Notes Introduction 1. There is, of course, no consensus on the precise meaning of democracy, much less dem- ocratic values. 2. Also sometimes known as the Constitution of Medina. The original document has not survived, but a number of different versions can be found in early Muslim sources. 3. The word caliph is derived from the Arabic khalifa, which means both “successor” and “deputy.” 4. In Arabic, Shari’a literally means the “path leading to the watering place.” 5. The word “Shia” is derived from the Arabic Shiat Ali, meaning “party of Ali.” While “Sunni” means those who follow the Sunnah, the exemplary words and practices of the Prophet Muhammad. The names are misleading, as Ali is revered by the Sunni—albeit not to the same extent as by the Shia—and the Shia also attach great importance to the Sunnah. 6. Starting with Ali through to Muhammad al-Mahdi, who received the imamate in 874 at the age of five. Muhammad was taken into hiding to protect him from his Sunni enemies. However, in around 940 he is regarded as having left the world materially but to have retained a spiritual presence through which he guides Shia divines in their interpretations of law and doctrine. Twelvers believe that he will eventually return to the world as the Mahdi, or “Messiah,” and usher in a brief golden age before the end of time. There have also been divisions within the Shia community. In the eighth century, during a dispute over the rightful heir to the sixth imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, the Twelvers backed the candidacy of a younger son, Musa al-Kazim. The supporters of his eldest son, Ismail, subsequently broke away to form what is now known as the Ismaili commu- nity. The Ismailis themselves then became divided between a minority, called Sabiyah or “Seveners,” who held that Ismail was the last imam, and the majority, who continued to recognize Ismail’s descendants as imams. There is also a Mahdi tradition in Sunni Islam, although many orthodox Sunni theologians have dismissed the concept on the grounds that it is not mentioned in the Qur’an. 7. The travelogue of the fourteenth-century Moroccan explorer Ibn Battutah (1304– 68/69), who visited almost every Muslim country during thirty years of traveling, reveals not only the cultural diversity of the Islamic world but also its many shared features. For example, Ibn Battutah’s training in Islamic jurisprudence enabled him to serve as a judge, each time under a different political authority, not only in his native Morocco but as far afield as Delhi and the Maldives. See Tim Mackintosh-Smith, ed., The Travels of Ibn Battutah (London: Picador, 2000). 220 NOTES 8. Starting in the eighth century, several schools of thought, most famously the Mutazilah, held that the Qur’an could not be the coeternal word of God because God is indivisible. Therefore, the Qur’an could only be created by God. After enjoying a brief popularity in the ninth century, the doctrine gradually lost favor and is now disavowed by Sunni Muslims. 9. One consequence is that translations can only be paraphrases, which lack the absolute sanctity of the original Arabic. Another is that most Muslims refuse to accept that the Qur’an contains textual variants or loanwords from other languages. For example, most non-Muslim scholars believe that the textual variants in the seventh- and eighth-cen- tury copies of the Qur’an found in 1972 during the restoration of the Great Mosque in Yemen suggest an evolving text. Such a claim is anathema to Muslims. 10. From the Arabic for “news” or “story.” 11. Al-Bukhari collected about 600,000 traditions but included in his collection only 7,275 which he deemed completely reliable. Muslim’s collection comprises approximately 9,200 traditions. The other four compilers—Abu Dawud (817–889), al-Tirmidhi (died 892), al-Nasai (830–915), and ibn Maja (824–886)—included hadith whose provenance was less clear-cut, and many of the traditions in their collections are graded into differ- ent degrees of likely authenticity. 12. Twelver Shia Muslims tend to follow the Jafari school of Islamic jurisprudence, named after the sixth imam, Jafar al-Sadiq (702–65). Like the main Sunni schools, the Jafari derive their Shari’a from the Qur’an and the sunnah of the Prophet, although there are occasional differences in interpretation. The Twelver doctrine of the infallibility of the imamate means that an authenticated pronouncement by an imam is also considered binding. 13. The Hanafi school has the most adherents, accounting for 40–45 percent of all Sunni Muslims, and is the dominant school in the Indian subcontinent, Egypt, Turkey, the Levant, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and parts of West Africa. Approximately 30 percent of Sunnis follow the Maliki school, which is mainly concentrated in north, central, and parts of West Africa. The Shafi school accounts for another 20–25 percent, mostly in southeast Asia. The remainder are followers of the Hanbali school, the majority of whom live in Arabia. 14. They include Wahhabism, which is based on the puritanical teachings of Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (c.1703–92) and is today the official doctrine of Saudi Arabia. For a detailed exposition of Wahhabi doctrine, see http://www.Islam-qa.com. For an unapol- ogetically antagonistic critique, see Hamid Algar, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay (New York: Islamic Publications International, 2002). 15. The precise balance between predestination and freewill in Sunni Islam remains prob- lematic. The very name of the religion—in as much that Islam means submission— would appear to necessitate at least a modicum of free will. The degree to which human free will is circumscribed by divinely predestined fate was one of the most divisive issues in early Islamic theology and has arguably yet to be fully resolved. See William Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Oxford: Oneworld, 2002), 82–118. 16. Curiously, there are examples in the Shari’a where, faced with an apparent contradiction between the Qur’an and the hadith, Islamic jurists have favored the latter. For example, the Qur’an (Surah 24:2) clearly states that the punishment for zina, meaning “adultery” or “fornication,” as the same Arabic word is used for both, is one hundred lashes. How- ever, there are numerous hadith that claim that the punishment is stoning to death (for example, al-Bukhari, Volume 2, Book 23, No. 413; Volume 4, Book 56, No. 829; Volume 8, Book 82, Nos. 803–6; and Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, Book 17, Nos. 4194, 4196, 4198, 4199, NOTES 221 4201, 4202, 4205, 4206, 4207 and 4209 http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/ hadithsunnah/bukhari/082.sbt.html-008.082.814). Classical jurists attempted to bridge this gap by claiming that the verse in the Qur’an refers to premarital sex (fornication) while the hadith refers to extramarital sex (adultery). Yet this would mean that the Qur’an made no mention of adultery, which is arguably a much more socially disruptive act than fornication. There are several hadith (for example, al-Bukhari, Volume 8, Book 82, Nos. 816–7) that maintain that the punishment of stoning for adultery was part of the original revelation of the Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad but was lost before the compilation of the ‘Uthman codex. If the claim is true, it would demolish one of the central tenets of the Muslim faith; namely, that the Qur’an is perfect and complete. 17. For example, in 1970, Saudi Arabia supplemented its Shari’a courts with administrative tribunals to hear cases related to traffic regulations and business and commercial law. 18. To give an extreme example, many Muslims in Africa and Arabia view female circum- cision as a religious requirement. Yet the practice appears to date back at least to the time of the ancient Egyptians some two thousand years before the birth of the Prophet Muhammad and is not mentioned at all in the Qur’an. 19. But see also Note 16 above. 20. For example, al-Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 83, Nos. 19, 20, 36, and 47. 21. However, there are many hadith that explicitly state that the punishment for apostasy is death: al-Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 83, No. 17; Volume 9, Book 83, No. 37; Volume 9, Book 84, No. 57; Volume 9, Book 84, No. 58; Volume 9, Book 84, No. 64; Volume 9, Book 89, No. 271. 22. For example, the Mughal Prince Dara Shikoh (1615–69) argued that the Hindu Upani- shads were a “storehouse of monotheism.” Mainstream Buddhism does not, of course, subscribe to the monotheistic belief in a creator God. This broadening of the definition of the People of the Book has not been accepted by most Muslims. 23. Translation by N. J. Dawood, The Koran (London: Penguin, 1999). The identity of the Sabaeans (also sometimes spelled Sabeans or Sabians) has been the subject of consider- able scholarly debate. They appear to have been members of a now-extinct monothe- istic faith with a scripture and prophets similar, though not identical, to the Jews and Christians. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. For example, Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Ladin (born 1957) used the verse to pref- ace his 1998 World Islamic Front Statement, Holy War against Jews and Crusaders, in which he called on Muslims to kill “Americans and their allies, both civilians and military.” 27. For example, Muhammad’s favorite wife Aisha quotes him as saying that for women the best form of jihad is to participate in the hajj (al-Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Nos. 43, 127, and 128).