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I think that Samuel Huntington is right and that the West and the Islamic world are in the midst of a clash of civilizations that has been ongoing for centuries. In his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (1996), Huntington attributes this to irreconcilable differences between the two civilizations’ respective religions:
The causes of this ongoing pattern of conflict lie not in transitory phenomena such as twelfth-century Christian passion or twentieth-century Muslim fundamentalism. They flow from the nature of the two religions and the civilizations based on them. Conflict was, on the one hand, a product of difference, particularly the Muslim concept of Islam as a way of life transcending and uniting religion and politics versus the Western Christian concept of the separate realms of God and Caesar. The conflict also stemmed, however, from their similarities. Both are monotheistic religions, which, unlike polytheistic ones, cannot easily assimilate additional deities, and which see the world in dualistic, us-and-them terms. Both are universalistic, claiming to be the one true faith to which all humans can adhere. Both are missionary religions believing that their adherents have an obligation to convert nonbelievers to that one true faith.
There’s more, but I think this states the overall point well enough. Except, I don’t think that it’s entirely true when it comes to Islam. Huntington is coming from a realist perspective which means that he is interested primarily in how these religions function in the real world and not on their theoretical and theological underpinnings, and within that context he is entirely correct. Huntington accurately describes the real-world functional behaviors of the two cultures. But I don’t think that’s what Islam really is. I don’t think that that’s what the Qur’an says that Islam is, and that’s the source I take to be most authoritative in this matter.
I recommend reading my previous essay on Islam, “A Satanist Reads the Qur’an,” as background for what follows, but failing that, I’ll just say that the Qur’an, the sacred text of Islam, believed to be the received word of God and the only sacred text I know of that makes that claim with regards to its whole being, is one of the world’s great works of literary genius. Indeed, part of its claim to divinity involves its incomparable literary qualities. Even in translation, reading it is like staring into the sun, almost intolerably intense. I don’t fully accept its central thesis, that it is the true and absolute word of God, but I can’t overstate its brilliance. I use Haleem’s translation, and I also highly recommend Ziauddin Sardar’s Reading the Qur’an as secondary literature.
The Qur’an is also a challenging text to interpret, though not insurmountably so by any measure. In fact, I think that its interpretation is easily available to anyone willing to put in some effort (and Sardar supports me in this1). Given that this is a text in which a primary narrator (ostensibly God) is narrating to Muhammad what he is to say to his followers, and that those instructions also include quotes, the language can become quite convoluted. There is also a matter of the historical context to consider: different verses were revealed to Muhammad at different stages of his life. The early Muslim community found itself in various different circumstances during these different periods, and the verses revealed must be understood and interpreted in those contexts.
And I’ll mention again that the translation of the Qur’an is a contentious issue. This is a text that was allegedly revealed in Arabic, so those Muslims for whom Arabic is a native language have an advantage over others as far as matters of religion are concerned. There has been debate over the centuries as to whether this text should ever be translated at all, or whether it simply be expected that everyone learn Arabic so as to hear the word of God2. Forbidding its translation would certainly benefit native Arabic speakers and the elite few who are able to garner an education sufficient to authoritatively interpret Qur’anic Arabic. I tend to be wary of such relegation of matters of interpretation to an elite few, but I also don’t know any Arabic beyond a few words and phrases, so I am left to interpret the Qur’an in translation for better or worse. I doubt very much, however, that God would have made such an important statement in such a way as could only be accessed in a single language, especially when, as I’ll be examining here, the Qur’an states that the very existence of other languages is a mark of God’s greatness.
Let’s start there, with the 30th sura (chapter) of the Qur’an, aya (verse) 22:
Another of His signs is the creation of the heavens and earth, and the diversity of your languages and colours. There truly are signs in this for those who know.
This is a Meccan sura, called “The Byzantines,” which references events of great political import in the contemporary world of the Qur’an by way of establishing the foundations of Islam, in a time before that in which the early Muslims would fight a war for their beliefs. We see here the claim that the diversity of human language serves God’s purpose. For that reason, it would be senseless to limit true understanding of God’s word to a single language unless God were incapable of doing otherwise, and I doubt very much that the Qur’an ever makes that claim. Elsewhere, the Qur’an states the purpose behind this diversity of languages and cultures:
People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into races and tribes so that you should get to know one another.
49:13
So we have a basis for at least a cultural pluralism. What about a religious one? Returning to the text, verse 2:62 states:
The [Muslim] believers, the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabians — all those who believe in God and the Last Day and do good — will have their rewards with the Lord. No fear for them, nor will they grieve.
The notes to this verse in my copy of the Qur’an state that the Sabians were a monotheistic religious community; according to Wikipedia, their exact identity is unknown, but it is thought that they were a mystical community of Jewish or Gnostic Christians, or possibly Mandeans, Mandaeism being a dualist religion resembling Gnostic Christianity. Mandeans still live in the world and are called Sabians by some, but the original Sabians are no longer extant. Given that the Qur’an is believed to be a text for all times and all places, it seems sensible to generalize from this commentary on the Sabians, as Sardar does: “In contemporary times, I would argue, the Sabians represent all those with mystical tendencies, who promote self-awareness of God and ‘do good’.” I’ve written before of the influence of mystical traditions on my Satanic thought, and as well on what I believe that it means to “do good” in a world where “good” is defined by the world’s most morally-destitute institutions. Sardar also mentions 22:34: “We appointed acts of devotion for every community,” which Sardar interprets as referring to “symbolic ways of worshipping and adoring God;” or, as I would put it, symbolic frameworks for approaching and understanding the sacred, which is exactly what all religion is to me in the first place. This is to say, I believe that Islamic pluralism is inclusive even of Satanism.
The Qur’an seems to expect that dialogue between religions is entirely natural and expected. The very brief 109th chapter seems to encourage… not what I would call a mutual respect, exactly, but at least a mutual understanding:
Say, ‘Disbelievers: I do not worship what you worship, you do not worship what I worship, I will never worship what you worship, you will never worship what I worship: you have your religion and I have mine.
According to early commentators on the Qur’an, as mentioned in the preface to the above chapter, this was revealed to Muhammad in Mecca after the polytheists suggested that they would worship Muhammad’s God for a year if he would worship their gods for a year. But again, we can generalize to what this would mean as a message to all people in all places and times, and in that sense I don’t think it’s at all ambiguous.
In the second chapter is a verse, called the Throne Verse, widely regarded as the most excellent in all of the Qur’an. I won’t reproduce it here as it is not of direct relevance, except to say that it describes several of the qualities of God and that it is indeed quite poetically striking. What interests me more is that this central verse is immediately followed by an admonition (and I’m using Sardar’s own translation here, which draws from both Haleem and Khalidi): “There is no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in God has grasped the most trustworthy handhold, that never breaks, for God is All-hearing, All-knowing” (2:256). Not “there should be no compulsion in religion” or “there must be no compulsion in religion” or anything else, but rather a direct statement about what religion is, one that I believe is fundamentally correct: true religion is never compelled; that which is compelled is not true religion. That there is an awareness of this fact is quite telling, especially in the context of the modern world, in which Islam is often compelled by law and force (take, for example, the Saudi Arabian laws against apostasy, which remains punishable by death). And as well, Sardar interprets “evil” from the Arabic word used (at-taghut) and states that…
The evil ones are those who exceed their legitimate limits, and arrogate powers, wealth, and lordship that do not belong to them — leading to arrogance and worship of other things beside God. Evil is interfering with, distorting and turning to the wrong ends, the free choices of free individuals.
Which sounds very much like what I’ve been describing as the Hegemon over the entire course of these writings. Just as much in Islam as in Christianity, and perhaps even more so, there are agents who appropriate the power that sacred texts have over people to their own ends, misrepresenting their content and distorting their meaning.
Also presenting the “no compulsion in religion” idea is 10:99:
Had your Lord willed, all the people on earth would have believed. So can you compel people to believe? No soul can believe except by God’s will, and He brings disgrace on those who do not use their reason.
Which is to say, “What is it that you think you’re doing trying to force people to believe? If God had wanted it that way, then that’s the way it would be.” And I interpret that last clause to mean, “God does not look kindly on those who follow a faith only through abandonment of their rational faculties.”
I’ll conclude with a discussion of “The Cave,” the 18th sura of the Qur’an, which is an especially enigmatic one. It begins with the story of the Sleepers of the Cave, which God relates seemingly by way of correcting the more common version of the story, which we then must assume was commonplace in Mecca in the late 6th century. The details of the story are not of immediate relevance, nor are those of the other two stories presented in the chapter, one of which dealing with a meeting that Moses had with some unidentified person, and the other of which dealing with an individual called Dhul-Qarnayn, “He of the Two Horns,” a story which scholars believe originated in myths surrounding Alexander the Great. The true identity of Dhul-Qarnayn remains unknown for certain, but the Qur’an relates the story as if he were a familiar figure to the Meccans. Taken as a whole, the chapter appears to be situating Islam within the context of mythological narratives extant at the time of its revelation. The chapter ends with what may be my favorite verse in the Qur’an, 18:109: “Say, ‘If the whole ocean were ink for writing the words of my Lord, it would run dry before those words were exhausted’ — even if We were to add another ocean to it.” Which, given context, I take to mean, not just those stories related here, but all the mythological narratives of all the religions that ever were or ever will be are the words of God.
One of the solutions that Huntington offers to the clash of civilizations is that “peoples in all civilizations should search for and attempt to expand the values, institutions, and practices they have in common with peoples of other civilizations.” Huntington is explicitly not arguing for global monoculturalism or local multiculturalism, and draws from Michael Walzer in describing morality as existing in a “thick” sense (extending deeply through a single culture) and a “thin” sense (extending more broadly across multiple cultures); civilizations, Huntington says, should embrace the “thick” morality unique to their culture but also seek to clarify and expand the “thin” morality that is shared between civilizations. I think that this can and should be applied to religions as well, both in terms of understanding the theology of different religions and in terms of the socio-cultural behaviors of the peoples of different religions. I don’t believe that all religions are the same, and we should seek to appreciate each religion on its own terms, but there are nevertheless commonalities that we should seek out and explore. The Qur’an in particular, in stark contrast to how Islam is often practiced in the world, embraces that outlook.
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- “All those who read the Qur’an should be able to comment on its content and offer an understanding, however simple, of its verses.”
- Sardar again: “As-Shafi, a pure Arab, argued that the Qur’an was revealed in the language of Muhammad’s own people to the exclusion of the tongues of non-Arabs; therefore, people who did not have Arabic were duty-bound to learn the glorious language of the Qur’an”