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Islam: a Guide for Jews and Christians / F.E ISLAM A GUIDE This page intentionally left blank ISLAM A GUIDE FOR JEWS AND CHRISTIANS F. E. P · Copyright ᭧ 2003 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Peters, F. E. (Francis E.) Islam: a guide for Jews and Christians / F.E. Peters. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-11553-2 (alk. paper) 1. Islam—Relations—Christianity. 2. Christianity and other religions— Islam. 3. Islam—Relations—Judaism. 4. Judaism—Relations— Islam. 5. Islam—Origin. 6. Islam—Essence, genius, nature. I. Title. BP172 .P455 2003 297—dc21 2002042464 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Sabon Typeface Printed on acid-free paper. ϱ www.pupress.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 10987654321 For Charlie and Bonnie taken much too soon, gone far too long This page intentionally left blank Contents Introduction xi 1. Discovering Scripture in Scripture 1 In the Beginning . .”; The Name(s) and Nature of God; The Bible in the Quran; History Begins; The Covenant and the Covenants; Abraham; A Holy Land; Hagar and Ishmael; Ishmaelites and Arabs; Abraham and Ishmael in Mecca; Is- raelite Tales; Abraham the Builder; The Origins of the Mec- can Pilgrimage; The Binding of Isaac (or Ishmael); The Jews in the Quran; Jesus in the Quran; Christians and Chris- tianity in the Quran 2. The Past Remembered 30 What the Arabs Thought, Remembered or Imagined; Mecca before the Prophet; The Holy Place; The Kaaba; The Rituals of the Kaaba; The Meccan Haram; Meccan Paganism; The Quranic Evidence; The Cult Practices of the Arabs; The Jews of Arabia; The Christians of Arabia 3. “And Muhammad Is His Messenger” 51 The Muhammad of History; Hagiography and History; Muhammad: A Life; Imagining Revelation; The Message of Islam; The Opposition; The “Satanic Verses”; Muhammad’s Night Journey and Ascension; Muhammad Cleansed, and Rapt; Boycott; The Hegira viii t CONTENTS 4. The Prince of Medina 68 The Medina Accords; The Practice of Islam; Muhammad and the Jews; The Religion of Abraham; The Master of Me- dina (624–628); Muhammad and the Jews (continued); The Lord of Arabia (628–632); Muhammad and the Jews (con- cluded); The Wives and Children of the Prophet; The Open- ing of Mecca; Problems before and after Tabuk; The Last Years (631–632); Collecting the Quran; The Arrangement of the Suras Muhammad and Jesus: An Essay in Comparison 96 5. The Muslim Scripture: The Quran 99 Scripture: A History; Three Sacred Books, Three Peoples of the Book; On Tampering with Scripture; Who Wrote Scrip- ture?; A Different Book; The Other Scriptures; In the Silence after the Seal; Unpacking the Word of God; The Quran Reads Itself: Abrogation, Emendation, Elaboration?; The Miracle of the Quran; History and Scripture; The “Occasions of Revelation”; Plain and Allegorical Exegesis in Islam; The Muslims Struggle with Revelation and Reason; Shiite Tafsir 6. The Umma, Allah’s Commonwealth 127 The Creation of the Umma; A Successor to the Prophet; Ten- sions in the Community; Ali ibn Abi Talib (601–661); A Disputed Succession; The Umayyads (661–750); The Shiite Imamate; Sunnis and Shiites; The Hidden Imam; Political Ismailism: The Fatimids; The Sultanate; The Ottomans and a Universal Caliphate; The End of the Caliphate; Iran as a Shiite State; The Shiite Ulama and the State; The Islamic Re- public of Iran 7. God’s Way: A Life and a Law for Muslims 156 Muhammad as Moral Exemplar; The Goods of This World; The Tradition; God’s Way; Instruction from On High: The CONTENTS t ix Prophetic Reports; From Prophetic Tradition to Law; A Growth Industry; A Skeptical Reaction; Islamic Justice: The Qadi; Islamic Morality and Islamic Jurisprudence; A Society of Law—and Lawyers; Judgments and Opinions; Priests and Rabbis; Jewish Rabbis and Islamic Ulama: A Comparison with a Difference; The Schools; Ijtihad; The Closing of the Gate; Consensus on Moral Matters 8. Defining and Defending the Community of Believers 186 Identity Markers; Building the Umma: Conversion; The Making of a Muslim; An Arab, and Arabic, Islam; “There Is No Coercion in Religion”; Dhimma and Dhimmis; The Mil- let System; Defining the Truth; The Umma Divided: Early Muslim Sects and Sectarianism; Innovation and Heresy; Sunnis and Shiites; The Enemy Without: Jihad; Just Wars and Crusades; The Enemy Within: Ibn Taymiyya; Funda- mentalists As the Faithful Remnant 9. The Worshipful Acts 216 To Be a Muslim; Women in the Ritual Life of Islam; Muslim Prayer; Friday Prayer and the Mosque; The Hajj; To Mount Arafat and Back; Intercalation Prohibited; The Enshrine- ment of Jerusalem; The Distant Shrine; The Christian As- sault on Jerusalem; Muslim Jerusalem in the Middle Ages; The Pious Visit al-Quds; Muslim Devotions; The Friends of God; The Passion and the Death of Husayn; Islam and the Graven Image; The Word as Decoration 10. This World and the Next 245 The Beginnings of Muslim Asceticism; The Sufi Way; The Path to God; Salvation; The End and What Follows; End Time Scenarios; The Muslim Dead; The Cosmology of the Other World; A Heavenly Journey; The Quranic Eschaton; Intercession in Islam; The Vision of God and Other Rewards x t CONTENTS of Paradise; Are the Martyrs in Paradise? A Savior Returns; Shiite Messianism; The Mahdi Reflections after a Breakfast 273 Index 277 Introduction THE POINT of this book is simple and rather direct: to provide a reader whose cultural and religious forma- tion has been Jewish or Christian with a way of ap- proaching the body of belief and practice called Islam. In The Monotheists I place Islam as an equal at the side of Judaism and Christianity and attempt, in consider- able detail, to contextualize each with the others in the hope of illuminating all three. Here, the primary focus is Islam, and the other two monotheistic systems are cited only to the extent that they cast light on the faith and practices of the Muslims, the least known and cer- tainly least understood of the three monotheistic faiths. My objective is not to reduce Islam to Judaism or Christianity (or some combination of them) in order to make it intelligible to non-Muslims, but to enter Islam through the same door Muhammad did. After he had had his first experience of the supernatural, he went, puzzled and frightened, to a relative of his wife, who had “read the Scriptures and learned from those that follow the Torah and the Gospel.” You have experi- enced, the man explained to him, what Moses had be- fore you. And, Muhammad himself would later add, Abraham and Jesus as well. The Quran, the book of revelations given to Mu- hammad by God, makes no attempt to disguise the af- filiation of its contents with what was found in the sacred books of the Jews and Christians. Indeed, Muhammad was instructed by God to refer those who xii t INTRODUCTION doubted the revelations in the Quran to the Jews and the Chris- tians, who would confirm that what was in the “clear Arabic Quran” was likewise the Word of God. In the Muslims’ own view, the Quran is, quite simply, the same God saying the same things to his often heedless creation. That is the theological basis of the approach here. There are equally convincing historical grounds for going down this way. Christianity is clearly an “offshoot” of Judaism. The image is Paul’s, an olive tree branch that Christians claim has replaced the trunk, but a branch nonetheless. Branch and trunk, stem and off- shoot, parent and offspring, the two have grown up and out to- gether, each dissembling, as suited its purposes, the family resem- blance. No such easy image occurs with Islam. It is neither a branch nor a child of either Judaism or Christianity, though some Jews and many Christians used to think so. Rather, it is their suc- cessor, according to the Muslims. A child not of Moses or Jesus but of Abraham, and of God. We will leave the quarrel over rank orders to the respective com- munities. What is incontestable is that Islam, almost from its in- ception, was a party in the great religious competition that took place for many centuries among the monotheists around the Medi- terranean, eastward into Asia and southward into Africa. It was indeed a confrontation as much as a competition, often hostile in intent and act, but it was also the great growth period for the three communities, an extraordinarily rich era of interaction when the practices, institutions, and religious ideals of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam grew into what would long be their standard form, in many cases into our own lifetime. Jews, Christians, and Muslims not only worshiped the same God; they also shared many, though by no means identical, ideals and aspirations, operated often in the same social and economic environment, and at certain times and in certain places lived side by side within the same culture, indis- tinguishable in language, costume, and manners. Little of that reality is apparent today. Judaism and Christianity have evolved in the public consciousness into “Western” religions, while Islam remains at best a “Middle Eastern” or at worst an “oriental” religion, and in any event an exotic one. But it did not INTRODUCTION t xiii always appear so, least of all to the millions of Sephardic Jews and Eastern Christians who lived out their lives in Muslim lands, spoke Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and were largely indistinguishable from their Muslim compatriots.
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