Copyright © 2015 by the University of North Carolina Press This edition has been published in Great Britain by arrangement with the University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514, USA Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ www.euppublishing.com Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 0177 7 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 0178 4 (paperback) ISBN 978 1 4744 0179 1 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 0180 7 (epub) The right of Bruce B. Lawrence to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). Calligraphy for chapter opening ornament by Mohamed Zakariya, February 2014. Cover illustration: Painting by Mohamed Melehi (Haʾ 2, 1984). At its center is a receding repetition of haʾ (the Arabic letter “h”), framed by angular and wavy elements. Haʾ elides with huwa (the pronoun “he”); when written alone, haʾ/huwa connotes Allah as its inner meaning. Used by permission of the artist. To M. F. Husain, an artist for the ages, a chain of light linking all to Allah, past, present, and future Contents Preface, xi Introduction, 1 1. Allah Invoked, 25 Practice of the Tongue 2. Allah Defined, 55 Practice of the Mind 3. Allah Remembered, 84 Practice of the Heart 4. Allah Debated, 118 Practice of the Ear 5. Allah Online, 141 Practices in Cyberspace Conclusion, 163 Glossary, 183 Notes, 187 Bibliography, 203 Acknowledgments, 209 Index, 213 Figures 1. Allah/Muhammad with the Four Righteous Caliphs, 12 2. Beads on the Qurʾan, 33 3. Counting to 7 with A- l- l- a- h, 47 4. 786 belongs to all religions, 53 5. Nasruddin Hoca and donkey, 58 6. Jabir and Ikhwan, according to M. F. Husain, 79 7. The Chain of Being, according to the Ikhwan as- Safa, 81 8. Kaʿba Cube of Ahmed Moustafa, 94 9. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen and his grave near Philadelphia, 110 10. Hu in bright acrylic colors by Mohamed Melehi, 157 11. Performance artist Arahmaiani with Allah plate, 165 12. Bilal, according to M. F. Husain, 168 Preface Who Is Allah? is the product of a lifetime engaged by Islam and sub- jects relating to Islamic thought and culture, society and politics, across centuries in myriad contexts. It is aimed at a popular audience, as well as regular readers of books in the Islamic Civilization and Muslim Net- works series published by the University of North Carolina Press. The conventions of Arabic are kept to a minimum, with just the hamza and ʿayn used to reflect the distinctive accents of Arabic—or Persian or Turk- ish or Urdu— names and technical terms. In many instances English translations of common words are used after their first introduction in both Arabic and English. A major exception is the name Allah. It is not enough to say Allah=God if one seeks to acknowledge the complexity, and also explore the mys- tery, of Muslim performance of Allah. In this study, Allah is center stage at every level and in every chapter. And so, in order to stress the preva- lence of Allah, I will occasionally parse words that combine Allah and another word into one that takes an Allah- specific form. Hence, at times bismillah will be written bismi(A)llah (“in the name of God”), and in- shallah (“if God wills, of God willing”) will appear as inshaʾ(A)llah. For Arabic speakers, this convention may seem redundant, but for those who are innocent of any knowledge of Arabic, it will be a constant re- minder of how Allah is implanted in the deepest recesses of the Muslim imagination— across time, space, race, gender, and geography. You will also find sidebars. They are included to provide readers with focused information about places, persons, and issues that until now have been dimly known but are relevant to the evidence and argument of this book. Finally, there is the ubiquitous Internet. In many instances the Inter- net has provided references and resources that are readily available to twenty- first- century readers. The surfeit of their presence requires judi- cious selection on each topic relating to Allah. I have attempted to har- vest the best, while avoiding the worst. Each reader must decide for xi him- or herself how well, or badly, I have performed that task, but my aim in each instance is to make Allah at once more accessible and subtle as the bedrock of Muslim self- expression. xii Preface There is the name and the thing; the name is a voice that denotes and signifies the thing; the name is no part of the thing, nor of the substance; it is a foreign piece joined to the thing, outside it. — Michel de Montaigne, Essays Introduction FRAMING THE NAME ALLAH Allah is said to be ubiquitous, all encompassing, and inescapable. Allah is a name but more than a name. Allah is the name for one beyond limits, including the limits of naming. How can we approach this puzzle? Can we dare to examine, interpret, and perhaps explain the pervasive name that supersedes all other names? Can we accept it as the thing that eludes all efforts to appropriate, to contain, and so to restrict it? Perhaps we must be content with traces. And so we begin by looking at a prayer, a hymn, an aphorism, and a pop song. Later we also exam- ine sources on the Internet, knowing that it is the reference point for many with the same queries as ours. But first we broach Allah in prayer. One popular Muslim prayer invokes the name Allah repeatedly: In the name of Allah, And through Allah, And from Allah, And towards Allah, 1 And upon Allah, And in Allah— There is no strength nor power except through Allah, the High, the Most Great.1 Central to Jewish ritual is repetition of the refrain, “Baruch atah Ado- nai, Eloheinu Melech ha- olam,” which might be translated as “Blessed are You, O Lord, our God, Sovereign of the universe,” while for Christians the focus is on Christ, as in the popular hymn “St. Patrick’s Breastplate,” the next- to- last stanza of which begins with the quatrain: Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me.2 Nor is this a specifically Abrahamic reflex. The notion of a single name, and a singular force, that expands to become something abso- lute, accessible to humans yet beyond their comprehension, also reso- nates in other religions: Om in Hinduism, or Om Shanti Shanti Shanti in Buddhism. With the emergence of Islam in the seventh century, however, it is one name, and one name alone, that is said to embody all that defines life— human, animal, animate, inanimate, this world, the universe— while itself exceeding definition: Allah. Allah is a name unlike other names. Allah is the Name and the Referent beyond all other names, first for those who are Muslim, but also for those who relate to Islam and the Muslim community, such as Arab Christians. Though Christianity pre- dates Islam by six centuries, Allah becomes the God of the Arabic Bible as well as the Arabic Qurʾan. For both Arab Christians and all Muslims, whether Arab or non- Arab, Allah comes to embody the beauty, but also the paradox, of naming the Absolute. In Allah Muslims confront the universal human dilemma: what does it mean to identify and name, and by so naming also to claim, the abso- lute? It was the paradox of naming the absolute that occupied Michel de Montaigne (d. 1592), an erudite, influential humanist of the sixteenth- century Renaissance. Montaigne probed the paradox of naming the thing. The name and the thing, he asserted, are related yet separate. In the brief aphorism cited above, Montaigne, a devoutly skeptical Chris- tian, went on to observe: “God, who is all fullness in Himself and the 2 Introduction height of all perfection, cannot augment or add anything to Himself within”; and yet there is the part of Him without, beyond His interior self, and that hinges on His name. “His name,” continues Montaigne, “may be augmented and increased by the blessing and praise we at- tribute to His exterior works. Since we cannot incorporate our praise in Him— for nothing can be added to His good— we attribute it to His name, the part of Him nearest to us.” 3 In other words, while we can praise God, we cannot add anything to His inner self, His unqualified good. Our praise instead attaches to His name, since the name is the part of Him most accessible, and nearest, to us. An educated Muslim in any century would agree: Allah is full- ness and perfection beyond human knowing or owning. No name can, or should, or will, capture the Thing.4 Because It is beyond us and be- yond compare, Its name is the portal to the unseen, the gateway to the unknown. Allah may become the song of the heart, as also the mea- sure of every day’s activity, in mind and in body, in self and in society. Yet always and everywhere Allah remains beyond compare, beyond our ability to compare the One with anyone, the Thing with anything. ALLAH BEYOND GENDER Beyond compare also means beyond gender attributes.