a process of human transformation in this life from natural self-centeredness to a new orientation centred in the transcendent divine reality, God, and leading to its fulfillment beyond this life. And I hold that so far as we can tell, this salvific process is taking place and also failing to take place, to an equal extent within all the great world religions. A pluralist theology of religions is an attempt to make sense ofthis situation."

Hick is well aware of the differences between salvation, enlightenment, liberation, and other goals that people have taken to be ultimate, yet he insists on reducing them to a common generic concept, which he sometimes calls “salvation /liberation” when “trying to think on a global scale.”®

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If the point is merely to point out certain structural similarities among various religious views, one may well grant that Christianity and Islam

both offer paths to salvation, but this is a rather misleading way of claiming that Christianity and Islam offer their adherents different programs for remedying various maladies that are identified as constituting the human predicament. The question remains whether a satisfactory remedy to the predicament as understood by one belief system is available according to that system for those who do not adhere to its creed, perform its rituals, or belong to its institutions. Religious pluralism, in the sense used by John Hick, may be understood as a skeptical answer to this question with respect to Christianity, for Hick holds that there is no way for Christians to acknowledge that Others may be saved except through inclusivism or pluralism. He argues that Karl Rahner’s inclusivism is unacceptable for various reasons and concludes that pluralism provides the best view of the salvation of Others. Pluralism, as Hick understands it, however, requires a denial of the doc-

trines of the Incarnation and Redemption that the vast majority of Chris-

tians will find heretical. So, what Hick is telling us, is, in effect, that there is no satisfactory theological explanation that can be given for the salvation of non-Christians that will not be considered heretical by the vast majority of Christian theologians. There are several other reasons for thinking that a pluralist response to diversity on the issue of salvation will run aground. First, the task of offering an idea of salvation that makes sense across traditions as close as Christianity and Islam is difficult enough, but when the attempt is made to include the goals associated with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Chinese traditions, the difficulties are compounded.'® What could it mean to claim

that Taoists and Calvinists, or at least some of them, will achieve, or have achieved, salvation/liberation? Will Taoists recognize that Calvinists are

saved through the grace of God made available by the Redemption? Not unless they become Calvinists. Will Calvinists recognize that Taoists approach a perfect harmony between yin and yang? Not unless they come to think that the yin/yang distinction is correct and that the method of attaining harmony employed by Taoists is effective. What the Calvinist may admit, without confessing the yin/yang distinction, is that some Taoists may approach what the Taoists themselves conceive to be harmony between yin and yang. The problematic nature of the salvation/liberation concept can also be appreciated by considering the notion of satori in Zen Buddhism. The only

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thing that Christian salvation and satori have in common is that they are both ultimate goals. The Buddhist does not believe that those who fail to attain satori will suffer eternal damnation or anything comparable to it. What could it mean to claim that Buddhism and Catholicism offer equally valid paths to salvation/liberation? Should the Zen master be expected to recognize baptism as a means to satori? If he persists in the belief that the teachings of his own school offer the most effective means of achieving satori, does that make him an exclusivist? The idea that adherents of different traditions all believe in something comparable to salvation and that they should admit equality in the ways of reaching it simply fails to appreciate the differences among the values of various traditions and how the spiritual life in these traditions is directed to provide the best means of achieving particular goals associated with these values. Second, the situation is already bad enough if we consider just the difficulties of ecumenism. Even within Islam, there are only too many who

are quick to consign those who oppose their views to eternal damnation; and the mutual excommunications of Christian groups are infamous. Even when they stop short of banning one another, however, it is common for different sects within a tradition to differ on the best way to achieve the various goals acknowledged by them, and even within a single sect, scholars will differ about the conditions needed for achieving various goals, including salvation. Equality pluralism, however, makes disagreement about such matters absurd. One might attempt to defend equality pluralism by claiming that even if some techniques of prayer, contrition, or meditation are more effective than others, the overall effectiveness across broad traditions is the same. One might claim that the meditation techniques of some Buddhist sects are more effective than others but that the average effectiveness of Buddhist meditation for reaching salvation/liberation is the same as the average effectiveness of programs of sanctification among Christian denominations. How could such a claim be supported? Third, with regard to Christianity and Islam, Muslims do not believe in original sin or salvation from it. There are no theological discussions of justification that correspond to those that have divided Christians, because Muslims do not accept the basic premises of the debate: that the sinful nature of man, or original sin, can be or needs to be redeemed. Even if Muslims could be convinced that there is some sense in which it is true that “in Adam’s sin, we sinned all,”” since Augustine, at least, it has been

taught that there can be no salvation without baptism, with which Muslims will not agree.'* Baptism, however, is no guarantee of entry into Paradise.

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If one sins, penance is required. Hence, baptism and penance came to be the key sacraments

associated with salvation, and these sacraments

are

administered by the Church. So, Augustine writes, “Salus extra ecclesiam

non est.” Calvin also affirms this point, citing the two great ecclesiological maxims of Cyprian of Carthage: “You cannot have God as your father unless you have the Church as your mother”; and “Outside the Church there is no hope of remission of sins nor any salvation.””° None of this implies that, according to Christian teaching, Muslims must be eternally damned. There are both Catholic and Protestant theologians who have developed ideas about how Muslims and other nonChristians might enter Heaven, but the ways for non-Christians to achieve felicity are extraordinary by contrast to the ordinary way through the Church and its sacraments. The idea is not generally found to be plausible among Christian theologians that non-Christians are saved because of the practical imperative found in all of them to turn away from selfcenteredness along with structural similarities among belief traditions. Pluralism is unacceptable to most Christians because it requires a radical rejection or revision of many beliefs that they consider central to their religious views. Likewise, the dominant view that has prevailed among Muslims over the centuries has been that failure to follow the laws of the Sharia is sinful. The ordinary way for Muslims to achieve sa ‘dda (felicity) is by observing the Sharia on the basis of faith (iman). Non-Muslims may also enter Heaven but only through extraordinary provisions by which God may extend His grace (lutf) upon them. Of course, there is much more to Islam than Sharia, and one might make a good case for the view that the observance of the law is a necessary but not sufficient condition for making spiritual progress and achieving rewards that go far beyond what can be gained by mere faithful observance. Nevertheless, Muslim scholars generally agree that one can escape punishment in the next world through faithful observance of the laws of Islam. According to what might be called conservative Islam (regardless of the Shi‘i or Sunni varieties), what is the otherworldly fate of those who do not accept Islam and who do not follow its prescriptions? I think the best attempt to develop a position according to which non-Muslims may avoid damnation and reap the rewards of Paradise from within the general framework of a conservative Islamic theology is presented in Shahid Mutahhari’s ‘Adl ilahi (“Divine justice”).”! His basic idea is that a loving and merciful God would not consign to eternal damnation those who

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through no fault of their own do not accept Islam. This is not to say that God is indifferent to the choice of religion one makes. The reaction of the religious conservative, whether Christian or Muslim, to the idea that Others might enter Paradise, is often a protest: this

cannot be, because otherwise it would make no difference which religion one accepted, and religious commitment would become unimportant. So, both Mutahhari and Rahner go to some length to assure the believers of their own faiths that it is preferable to God for us to belong to His preferred denomination, which one naturally believes to be one’s own.” If

some form of religious pluralism with regard to salvation is to be defended by Christians and Muslims, they will have to seek reasons for it from within the resources of their own traditions or face the condemnations of the more orthodox members of their own communities. Karl Rahner’s inclusivism represents a Catholic way of allowing for the salvation of non-Catholics, and even non-Christians. Rahner makes use of the traditional Catholic teachings regarding the votum ecclesiae (a wish to belong to the church) and the related notion of implicit desire. Just as one who wants to belong to the Church but dies in an accident on the way to the baptismal font is saved, according to traditional Catholic theology, despite never joining the Church or being baptized with water, so too, Rahner reasons, one may unconsciously want to belong to the Church while failing to recognize it. Rahner explains that, because of the Incarnation, God’s grace is given to the entire world, not merely to Catholics. The motivation for Rahner’s inclusivism is not just the realization that there is something wrong about damning people for belonging to the wrong denomination, it springs from contemplation on the doctrines of the Church about the singularity of Christ’s redemption in the history of the world. Rahner’s effort is not so much to allow a place in Heaven for non-Catholics as to show how God’s plan for salvation in Christ and the ministry of divine grace through the sacraments of the Catholic Church can reach all of humanity, at least at an implicit level, even to those who are not formal members of the Church. The problems with the doctrine of the “anonymous Christian” are wellknown, and I have no interest in rehearsing them here. What is more important than that to which objections and criticisms can be made is the demonstration of how salvation may be extended to non-Christians while respecting the constraints of Catholic doctrinal orthodoxy. In this regard,

the efforts of Rahner and Mutahhari are comparable. Both argue, for different reasons, that, although the religious communities to which

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they belong call on all people to join them, those outside their denominations may receive divine blessings, favor, grace, and assistance and achieve

felicity. Rahner argues for this position on the basis of his understanding

of the universal effect of the Redemption, while Mutahhari argues on the basis of Islamic jurisprudence. Both disdain the very idea that God should damn otherwise good people who adhere to a creed they consider to be in important respects mistaken. Hence, both Rahner and Mutahhari defend a version of soteriological degree pluralism (which is compatible, though

not identical, with what is often called “inclusivism”). Both Rahner and Mutahhari hold that a plurality of religions provide ways to felicity in the afterlife; and both are quick to add that this in no way makes religious affiliation arbitrary or a matter of indifference. Non-Catholics are handicapped, in the Catholic view, because they do not participate in the sacraments through which grace is obtained. Non-Muslims are handicapped, in the Muslim view, because they do not live in accordance with the divine law designed to lead people to God. Is there a core vision behind Mutahhari and Rahner that can be identified, despite their very different approaches to the issue? Yes. It is the understanding of a loving, merciful, and just God that can be found at the base of both men’s views. So, although there are very different theologies at the basis of their views, and their ideas about ultimate felicity also differ in important ways, neither would allow these differences to bar the Other’s entry into Heaven, and both recognize that there is some-

thing wrong with thinking that differences as important as those that divide them could be sufficient for God to cast one party into eternal damnation. Is there any common basis on which to defend some version of soteriological religious pluralism? Common to the theistic religions is the teaching that God is merciful. On this basis one could argue that a merciful God would not condemn people to eternal damnation if they were not guilty of some sin for which they would deserve such a punishment. If, in good conscience, a person honestly considers religion X to be best, the belief that the person would be damned forever just because God prefers religion Y would threaten belief in divine justice. This sort of ar-

gument is available to the monotheistic religions, all of which affirm the justice and mercy of God. Since nonmonotheistic traditions do not generally have a belief in eternal damnation, the argument that there is no eternal damnation based solely on religious affiliation is available to the adherents of all the major traditions. Although the argument crosses

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religious boundaries, it is a theological argument in the sense that it appeals to the religious beliefs of those expected to endorse it. One could also argue that, although there are sins that warrant a punishment of eternal damnation, God will not condemn anyone to this punishment. The view that no one is ever condemned by God to eternal damnation is called “universalism,” and it has had defenders among both

Muslims and Christians. I will not examine the arguments for and against universalism here, since an adequate treatmentof this subject would require extensive discussion beyond the scope of our topic.”? Is there any philosophical basis on which to defend soteriological pluralism? Yes, but it depends on one’s philosophy. First of all, philosophers differ over whether the existence of God and the immortality of souls can be adequately defended. One could avoid these issues and ask whether there are philosophical reasons that the adherents of different religions should not damn one another. One might argue this on moral grounds. It is insulting to damn people, and offensive, too. Most important, the view that those

with differing religious views are damned has been used to foment and justify the persecution of Jews, heretics, and others. Such persecution is unjust and morally condemnable. This leaves us with two questions. First, how can the injustice of persecution justify some sort of soteriological pluralism; and, second, what sort of soteriological pluralism may be justified in this way? Let us consider the second question first. In order to remove the cause of persecution, it is not

necessary to hold that those of all religious persuasions have an equal shot at any given post mortem fate. It would seem sufficient to avoid blanket damnations on the basis of denomination. What is important in this regard is not specific to belief in eternal damnation. It is sufficient for there to be a belief that some cosmic law or divine judgment that makes the members of one group despicable sets them up in the eyes of the others as a potential scapegoat and stigmatizes them. So the minimal sort of pluralism needed to avoid persecution would be one that holds that, among the major religions, all have the value of being free from stigma, either equally or above some threshold sufficient to remove the danger of persecution. Let us call this “astigmatic pluralism” and its denial “religious stigmatism.” One may hold that the rejection of one’s faith is a damnable sin while maintaining astigmatic pluralism, for example, through an

emphasis on God’s love of sinners. One might also hold that God has commanded us to be kind and tolerant toward those who reject the true religion, perhaps in hopes that they will repent and thereby avoid damnation.

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As for the first question, we should now consider how an argument

could be formulated for astigmatic pluralism, based on the idea that religious stigmatism leads to persecution: 1.

If a belief leads to injustice, such belief should be condemned

and

rejected.

2. Belief in religious stigmatism leads to injustice. 3. Thus, belief in religious stigmatism should be condemned rejected.

and

Not everyone will be convinced by this sort of argument, despite the fact that the argument is not that astigmatic pluralism is true but only that it is morally objectionable to think it is not. Those unconvinced by the argument might attack premise (1) by saying that a belief should be condemned and rejected only if it is false, regardless of whether it leads to injustice. They might also take issue with the notion that a true belief might lead to injustice.

Consider one who believes in caste differences. Such a person might be presented with the following argument: 4. If a belief leads to injustice, such belief should be condemned and rejected. 5. Belief in caste differences leads to injustice. 6. Thus, belief in caste differences should be condemned and rejected. The response we should expect from the believer in caste differences is

that what should be condemned is not the belief but the use of this belief as an excuse for injustice. Likewise, the believer in religious stigmatism might argue that, even though the members of groups of Others are damned, they should not be mistreated. Although a defense of religious stigmatism might be mounted along these lines, the view conflicts with widespread current moral and social norms, according to which it is repugnant to make claims about eternal damnation due solely to religious affiliation (at least with regard to what are considered normal denominations within the major traditions). Aside from the issue of social stigmatism, there are other philosophical arguments that can be given against the view that God may damn the adherents of a given belief system for no other reason than their adherence. Usually, the view that membership in the “wrong” denomination is

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sufficient for eternal damnation is coupled with a belief that the preferred denomination contains the sole means to escape damnation. Exclusivist Jews and Muslims, for example, might hold that the only way to escape

damnation is by following the Torah or Sharia, respectively. The exclusivist Christian might hold that all are damned who do not accept Jesus as their personal savior. It might be helpful to consider the negative side of soteriological pluralism: instead of concentrating on the claim that only one way leads to salvation, consider the claim that all other ways lead to perdition. One need not be a pluralist of any stripe to deny this. Atheists

deny that God sends people to Hell on the basis of religious affiliation, since, by definition, they deny that there is a God at all (although some atheists seem to think that any sort of religious belief is damning in some sense). What is crucial to note regarding the issue of religious exclusivism with respect to salvation is that there are lots of people who deny soteriological exclusivism without accepting religious pluralism or religious inclusivism. Some might deny exclusivism because they do not believe in God, others because they do not believe in Heaven and Hell, and others

because they believe that special acts of divine grace may save people in otherwise damnable denominations. Soteriological religious exclusivism may be formulated in several ways, depending upon whether the factor that causes Others to be damned is taken to be their beliefs, their practices, or their affiliation. The most extreme form of soteriological religious exclusivism would hold that all those whose beliefs, practices, or affiliations are not those of the favored group are damned. This view may be attacked on theological and philosophical grounds. Theologians usually make exceptions for those who lack the mental or physical capacities to consciously affiliate, believe, or practice according to some set of teachings. Why are these exceptions made? The exclusivist might hold that since God is just, He would not punish someone for something they could not do anything about. According to the religious rejection of soteriological exclusivism, one argues on the basis of religious beliefs about the justice and mercy of God to the conclusion that God would not cast people into eternal perdition just for picking what the arguer considers the wrong denomination, especially given the fact that denominational affiliation is highly correlated with accidents of birth. The philosophical rejection of soteriological exclusivism has a different structure, for it is not based on any religious beliefs at all. The idea is that soteriological exclusivism leads to inconsistency.

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The argument is that the following three propositions form an inconsistent triad: 1. God is perfectly good. 2. God is omnipotent. 3. For all persons S, if S deviates from the right beliefs, practices, or religious affiliation, then God condemns S to eternal damnation. It is argued that these three propositions are inconsistent, so at least one must be abandoned. Abandoning either of the first two would be to give up the existence of God, and with it, soteriological exclusivism. But to reject (3) is also to reject soteriological exclusivism. Hence, soteriological exclusivism is untenable. This argument is not water-tight, however, for the soteriological exclusivist could always insist that divine goodness would not be compromised by condemning people who in good conscience fail to accept the right beliefs, practices, or affiliation. Here we might respond that even if (1), (2), and (3) are not logically inconsistent, it is not very plausible to consider all of them true. The implausibility of the claim that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God would condemn people to eternal damnation solely because of denominational deviance is often supported by the argument that denominational variation is largely determined by accidents of birth, such as the region in which one is born and raised, and it would be unjust for anyone to be condemned because of accidents of birth. Another argument is that it would be wrong for God to punish those who failed to obey a command that had not reached them or a command that they were not able to understand. Assuming that God commands all people to join a particular denomination, it seems that there are many people who have failed to understand that God has issued this command. Hence, it would be wrong for God to issue damnations solely on the basis of denominational affiliation. in conclusion, astigmatic pluralism may be defended for philosophical reasons (i.e., religious stigmatism is contrary to widely accepted moral norms), and astigmatic pluralism implies the rejection of soteriological exclusivism. Soteriological exclusivism may also be rejected by an argument analogous to the argument from evil, as well as for theological reasons (i.e., the loving and merciful God would not condemn people to eternal damnation merely because they were adherents of the “wrong” religion).

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Religious Truth and Religious Dialogue The issues of truth and salvation are not independent. According to traditional Christian belief, one is saved through the Redemption when one has faith in it, and that implies knowing some things that Christians consider very basic truths. Muslims also hold that there are some basic truths about the prophetic mission of Muhammad that should be known so that one may find the way to God and keep His laws. There is also a fundamental relation between truth and the attainment of one’s goals, between theoretical and practical reasoning. Practical reason serves two basic functions: recognition of goals, and finding the way to achieve them.” The effective performance of both these functions depends on theoretical reasoning. Even the purely instrumental reasoning of how to get from point A to B requires some rudimentary theoretical knowledge of geometry. If two people differ about theoretical issues concerning where they should go and what the best way is to get there, there is no a priori reason to think that they both have an equal shot at reaching

their goals. Differences about truth claims are thus related to expectations about destiny. If two people both believe that it is possible to do things that will have dire consequences in the afterlife; but they differ about what actions have what consequences, they can be expected to disagree over what sorts of life will lead to wretchedness. Not every difference, however, will yield a disagreement. Theoretical differences may be divided initially into two categories: (a) disagreement, where one tradition denies what the other affirms; (b) complementarity, where one tradition affirms or denies a proposition that has not been affirmed or denied by the other. Consider, for example, the issue of alcohol. Muslims generally consider it to be forbidden in the Qur’an and that the prohibition was given gradually: first, requiring sobriety only for prayers, and finally, making alcoholic beverages haram (forbidden) in essence. Muslims also tend to think that alcohol is bad for you, that is, that it has harmful consequences in this life and the next. Many (though not all)

Christians, on the other hand, believe that there is nothing wrong with moderate drinking, that is, that it does not have harmful consequences in this life or the afterlife. Evangelical Christians, however, were at the fore-

front of the prohibition movement in the beginning of the twentieth century, so the issue is not as simple as that Muslims deny what Christians affirm. Nevertheless, the claim that God has forbidden the consumption of alcohol is one that most Muslims would affirm and many Christians

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would deny. There are many other claims that most Muslims affirm and to which some Christians concur, for example, that drinking has harmful effects in this life and the next. Sometimes a belief is held by one group, while the other group has no opinion on it or considers the issue to be outside the range of religious teaching. Of course, there are common truths that are accepted by both Christians and Muslims, too. But the very important points of contention are what pose the greatest challenge to a pluralistic position with regard to truth claims. The points of contention become obstacles to dialogue in two ways: first, they are made the exclusive focus of attention; and second, they are slighted as mere details. Nonreductive versions of religious pluralism may provide a way for Muslims, Christians, and other participants in religious dialogue to acknowledge that points of difference (complementary and contentious) may play an essential and valuable role in the religious life of members of different communities, beyond the common points they share. Scholars of religious studies interested in the issues of religious pluralism might do well to consult with their colleagues in other departments about the sectarian divisions in fields other than religion. Consider, for example, the logicians (although essentially the same points could be made with reference to other fields, such as physics, economics, etc.). They are divided into affiliations that rival those of religious denominations. There are intuitionists, logicists, formalists, conventionalists, dialethists, pluralists, and many others. The adherents of these schools differ from one another about what logic is, how it should be studied, and what valid results have been proven. Even the logical pluralists do not grant that there is truth in equal measure in all the different logical sects, and they are particularly averse to dialethism.” As far as I can tell, the professors who constitute the membership of these schools of thought are on the whole equally highly intelligent, industrious, and well informed; yet they disagree about the fundamental principles of rationality—logic! Despite their differences about the principles of logic, logical truth, and rationality, logicians of different schools of thought are generally respectful toward one another, and they do not consider those who have opposing beliefs on these matters to be irrational. For the most part, the adherents of the various views of logic claim that the relation of logical consequence is correctly described only from their own viewpoint. Rival views are considered incorrect. Disagreements prompt research. The

adherents of a given view attempt to find reasons to support their view,

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such as problems that are solved on their own view but that pose grave difficulties for rivals. When faced with such difficulties, adherents of the rival view are motivated to develop their own views further to meet the challenge. Sometimes a view faces repeated challenges it is unable to solve. This can lead to the abandonment of a view, as in the case of the abandonment of psychologism in logic in the early twentieth century. Sometimes a scientific revolution can be provoked when the defenders of a view find themselves repeatedly running into dead ends. Normally, however, disagreements are productive of valuable research in rival projects. Just as religious adherence can be predicted within a reasonable margin of error on the basis of where one grew up, adherence to a logical school might be predicted on the basis of the university where one happened to study. The fact that adherence to a school of thought may be predicted on the basis of factors irrelevant to its truth is not taken to be evidence that the positions taken by logicians are irrational, or that one is no better than another. Likewise, the fact that religious adherence might

be predicted on the basis of accidents of birth and geography does not imply that with regard to any given value the differences in religious belief systems are equally valuable. The point of this analogy is not to suggest that theologians should model their views on those of logicians; rather, it is that any conclusions to be drawn from features of religious differences that are shared with differences among logical schools (or among the theoreticians of any given field) should be applied to both. If we are not tempted to think that the persistent disagreement among various schools of logic shows that they are equally true, we should not draw this conclusion in religion, unless some relevant difference in the two cases can be used to show why the conclusion follows in one case but not the other.” What motivates alethic equality pluralism, that is, the view that religious truth is divided more or less equally among the various religious denominations, is not a recognition of religious truth plus the discovery of its equal distribution among denominations, but the goal of avoiding religious stigmatism. Might not persecution of outsiders be whipped up as easily on the basis of their allegedly false beliefs as on the basis of their destination in the afterlife? This is not unlikely. So, would not it be best to prevent persecution by making it a basic principle of civilized discourse

about the religions that they all have equal doses of truth? While no price may be too high to pay to eliminate religious persecution, surely there must be a better way.

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If (regardless of how rough departmental politics can get) the logicians are not persecuting one another, although each school proclaims the truth of its own views to the exclusion of others (with respect to the claims about which they disagree), the reason would seem to be sociological rather than that truth is equally distributed among religious denominations but unequally distributed among logical schools. Imagine a possible world in which the logicians were able to generate large followings of ordinary people who would attend weekly lectures in popularized logic in which intuitionists drummed constructivist principles into their listeners’ heads while other orators were generating outrage over doubts about the axiom of choice. Suppose that some such logicians made use of the loyalty of their followings to raise mobs to have dissenting logicians and their coteries run out of town. We might imagine that, in such circumstances, in order to cool down the hotheads, a logician might appear who would defend what might be called a Kantian logical pluralism,” according to which the relation of

logical consequence is ineffable but manifests itself in different, even contradictory ways, in the various systems of intuitionist, classical, paraconsistent, and other logics. I submit that there is as little reason for thinking that these imaginary Kantian pluralists or occultists are right about logic as there is for thinking that the views of John Hick or the traditionalists (in the line of René Guénon) are right about religion, and that what motivates acceptance of pluralism is not the metaphysical views that are used to back up one version or another (although there is no denying that these do have their charms), but the moral and social norms according to which religious stigmatism is condemned. In most scholarly disagreements, there is nothing wrong with thinking that the theory one is developing is correct and that the rival theories being developed by colleagues are wrong, but, in so doing there should be no condemnation. Of course, rival theories generally agree on many important points and disagree on certain crucial issues. But the respect shown to colleagues holding rival positions is not solely due to shared opinions. One who does not agree with the philosophical principles on which intuitionist logics are based may still appreciate the elegance ofthe systems developed on that basis. I would hope that, likewise, even those who have different religious commitments could show professional respect for one another’s theological positions— even while disagreeing.

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Notes a

. For a fairly exhaustive account, see Muhammad Legenhausen, “On the Plurality of Religious Pluralisms,” International Journal of Hekmat 1 (Autumn 2009): 5-42,

http://peacethroughunderstanding.blogspot.com/2010/05/plurality-of-pluralisms. html (last accessed September 20, 2011). . Religious pluralism is often defined in such a way as to require equality, and what is

here called degree pluralism would not be considered pluralism at all. See Peter Byrne, Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism: Reference and Realism (Houndmills: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin’s, 1995), 5-6, 12, where equality is required in some but not all respects. Keith Yandell also sees equality claims as being essential to religious pluralism. See his Philosophy of Religion: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, 1999), 67.

. This idea is suggested in William J. Wainwright, “Competing Religious Claims,” in

The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion, ed. W. E. Mann (Oxford: Blackwell, 2.005), 221, only to be rejected in short order.

. Michael J. Murray and Michael Rea, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 12. In the passage quoted, Murray and Rea are merely describing religious pluralism, not endorsing it. . Murray and Rea could reply that having reason to believe, de dicto, that one of the religions is superior to the others is enough to make one an exclusivist and that I have unfairly assumed that their description requires the exclusivist to believe about one of the religions, de re, that it is superior to the others. What should make different

denominations equally valid attempts to achieve the goals of religion, however, is not a lack of reasons for thinking that any religion is superior to the others, but the (al-

leged) fact that none is superior. As Lessing tells the story of the rings, the possibility is introduced that the original ring might be lost altogether, so that only three counterfeits remain. So, even with respect to the de dicto belief that at least one of the three

rings is the magic ring, the judge in Lessing’s story remains agnostic. It would seem more intuitive to call someone who holds that at most one ofseveral religions has the value V an exclusivist than a pluralist, for pluralism seems to imply the belief that

various religions all possess some value, not merely that we do not have sufficient reason to deny this. See Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan der Weise (1779), in Lessings Gesamelte Werke, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Tempel Verlag, i912), 292f., and the extra wrinkle

that maybe the king sold the real ring to make three counterfeits at 296. Lessing took the story of the rings from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (1353), the third story of the first day. . William P. Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 260. . John Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 1-15. . See Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

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. This theme is explored with sensitivity and insight in Gavin D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 145-176; D’Costa (147) also cites a remark by the Buddhist scholar Edward Conze: “I once read through a collection of the lives of Roman Catholic saints, and there was not one of whom a Buddhist could fully approve. .. . They were bad Buddhists though good Christians.” Edward Conze, Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1967), 47. . See William J. Wainwright, “Competing Religious Claims,” in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion, ed. W. E. Mann (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 221; Michael J. Murray and Michael Rea, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 111-119; Keith Yandell, Philosophy of Religion: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, 1999), 73-74.

. Paul J. Griffiths, An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Interreligious Dialogue (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 20; cited with approval by William J. Wainwright, “Competing Religious Claims,” 220, in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion, ed. W. E. Mann (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 220-240. . Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought, and ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 115; for a more extensive discussion, see McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine ofJustification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 13 John Hick, “Religious Pluralism and Islam,” lecture delivered to the Institute for Islamic Culture and Thought, Tehran (February 2005): 7, http://www.johnhick.org. uk/articleu.html (last accessed September 20, 2011). . Ibid., u. . Dennis L. Okholm and Timothy R. Phillips, Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 44. e=

. For a useful overview of sin and salvation in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism,

and Buddhism, see Harold Coward, Sin and Salvation in the World Religions: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003). Many modern Christian theologians reject the explanation of original sin as a guilt inherited from Adam. See Karl Rahner, The Content of Faith: The Best of Karl Rahner’s

Theological Writings, ed. Karl Lehmann and Albert Raffelt, trans. Harvey D. Egan (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1993), 527-528. The doctrine of original sin is explained in the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church as follows: “404 How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam ‘as one body of one man’ (St. Thomas Aquinas, De Malo 4, I). By this ‘unity of the human race’ all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully under-

stand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that

they would then transmit in a fallen state (Cf. Council of Trent: DS 1511-1512 [294)). It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why

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original sin is called ‘sin’ only in an analogical sense: it is a sin ‘contracted’ and not ‘committed’—a state and not an act.” See http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/

archive/catechism/pis2cip7.htm (last accessed on October 15, 2012). 18, Here, too, Rahner offers an alternative to the traditional understanding in which bap-

tism is no longer needed for individual salvation, but rather is needed to signify

membership in the Church externally, in a tangible way. See Karl Rahner, The Content

of Faith: The Best of Karl Rahner’s Theological Writings, ed. Karl Lehmann and Albert Raffelt, trans. Harvey D. Egan (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1993), 524-526. According to the Catechism: “1260 ‘Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery.’ Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.” See http: //www.vatican.va/archive/ ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2saciai.htm (last accessed on October 15, 2012). . “There is no salvation outside the church.” De baptismo IV, xvii, 24, cited in Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine ofJustification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 127. 20. Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought, and ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 199. 21.ee The translation of the relevant parts of this work has been published as Shahid Ayatullah Murtada Mutahhari, Islam and Religious Pluralism (Stanmore, UK: The World Federation of KSIMC, 2006). It is on the basis of this view that I have defended the consistency of Islamic teachings with some forms of nonreductive religious pluralism in works such as the following: Muhammad Legenhausen, “On the Plurality of Religious Pluralisms”; Muhammad Legenhausen, “A Muslim’s Proposal: Non-Reductive Religious Pluralism,” Universitat Innsbruck, Der Innsbrucker Theologische Leseraum (2006), http://www.uibk.ac.at/theol/leseraum/texte/626.html] (last accessed on September 20, 2011); Muhammad Legenhausen, “A Muslim’s Non-Reductive Religious Pluralism,” in Islam and Global Dialogue: Religious Pluralism and the Pursuit of Peace, ed. Roger Boase (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 51-73; and Muhammad Legenhausen, Islam and Religious Pluralism (London: Al-Hoda, 1999). 22.

Karl Rahner, The Content of Faith: The Best of Karl Rahner's Theological Writings, ed. Karl Lehmann and Albert Raffelt, trans. Harvey D. Egan (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1993), 392; Ayatullah Murtada Mutahhari, Islam and Religious Pluralism

(Stanmore, UK: The World Federation of KSIMC, 2006), 66. 23. The best defense of universalism I have found is that of Tom Greggs, Barth, Origen, and Universal Salvation: Restoring Particularity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2.009).

24. Practical reason may also play other important roles, such as reflection on practical

dilemmas, the formulation of reasons for one’s actions, and more, but the two mentioned here suffice to show the dependence on theoretical reason.

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25. See J. C. Beall and Greg Restall, Logical Pluralism (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2006), 79-83. 20% For a diversity of views about the epistemic significance of disagreements among

peers, see Richard Feldman and Ted A. Warfield, Disagreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

27. Not to be confused with the logical pluralism of Beall and Restall, Logical Pluralism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 25. Beall and Restall define logical pluralism as the view that there is no single relation of logical consequence; there is a plurality of logical consequence relations. According to my imaginary Kantian logical pluralism, however, there is one ineffable logical consequence relation that becomes

manifest in different ways through a plurality of logics.

&

Oneself as the Saved Other? The Ethics

and Soteriology of Difference in Two Mushm Thinkers Sayad H. Rizvi

IT IS RATHER axiomatic that we live in a world of paradoxes and puzzles that challenge us and often leave us perplexed. Difference and dissonance is the order of the world; ambiguity and multivocity are key features of the language through which we articulate our world. Yet alongside this apparent multiplicity, we cannot escape the basic assumption that each of us in our own way possesses coherent, unequivocal, and univocal understandings of our reality. Out of the recognition of these differences often arises conflict and even warfare: over politics, over aggressive identity— but within a philosophical context, conflict is no less present, intervening in issues of epistemology and ethics. We assume that each of us has good reason for the positions that we hold and that we arrive at them through a process of reasoning: the conflict between the results of our reasoning is what is called epistemic peer conflict. This is merely an expression for the ways in which we articulate, self-define, and self-reflect in a dialectic and multivalent way through encounters with Others in history.' The more pessimistic and unhappy among us see these differences as insurmountable contradictions that will inexorably lead to conflict, violence, brutality,

and confusion. Our language of conflict commits us to an ontology of violence. The optimistic and ecstatic among us, however, see in these par-

adoxes felicitous coincidentiae oppositorum that inspire us to move from ignorance to a higher knowledge, to comprehend that our self-realization as humans put us on a path to perfection that transcends discord in favor of concord.

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Of course, such a dichotomization is deliberately exaggerated. The fact of human diversity, expressed in multifold ways, the particular manifestation of that in the present context being religious diversity, juxtaposed with the exclusive truth claims, ethical norms, and salvific stances of those differing religious traditions does pose a major challenge, not least because we do not have the luxury of an omniscient being or ultimate reality intervening in our affairs in some objective manner and deciding for all of us the nature of truth. God in this sense remains absconditus. Religious pluralism, as an expression of one side of the lib-

eral desire to allow and promote the flourishing of diversity (because the flip side of liberalism is to advocate a universalization of its own values),’ becomes a primary desideratum, because we live in a disenchanted world that has forgotten the role of religion and has had to wake up to religious claims in the stark light of revivalism, the modern reaction of fundamentalism, and the stubborn persistence of traditionalism. Religious diversity, therefore, represents a challenge to the ways in which believers and nonbelievers alike understand truth, ethics, politics, and indeed salvation. It also signals opportunities. This chapter is primarily a caveat about the ways in which we speak of religious diversity and the sorts of epistemologies assumed and ontologies to which one is committed. We seem stuck in a language that argues in two distinct, and, I would suggest, wrong-headed, directions: First, the theology of religions (and religious difference) tends to be restricted to rather simple categories of compatibility of coexistence, truth claims, and soteriology, and often fails to break out of the straitjacket of the tripartite positions of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Second, there is an assumption about the holistic nature of religious reasoning that postulates that truth claims, ethical stances, and salvific efficacy are continuous, a rather Platonic insistence upon integrity. In this chapter, I draw upon two important contemporary Muslim thinkers who are making significant contributions in thinking about religious diversity. In a sense, this chapter is an attempt to search out a journey toward pluralism by taking in a series of different philosophical arguments toward an Islamic pluralistic theology of religions. At the heart of the problem is the basic recognition that each of us possesses the desire to live authentic lives and to see in that authenticity some uniqueness, and ultimately in such a formation of our identity to deny such authenticity to another. What I attempt to do is to set aside scriptural reasoning for the moment (those interested will no doubt see in Reza Shah-Kazemi a good

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exemplar of such)’ and to see what resources there are generally in philosophy that one can utilize in thinking about a new Islamic theology of religions, a theology that concerns itself not only with diversity within a religion but also across religions. Many of the existing Muslim discourses on pluralism suffer, I

believe, from two basic problems of foundationalism. The first type of foundationalism is a juristic construction—religious diversity represents a social problem that requires a jurisprudential (fighi) solution articulated through the jurisprudential status of Others within Islam and without. While there is little disputing the contention that jurisprudence is indeed the master science of the madrasa, it is a disaster for our societies if we insist upon a juristic foundationalism. The rules and precepts of Islamic jurisprudence (figh) instrumentalize the moral obligation (taklif) that rational believers undertake. Reason and ethics ought to be foundational to our moral agency, which should not merely be reduced to a minimal conformity to the jurisprudential precepts that arise out of legal reasoning and are admittedly conjectural. Our basic social relationships determine and embed the values that we ascribe to our agency. The second type of foundationalism is a form of scripto-centrism, a privileging of the Qur’an above all other signifiers in Islamic theology. Arguments that stem from deracinated readings or even from contextualized exegesis remain focused solely upon the Qur’an. But the concept of revelation arises from the person who bears the revelation and on whose reliability we accept revelation. The primary mode of revelation therefore in Islamic theology is the person ofthe Prophet; without him, and, I would argue as a good Shi‘i believer, without the concurrent theological notions of prophetic infallibility and justice, we cannot accept the authority of the text that he conveys—a position for which al-Sharif al-Murtada (d. 1044) provided a neat syllogism.* Why and how did we all suddenly become Protestants? Or, to put it another way, since when are all Muslims supposed to adhere to Salafi scripturalism? But one final caveat: any response to religious diversity needs to be rooted in authentic being and arise out of the desire of the Self to be realized on the path to the One. We should not feel the pressure to embrace reform or pluralism or any such approach merely because it is unacceptable in the liberal consensus to stay aloof. What we do need to articulate are reasons for holding that pluralism is a good—especially in the ethical sense.

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Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari reflects an important tendency in recent Iranian Islamic thought toward a hermeneutical approach to text and reality, a shift away from Qur’an-centered exegesis to a hermeneutical understanding of Islamic thought motivated by “mediated subjectivity.”°

Farzin Vahdat makes a strong case for seeing Shabestari and other Iranians thinkers as engaged in an encounter with modernity, predicated on the two major (Hegelian) themes of subjectivity and universality.° The former considers the human to be an autonomous agent, self-conscious, self-willing, self-defining, and self-determining of her life-processes expressed in the notions of liberty, volition, consciousness, and individu-

ality.’ The latter relates to the mutual recognition of subjectivity between individuals and their equality that allows for the emergence of civil society and civic pluralism. However, that is not to say that subjectivity does not also have its roots in the theomorphic notion of the human as vicegerent of God on earth (khalifat Allah fi al-ard) and the self-realized human as the perfect man (al-insan al-kamil).° Shabestari (b. 1936) is an emeritus professor of Islamic philosophy at the University of Tehran. Having trained as a seminarian, he spent the 1970s running the Iranian Islamic Center in Hamburg, where he learned German and was exposed to the hermeneutical tradition, particularly Hans-Georg Gadamer (d. 2002) whose historical approach to human understanding of the text was a critical influence. As a leading liberal thinker, he approaches the fact of revelation as an address to the human Self: Islam is a total reorientation, and when there is a reorientation, there

is an emerging from the self, a migration from the self to the Other. It is our self from which we must migrate, the self which constitutes the dimensions of human identity: the historical self, social self and the linguistic self. Humans are limited by four dimensions: history, society, body and language. The role of divine revelation is to open another horizon and, without negating the four dimensions, to make them transparent, traversing the human toward God.” As such, faith is an expression for encounter with the Other and the experiential content of that encounter." Moral acts and the performance of the rituals are still important but only insofar as they authentically translate that experience.” The liberty and autonomy of the Self is the ground for ethical

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engagement with the human Other and the transcendent Other, facilitated by the hermeneutical turn. This liberty leads to two results. First, the individual agent needs to interpret the text; meaning is not transparent and requires a

process to pour forth.” This interpretation is mediated by modern subjectivity whose basic features are a critical attitude to the text, volition, and intention toward the text, and the need to draw upon modern “human” knowledge to interpret the text. As these features are transient and mutable, and, as the very processes of reasoning are similarly limited by their human context, they are somewhat tentative.“ As such, Shabestari sets out to distinguish between what is mutable and immutable in faith and decides on justice as the primary value (no doubt a result of the modified Mu ‘tazili tradition of his training).” In the quest for the essential, it is not sufficient to delve into the scripture to extract principles but rather, one needs to investigate the content of religious experience and the reception of revelation to search for the essential aspects of the faith.'° Then thinkers need to engage with the human sciences—the old curriculum

of the seminary is insufficient; the strong influence of

Gadamer’s hermeneutical turn to the human sciences is evident here and throughout Shabestari’s major work on hermeneutics.” He rejects both the notion that society needs to conform to humanly derived essences of the faith, as well as the notion that faith has no public face but is merely an inter-

nal ethical norm.” Liberty entails a suspicion of institutionalized particularism. In Faith and Freedom, Shabestari writes:

When religion is institutionalised, the danger appears that man is negated by the institution. Why? Because when religion is institutionalised, God’s absoluteness is denied. With the institutionalisation of religion, God is confined . . . within the enclosure of Church or Mosque. God thus is eclipsed, and when he is eclipsed, man no longer finds himself before an absolute God, but before a God that is confined and reified. Under these circumstances, man is negated and when man is negated God is experienced as antifreedom.” Such a plea against particularization makes sense within a postrevolutionary Iranian context especially. But ultimately, it is an argument for liberty to be the ground for an ethical pluralism in this world and to permit paths toward realization of the relationship between the Self and the Other. Liberty frees

the human intellect over time before the text.” It leads to multiple readings of the text that provide the hermeneutical foundation for pluralism.

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The second result of the emphasis upon liberty is that faith has to be sincere and free of constraints, whether cultural or dogmatic. Shabestari writes:

Faith is an act of choosing, a fateful act. The question is when a human being is facing a dilemma and chooses the type of lifestyle he wants to live by, what path should he take?. .. . The ideal society for faith and the faithful is one in which this choice is widely available. ... The truth of faith is a free act of conscious choice. All of our mystics have urged the forsaking of imitated faith and adoption of conscious faith.”!

In his work on faith and freedom, he presents four conceptualizations of faith but argues that each one is, at its heart, founded upon the liberty of thought and expression and human free will.” The latter as a divinely mandated act of grace underpins human liberty. The role of ijtihad (the exercise of independent reasoning when interpreting scripture) exerted from the ground of the free choice of faith becomes the means for negotiating between the mutable and the immutable, between eternal principles and social transformations.” A critical rationalism needs to be applied to the “official reading of the faith,” which tends to be monopolizing. The juristically grounded reading of the faith is coercive because it forces individuals to adhere to this monopolizing discourse. At the very beginning of his important critique of the “official reading of the faith” (Nagdi bar gara’at-i rasmi az din), he writes: The official reading of the faith in our society is the source of our crisis. This crisis has multiple causes but I want to focus upon and explain two of the leading ones. The first cause is the insistence upon an indemonstrable and incorrect claim that Islam insofar as it is a religiosity (dindari) constitutes a political, economic, and legal system derived from the science of jurisprudence that can be the basis of one’s way of life in every age and God wants Muslims in every age to live accordingly. The second cause is the insistence upon another incorrect claim that the job of government among Muslims is to implement the [legal] precepts of the faith.” The various crises of the modern Islamic republic arise from the restriction of choice that denies humans the ability to exercise their right to the free composition of opinion and reading of the text.” Liberal readings of

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the text recognize that there is more to the faith than mere jurisprudence, and Shabestari in particular points toward the importance of philosophical hermeneutics and ethics.”° The freedom of choice leads to a tolerance (mudara va tahammul) of, and respect (ihtiram) for, difference and ultimately to an effective politico-ethical pluralism. Tolerance and respect should not be grudgingly granted by those confident in the superior and exclusive claims that they make; rather, they (tolerance and respect) should be more than formal features of society and should be meaningful, with the acknowledgment of the possibility that the powers within the society do not necessarily hold a monopoly on political and religious truth.” Tolerance that is meaningful should extend to criticism of the beliefs, religious or otherwise, of the majority in a society.** Shabestari entertains the objection that in a religious society such tolerance cannot pertain and that there ought to be limits to tolerance;” however, he responds by saying that in Islam, both in Sunni and Shi‘i dispensations, there is no clear articulating authority (after the Prophet and after the occultation of the Twelfth Imam) who can have the final say on issues, so we are left with a situation of a consistent need for critical and rational engagement with texts and a multivocity of reasoned opinions that arise.*° The result is that In a Muslim society pluralism of interpretations and of reasonings can possibly obtain and we can have political systems based upon claims that equal rights should be granted to the various interpretations and not that one should select one and reject others and engage in a struggle between them. Even if the majority in a democratic sense follow a particular interpretation, the rights of other interpretations insofar as they are interpretations that may be followed should remain protected.”

Finally, Shabestaris most explicit discussion of religious pluralism appeared in a roundtable alongside Anmed and Mahmoud Sadri and Morad Farhadpour, convened by the now defunct leading intellectual reformist journal Kiyan and reproduced in Shabestari’s book on the critique of the official reading of the faith.” He starts by arguing that pluralism can only arise when one’s philosophical predispositions remain skeptical about the ability of humans to decide definitively that their interpretations accurately reveal the intent of the text and make the deus absconditus (the God who is hidden from our knowledge) apparent. Once this obtains, and once one recognizes that the essential element in religion is experiential content,

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then pluralism is possible.*’ Shabestari’s position seeks a philosophical possibility and is critical of an argument for pluralism based on a historicizing account of the development of religions and their clash in actuality and on the need to avoid conflict.“ The political challenge that diversity lays down is easily solved by tolerance and is articulated by the great faiths through the recognition of the inviolability (hurmat) of the Other; but that is not pluralism. A clearer understanding of the question needs to focus upon the category of religion: religion comprises three aspects.* First, it has an existential feature that is rooted in the religious experience of the individual. Second, the essence of religion is both personal and dialogical, both immanent and transcendent. Third, religion is not apparent and is not an exact science like mathematics. It should be clear that he is speaking about religion as such and not merely about differing understandings within Islam. He does not think that pluralism, either within a tradition or across religions, should lapse into relativism: the acceptance that more than one faith can be a framework or path for salvation does not entail the advocacy of the truth of particular beliefs and practices in particular religions.** Pluralism does not concern the incompatibility between different ethical and legal codes—faith cannot be reduced to external legal features and Sharia is a term for the salvific path and not for a particular set of rules.” Ultimately, since faith, freely chosen, is rooted in religious experience and in an ethical framework, pluralism is quite a straightforward matter. Shabestari’s concern lies with the ethical engagement of intersubjective selves engaged in this world in mutual relations of respect and liberty. Pluralism is thus, as a minimum, just recognition of this social fact, but

the epistemological and soteriological case for pluralism still needs to be made. In his more recent work, Shabestari has actively made an argument for religious pluralism on ethical grounds as well as urge a more humanistic approach to the study of text and reality: after all, the journey from the Self to Other needs to begin with the fully realized human Self.** But the issue of epistemic peer conflict is neglected.

Abdolkarim Soroush Famously described as the Martin Luther of Islam by The Guardian in 1995, Soroush (the pen name of Hossein Dabbagh) has become a name synonymous with the project of reform in Iran and in contemporary Islam in general. His approach to reform is a radical root-and-branch rethinking

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that focuses on epistemology and hermeneutics (one only needs to read his earlier works such as ‘Ilm chist, falsafa chist [“What is science? What is

philosophy?”], Danish va arzish [“Knowledge and value”], and Taffaruj-i sun‘ [“Excursion of creation”] and middle works that usher in the transition, such as Farba-tar az tdiyiliji (“Thicker than ideology”]) and forsakes metaphysics and theomorphism.” Consistent with Shabestari, he defines religion as an experience of the noumenal and of revelation itself. The religion of Islam in particular lies in the rehearsal of the prophetic experience of Muhammad and not simply in following precepts.” Similar to Shabestari, he refuses to reduce faith to jurisprudence and marks an important ethical deficit in a legal-minded reading of the faith.“ Soroush’s theory of religious pluralism is grounded in two key concepts: a Popperian skepticism and critical realism deployed for a critical examination of the religious sciences and an almost Kantian distinction between religion an sich and religion as commonly understood, expressed in his famous theory on the evolution (or contraction and expansion) of religious knowledge (qabz va bast-i ti’iirtk-i shari‘at), and a deep notion of religion as the rehearsal and practice of religious experience.” On the former, his early work had attempted to introduce Popperian perspectives from the philosophy of science to the study of the human and religious sciences and to break down the distinction between two notions of ‘lm (knowledge, science): rational and metaphysical knowledge as opposed to empirical sciences founded upon sense perception and experimentation.** Human knowledge is always tentative, evolutionary, falsifiable, and provisional. Nevertheless, it marks a middle path between a positivism that maps concepts directly upon extramental reality and a pragmatism that sees reality as a construct of convention.“ Soroush remains a realist. The theory of the evolution of religious knowledge is founded upon this insight and expressed succinctly thus: Religious knowledge—meaning our knowledge of the Qur’an and the [Sunna|—is human knowledge, and similar to other sciences, is in constant flux, evolution, and contraction and expansion. This contraction and expansion is directly produced by contractions and expansions in other areas of human knowledge, and understanding the [Sharia] is not independent of our understanding of nature and science, and changes to it. Therefore, just as philosophy and the natural sciences are imperfect and continue to evolve, the sciences

of jurisprudence and interpretation and ethics and theology are also imperfect and also continue to evolve. ... Consistent with the growth

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in science and philosophy, the ability of scholars to expand and deepen their understanding of the [Sharia] will also be enhanced.* This does not, however, result in epistemic relativism. Soroush’s deployment of Popper and rejection of foundationalism does not negate his realism. The claim that concepts in the human sciences are constantly evolving (toward perfection) is not identical with the claim that truth and religion are relative.” The evolution of knowledge does not bracket truth. Epistemic relativism for Soroush entails skepticism, because it conflates a priori and a posteriori approaches to knowledge and disavows the Kantian distinction between the noumenon and the phenomenon.” Even if we cannot access objective knowledge of the noumenon, that does not imply that the noumenon of things-an-sich does not exist: the metaphysical and epistemological realism remains in place. He advocates a nominalism of what appears to be the case, rejecting a priori knowledge.* Nevertheless, there is a weak epistemological relativism on his position of the relative nature of warrant for belief in God (while arguing that God Himself is not relative). Soroush makes a central distinction between reasons (or proofs) and causes: contemporary epistemology has on the whole forsaken the former in favor of the latter.°° Religion is not reasoned; it is caused by experience.” The second foundation of his theory of religious pluralism is the definition of religion as experience.» In Bast-i tajriba-yi nabavi (“Expansion of prophetic experience”), Soroush writes:

Islam is not a book or an aggregate of words; it is a historical movement and the history-incarnate of a mission. It is the historical extension of a gradually-realised prophetic experience. The Prophet’s personality is the core; it is everything that God has granted to the Muslim community. Religion is woven through and through with this personality. Religion is the Prophet’s inward and outward experience. ... The world of experience is a pluralistic one. .. . Not only inward experiences, but social experiences too have contributed and can contribute to the feasible strengthening and perfection of religion.” As such, religion is not a closed system completed by the end of the life of the Prophet but an evolutionary process that begins with the Prophet's historical mission, and thus the Qur’anic declaration of perfection (“Today

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We have perfected your religion” [5:3]) constitutes a minimum of legisla-

tion and guidance but not the end of experience.™ Legal precepts are part of the cultural package of the historical faith and constitute accidentals of religion: essentials include the ethical scope of religious experience.” Soroush, much like Shabestari, sees religion in minimalist terms, with respect to both jurisprudence and theology, focusing on inner experience: the core of the faith needs to be minimal, because each historical religion undergoes distortions and corruptions. Again, as with Shabestari, the

function of religious rituals is to express religious experience.” What is required is a revival not of political Islam but of experiential religiosity. But how can we make sense of this minimum? What constitutes the authenticity of religious experience that stems from and takes forward the path toward perfection set out in the prophetic mission? The list of accidentals posed by Soroush is rather exhaustive: what is left?°? Revelatory and prophetic experience? If the essence of religion lies in the goals of the Prophet, how can we understand them? Then the further question arises: how is it meaningful to believe in them if the only means of accessing them that we have is contingent and historically and linguistically constructed? On the face of it, distinguishing between the essential and accidental seems sensible, but the problem for the believer is whether, once one has peeled away all those layers of the accidental, there is anything left.

Religious experience for Soroush is fundamental because it constitutes (returning to the language of his epistemology) both a cause and reason for faith. As Soroush says: I believe that religious experience is both the cause and reason for faith. . . In any religious experience or disclosure, a being, or truth or a secret unveils itself to the person. This secret or truth is on occasion so beautiful, enchanting, glorious and majestic as to engulf the discoverer’s entire being and make them fall under its spell. An occurrence of this kind produces most of the characteristics we attribute to faith such as belief, trust, commitment, devotion, humility and submissiveness and transforms the person into a faithful believer. . . . Religious beliefs, for their part, formulate religious experiences and religious disclosures into theories. . . . Religious practice, in turn, abates and intensifies along with the abatement and intensification of faith. In other words, religious faith produces the will to action.”

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From these foundations, Soroush proceeds to an articulation of positive and negative pluralism. In a famous debate with another prominent reformist, Mohsen Kadivar, in the late 1990s, Soroush defended pluralism, even invoking John Hick in contrast to Kadivar’s promotion of inclusivism.*' Based on his Kantian rejection of a priori knowledge, Soroush argues that human cognition cannot justify religious belief beyond doubt but rather that intersubjective justification can test and falsify claims; one cannot merely account for one’s beliefs separated from one’s context, but rather claims need to be tested beyond the original context of the articulation of those beliefs.® Soroush sets aside perennialist arguments for pluralism based on the transcendent unity of religions on good Kantian grounds that mystical experiences are constructed and that pure consciousness experiences (PCEs) do not obtain: Those who witness unity behind diversity in universal terms consistent with their own views [on mystical pluralism] have not at all posed any questions or grasped the factual nature of the issue. The debate on pluralism is a discourse on empirical pluralism at the level of empirical corroboration and explanation of causes, not exo-

teric diversity through esoteric unity or reduction of imaginative pluralism to true unity.® Soroush,

following Kant, holds a constructivist view of knowledge,

de-

nying the possibilities of direct experience and setting aside a priori metaphysics. The Kantian equality of proofs within the context of the epistemic peer conflict that Muslims face defeats exclusivist arguments.” The diversity of readings of texts and of understanding of religious experiences, at the very base, constitute an argument for pluralism.® Religious truth claims are contextual and relational, and religious diversity is just one expression, for him, of his theory of the evolution of human knowledge, of the epistemic gap between truth and the understanding of truth. Truth claims, therefore, need to be considered as nonabsolute and meaningful within a schema in which validity and warrant are relational. Soroush writes:

We have to acknowledge that each religion is a scheme, a substantial collection of hypotheses, in the sense that every hypothesis is interrelated to a large number of other hypotheses. It is not possible to compare two different hypotheses but only to compare two

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separate schemes or systems. As each scheme includes a large range of hypotheses, it is extremely difficult to refute a religion as contradictory or false. Each of these systems has its own capacities and incapacities in the interpretation of facts, experiences... . From this perspective, the claim of one religion over another becomes more complicated than first appears to be the case. The exact identification of the nature of contradiction as well as the identification of criteria for discerning truth and falsehood is exceptionally difficult. This still does not constitute a justification for pluralism, but merely a critical challenge to exclusivism. Religions are cultural paradigms for salvation, and incommensurability does not occur between faiths but within faiths.” As a realist, however, Soroush still feels the need to grade traditions: he is not advocating universal salvation. Soroush’s own position on truth reflects a realism and compatibilist pluralism. In an interview over a decade ago, he said: I believe that truths everywhere are compatible; no truth clashes with any other truth. They are all inhabitants of the same mansion and stars of the same constellation. One truth in one corner of the world has to be harmonious and compatible with all truths everywhere, or else it is not a truth. That is why I have never tired of my search for truth in other arenas of intellect and opinion. This truthfulness of the world is a blessing indeed, because it instigates constant search and engenders a healthy pluralism.“

One therefore needs to distinguish between an Islam of identity and one of truth: it is the latter that engages in a pluralistic dialogue with Others.” As religious communities develop along the path of self-realization, they become more open to pluralism. Soroush writes: The religious community is plural and pluralistic by nature. The plurality of religious sects and factions is but a coarse, crude, and shallow indicator of the subtle, elusive, and invisible pluralities of souls. Only after one enters that realm will one experience the wisdom of these sagacious words: “There are as many paths towards God as there are people”... . A religious society becomes more religious as it grows more free and freedom loving, as it trades die-hard dogma with examined faith, as it favors inner plurality over outer

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mechanical and nominal unity, and as it favors voluntary submission to involuntary subservience.” Pluralism involves forsaking monopolizing readings, or what Soroush has called the fascist interpretation of religion.”! This interpretation stems from the inflexible ideological understanding of the faith that shuts the gates of reason and replaces inquiry with ideological dogma.” Soroush writes: A pluralist society is a non-ideological one in which there is no one official interpretation and class of interpreters. It is based on plurality-loving reason rather than uniformity-seeking prejudice. It features forbearance and tolerance, and benefits from the free flow of information, from competition and from the various colours and

seasons, as in nature. Its genesis is based on the realization by its rulers that the essence of science and society rest on diverse and plural pillars rather than uniformity and conformism, and that attempts to enforce a single model of life and religion and ethics and culture are doomed to failure.” Soroush then develops his argument, shifting the focus from religion to religions, and addresses the question of pluralism from a negative and a positive perspective. The former denotes a way of understanding religious approaches to other traditions through the prism of inclusivism—the denial of the truth of other traditions implies a denial of the success of prophetic missions. The latter accounts for a nominalist approach of the different approaches of religious leaders and traditions whose truth and

salvation is relevant to them and them alone. Diversity of understanding of texts and diversity of understanding of experiences underlie pluralism. He positively approves of Hickian pluralism based on the Kantian distinction between noumena and phenomena. Besides, different interpretations of faith are multiple and contingent, just as is the understanding of a particular faith (following his earlier insight from the 1980s). The odd assertions are that no Muslim group can claim to have pure Islam and that no religion can possess purity. One wonders how this position can fail to lapse into relativism—and it does. However, for Soroush, relativism and pluralism do not lead to the collapse of faith in society, since belief is not reasoned but flourishes in a pluralistic and ideological context. Does this amount to a nonreductive pluralism? Soroush attempts to distinguish his critical rationalism from relativism, based on his cause/reason dichotomy in epistemology. For him, relativism does not pertain in science; in religion, he

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advocates a hermeneutical pluralism. Plurality of truth concerns taking intrinsic notions of truth and falsehood seriously. So why should one promote a particular religion? Soroush’s answer is somewhat surprising—he does not invoke religious experience or prophetic experience but rather the idea of artistic expression and the desire to manifest and disseminate beauty: Anyone who, by reason and by love, is committed to something, sees beauties in it that they do not see in other people’s beliefs and ideas. They are, therefore, eager to present these beauties to others; in other words, the call to religion becomes a kind of presentation, that’s all... . Let the world of loving and being loved prosper and thrive. There is much to be gained by many here. The world of religion, too, is a world of adoration and charms. And, in order to charm,

a host of beauties, purities and pieties must be presented. . . . Pluralism does not imply that everything said is true. Hence the call to religion can help expose falsehoods.” One notices various points of convergence among the thinkers in terms of both their hermeneutical method and their insistence upon human liberty. Soroush is the only one to engage actively with the three spheres of epistemology, ethics, and soteriology and reconciles Kantian, Popperian, and Sufi influences. Of course, in the pursuit of pluralism, why should one remain a Muslim? One answer is given by another contemporary Iranian liberal, Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari:

As a Muslim, I know that my religion is more just and more complete. But I do not have a monopoly over the truth and I do not seek to monopolize others. In this sense, | am a pluralist and also believe in dialogue, conversation, and mutual understanding between religions. I reject religious violence, force, and compulsion and in this sense I am also a pluralist. But I also defend the righteousness of my faith.”

The Ethical Turn: Deploying Ricoeur The hermeneutical and ethical work of Paul Ricoeur needs little introduction. In the context of this chapter, it is relevant to draw upon him, because, as you will have seen, the thought of the two men I have discussed is

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heavily influenced by tendencies in modern European thought: de Chardin, Gadamer,

Habermas,

Popper,

Hick, and others come

to mind.

These

thinkers are also keenly aware of Ricoeur’s intersubjective ethics that attempts to overcome the pessimism of knowing the Other, on the one hand, found in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, and the mystical transcendence of

intersubjectivity in the work of Martin Buber, on the other. According to Levinas, the Self’s subjectivity is expressed through witnessing alone. The spatial distance and temporal lapse between the “I” and its object are insurmountable. Pluralism and the pursuit of justice are therefore located in a space emptied of epistemic value and constitute elements of the intersubjective accord on the notion of the good that is the teleological end of ethics.” Levinas’ outlook is therefore rather bleak; Ricoeur’s response is

framed in an attempt to search that is more positive. In order to I begin with Ricoeur’s position heart of justification claims and

for a justified diversity and intersubjectivity understand his position on ethical pluralism, on truth to engage with the question at the move onto the problem of interpretation.

Truth Ricoeur’s approach to most fundamental concepts is to subject them to a thorough historical and genealogical critique. At the heart of the issue lies the basic tension between our desire to pluralize and multiply orders of truth so that the truth does not contradict itself, while at the same time seeking to totalize truth from one perspective.” The latter is clearly a rational imperative arising out of Enlightenment conceptions and hence also a mistake, and it often emerges into a totalitarianism of either the clergy or the state (or both). How have the various conceptions of truth emerged? Ricoeur argues that truth constitutes an “agreement of speech with reality” and an “agreement among ourselves.”” For banal issues, such as verifying simple statements such as “it is raining,” truth is little more than mere saying or speech. However, when it comes to the concept of scientific or empirically determined truth, there is a tendency toward singularity and absolutism and an attempt to work outside of the circle of people, circumventing the second type of agreement.” This endeavor in itself fails to act outside of human agency. As he says: Science proceeds to the reduction of the objects of culture at the same time as that of perceived objects. Moreover, it reduces man to the same measure of objectivity, man who is the bearer of this

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culture; biology, psychology, and sociology are departments of natural science in which man has, as an object of science, no special privilege whatsoever. And yet this science, which resorbs man as an object, presupposes scientific activity and man as a subject, the sustainer and author of these activities.

. . Science is never more

than one “praxis” among others.™

All orders of truth, including the theological and moral, are thus implicated in human praxis; all are mutually exclusive and co-implicated; all modes of truth bear the ability to dogmatize and problematize each other. This process is quite clear with respect to ethical truth. Coherence lies in our desire to conserve options as convictions and not to question them, allowing us to make actions. But a question remains over our choice: Is it enough to have once doubted an old prejudice, a custom, or a conviction in order for everything suddenly to become shaky and for the ethical world to manifest its precarious conditions? The result is an endless questioning which assails the main supports of out ethical actions; and the vertigo of our ethical condition lays hold of us. Is there a power which can compel us; is there a centre of authority which withstands our fancy, the temptation of the gratuitous act? This questioning is the other aspect of the idea of ethical truth: for in this doubt, in this questioning which upsets established order, we seek authentic obligation, we dispose ourselves in accordance with the more authentic and original exigency which is capable of both commanding us and of attracting us. We have the feeling that moral truth ought to be something like the tension between blind obedience to an already established order, which is always close at hand, and the questioning and doubting obedience directed to the essential value which is always more elusive than any already consolidated custom. ...

We can find this movement of dogmatization and of problematization in ethical truth at the source of all the paradoxes of the moral life: a value is recognized only by serving it; a value is authentic— justice, truthfulness etc.—only in its dialectic with another.®!

Truth thus multiplies. Like Soroush, Ricoeur resorts to the example of art as truth—truth of respect and of doubt and ultimately of submission.* For reason and for revelation, absolute pluralism is unthinkable, but historical

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experience suggests otherwise.*’ The violent realized unity of truth is “the initial lie” along the path to asserting authority.* Truth is not, however, theology, but rather theology acts as an attempt to understand and to bear witness, to evince testimonies to truth—hence the need for interpretation. But ultimately theological truth is ontologically predisposed to preparing one for the eschaton; its opposite, which constitutes an integral humanism, is as illusory as the unity of meanings.*

Interpretation Given these tensions within truth, how do we interpret text and reality? The

hermeneutic act is not unavoidably ontological in which the Self transcends time. Rather, the Self is not transparent, and the hermeneutical circle requires the Self to be located within and to reflect critically upon its own agency. Neither the text nor what is beyond (de hors-texte) are fixed, and this flux allows for existential and interpretative possibilities to arise from the text. A hermeneutical critique of the world and suspicion of claims for subjectivity and the ability to determine meaning in the text displaces the traditional category of faith in one’s work. Onto-theological approaches to text and reality are replaced with possibilities, hope, and liberty at the heart of the endeavor. This critical theological approach is not necessarily negative. Reza Shah-Kazemi, in his recent work (including his chapter in the present volume), argues for a hermeneutics grounded in tradition and in Sufism and is highly critical of postmodern hermeneutics deployed by the likes of Derrida as well as Muslim thinkers such as Esack and Arkoun.*® Within this critique, he queries the possibilities of the hermeneutics of suspicion advocated by Ricoeur, setting up an unfair choice between a sense of the sacred and naive receptivity to the text embedded in (mystical) tradition against a postcritical stance influenced by philosophies skeptical at the very least of the claims of religion. Shah-Kazemi is being rather hasty: the basic point about the hermeneutics of suspicion is that discourse reveals and conceals, and claims to subjectivity obscure and prejudice claims to objectivity. Ricoeur’s approach to interpretation is teleologically deployed like his ethics to an intersubjective understanding of the good life. The project of grafting hermeneutics onto phenomenology is designed to assist the emergence of a selfhood and to discover “the multiple modalities of the dependence of the self—its dependence on desire glimpsed in an archaeology of the subject, its dependence on the spirit glimpsed in its teleology, its dependence on the

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sacred glimpsed in eschatology.”” Interpretation of scripture, therefore, is not just a simple act of discovering meanings in the text and message but also, through that dialectical process, of discovering the Self. Hermeneutics is thus, for Ricoeur, a process of questioning and responding to two fundamental philosophical interrogations: Who am I?. How should I live?

Concluding Remarks The obvious lacuna in the contemporary Muslim discourse on religious diversity lies in a clear epistemological account, and for this reason I have focused broadly on ethics and soteriology. Ethical interaction and intersubjectivity strikes me as being the most fruitful area in which to discuss pluralism, but with a view to considering why and to what end do we wish to advocate a pluralistic encounter between faiths. A scriptural argument also needs to be grafted onto this purely theoretical one—but this is work that I can see progressing. The use of Ricoeur in this context was designed to orient our understanding of ethics toward a hermeneutical reading of the text and reality that we inhabit. Some basic questions remain: Can we successfully bracket questions of truth and salvation in search of moral imperatives of intersubjective engagement? Can one hold to a realist and exclusivist conception of truth while advocating multiple salvific paths? Is meaningful intersubjective pluralism possible? How do we prevent pluralism from lapsing into relativism that does not take seriously the truth claims made in different traditions? Why should one be a Shi‘i Muslim instead of someone of another affiliation? Why should one adhere to a religious tradition at all? The two authors I have analyzed suggest ways of dealing with these questions, although they do not give the definitive answers and consider the wider philosophical literature sufficiently to be entirely satisfactory to a reflecting believer. In the search for some clarifications, I have, perhaps, muddied the waters, while also offering points of departure for further contemplations.

No les

1, For a useful introduction to the problem of epistemic peer conflict in the context of religious pluralism, see David Basinger, “Religious Diversity,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religious-diversity (last accessed on

February 7, 2010).

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. See John Gray, Tivo Faces of Liberalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000). . In addition to his chapter in the present volume, see Reza Shah-Kazemi’s The Other in the Light of the One: The Universality of the Qur'an and Interfaith Dialogue (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2006).

. Ian K. Howard, “Shi‘i Theological Literature,” in Religion, Learning and Science in the ‘Abbasid Period, ed. M. J. L. Young et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1990), 30-32. . Farzin Vahdat, “Post-revolutionary Islamic Modernity in Iran: The Intersubjective Hermeneutics of Mohamad Mojtahed Shabestari,” in Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur'an, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 193-194. . Farzin Vahdat, God’s Juggernaut: Iran’s Intellectual Encounter with Modernity (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002).

Farzin Vahdat, “Post-revolutionary Islamic Modernity in Iran: The Intersubjective Hermeneutics of Mohamad Mojtahed Shabestari,” in Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur'an, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 195. 8. Charles Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

. Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, Iman va azadi (Tehran: Tarh-i Naw, 1997), 114. . Ibid., 120, trans. Farzin Vahdat, “Post-revolutionary Islamic Modernity in Iran: The Intersubjective Hermeneutics of Mohamad Mojtahed Shabestari,” in Modern Muslim Intellec-

tuals and the Quran, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 200.

. Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari, Nawgara’t-yi dint (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 1998), 163-164. . Ibid., 165166. . Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, Hirminitik, kitab, va sunnat (Tehran: Tarh-i Naw, 2000), 15.

. Farzin Vahdat, “Post-revolutionary Islamic Modernity in Iran: The Intersubjective Hermeneutics of Mohamad Mojtahed Shabestari,” in Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur’an, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 203.

i Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, Hirminitik, kitab, va sunnat (Tehran: Tarh-i Naw, 2000), 56-57, trans. Farzin Vahdat, “Post-revolutionary Islamic Modernity in Iran: The Intersubjective Hermeneutics of Mohamad Mojtahed Shabestari,” in Modern

Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur'an, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 203. ee

. Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari, Nawgara’-yi dini (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 1998), 181. The obvious parallel that comes to mind is the CMP (Christian mystical practice) or experiential approach to perceiving God articulated in William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). . Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, Hirminattk, kitab, va sunnat (Tehran: Tarh-i Naw, 2000), 42-66; Jean Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1994), 106-110; Ashk Dahlén, Deciphering the Meaning of the Revealed Law: The Surushian Paradigm in Shi‘i Epistemology (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2001), 166.

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. Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, Hirminattk, kitab, va sunnat (Tehran: Tarh-i Naw,

2000), 63-66. . Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, Iman va azadi (Tehran: Tarh-i Naw, 1997), 29, trans. Farzin Vahdat, “Post-revolutionary Islamic Modernity in Iran: The Intersubjective Hermeneutics of Mohamad Mojtahed Shabestari,” in Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur'an, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 215.

Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, Hirminatik, kitab, va sunnat (Tehran: Tarh-i Naw,

20.

2000), 207-219. 2

_

. Ibid., 184-185, trans. Farzin Vahdat, “Post-revolutionary Islamic Modernity in Iran:

The Intersubjective Hermeneutics of Mohamad Mojtahed Shabestari,” in Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur’an, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 209. 22.

Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, Iman va azadt (Tehran: Tarh-i Naw, 1997), 12-19.

23 Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, Hirminatik, kitab, va sunnat (Tehran: Tarh-i Naw, 2000), 220-226. 24. Shabestari, Naqdi bar gara’at-i rasmi az din (Tehran: Tarh-i Naw, 2000), u. AR. Ibid., 37. 26. Ibid., 50-53.

Dy Ibid., 71. 28. Ibid., 73.

20 Ibid., 84-93. 30. Ibid., 76-77. Ba Ibid., 78. 32. Ibid., 381-445. 33. Ibid., 382-384. 34.

Ibid., 395-397.

35: Ibid., 403-405. 36. Ibid., 417. 37. Ibid., 418-420. 38. Shabestari, Ta’ammulati dar qird’at-i insani-yi din (Tehran: Tarh-i Naw, 2004). 39. Farzin Vahdat, God’s Juggernaut: Iran’s Intellectual Encounter with Modernity (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 199.

40. Abdolkarim Soroush, The Expansion of Prophetic Experience: Essays on Historicity, Contingency and Plurality in Religion, trans. N. Mobasser (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 22, 42. 4l. Ibid., 65. 42. Ashk Dahlén, Deciphering the Meaning of the Revealed Law: The Surushian Paradigm in Shit Epistemology (Uppsala: Uppsala “Islamic Humanism

University, 2001), 251-340;

Hamid

Vahid,

from Silence to Extinction: A Brief Analysis of Abdolkarim

Soroush’s Theory of the Evolution and Devolution of Religious Knowledge,” Islam and Science 3 (2005): 43-57; Farzin Vahdat, God’s Juggernaut: Iran’s Intellectual Encoun-

ter with Modernity (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 200-205.

43.

Abdolkarim Soroush, ‘Ilm chist, falsafa chist? (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 1996).

Oneself as the Saved Other?

201

44.

Ashk Dahlén, Deciphering the Meaning of the Revealed Law: The Surushian Paradigm in

45.

Abdolkarim Soroush, Qabz va bast-i t’iirtk-i sharv‘at: Nazariyya-yi takamul-i ma‘rifat-i

Shit Epistemology (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2001), 198.

dint (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 1995), 245, trans. Mehran Kamrava, Iran's Intellectual Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 157-158. 40. Abdolkarim Soroush, Qabz va bast-i ti’irik-i shari‘at: Nazariyya-yi takamul-i ma‘rifat-i

dint (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 1995), 194; Ashk Dahlén, Deciphering the Meaning of the Revealed Law: The Surushian Paradigm in Shi‘i Epistemology (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2001), 307.

47.

48.

49. 50. 51. 52.

53:

54: 55:

Abdolkarim Soroush, Qabz va bast-i ti’artk-i shart‘at: Nazariyya-yi takamul-i ma ‘rifat-i

dint (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 1995), 331; Ashk Dahlén, Deciphering the Meaning ofthe Revealed Law: The Surushian Paradigm in Shi‘i Epistemology (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2001), 308. Abdolkarim Soroush, Qabz va bast-i ti’artk-i shari‘at: Nazariyya-yi takamul-i ma ‘rifat-i dini (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 1995), 53. Ibid., 16-17. Abdolkarim Soroush, Sirat-ha-yi mustaqim (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 1999), 47-50. Abdolkarim Soroush, The Expansion of Prophetic Experience: Essays on Historicity, Contingency and Plurality in Religion, trans. N. Mobasser (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 149-152. Abdolkarim Soroush, Bast-i tajriba-yi nabavi (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirdt, 2000), 1-28; Ashk Dahlén, Deciphering the Meaning of the Revealed Law: The Surushian Paradigm in Shit Epistemology (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2001), 209-222. Abdolkarim Soroush, The Expansion of Prophetic Experience: Essays on Historicity, Contingency and Plurality in Religion, trans. N. Mobasser (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 16, 20. Ibid., 19. Ibid., 65, 104.

56. Ibid., 11-112, 202-205.

57: Ibid., 205. 58. Abdolkarim Soroush, Bast-i tajriba-yi nabavi (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 2000), 179.

59: Ibid., 31-32; Soroush, The Expansion of Prophetic Experience: Essays on Historicity, Contingency and Plurality in Religion, trans. N. Mobasser (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 63. Go. Abdolkarim Soroush, The Expansion of Prophetic Experience: Essays on Historicity, Contingency and Plurality in Religion, trans. N. Mobasser (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 228-229. 6 rat. Abdolkarim Soroush and Mohsen Kadivar, Puliralizm-i dint: Mundzara (Tehran: Riznama-yi Salam, 1999); cf. Ashk Dahlén, “Sirat al-mustagim—One or Many? Religious Pluralism among Muslim Intellectuals in Iran,” in The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought, ed. 1. Abu-Rabi‘ (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 426-427. 62. A good explanation of this form of justification in the public sphere is Jurgen Habermas, Truth andJustification (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). 63. Abdolkarim Soroush, Sirat-ha-yi mustaqim (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 1999), 63, trans. Ashk Dahlén, “Sirat al-mustagim—One or Many? Religious Pluralism among Muslim Intellectuals in Iran,” in The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought, ed. 1. Abu-Rabi‘ (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 428.

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64. Abdolkarim Soroush, Sirat-ha-yi mustagim (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 1999), 87-88; Ashk Dahlén, “Sirat al-mustagim—One or Many? Religious Pluralism among Mus-

lim Intellectuals in Iran,” in The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought, ed. 1. Abu-Rabi‘ (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 429. 65. Abdolkarim Soroush, The Expansion of Prophetic Experience: Essays on Historicity, Contingency and Plurality in Religion, trans. N. Mobasser (Leiden: Brill, 2009),

119-120. 66. Abdolkarim Soroush, Sirat-ha-yi mustagim (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 1999), 157-158, trans. Ashk Dahlén, “Sirat al-mustagim—One or Many? Religious Pluralism among Muslim Intellectuals in Iran,” in The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought, ed. I. Abu-Rabi‘ (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 431. 67. Abdolkarim Soroush, Sirat-ha-yi mustagim (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 1999), 20. 68. Abdolkarim Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush, ed. and trans. M. Sadri and A. Sadri (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 21.

69. Ibid., 23-25.

70. Ibid., 145. Fis Abdolkarim Soroush, Razdant va rawshanfikri va dindari (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 2000), 79-116.

a. Abdolkarim Soroush, Farba-tar az idiyiilaji (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirat, 1993), 125-143: cf. Mehran Kamrava, Iran’s Intellectual Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 159. 73: Abdolkarim Soroush, Sirat-hd-yi mustaqim (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sirdt, 1999), 49; Abdolkarim Soroush, The Expansion of Prophetic Experience: Essays on Historicity, Contingency and Plurality in Religion, trans. N. Mobasser (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 152; Mehran Kamrava, Iran’s Intellectual Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 161.

74.

Abdolkarim Soroush, The Expansion of Prophetic Experience: Essays on Historicity, Contingency and Plurality in Religion, trans. N. Mobasser (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 173-174.

75: Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari, Ta’ammulati-yi tanha’t: Dibacha’t bar hirminatik-i Trani (Tehran: Sara’, 2003); cf. Mehran Kamrava, Iran's Intellectual Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 136. iho: Paul Ricoeur, OneselfasAnother, trans. K. Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 172.

77) Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth, trans. C.A. Kelbley (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 165. 78. Ibid., 166. 79: Ibid., 167-168, 80. Ibid., 168. The fundamental point that Ricoeur is trying to make is that there is no

justification for privileging the natural sciences as “purer” inquiry about the human;

both natural and human sciences are plagued with subjectivities and arise out of the narrative and dialogical constructions of the Self that we articulate.

Oneself as the Saved Other?

203

81. Ibid., 173. 82. Ibid., 174. 83. Ibid., 175. 84. Ibid., 176. 85. Ibid., 181-182. 86. Reza Shah-Kazemi, The Other in the Light ofthe One: The Universality ofthe Qur'an and Interfaith Dialogue (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2006), 23-58.

87. Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, ed. D. Ihde (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 24.

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Glossary of Select Terms

Ahmadi A member of the Ahmadiyya. Ahmadiyya A movement established in British India by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (d. 1908), who claimed to be the “Promised Messiah” who would restore the purity of Islam. Allah The Arabic word for God. Ash‘ari (Ash‘arite) A member of a rationalist school of theology whose eponym is Abi al-Hasan al-Ash‘ari (d. 935). Today, Ash‘arism and Maturidism constitute the two popular schools of Sunni rationalism that have thrived since the Abbasid era (750-1258). Gya (pl. Gyat) A verse of the Qur’an. barzakh The period/state between death and the Resurrection. Copt (adj. Coptic) A member of the Coptic Orthodox Church, an indigenous Egyptian Christian church representing Egypt’s largest minority. da‘wa Calling people to the truth/faith. dhimma The classical Islamic legal protection of non-Muslims who have submitted to the jurisdiction of the Islamic state. dhimmi A classical Islamic legal category designating a non-Muslim living under Muslim rule and hence subject to certain restrictions and entitled to certain rights. dhimmiyya (charter/contract/covenant). The classical Islamic legal protection of non-Muslims who have submitted to the jurisdiction of the Islamic state. fatwa A formal scholarly opinion or ruling. figh Literally, “understanding”; jurisprudence. hadd (pl. hudiid) “Limit” of God; statutory punishment (for a crime that transgresses the “limits” of God). hadith (pl. hadith/hadiths) A report of the Prophet’s actions and/or sayings. The most respected hadith collections among Sunnis are Sahih al-Bukhari, collected by al-Bukhari (d. 870), and Sahih Muslim, collected by Muslim (d. 875). Hanafi (Hanafite) A member of the oldest and largest of the four major Sunni schools of legal thought, whose eponym is Abii Hanifa (d. 767).

314

Glossary of Select Terms

Hanbali (Hanbalite) A member of the youngest and smallest of the four major Sunni schools of legal thought, whose eponym is Anmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855). Hanbalism also refers to traditionalist theology, whose advocates often claim to follow a

methodology that is more scripture-based than that of the rationalists (such as the Ash‘aris and Maturidis). ; hagq Reality, appropriateness, rightness, right (as in “human rights”), responsibility. Al-Haqq is a divine name meaning the Real, the Truth, the Right, the Appropriate.

;

hijra Migration, This term typically denotes the migration of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina (Yathrib) in the year 622. ijma‘ Consensus. In Sunni discourse, this term typically denotes the consensus of widely recognized Sunni scholars. Imam A leader of some sort. In Shi‘i discourse, this term often denotes an infallible leader from the “household” of Muhammad (ahl al-bayt) who preserves the integrity of the Muslim community in the absence of the Prophet. The largest Shi‘i branch, the Twelvers, recognizes twelve such Imams. im4@n Faith; belief; assent; sincerity; fidelity. islam (or al-islam) Submission or surrender to God. Whether this Qur’anic term specifically designates the religion called Islam is a subject of debate among theologians and historians. Islamist One who subscribes to the belief that Islam is a comprehensive way of life, inclusive of a political and economic dimension. Isma‘ilism A minority sect within Shi‘ism. jihad A noble “struggle.” In Islamic legal texts, this term typically denotes an armed struggle, or regulated warfare between Muslims and non-Muslims. kafir (pl. kuffar, kafirtin) One who is guilty of kufr. In scholarly discourse, the term kafir is often used to refer to anyone who is non-Muslim. kalam Speculative/dogmatic theology. Karrami (Karramite)

A member of a sect once prominent in Iran, whose eponym is

Ibn Karram (d. 869). Khariji (Kharijite) A member of an early and relatively small sect of Islam that was reportedly established by individuals who rejected and then assassinated the fourth caliph, ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661). kitabi A Person of the Book; an individual belonging’to the People of the Book (ahl al-kitab).

kufr Unbelief; disbelief; rejection; dissent; concealment of the truth; ingratitude. madhhab A school of legal thought. madrasa A school or university; an Islamic seminary. Maliki (Malikite) A member of the second oldest of the four major Sunni schools of legal thought, whose eponym is Malik ibn Anas (d. 795). Maturidi (Maturidite) A member of a rationalist school of theology whose eponym is Aba Manstr al-Maturidi (d. 944). Today, Maturidism and Ash‘arism constitute

Glossary of Select Terms

315

the two popular schools of Sunni rationalism that have thrived since the Abbasid era (750-1258). Meccan (verses/suras) Qur’anic verses/suras revealed before the hijra (migration) of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina (Yathrib). Medinan (verses/suras) Qur’anic verses/suras revealed after the hijra (migration) of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina (Yathrib). mufti One who is vested with authority to issue fatwas. mu'min A believer; a person of faith; one who has iman. mundfigq A hypocrite. Murji't (Murji’ite) A member of an early sect that developed in response to the Kharijis. It is remembered for its emphasis on faith (rather than deeds) and its claim that sin does not disqualify one from being considered a believer. mushrik One who associates partners with God; an associator/associationist.

muslim One who submits or surrenders (to God). An adherent of Islam is called a Muslim. If gender is specified, muslim/Muslim is the masculine form, muslima/Muslima is the feminine form. Mu'tazilt (Mu'tazilite) A member of a rationalist school of theology that came to prominence during the reign of the Abbasid caliphs (750-1258). Widely considered the first systematic school of Islamic theology, Mu‘tazilism gradually lost influence to the new rationalist schools of Ash‘arism and Maturidism. naskh Abrogation; the theory that specific divine commandments (or Qur’anic verses) were abrogated by commandments (or verses) revealed later. nubuwwa Prophecy. Pancasila The Indonesian state ideology/philosophy. People of the Book (ahl al-kitab) Scriptuaries; religious communities that possess scriptures that were, at least in their original form, divinely revealed. Jews and Christians are the standard examples of People of the Book. Qur’an (Koran) Literally, “the recitation”; the Islamic holy book, believed to be the “Word of God” transmitted to the Prophet Muhammad. rahma Mercy; compassion. Salafi (Salafite) A member of a modern movement that calls for a return to the way of the pious ancestors (al-salaf al-salih), who interpreted the Qur’an and Sunna directly, rather than rely on the authority of other scholars and their precedents. salah Ritual prayer. Shafi'l (Shafi‘ite) A member of the third oldest of the four major Sunni schools of legal thought, whose eponym is Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi‘i (d. 820). shahdda Declaration/testimony of faith: “There is no god but God (Allah), and Muhammad is God’s Messenger.” The first part of this declaration—“There is no god but God” (la ilaha illa Allah) is often called the first shahdda; the second part—“Muhammad is God’s Messenger” (Muhammadan rasiil Allah)—is called the second shahada. shara’i‘ Particular religious/Islamic obligations and practices.

316

Glossary of Select Terms

shar‘ Revelation; revealed law and the moral imperative; deontology. Sharia (shari‘a) Islamic law; divine law; Islamic morality.

shar‘iyyat Acts imposed by God. Shi‘i (Shi‘ite) A member of the second largest branch of Islam (Shi‘ism), accounting for 10 to 20 percent of the worldwide Muslim population. shirk Associating partners with God; associating others with God’s powers (associationism). stra Prophetic biography. Sufi A person affiliated with Sufism. Sufism (tasawwuf) An orientation of self-purification, transformation, and realization. It is often called “Islamic mysticism” and the “mystical dimension of Islam.” Sunna The Prophet’s normative example; his “way.” Sunni (Sunnite) A member of the largest branch of Islam (Sunnism), accounting for 80 to 90 percent of the worldwide Muslim population. sura A chapter (or book) of the Qur'an. The Qur’an consists of 114 suras. tafsir Interpretation; exegesis; Qur’anic commentary. ta‘til The negation of the reality of the divine predicates. tawhid The assertion of God’s unity/oneness. Twelver Shi‘ism The largest sect within Shi‘ism. ulama Traditional scholars. usil al-figh The principles of jurisprudence; Islamic legal theory. usilis Experts in usil al-figh. wudw’ Ritual ablution.

zakah Obligatory alms.

Index

‘abd, ‘Abd ‘Abd ‘Abd

80 Allah ibn Ubayy, 2, 279 al-Jabbar, al-Qadi, 34n49, 130, 131 al-Muttalib (Prophet's grandfather), 274, 286n5 ‘Abduh, Muhammad, 37, 45, 54, 222 Abraham, 79, 88, 96, 114, 115, 116, 137, 139, 142, 149n87, 277-278, 280, 281, 288, 293, 306 Absolute Reality, 67, 68,77 Abt Hanifa, 17-18, 313 Abt al-Hudhayl, 85n4 Abt Hurayra, 283

Aba Abii Abt Abi

Jahl, 274 Talib, 46-47, 139, 274, 280 Ya‘la, al-Qadi, 32m8 Zahra, Muhammad, 43, 44, 45, 40, 58n32

The Accord of Medina, 21, 213

Adam, 68, 126, 131, 140, 164, 177n17, 281 Children of, 21, 52, 140 descendants of, 137, 138, 149n8&7 agnostic, 176n5 Ahmad ibn Hanbal, 3218 Ahmadis, 298, 299, 302, 304, 308m18 Ahmadiyya, 297, 308m16, 313 Al-Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies, 302 alcoholic beverages, 172-173

‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, 75, 85n9 Allah, 70, 85n3, 109, 295. See also God Al-Midan, 303

Al-Musawwar, 303 Alston, William P., 158-159 Ambrose, 124-125 Americans, 261 American University in Cairo (AUC), 303 Amidism, 134 al-‘Amiri, 127 al-‘Anbari, ‘Ubayd Allah ibn al-Hasan, 40, 42, 51 antirealism, religious, 161 apes and pigs, Jews as, 218-222, 230, 233n16 Aphrodite, 125, 129 apostate(s), 227, 233n22, 264 Appadurai, Arjun, 306 Arab pagans, 49, 5725, 14 Arabs, 128, 230 Arab Spring, 300, 309n30 Arians, 128. See also Christian(s) Arifianto, Alexander R., 299 Arkoun, Muhammad, 133, 197 Asad, Muhammad, 220, 222, 233m16 Ascension, 140

Ash‘ari(s), x, 17, 66, 110, 11, 129, 130, 131,

133, 134, 136, 143, 278 Shafi‘l-Ash‘aris, 25

318

Index

Askari, Hasan, 92, 93, 96 associationist. See mushrik atheist(s), 3, 15'7, 161, 170 Athena, 125 Augustine, 164, 165 Avicenna, 80, 10

aya, 3340, 244 Aydin, Mahmut, 236, 237

Baal Addir, 123 Babel legend, 142 al-Baghdadi, ‘Abd al-Wahhab, 264 Baha’is, 304 Banti Qaynuqa’‘, 211 Banu Qurayza, 213

Banti Nadir, 211, 212 al-Banna, Muhammad, 46-47, 58n32 baptism, 162, 164-165, 178m8 Barlas, Asma, 239-241, 246 barzakh, 275, 276, 277 al-Basri, Abit al-Husayn, 23-24, 26, 30 Basyuini, ‘Abd al-Halim, 44, 58n32,

5843 Battle of Badr (624 C.E.), 21 Battle of the Trench (627 C.E.), 212, 213 Beck, Ulrich, 241 believers, 4, 36, 88, 90, 98, 110, 113, 16,

127, 143, 155, 159, 305 Abrahamic, 288 argument for astigmatic pluralism,

169 of foundationalism, 182 guided, 68, u2, 16, 228 mu'mMin, 20, 243, 244 non-, 36, 45, 47, 50-52, 102, 10, 136, 259, 275, 282, 285, 294 non-Muslim, 139, 166, 273, 293, 298,

301 pluralist model, 92 ofthe Qur’an, 119, 182, 210, 220, 229, 240, 260, 2°75 Sharia granting protection to, 95

sinning, 138, 219, 228 thinking about religious diversity, 181, 182

true, 117, 290, 297 Bible, 89, 129, 215, 228, 264 al-Birtini, 85n1o Bishop of Najran, 126 blessed (those who are), 137, 148n74, 261 Buber, Martin, 195 Buddhism, 163, 164 Buddhist(s), xii, 134, 164 Bukharan Hanafis, 17, 19, 25-29 al-Bukhari, 126 al- Bukhari, ‘Ala’ al-Din, 27-29 Byzantines, 49, 111, 143, 266, 271n26 Caesar, conquest of Gaul, 123 Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, 302

caliph(s), 314, 315 Calvinists, 163 Catholic(s), 88, 161-162, 164, 165-167, 295-297; 299, 395 Roman Catholic Church, 177n9,

177017 Central Asian Hanafis, 17, 19, 25-29 children, 19, 68, 72, 78, 84, 251n57, 251n58 Children of Adam, 21, 52, 140. See also Adam Children ofIsrael, 7, 13, 207, 214, 216, 207 2260,027 China, 294 Chinese traditions, 163 Chittick, William C., 5, 115, 135, 284, 285 Chosroes, Persian, 126, 128 Christ. See Jesus

Christian(s), xii, 13, 14, 15, 18, 21, 24, 30n2, 42, 51, 53, 87, 90, 16, 218 Arians, 128 Byzantine, 11, 143

Index

Catholics, 88, 161-162, 164, 165-167,

295-297; 299; 395 food of Jews and, 259-261 of Indonesia, 295-299, 305 invocations of Christian butchers, 261-263 missionaries, 44

Muslims’ views of, 14, 12, 14 status of one not to be prayed for, 279-282 treatment of Jews, 209 unreached, 3 Christianity, 99, 11, 123, 126, 127, 128, 133-134, 142, 234, 262 Indonesia, 296-299, 305 Jarrah, 100 Lutheran, 154 religious truth in, 172-175 salvation as Christian concept, 4, 7, 20, 161-171 Citizen Ahmad, 288-305 Cold War, 297 command, 27-29, 77-81 divine command, 69-74 path to salvation, 81-83 Commodus, emperor, 123 community(ies), 25, 55, 65, 73, 120n5, 131, 138, 23213. See also sects of believers/Muslims, 14, 15,16, 46, 54, 77, 88, 91, 102, 10, 118, 173, 189, 192, 208, 210, 222, 224, 226, 230, 244, 247, 268, 278, 297, 298 monotheistic, 142 of non-Muslims, 23, 29, 117, 127,166,

173, 219, 266, 289, 290, 302, 304 Companions (of the Prophet), 44, 139, 261, 274 Confucians, 295 Confucius, 72 consensus, 65-66, 114, 127-128, 131,

133-134 Constantine, Wafa, 309n30

319

Constantinople, Great Church in, 126 Constitutions, 291-292 Egyptian, 300, 307nG

freedom ofreligion in, 297 national identity in, 292-294 Copernican revolution, 136-140 Coptic Center for Social Studies (CSSO), 302, 303 Coptic Church, 300, 309n30 Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services (CEOSS), 302, 303 Coptic Orthodox Church, 300-301, 313 Coptic separatism, 299 Copts, Egypt, 299-305

Council of Trent (1547), 162 Cyprian of Carthage, 165 damnation, 7, 20, 110, 120, 168-170, 171,

230 damned, 4, 9n2, 35, 43, 109, 118, 120, 137, 165, 167-169, 170, 230, 280 food of, 255-269 da‘wa (calling people to truth), 46, 48,

5842, 97, 98, 278 Day of Judgment, 22, 52, 16, 119, 138, 225, 282, 288, 293

Last Day, 49, 50, 93, 06, 121n8, 218, 284, 288

Day of Reckoning, 301 Day of Resurrection, 72, 85n13, 120n3 death, praying for another individual after, 276-278 de Chardin, 195 Deism, 84 democracy effects of, on theological exclusivism,

36 liberal, 5, 36, 46, 55 Democrats, 261 Derrida, 197 dhimma, 41, 42, 52, 53, 54, 6on73 dhimmi, 18, 19, 21, 37, 56n9, 293

320

Index

dhimmiyya, 19, 21, 30, 313

disobedience, 69 divorce, 17-18 doctrine actual notice, 44, 45, 46 constructive notice, 44, 46 dhimma, 52 of excuse, 42-43 Incarnation and Redemption, 163 intercession, 136-140 logic of Islamic theology, 129-136, 182

Ebrahim, Saad Eddin, 303 Eden, Lia, 298

Egypt, 8, 17, 36, 47, 54, 55, 141, 288, 290, 292, 294, 296, 299-305, 307NG Egyptian Organization for Human

Rights, 302 Egyptian Revolution of 1952, 54 Engineer, Asghar Ali, 235, 236 Enlightenment, 84, 143, 162, 195 equality pluralism, 155, 164, 174 Esack, Farid, 7, 15, 16, 18, 197, 245, 267 Eshkevari, Hasan Yousefi, 194 esoterists, 10 eternal punishment, 113 ethics, Ricoeur, 194-195 Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN), 302 exclusivism, 9n2, 88, 96, 97, 101, 104m18 beyond polemics, 89-91 Catholic doctrine, 88 soteriological, 170-171 tolerant, 104n17 exclusivist(s), 5, 32N2'7, 92, 93,157,160,

176n5, 191, 198, 234, 238, 285 Christianity, 160, 162, 164, 170 defense ofinclusion of, 96 eternal torment in Hell, 162 fanatic, 98, 160 Jews and Muslims, 170

medieval theologians, 266-267 Qur’anic message, 93, 98, 101 relationship between form and essence, 97 salvation religion, 36, 54 Shi‘i authorities, 261 transformational parity, 104n18 excuse doctrine of, 42-43 modern concept of, 43-47 exegete, 49, 66, 77, 117, 212, 220-222, 2A K24OP 231 Exodus, 215 Ezra (‘Uzayr), 263 Fadel, Mohammad, 5 faith, 184, 185 false religions, 134 fanaticism, 51, 89, 93, 101 al-Farisi, Salman, 11:7 Farhadpour, Morad, 186 fate, 14, 20, 67, 238, 245-247, 273, 289-290 fatra (gap between prophets), 120n3 fatwa, 52, Gon78, 284, 301, 313 felicity (sa‘Ada), 68, G9, 71, 74, 77, 80, 162, 165, 167 feminist. See gender figh (jurisprudence), 13, 14, 15, 25, 30, 182, 301 Fire, 6, 14, 15, 65, 79, 81, 13, 19, 120n3, 212, 274, 275, 283, 286n5. See also Hell fitra, 20, 33n29, 71, 82, 246 food, 255-257 animal slaughter by Zoroastrians, 257-258 invocations of Christian butchers, 261-263 of Jews and Christians, 259-261 meat forbidden to Jews, 263-265 freedom ofbelief, 36

321

Index

freedom of choice, 186 freedom of religion, 295, 297, 308n17 Freidenreich, David M., 7-8 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 183, 184, 195 Garden(s), 15, 18, 65, 88, 283. See also Heaven; Paradise gardens, 216, 217

gardens ofbliss, 225 people of the, 20 gender difference Muslim women interpreters of Qur’an, 239-241, 249n28 to religious difference, 241-242 General Intercession, 137, 138, 139 al-Ghazali, Abi Hamid Muhammad, K902739..405.42,151,70, 82,11, 120N5, 131, 134, 257, 258, 259, 266, 276 God All-Merciful, 71, 72,79, 80, 85n13 beautiful opinion of, 83-84 Christian definitions of internal life

of, 133 and concept of salvation in Islam, 283-284 Ever-Merciful, 71, 72, 80, 85n13 Islam as only religion acceptable to, u2 Islamic teachings about, 67 knowing best, 19-120 love for man and man’s love for God, 81-83 Most Merciful of the merciful, 72,

84, 285 religious authority about, 74-76 servants of, 27, 72, 78, 80-81, 83-84, 128 Golden Calf, 215, 216, 219, 222, 228 Gomaa, Ali, 301 Gospel, 114, 127, 217, 264 Great Church, Constantinople, 126 Griffiths, Paul, 161

Gross, Rita, 241

Guénon, René, 103n14, 175

Habermas, Jurgen, 195, 293 hadd (statutory punishment), 16, 23 hadith(s), 22, 26, 79, 83, 14, 126, 274,

277-279, 283, 285 collections, 16, 313 Day of Resurrection, 120n3

hadith qudsi, 8a intercession, 136-140 mercy, 65, 142 Quranand, 6270072) 75,707 ips, 127, 265, 292, 298, 303 Sunna and, 233n25 Hakim ibn Hazam, 16

Hamma, ‘Abd al-Wahhab, 58n32 Hanafi(s), 15, 17, 18 Bukharan/Central Asian, 17, 19,

25-29 Iraqi, 18 Hanbali(s), 17, 18, 32118, 1

Hanbali fideism, 129 Hanbali readings, 133

hanif, 244, 246 haqgq, 79, 73, 83, 129 al-Haqq, 67, 70, 73, 74, 130, 133 Hassan, Riffat, 239-241, 246 Heaven, 119, 125, 138, 155, 159, 162, 165, 170, 255, 266-269, 277, 284. See also Garden(s); Paradise Hegel, 154, 183 Hell, 21, 79, 80, 113, 119, 125, 162, 170, 213)227,273,.270 doctrine of intercession, 137-140 nature, permanence, and reality of, 275-276 non-Muslims, 265-268 Heraclius, 128 heretical margins, 128 heretic(s), 163, 168, 262 zindiq(s), 65, 84n1

322

Index

Hermansen, Marcia, 8 Herodutus, 123 Hick, John, 4, 89, 92, 97, 103nG, 158-160, 162, 163, 175, 191, 193, 195,

237, 238 hijra (migration), 210, 218 Hill Fletcher, Jeannine, 235, 241, 242 Hindu(s), xii, 81, 163, 291, 292, 295 Hinduism, 163, 291 pandits, 85n1o Hitler, 79, 278 Holy Spirit, 162 Hoover, Jon, 286n6 hostility, 52 Howeidy, Fahmy, 303 Hussein, Saddam, 119, 268 hypocrites. See munafiq

India, 291-292, 294, 298 Indonesia, 8, 288, 292, 294-299, 307nG6 inclusivism, 92, 98, 181 Kadivar's, 191 Rahner’s, 163, 166-167 religious, 170, 193, 237, 241 when it comies to food, 261 inclusivist(s), 8, 92, 224, 234, 266, 290, 306 Information Age, 298, 309n23 insane, 21, 120n3 intercession, doctrine of, 136-140 INTERFIDEI (Institute for Inter-Faith Dialogue in Indonesia), 296 intermediaries, 71 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 297

Ibn ‘Abbas, 16, 139

interpretation

Ibn ‘Arabi, Muhyi al-Din, 9n2, 89,

ambiguities of, 76-81 text and reality, 197-198 interpretatio Romana, 123 Iranian Islamic Center, 183 ‘Isawiyya (sect), 128 al-Isfara’ini, Abt Ishaq, 17 islam (al-islam), 15,79, 93, 112, 16, 245,

92-96, 98, 99, 135-136, 237 Ibn Barrajan, 136 Ibn Hazm, ‘Ali ibn Ahmad, 5, 14-15, 19-22, 23, 30, 31n8, 32n26, 264 Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, 212 Ibn Kathir, Isma‘il, 220 Ibn Khaldun Centre, 303, 31035 Ibn Sina. See Avicenna Ibn Shadhan, Abi Muhammad al-Fadl, 260 Ibn Taymiyya, Taqi al-Din Ahmad, gna, 85n4, 11, 115 Ibn ‘Umar al-Zamakhshari, 221 Ibn ‘Uyayna, 278 idol worship/idolaters, 10-1, 114, 115,

139 ima‘, 23, 65, 14, 127, 128, 131, 135, 221, 314 Ikhwan al-Safa’, 85n1a imam (leader), 66, 135, 186, 261, 314 iman (faith), 24, 26, 28, 66, 76, 16, 165,

2.43, 314

314 Islam, x, 3, 5,16, 44, 93-95, 104n17, 118, 163, 164, 165, 218, 221, 224, 287n31,

295 conservative, 165 definition, 208

Egypt, 299-305 idea of, 96 Indonesia, 294-299 interpretation, 76-81 literature, 65 only religion, 98, 10, 1m political cooperation with nonMuslims, 52 rejection, 45, 51

religion with God, 93

Index

teaching(s), 42, 43, 45-47, 50, 65, 67, 80, 110, 178n21 universality, 92, 97, 99 Islamic law, 37, 41-42, 48, 50-53, 95, 165, 167, 264, 2°73, 295 animal slaughter, 256-258 Islamic theology, 129-136, 165 concept of salvation, 81-83, 272n32, 283-284 divine command, 69-74 doctrine of intercession, 136-140 foundationalism, 182 Muslim women interpreting, 239-241 possibility of toleration in medieval,

38-43 prayer of individual after death, 276-278 reality of Hell and salvation from it, 275-276 of religions, 235-238 religious authority, 74-76 salvation of others, uo-115, 265-269 Shabestari, 183-187 Soroush, 187-194 status of one not to be prayed for, 279-282 Isma‘ilism, 135, 314 Israel. See Children of Israel; New Israel Izutsu, Toshihiko, 232n13, 235, 242-243

Jackson, Sherman, 291 al-Jahiz, ‘Amr ibn Bahr, 40, 42, 51 James, William, 160 al-Jassas, Abt Bakr, 15, 18, 278

al-Jawziyya, Ibn Qayyim, 85n4, 125, 262, 263, 264-265 Jesus, 6, 100, 103n6, 114, 117, 123, 126, 127, 135,170; 279, 203 apostles of, 79 Moses and, 96, 137, 138 Second Coming, 127

323

Jew(s), xii, 7, 13, 14, 15, 18, 21, 302, 51, Ga 07, OO) 12, 116) 127,210 as apes and pigs, 218-222, 230, 233m16 chosenness of, 213-215 food of, and Christians, 259-261 historical, of Medina, 210-213 meat forbidden by, 263-265 Qur’an criticizing, 207-208 Qur’anic grouping of the, 222-223

jihad, 37, 38, 41, 5725, 5951 modernist, 59n54 revisionism, 47-50

jihadism, militant, 10417 al-Jili, ‘Abd al-Karim, 136 Joseph (Prophet), 79 Jovian, emperor, 124 Judaism, 99, 1, 123, 127, 128, 216, 234 Judgment Day. See Day of Judgment al-Juwayni, Imam al-Haramayn, 131 Kadivar, Mohsen, 191 kafir (pl. kafiriin or kuffar), 13, 15-16, 17, 20-24, 25-29, 30, 30n2, 3218,

34049, 507 243,244, 2457275 kalam, 65, 66-67, 73, 80, 81 Kant, Immanuel, 130, 131-132, 141, 143,

175, 188, 189, 191, 193, 237 al-Karkhi, Abt al-Hasan, 15, 16, 18

Karramis, 130

Kaviraj, Sudipta, 291 kerygmatic universalism, 19-22,

32n26 al-Khafaji, Shihab al-Din Ahmad, 138 Khallaf, Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahhab,

43, 44, 46, 58n32 Kharijis, 120, 314, 315 Khaybar (629 C.E.), 212

khitab Allah, 13 al-Khudri, Abt Sa‘id, 286n5 khulug (character), 81-82 King, Ursula, 241

324

Index

kitabi(s) (scripturalists), 30n2, 257-258, 259, 261, 265. See also People of the Book Knitter, Paul, 235, 236 knowledge religious authority, 74-76 theoretical and practical, and toleration, 38-43 Koran. See Qur’an

kuffar. See kafir kufr (disbelief/unbelief), 15, 16, 22-25, 26, 27, 29, 30n2, 30n4, 114, 06, 120N5, 135, 243, 282 theological and legal, 50-53 Lamptey, Jerusha, 7, 267 Last Day, 49, 50, 93, 6, 121n8, 218, 284, 288. See also Day of Judgment law. See Islamic law Lawrence, Bruce B., 8 Legenhausen, Muhammad, 6-7, 238, 240 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 157, 176n5 Levinas, Emmanuel, 195 liberty, 184-185 Lings, Martin, 99 love, 81-83

Lumbard, Joseph, 245 Lutheran Christianity, 154

madhhab(s), 13, 314 Madi, Abu al-Ila, 303 MADIA (Masyarakat Dialog Antar Agama), 296 madrasa, 182, 314 Magians, 18, 21 Mahmoud, Abdel-Halim, 97, 10314 Majlis al-Milli, 300 Maliki(s), 17,18, 264 al-Maraghi, Ahmad, 48, 50 March, Andrew, 293, 307n8 Marxism, 157

Mary (mother of Jesus), 114, 127 Maturidi(s), x, 66, 129, 130, 134, 136, 146n38 Maybudi, Rashid al-Din, 85n13 McAuliffe, Jane, 121n7 meat. See also food animal slaughtered by Zoroastrians, 257-258 Christian butchers, 261-263

forbidden to Jews, 263-265 Mecca, 23, 46, 228 Meccan revelations, 114

Meccan verses/suras, 210, 294, 315

Medina (622-632 C.E.), 210-213, 228 Medinan verses/suras, 16, 210, 219, 228, 294, 315 Mehrez, Samia, 311n39 Mercurius Sylvanus, 123 mercy. See rahma Messenger (Muhammad), x, 20, 21, 24, 30, 49, 52, 72, 90. See also Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah

messenger(s), 24, 66, 70, 77, 90, 91, 95, 98, 11, 113, 119, 125, 140, 215, 224, 281 Messiah, 114. See also Jesus

modern movements, 315

non-Muslims, 47 scholars, 13, 78 modernist(s), 36, 37

Egyptian, 43, 47 interpretation of jihad, 59n54

Muslim theology, 54 scholars, 48 theologians, 56nu theory of culpability, 44 monks, 14, 99 monotheism, Islamic, 6, 115, 122, 128, 12.9, 133-135, 137, 141 monotheist(s), 14, 20, 138, 244 Abrahamic, u5

Index

325

non-Muslim, 29, 139, 149, 229, 259 pre-Islamic Arab (hanif), 248, 286m16 moral responsibility, 29, 34n49 Mormons, 290

60n77, 6on78, 65, 66, 69, 78, 79, 83, 87, 90 American, 3 apologists, 74

Moses, 96, 137, 138, 219, 223, 228 Mother Teresa, 119, 267, 268 260, 278, 286n12 Mu‘adh, 26

and Christians and Jews, 13, 14

al-Mufid, al-Shaykh, 131

mufti, 301, 315 Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah, Prophet, eps 05), 1G, B76) 1, O72) 22,

26, 30n2, 31n8, 39, 40, 44, 46, 49, 57n25, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 76, 80, 81, 82, 83, 90 companions of, 44 doctrine of intercession, 137-140, 275 frustration with Jewish tribes, 227 Messenger of God, 113, 228, 278, 283 mother of, 28617 parents of, 286m16 Prophet's intercession, 139

rejection of, and of God, 2-113 theology of, 126 Mujahid ibn Jabr, 221 Mujiburrahman, 299 mujtahid, 39 mu’'min, 20, 243, 244 munafig (hypocrite), 244, 275, 280, 282 Murjfis, 282 Murqus, Samir, 303 Murray, Michael, 156, 157, 158, 176n4, 176n5 al-Murtada, al-Sharif, 182 mushrik, 14, 20, 244, 275, 279, 282 Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin), 302, 304 muslim(s), 79, 81, 244, 245-281 Muslim(s), x, 3, 4, 6, 8, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, BO, win zanes, 2A, Qhy 2.0; 30,387 930s

41, 42, 43, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53» 54» 55» 57N25, 60n73, Gon76,

commentators/exegetes, 49, 66, 74, 77, 117, 212; 220-222, 22.4;-230,.231 inclusivists, 8, 92, 234, 266, 290, 306 Indonesia, 295-299, 305 jurists, 14, 18, 25, 39, 48, 66, 69, 73, 76, 80, 82. See also usiili(s) minorities, 46 philosophers, 73-74, 82 praying for individual after death, 276-278 scholars, 4, 5, 7-8, 13, 22, 30, 30n2, 54, 5954, 65, 6G, 78, 80, 92. See also ulama theologians, 3, 8, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42,

43, 44, 47, 48, 51, 54, 55, 66, 67, GO) 7027172 7doln 02,103. 6 also kalam experts treatment ofJews, 209, 225-226 women interpreting Qur’an, 239-241, 249n28 universalists, 5, 21, 26, 27, 92, 93,

95-101, 234 Muslima theology, 235, 241-243, 245, 247-248 Mustafa, Anmed, 306n1 Mutahhari, Shahid Ayatullah Murtada, 165, 166, 167 Mu‘tazilism, 16, 130 Mu*tazili(s), x, 17, 22, 23, 24, 25, 40, 66, 85N4, 110, 130, 131, 132, 136, 138, 143, 184, 2°76

an-Na’im, Abdullahi, 293 najah (“to save”), 283 “names of the essence” (asma’ al-dhat), 129-136 Nandy, Ashis, 296, 308m14

326

Index

naskh (abrogation), 30n3, 73, 94, 125-128, 223-226, 233n23, 294, 315 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, 89, 115, 236-237,

240 Nasser, Egypt, 300, 301

national identity, 292-294 al-Nawawi, Yahya ibn Sharaf, 16 Neuhaus, Richard, 101 New Israel, 141 New Order, 296, 297 new religious movements (NRM), 298 Noah (Prophet), 137, 149n87, 281 Noble Book, 293. See also Qur’an nonbelievers, 36, 47, 51, 52, 143, 181, 281 nonmonotheists, 167 non-Muslim(s), 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 29, 30, 30n2, 31n8,

36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45-40, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56n9, 59n51, 59n54, 60n73, 60n77, 79. See also Others categories of, 78, 12-115 debate of status, 22-25 forgiveness for, 282 al-Ghazilis categories of, 5'7n14 Hell and, 265-268 of premodern period, 48, 88 in post-Muhammadan world, 263 salvation of, 4, 20, 234, 267-269 sincere/earnest, 117, 185, 285 status of one not to be prayed for, 279-282 nonreductive religious pluralism, 6,

154-158, 173 nubuwwa (prophecy), 67, 68—-Go, 71, 128, 315 nullification, 94, 95

obedience, 69 divine command, 69~—74 original sin, 162, 164, 177m17 Orthodox Christianity, 126

Others, 4, 8, 77, 78, 275, 276, 285m, 306 fate/salvation of, 14, 20, 67, 238,

245-247, 273, 289-290 relations to Muslims, 47, 48, 54, 265,

293 Shabestari, 183-187, 190 Soroush, 187-194 theological approach to salvation of, nlo-12 Otto, Rudolf, 155 pagans, 13, 42, 49, 5725, 123, 129 paradigm, 122-125 Pakistan, 298, 299, 304, 308m18 Palestinians, 54, Gon78, 230 Pancasila, 295, 296 pan-Islamist, 55 Paradise, 3, 68, 83, 87, 88, 90, 16, 136, 138, 164-166, 266, 283. See also Garden(s); Heaven particularism, 98 Pax Britannica, 299 Pax Romana, 123

Pentecostals, 290 People of the Book (ahl al-kitab), 13, 49, 88, 12, 14, 145n22, 207, 216-219, 222-227, 229, 233N22, 244, 257, 259-262, 266, 275, 279-280 people of the Garden, 14-15, 20 perennialists, 89, 115, 191, 236 perennial philosophy, 89 perennial school of thought, 103114 Pew survey, 3, 8 Pharaoh, 212, 214 philosophers (falasifa), 4,7, 73, 82, 10, 115, 123, 134, 168, 276 physicists, modern, 69-70, 173 Plotinus, 123 pluralism, 133. See also religious pluralism beyond, 92-100

Index Hick’s, 4, 92, 97, 158-160, 162, 163,

175, 191, 193 logical, 179n27 nonreductive religious, 4, 153,

154-158, 173 normative, 39 scriptural case for plurality, 15-17 Soroush theory of religious, 187-194

soteriological, 161, 167 pluralist(s), 92, 163, 166, 167, 170, 181, 191, 193, 306 Abrahamic, 115, 158, 280, 306 equality, 155,164, 174 premodern Muslim, 11-112, 293

Plutarch, 123 polemics, 87, 89-91 political cooperation, Muslim—nonMuslim, 50-53 polytheism, 147n55, 147n61 monarchian, 122 polytheist(s), 52 Popper, philosophy, 188, 189, 194, 195 Porphyry, 123, 127 Praiseworthy Station, 137, 139, 140

prayer forbidden, 282 for an individual after death, 276-278 status of one not to be prayed for, 279-282 prophecy. See nubuwwa (prophecy) Prophet (Muhammad). See Muhammad prophets, 68, 69, 71, 73, 75, 79, 80, 84. See also messenger(s)

Abrahamic, 142, 288, 306 Protestants, 162, 182, 292, 295-297,

299; 395 Proudfoot, Wayne, 160 Psalms, 14 public square, national identity in, 292-294, 302-303

327

Qadhi, Yasir, 6, 268, 269, 272n32 al-Qaradawi, Yusuf, 38, 50-53, 54-55, 60n78, 120N5, 301 al-Qarafi, Shihab al-Din, 39, 40-42, 51,

55» 5725 Qur’an

beyond pluralism, 92-100 corruption of the straight path, 215-218 criticizing beliefs of idolaters, 14-15 divine command, 69-74 eternal punishment, 113, 119 grouping of Jews, 222-223 guidance, 247 importance accorded to Jews,

213-215 Jewish references in, 210 Jews, 230-231 message of, 89-91 Muslim women interpreters of, 239-241, 249n28 nature, permanence, and reality of Hell, 275-276 “pluralism-ambivalent” verses, 235-236 polysemy, 241, 247 possibilities for salvation, 229-230

praying for individual after death, 276-278 reconciling contradictions, 226-229 reading of religious texts, 208-209 religious authority, 74-76 religious diversity, 243-245 scriptural case for plurality, 15-117 status of one not to be prayed for, 279-282 universalism, 92-95, 97-99 Quraysh, 17-118, 212 al-Qurtubi, Muhammad ibn Ahmad, 138, 149n81 al-Qushayri, 281 Qutb, Sayyid, 222

328

Index

rabbis, 225, 264 Rabi‘a of Basra, 276 rahma (mercy), 65, 71, 72, 136, 137, 143, 282 Rahman, Fazlur, 15, 16, 117

Rahner, Karl, 163, 166, 167, 178n18 Ramadan, Tariq, 8 rationalist(s), 15, 22-25, 30, 110, 313, 314,

315

Rawls, John, xi, 36, 47, 54, 55, 293 al-Razi, Fakhr al-Din, 39, 51, 125, 221 Rea, Michael, 156, 157, 158, 176n4, 176n5 reached, 4, 44, 287n31 People ofthe Book, 13, 49, 88, 112, 114, 145N22, 207, 216-219, 222-227, 229, 233N22, 244, 257, 259-262, 266, 275, 279-280 realism, 131-134, 192 Redemption, 163, 167

Muslima theology, 235, 241, 242-243,

245, 247-248 Soroush’s theory of, 188-194 nonreductive, 4, 153, 154-158, 173 religious texts, 208-209 Republicans, 261 Republic of India, 292 Republic of Indonesia, 295 Resurrection, 85n13 Revelation, 99 Ricoeur, Paul, 7, 194-195, 196, 197, 202n80 Rida, Muhammad Rashid, 222 righteous, 3, 5-7, 27, 13, 16, 117, 19, 216, 210, 223)-223,.225 244, 267! 268, 277, 281

ritual acts, 28 ritual purity, 18 Rizvi, Sajjad, 7

Reformasi Era, 297

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, xi, 35, 36, 54,

Reformation, 162 regeneration, 162

55,109, 08 Rami, Jalal al-Din, 99, 100, 236 Ruz al-Yusuf, 302

Reinhart, A. Kevin, 5

relationality, 247-248 relativism, religious, 14 religion dialogue, 172-175 false, 134 Islamic theology of, 235-238 of love, 100 praying for individual after death, 276-278 truth, 172-175, 191-192, 195-197 religious authority, knowledge and ignorance, 74-76 religious chauvinism, 87-88 religious diversity, Qur’anic discourse

On, 243-245 religious pluralism, 156, 162, 176n2. See also pluralism feminist approaches, 241-242 motivations for, 158-161

Sabbath, 219, 220, 223 Sabians (al-Sab7tin), 90, 93, 16, 117, 218, 284, 287n31 Sachedina, Abdulaziz, 115 Sadat, Anwar, 302 Sadri, Mahmoud, 186 saints, 2'77

St. Ambrose, 124-125 Salafi(s), 182, 276, 286n6, 315 salah, 21, 22, 24, 29, 315 salvation, 4,7, 20, 161-171 of non-Muslims, 267—269 notion of“no, outside Islam,” 36-37 path to, 81-83, 272n32, 283-284 possibility of, from Hell, 275-276 religious truth and, 172-175 possibilities for, 229-230 al-Sam‘ani, Manstir ibn Muhammad, 17

Index

al-San‘ani, ‘Abd al-Razzaq, 16, 3113 sanctification, 162 Sawt al-Umma, 302 Schuon, Frithjof, 89, 97, 5 Schwartz, Regina, 141, 142 scientists, 75. See also physicists Scientologists, 290 Scott, Rachel M., 307nG, 310n35 scripturalists. See kitabi(s) sects, 65, 66, 80, 110, 164, 173, 192, 302 Sennott, Charles, 309n30 Shabestari, Mohammad Mojtahed, 7, 183-187, 190 al-Shafi'‘, 17, 18 Shafi‘l(s), 16, 18, 22 Shafi‘l-Ash‘aris, 25 shahdda, 67, 71, 139, 283, 315 Shahin, Emad, 303 Shah-Kazemi, Reza, 5—G, 115, 197, 237, 238, 240 Shaltout, Mahmoud, 49-50, 51, 53, 55 shara'i‘, 20, 21, 24, 27, 27, 29, 315 shar’, 15,.16,17, 18, 19, 23, 247: 25,°26,.29 Sharia, 18, 23, 97, 165, 170, 187, 285, 292, 300, 302-304 Egypt, 292, 307nG6 in Indonesia, 292

jurists, 66, 75-76, 81, 83 marriage rules, 280 protecting believers, 95 status of non-Muslims, 24, 26, 29 shar ‘iyydt, 21, 24, 26 Shattaé, Muhammad ‘Ali, 58n32 Shi‘i(s)/Shi‘ism, x, 94, 18, 120n5, 182, 186, 198, 259, 260, 261, 269, 270n6, 274, 285n3, 286n17, 302,

314, 316 Twelver/Twelve-Imam, 66, 131, 133, 316 shirk, 83, 14, 244, 282, 287n25, 316 SIDA (Society for Inter-Religious Dialogue), 296 Sidhum, Yusuf, 303

529)

Sika, Nadine, 301 Simon, Andrew, 309n30 sin, 69, 162, 164, 177n17, 282 sincere, non-Muslims, 117, 185, 285 sinner(s), 45, 136, 139, 140, 221, 276 forgiveness for, 282 God’s love of, 168 in Hell/Fire, 6, 139, 265, 268 Jews as eternal, 222-223 stra, 126, 316 Skinner, B. F., '70 SOME (Salvation Option—Minor Entry), 289, 290, 298, 302,

305-306 Soroush, Abdolkarim, 7, 187-194, 196 stigmatism, 169 straight path, corruption of, 215-218 successors, to the companions, 261 Sufism, 56n8, 65, 67, 73-74, 82, 115, 135, 194, 276, 316 Suharto government, 296 Sunna, 13, 77, 78, 81, 82, 131, 188, 285, 316 Sunni(s), x, 32n26, 48, 11, 08, 19, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 139, 143, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 269, 274, 278, 280, 282, 298, 299,

302, 313, 314, 315, 316 supersessionism, 6, 94 suras (chapters of the Qur’an)

sura 1, 230

sura 2, 48, 87, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 102N2, 112, 113, 16, 117, 145n27, 219, 23315, 23321, 233n23, 233n24, 251n53, 252n68, 277, 294 sura 3,79, 93, 94, 95, 96, 112, 126, 223, 224, 227, 233n22, 251N55 sura 4, 17, 119, 121n8, 251n53, 252n59, 252nGo, 287n25 sura 5, 90, 91, 99, 114, 224, 227, 233m16, 246, 251n57, 259, 260, 261, 262, 264, 271n17, 271m18, 283, 287n18, 294, 301

330 suras (continued) sura 6, 120, 251n58, 259, 260 sura 7, 219, 228, 233n24 sura 9, 49, 60n77, 14, 224, 229, 251152, 259, 263, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 28617 sura 10, 301 sura u, 68, 83, 281, 301

sura 12, 251n56 sura 13, 19 sura 14, 281 sura 17, 19, 227, 282 sura 18, 301 sura 22, 102N2, 233N24, 293, 301 sura 25, 86 sura 26, 149n87 sura 33, 138 sura 34, 20 sura 36, 69 sura 37, 78 sura 40, 72, 102n4 sura 41, 15, 1023 sura 42, 293, 301 sura 45, 233n24 sura 46, 102n3 sura 48, 113 sura 57, 113 sura 60, 53, 60n77, 278, 288, 294 sura 61, 114 sura 78, 79 sura 98, 251n54 sura 11, 281 Symmachus, 124

al-Tabari, Muhammad ibn Jarir, 60n77, 94, 212, 221 al-Tabarsi, 94, 103n1 Tabataba’i, Allamah, 103n11 Tacitus, 123

tafstr, 76, 208, 220, 274 Tafsir Muqatil, 17 Tahrir Square, 309n30

Index Taoists, 163 Tapp, E. J., 209

taglid, 75 ta ‘til, 84, 130, 133, 136, 310 tawhid, 67-68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79-83, 85n13, 210, 227 Themistius, 123 theologians, 66, 67, 69-74, 82, 129, 278 Christian, 124, 162, 163, 165, 17717

Egyptian, 54, 55 feminist, 252n70 medieval, 47, 10, 256, 265-266, 268-269, 272n32 Muhammad ‘Abduh, 37, 45, 54, 222 Muslim, 37-40, 42, 44, 51, 1, 14-15, 125, 230, 265 reformist Muslim, 43, 48, 54 theology, G6-Gg. See also Islamic theology tolerance, Islamic tradition, 36-37 freedom of choice, 186 toleration, possibility of, 43-47 in medieval Islamic theology, 38-43 Torah, 99, 114, 127, 128, 207, 216, 217, 226, 264

transformational parity, 104m18 trinity, 114, 2'79 triumphalist universalism, 26-27 Truce of Hudaybiyya (ca. 628 C.E.), 294 truth, 172-175, 191-192, 195-197

Tuhan, 295 Turks, 42, 45, 143, 150n98, 266, 271n26 Twelver Shi‘ism, 66, 131, 133, 316 ulama, 66, 73, 77, 78,79, 316 Ultimate Reality, 66, 141, 181 ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, 279 unbeliever(s), 50, 54, 113. See also kafir damned, 113, 120 United Nations, 48 United States, 294 Constitution, 291

Index

universalism, 5-6, 9n3, 168, 237 kerygmatic, 19-22, 32n26 Qur’anic, 98-100, 101 rationalist, 22-25 triumphalist, 26-27 universalist(s), 5, 21, 26, 27, 92, 93,95,

96, 97, 234 unreached, 3 ustil al-figh, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, '73, 316 usilt(s) (experts in/masters of/scholars of ust al-figh), 13, 15-16, 73 Vahdat, Farzin, 183 Valentinian II, 124 van Ess, Josef, 24 Wadud, Amina, 239-241, 246 The Wahid Institute of Jakarta, 297,

s09n19 warner, 113, 142 Warner, Margaret, 309n30 Watani, 302 Watt, W. Montgomery, 213

Winter, Tim, 6, 269, 282

women (Muslim), interpreters of Qur’an, 239-241, 249n28 World War I, 299 World War II, 48, 292, 299 wretchedness (shaq@), 68, 69,77, 172 wrongdoers, 27 wudi’, 24 yin and yang, 163 Young, Iris, 241

al-Zabidi, al-Murtada, 139 Zahiri school of law, 32n26

zakah (alms), 15, 21 Zaki, Moheb, 310n35 al-Zamakhshari, Ibn ‘Umar, 221 Zayd, Mustafa, 47, 58n32 Zen Buddhism, 163 zindigs, 65 Zionism, 54, 60n78, 61n8o, 232n5 Zoroastrians, 256, 259, 263, 265, 270n6 animal slaughter by, 257-258 al-Zuhri, 282

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“This is a collection of essays—as rich as it is

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topic of salvation within the Islamic tradition. Rather than offering pat andmono= chromatic responses, the various authors demonstrate that a broad spectrum of perspectives is possible on this subject through a faithful and critical reading of foundational texts within Islam. Mohammad Hassan Khalil is to be commended for bringing this multifaceted intra- and interfaith conversation to the attention of abroad reading public. Asma Afsaruddin,

Chair & Professor of the Department of Near Eastern

Languages & Cultures, Indiana University

In Between Heaven and Hell, eminent and up-and-coming scholars representing a diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints address the question of non-Muslim salva-

tion: according to the Islamic ethos (however understood), what can be said about the status and fate of non-Muslims? Each of the volume’s contributors responds to this often asked “salvation question’—a question with profound theological and practical implications—from different angles: while some limit themselves to its historical dimensions, others approach it as theologians and philosophers, while yet others focus on the relationship between this-worldly relations with Others and

next-worldly conceptions of salvation. Collectively and individually, the essays in this volume advance our understanding of Islamic thought and Muslim societies and, indeed, the discourse on religious diversity. This groundbreaking volume does

not conclude with neat resolutions; instead, it offers fascinating expositions, debates, and points of departure for further contemplation. Contributors include Mohammad

Hassan Khalil, Tariq Ramadan, A. Kevin Reinhart, Mohammad Fadel, William C >]

Chittick, Reza Shah-Kazemi, Yasir Qadhi, Tim Winter, Muhammad Legenhausen, Sajjad H. Rizvi, Farid Esack, Jerusha Lamptey, David M. Freidenreich, Marcia Her=

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