14.11.98 03:03

 In Mohammed's time (circa 570-632), nomadic Bedouins inhabited the Arabian Peninsula engaged in herding and Brigandage, and by city-dwelling Arabs engaged in trade. The religion of the Arabs was polytheistic and idolatrous. Nonetheless, an old tradition of monotheism, or at least a belief in a supreme deity, existed. Jewish and Christian communities probably contributed to a growing receptivity to monotheistic doctrines, although neither Judaism nor Christianity proved attractive to the Arabs. A number of monotheistic preachers preceded Muhammad but had little success.

Muhammad began his ministry at the age of 40, when, he claimed, the archangel Gabriel appeared to him in a vision. Muhammad confided to his family and close friends the substance of this and succeeding visions. After four years he had converted some 40 persons to his views, and he then began to preach openly in his native city of Mecca. Ridiculed by the Meccans, he went in 622 to Medina. It is from this event, the Hegira that the Islamic calendar is dated. At Medina, Muhammad soon held both temporal and spiritual authority, having been recognized as a lawgiver and prophet. Arab and Jewish opposition to him in Medina was crushed, and war was undertaken against Mecca. Increasingly, Arab tribes declared their allegiance to him, and Mecca surrendered in 630. At his death in 632 Muhammad was the leader of an Arab state growing rapidly in power. Mohammed's central teachings were the goodness, omnipotence, and unity of God and the need for generosity and justice in human relations. Important elements from Judaism and Christianity were incorporated into the emergent religion, but it was rooted in the pre-Islamic Arabic tradition; such central institutions as the pilgrimage and the Kaaba shrine were absorbed, in modified form, from Arabic paganism. Muhammad, in reforming the pre-Islamic Arabic tradition, also confirmed it.

During the first centuries of Islam (7th-10th century), its law and theology, the basic orthodox Islamic disciplines, were developed. Theology is next in importance to law in Islam, although it is not as essential as Christian theology has been to Christianity. Theological speculation began soon after Muhammad's death. The first major dispute was provoked by the assassination of the third caliph, Uthman Ibn Afhan, and subsequent political struggles. The question was whether a Muslim remains a Muslim after committing grave sins. A fanatical group called the Kharijites maintained that the commission of serious sins, without due repentance, excludes even an observant Muslim (who continues to subscribe to the articles of faith) from the Islamic community. Good works, therefore, and not just faith, are essential to Islam. The Kharijites came to regard almost all Muslim political authorities as impious, and after numerous rebellions, they were finally suppressed. A more moderate faction of Kharijites, called ibadis, survived, however, and still exists in North and East Africa, Syria, and Oman.

The translation of Greek philosophical works into Arabic in the 8th and 9^th centuries resulted in the emergence of the first major Islamic theological school, called the Mutazilites, who stressed reason and rigorous logic. The question of the importance of good works persisted, and the Mutazilites maintained that a person who committed a grave sin without repenting was neither a Muslim nor a non-Muslim but occupied a middle ground. Their fundamental emphasis, however, was on the absolute unity and justice of God. They declared God to be pure Essence without attributes, because attributes would imply multiplicity. Divine justice requires human free will, because if the individual is not free to choose between good and evil, reward and punishment become absurd. God, because he is perfectly just, cannot withhold reward from the good or punishment from the evil. As rationalists, the Mutazilites maintained that human reason is competent to distinguish between good and evil, although it may be supplemented by revelation. The theology of the Mutazilites was established as a state creed by the caliph al-Mamun, but by the 10th century a reaction had set in, led by the philosopher al-Ashari and his followers. They denied the freedom of the human will, regarding the concept as incompatible with God's absolute power and will. They also denied that natural human reason can lead to a knowledge of good and evil. Moral truths are established by God and can be known only through revelation. The views of al-Ashari and his school gradually became dominant in Sunnite, or orthodox, Islam, and they still prevail among most conservative Muslims. The tendency of the Sunnites, however, has been to tolerate and accommodate minor differences of opinion and to emphasize the consensus of the community in matters of doctrine.

The Mutazilites were probably the first Muslims to borrow Greek philosophical methods in expounding their views. Some of their opponents used the same methods, and the debate initiated the Islamic philosophical movement, which relied heavily on the Arabic translation and study of Greek philosophical and scientific works, encouraged by the caliph al-Mamun. The first important Islamic philosopher was the 9th-century Arab al-Kindi, who tried to bring the concepts of Greek philosophy into line with the revealed truths of Islam, which he still considered superior to philosophical reasoning. As were subsequent Islamic philosophers of this period, he was primarily influenced by the works of Aristotle and by Neoplatonism, which he synthesized into a single philosophical system. In the 10th century, the Turk al-Farabi was the first Islamic philosopher to subordinate revelation and religious law to philosophy. Al-Farabi argued that philosophical truth is the same throughout the world and that the many different existing religions are symbolic expressions of an ideal universal religion.

In the 11th century, the Persian Islamic philosopher and physician Avicenna achieved the most systematic integration of Greek rationalism and Islamic thought, but it was at the expense of several orthodox articles of faith, such as the belief in personal immortality and in the creation of the world. He also contended that religion is merely philosophy in a metaphorical form that makes it palatable to the masses, who are unable to grasp philosophical truths in rational formulations. These views led to attacks on Avicenna and on philosophy in general by more orthodox Islamic thinkers, notably the theologian al-Ghazali, whose book Destruction of the Philosophers had much to do with the eventual decline of rationalist philosophical speculation in the Islamic community. Averroës, the 12th-century Spanish-Arab philosopher and physician, defended Aristotelian and Neoplatonic views against al-Ghazali and became the most significant Islamic philosopher in Western intellectual history through his influence on the Scholastics.

The mystical movement called Sufism originated in the 8th century, when small circles of pious Muslims, reacting against the growing worldliness of the Islamic community, began to emphasize the inner life of the spirit and moral purification. During the 9th century Sufism developed into a mystical doctrine, with direct communion or even ecstatic union with God as its ideal.

This aspiration to mystical union with God violated the orthodox Islamic commitment to monotheism, and in 922 al-Hallaj, who was accused of having asserted his identity with God, was executed in Baghdad. Prominent Sufis subsequently attempted to achieve a synthesis between moderate Sufism and orthodoxy, and in the 11th century al-Ghazali largely succeeded in bringing Sufism within the orthodox framework. In the 12th century Sufism ceased to be the pursuit of an educated elite and developed into a complex popular movement. The Sufi emphasis on intuitive knowledge and the love of God increased the appeal of Islam to the masses and largely made possible its extension beyond the Middle East into Africa and East Asia. Sufi brotherhoods multiplied rapidly from the Atlantic to Indonesia; some spanned the entire Islamic world; others were regional or local. The tremendous success of these fraternities was due primarily to the abilities and humanitarianism of their founders and leaders, who not only ministered to the spiritual needs of their followers but also helped the poor of all faiths and frequently served as intermediaries between the people and the government.

The Shiites are the only surviving major sectarian movement in Islam. They emerged out of a dispute over political succession to Muhammad, the Shiites claiming that rule over the community is a divine right of the Prophet's descendants through his daughter Fatima and her husband Ali. The Shiites believe in a series of 12 infallible leaders beginning with Iman Ali and are thus also known as the "Twelvers." The 12th and last imam disappeared in 880, and Shiites await his return, at which time the world will be filled with justice. Until that time even the best ruler is only half-legitimate. The Shiites, in contrast to the orthodox Sunnites, emphasize esoteric knowledge rather than the consensus of the community.

Several small sects have developed out of Shia Islam, the most important of which is the Ismailis. The theological ideas of the Ismailis are more radical than those of the Shiites and are largely derived from Gnosticism and Neoplatonism. Ismailis are found mainly in India and Pakistan; others have recently emigrated from East Africa to Canada. An offshoot of Ismailism is the Druze sect, which arose after the mysterious disappearance in Cairo of the Ismaili Fatimid caliph al-Hakim. Many Druze believe al-Hakim to have been an incarnation of God.