Have your ever wondered about the concept of “Islamic Pluralism” …
Here is a
very good guideline …
.. To frame a response, I think it is useful to step back a little, and
consider the larger picture of Islamic history of which we form a very
small
part. I mentioned earlier that Islam usually spread through the
utilisation of
commercial opportunities as opportunities for da‘wa. That picture is
one of the
most extraordinary success stories in religious history. Compare, for
instance,
the way in which the Muslim world was Islamised to the way in which the
Americas were Christianised. Islamisation proceeded with remarkable
gentleness,
at the hands of Sufis and merchants. Christianisation used mass
extermination
of the native Americans, the baptism of uncomprehending survivors, and
the
baleful scrutiny by the Inquisition of any signs of backsliding. A more
extreme
contrast would be impossible to find.
Perhaps no less extraordinary than this contrast is its interesting
concomitant: Christianisation brought Europeanisation. Islamisation did
not
bring Arabisation. The churches built by the Puritans or the
Conquistadors in
the New World were deliberate replicas of churches in Europe. The
mosques
constructed in the areas gradually won for Islam are endlessly diverse,
and
reflect and indeed celebrate local particularities. Christianity is a
universal
religion that has historically sought to impose a universal
metropolitan
culture. Islam is a universal religion that has consistently nurtured a
particularist provincial culture. A church in Mexico City resembles a
church in
Salamanca. A mosque in Nigeria, or Istanbul, or Djakarta, resembles in
key
respects the patterns, now purified and uplifted by monotheism, of the
indigenous regional patrimony.
No less remarkable is the ability of the Muslim liberators to
accommodate those
aspects of local, pre-Islamic tradition which did not clash absolutely
with the
truths of revelation. In entering new lands, Muslims were armed with
the
generous Koranic doctrine of Universal Apostleship; as the Koran says,
‘To
every nation there has been sent a guide’. This conflicts sharply with
the
classical Christian view of salvation as hinging uniquely on one
historical
intervention of the divine in history: the salvific sacrifice of Christ
on
Calvary. Non-Christian religions were, in classical Christianity, seen
as
demonic and under the sign of original sin. But classical Islam has
always been
able and willing to see at least fragments of an authentic divine
message in
the faiths and cultures of non-Muslim peoples. If God has assured us
that every
nation has received divine guidance, then we can look with some favour
on the
Other. Hence, for instance, we find popular Muslim poets in India, such
as
Sayid Sultan, writing poems about Krishna as a Prophet. There is no
final
theological proof that he was one, but the assumption is nonetheless
not in
violation of the Koran.
Even among Muslim ulema who had not been to India, we find
interestingly
positive appraisals of Hinduism. For instance, the great Baghdad
theologian al-
Shahrastani, in his Book of Religions and Sects, had access to enough
reliable
information about India to develop a very sophisticated theological
reaction to
Indian religion. He accepts that the higher forms of Hinduism are not
polytheistic. He notes that that although the Hindus have no notion of
prophecy, they do have what he calls ashab al-ruhaniyat: quasi-divine
beings
who call mankind to love the Real and to practice the virtues. He names
Vishnu
and Shiva as examples, and speaks positively of them. He focuses
particularly
on the veneration of celestial bodies: the sun, the moon, and the
planets. The
reason why he fixes on these practices is that they seem to situate
Hinduism
within a recognisably Koranic paradigm. The Koran mentions quite
favourably a
group known as the Sabeans, who were by the second century identified
with
various star-worshipping but still vaguely monotheistic sects in
Mesopotamia.
The Sabeans are tolerated in Islamic law, although they are less
privileged
than the Jews and Christians, a position reflected in the ruling in
Shari‘a
that a Muslim may not marry their women or eat their meat.
Shahrastani explicitly assimilates many Hindus to this category of
Sabeans.
They are to be tolerated as believers in One God; and will only be
punished by
God if, having been properly exposed to Islam, they reject it.
Another example is supplied by the great Muslim epic in China. Those
who
believe that Muslim communities can only flourish if they ghettoise
themselves
and refuse to interact with majority communities would do well to look
at
Chinese history. Many of the leading mandarins of Ming China were in
fact
Muslims. Wang Dai-Yu, for instance, who died in 1660, was a Muslim
scholar who
received the title of ‘Master of the Four Religions’ because of his
complete
knowledge of China’s four religions: Islam, Buddhism, Taoism and
Confucianism.
Many of the leading admirals in the navy of the Ming Empire were
practising
Muslims.
In China, mosques look very like traditional Chinese garden-temples,
except
that there is a prayer hall without idols, and the calligraphy is
Koranic. In
some of the most beautiful, you will find, as you enter, the following
words in
Chinese inscribed on a tablet:
Sages have one mind and the same truth. In all parts of the world,
sages arise
who possess this uniformity of mind and truth. Muhammad, the Great Sage
of the
West, lived in Arabia long after Confucius, the Sage of China. Though
separated
by ages and countries, they had the same mind and Truth.
In these examples from India and China, we see a practical confirmation
of
Islam’s proclamation of itself as the final, and hence universal,
message from
God. In a hadith we learn: ‘Other prophets were sent only to their own
peoples,
while I am sent to all mankind.’ It is not that the Koranic worldview
affirms
other religions as fully adequate paths to salvation. In fact, it
clearly does
not. But it allows the Muslim, as he encounters new worlds, to sift the
wheat
from the chaff in non-Muslim cultures, rejecting some things, to be
sure, but
maintaining others. In Islamic law, too, we find that shara‘i man
qablana, the
revealed laws of those who came before us, can under certain conditions
be
accepted as valid legal precedent, if they are not demonstrably
abrogated by an
Islamic revealed source. And Islamic law also recognises the authority
of urf,
local customary law, so that a law or custom is acceptable, and may be
carried
over into an Islamic culture or jurisdiction, if no Islamic revealed
principle
is thereby violated. Hence, we find the administration of Islamic law
varying
from country to country. If a wife complains of receiving insufficient
dower
from her husband, the qadi [judge] will make reference to what is
considered
normal in their culture and social group, and adjudge accordingly.
All of these historical observations have, I hope, served to make quite
a
simple point: Islam, as a universal religion, in fact as the only
legitimately
universal religion, also makes room for the particularities of the
peoples who
come into it. The traditional Muslim world is a rainbow, an
extraordinary
patchwork of different cultures, all united by a common adherence to
the
doctrinal and moral patterns set down in Revelation. Put differently,
Revelation supplies parameters, hudud, rather than a complete blueprint
for the
details of cultural life. Local mindsets are Islamised, but remain
distinct…