under|progress

Q: What is 'revisionist Islam'? A: The Da Vinci Code for Muslims

Eteraz links to an article from a few years back, published in the New York Times, which looks at 'radical' new theories on the emergence of Islam from Arabia. The article concentrates on the theories of Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, as developed in their contrioversial book Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, with a nod towards other work by contemporary German scholars.

Hagarism is perhaps one of the most abused theories around. It used as 'historical proof' that the Qur'an Muslims have with them today, and core tenants of their faith, are fabrications with no historical validity. Whatsoever.

Following on from their teacher, John Wansbrough, Crone and Cook did not accept the Muslim views of their own history, and so rather than following the path of someone like Montogemery Watt and examine Muslim historical sources for internal consistency, they dumped the whole history. Indeed, they declared in their book that Hagarism was a book 'written by infidels for infidels'. The whole point of Crone's and Cook's work was to reject the traditional Muslim accounts of the emergence of Islam and reconsruct the history using other, non-Muslim, sources. From this they drew the conclusion that, while a man called Muhammad might have existed, the Qur'an and other Islamic beliefs came into existence much after his death. In fact, the entire first century of Islam was largely a later fabrication. In other words, if you're not a Muslim who accepts the divine origins of the Qur'an, how do you explain the contents of the text? Where did its stories come from? Hagarism is one attempt to answer these questions, by positing that the Qur'an, being a monotheist text, must have been developed in a monotheist culture, where such teachings were existent and accepted; if the Hijaz was not such a monotheist centre, as is supposedly claimed by the Muslim traditions, then how does one who does not accept the existence of divine intent explain Qur'anic contents? Hagarism, basically, asks us to accept a vast conspiracy theory; a sort of Da Vinci Code for Islam, where the falsity of Jesus' divinity by the Catholic Church is replaced by the falsity of the sirah of the Prophet (upon whom be peace) by early Muslims as they expanded out of Arabia.

I do want to mention that Crone's insistence (as reported by the article) that 'there are only two possibilities' is a stretch, and avoids a third possibility. If we indulge in a little speculation of our own we could say that the Quraysh accepted the existence of Abraham (upon whom be peace), and his religion and even the One God, but had distorted Abraham's (upon whom be peace) teachings and practices. All of this could have occured in the Hijaz, and without the need for huge Jewish and Christian groups (however, the Qur'an mentions them in many verses, so there must have been some Jews and Christians in Makkah and Medina). (Incidentally, this is a view put forward by some Muslim scholars.)

Hagarism is a speculative attempt to find answers. Not, as some would have us believe, The Truth. (For example, read this laughable piece. Attempting to bolster your arguments by adding "PhD" at the end of your name is lame. Especially when your area of expertise is somewhere else.) Crone and Cook have revised their own views in recent years, though perhaps they still hold Islamic traditions' view of itself as unreliable and not wholly accurate (I've read more of Cook's work than I have Crone's in recent years). And Muslims should not forget that the Qur'an itself records peoples' derisive attitude towards the Prophet (upon whom be peace); some would dismiss Revelation as "stories of the ancient" (e.g. Qur'an 8: 31). Hardly new, this business of where the Qur'an came from, then is it?

So Muslims should not be perturbed by people asking such questions and producing these sorts of answers. They can respond in kind and show where the faults in such attempts lie. Or Muslims can just ignore such theories and deprive the one thing that most people who push such ideas need: publicity (angry Muslims are good publicity).

Of course, it doesn't help if hostile or lazy journalism constantly repeats these kinds of stories, exaggerating their importance out of all proportion and not considering the crticisims for and and against such theories. For example, last year I looked at a similar article that appeared in The Economist, which discussed some contemporary German scholarship, which similarly exaggerated the importance of some theories.

Talking tradition

There have been a few blogs discussing 'tradition' lately.

Abu Muhammad offers a four part investigation of our notion of 'tradition', questioning some common held misconceptions by both 'traditionalists' and 'non-traditionalists'. Tradition (1) - Key Dualities investigates the concept of tradition, looking at the espitemlogical, social and hisotrical dualities that are posited when it comes to discussions 'tradition'. Tradition (2) - Conversation Incarnate explains that "[t]radition [...] is not merely a point in history which has exhausted its potential. It is not an event or set of events happened in a confined slot. It is rather a phenomena in history which makes our past alive to interact with our present in order to make our existence meaningful while directing the course of our future. [T]radition may be understood as our perceptual conversation with phenomena of past." Tradition (3) - Converse to Create Knowledge lays down his own views, where he concludes "that tradition is a process to construct forms of knowledge. We need to carryout this critical conversation with awarenesss in order to identify the roots of these forms. This awareness would enable us to manage pseudo-conflicts at higher levels which might not be between traditionalism and rationalism per se but because of giving dominance to one form of knowledge over other." He concludes with Tradition (4) - Conclusion and more; here he outlines a way forward, noting that anyone interested in questions of tradition and modernity should try to distinguish between history as an 'event', and tradition as a continual set of conversations needing 'fresh particpants' (who, I would say, are themselves are 'conditioned' by the present, so must bring something to the discourse). If this conversation stops, the tradition dies (which sort of explains why other madhabs are no longer in existence).

Haroon tries to conceptualise the problem in relation to Traditionalism's and Salafism's views on history: "Part of the problem is that it is not traditionalism that Muslim traditionalists want to defend, per se, but the body of Islamic law that developed out of the formative period of Islam — in this sense, tradition privileges a certain time period not because of its antiquity but because of its closeness to the Divine’s communication with and through humanity. (That's the same thing Salafism does; however, traditionalism wants to privilege a certain mode of understanding dominant for a certain period of time, whereas Salafism is, in essence, the time of the Salaf. The traditionalist imagines a clean break can be made in the absence of such genealogical strictness.)" (Also see the exchanges between Haroon and Eteraz.)

I would also point to Alasdair MacIntyre's views on tradition (I found this link on Google as I don't have the book in front of me) as he set them out in After Virtue: a study in moral theory: "The traditions through which particular practices are transmitted and reshaped never exist in isolation for larger social traditions. What constitutes such traditions? [...] We are apt to be misled here by the ideological uses to which the concept of a tradition has been put by conservative political theorists. Characteristically such theorists have followed Burke in contrasting tradition with reason and the stability of tradition with conflict. Both contrasts obfuscate. For all reasoning takes place within the context of some traditional mode of thought, transcending through criticism and invention the limitations of what had hitherto been reasoned in that tradition; this is as true of modern physics as of medieval logic. Moreover when a tradition is in good order it is always partially constituted by an argument about the goods the pursuit of which gives to that tradition its particular point and purpose [...] So when an institution--a university, say, or a farm, or a hospital--is the bearer of a tradition of practice or practices, its common life will be partly, but in a centrally important way, constituted by a continuous argument as to what a university is and ought to be or what good farming is or what good medicine is. Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict. Indeed when a tradition becomes Burkean, it is always dying or dead." [my emphases]

Talal Asad has reworked some of these ideas for Muslim traditions: "In an important sense, tradition and modernity are not really two mutually exclusive states of a culture or society but different aspects of historicity. Many of the things that are thought of as modern belong to traditions which have their roots in Western history. A changing tradition is often developing rapidly but a tradition nevertheless. When people talk about liberalism as a tradition, they recognize that it is a tradition in which there are possibilities of argument, reformulation, and encounter with other traditions, that there is a possibility of addressing contemporary problems through the liberal tradition. So one thinks of liberalism as a tradition central to modernity. How is it that one has something that is a tradition but that is also central to modernity? Clearly, liberalism is not a mixture of the traditional and the modern. It is a tradition that defines one central aspect of Western modernity. It is no less modern by virtue of being a tradition than anything else is modern. It has its critics, both within the West and outside, but it is perhaps the dominant tradition of political and moral thought and practice [...] In this sense, I think, we can regard the contemporary Islamic revival as consisting of attempts at articulating Islamic traditions that are adequate to the modern condition as experienced in the Muslim world, but also as attempts at formulating encounters with Western as well as Islamic history. This doesn't mean that they succeed. But at least they try in different ways." [my emphases] (That interview might also answer my question on Muslim relationship towards "European ideas", as further down he questions the idea that Modern Science, Technloloy, Art, Politics and Philosophy must all 'hang together'.)

Eteraz points to Ambivablog, who looks at 'a way beyond religion' (from Ambivablog, I found a detailed response to her post by a Catholic blogger, Ales Rarus). Eteraz also has a list of faults with 'traditionalism', in response to (yet another) story of abuse perpetrated against foreigners, in this case a Pakistani girl, in Saudi Arabia. This has generated controversy and conversation (the two usually go hand-in-hand) with Yursil of Mind, Body, Soul, who has responded with an equally stinging rebuke, although unfairly calling Eteraz 'an Irshad Manji' (Eteraz might be controversial (or unconventional), but I would defend him against charges that he is just emulating Manji et al.). See also Eteraz's exchange in an open letter to Yursil and some follow up comments, and also Yursil's counter comments.

(It should also be noted that Hanabli legal texts do form the basis of Saudi laws; whether their applied 'correctly' is a different question... or is it?)

Those who would call themselves Modernists posit that Tradition is unchanging and static (cf. "Islam has rejected modernity"). Some Traditionalists would also argue it is untouchd by 'history'or 'time'. These are both false. Traditions always undergo change: they can be subsumed by those from the outside; or they can be invigorated with the formation of new traditions from within; or they can undergo syntheses with other traditions. All these changes occur if a tradition encounters problems not yet faced or fail to produce adequate solutions. In other words traditions are discursive (Muslim traditions no less so than others). Dissent, debate, dialogue, opinion-making, re-formulation, adaptation, as well as consensus-making, uniformity and agreement are all part of a "tradition". (The question for Muslims appears to be: 'who is allowed to engage in this?') But then Modernism is also a tradition, with its own tenants that have to be defended and explained. Today many are demanding that Modernism be reinvigorated, strengthened, and its core principles and beliefs are furthered, after decades of sustained criticism (by 'postmodernists' and 'arch-conservatives'); even through the use of arms. (Modernism, warfare and the threat of violence are inextricably linked, despite the claims of many of its adherents that it uses only reason to further its aims -- someone who says otherwise is blind to the 20th-century, the Modern Century.)

Tradition

Abu Muhammad left this comment on Svend White's blog, which I thought was worth reproducing here:

Tradition is our perpetual converstation with history while we are flowing. Being aware of their absolute contemporaneousness, those who affirm to undertake this conversation are traditionalists. Others who view tradition as a specific point in history are pseudo-traditionalists not ready to get out of this misplaced anachronism. Rationalsim is merely an awareness of this construct.

'Will the real al-Qaida please stand up?'

Jason Burke (Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam) reviews a handful of books on al-Qa'ida, bin Laden and 'radical Islam'. Burke concludes:

So what might be the timeline on the demise of radical Islam? Well, if radical Islam is indeed a function of the instability and inherent chaos of the process of development and globalisation of our modern world, a process which is not going to stop soon, then we are in for a protracted struggle. The Pentagon recently talked of "the long war" against terrorism. In that, for once, the planners of America's response to the threat from "al-Qaida", however you define it, were right. How long? As [Mary] Habeck, [Peter L.] Bergen, [Abdel Bari] Atwan and others make clear, Bin Laden and his followers are thinking in terms of centuries.

A look at Muslim contributions to science and technology

Paul Vallely, in today's Independent, looks at Muslim contribution to science and technology and points to 1001 Inventions, an educational website created by the makers of Muslim Heritage, which aims to popularise Muslim roles in the history of science and technology. The 1001 Inventions Touring Exhibition is currently on at the The Museum of Science and Industry Muslim in Manchester until June 4.

I think exhibitions and websites like these are good because they are educational and instructive to people who might otherwise not know about Ibn al-Haitham or al-Khwarizmi; or to those (including Muslims) who believe that being a Muslim necessarily requires the abandoning of critical thinking (although not all scientists and engineers of past Islamic societies were Muslim). However, I hope it doesn't lend itself to the romanticised view of Muslim histories but a recognition that you need to think freely in order to be innovative.

The popular use of hadith material

Here are a couple of links (1, 2) to a lecture by Abd al-Hakim Murad, given sometime last year, to the Oxford Muslim Community Association. He discusses ijtihad, hadith and the approach to Islamic law by Muslims today. One problem he highlights is the current, popular, approach to the hadith material where people open a printed copy of, say, Sahih al-Bukhari, and derive all sorts of conclusions and edicts. Yet, this approach is flawed because people who tend do this are relying on only one of the 'readings' of Sahih al-Bukhari, when in fact there are several to consider.

One point he makes is eye opening (and I've tried to get his exact words from the lecture):

"[I]f you talk to Shaykh Ahmad Ma'bad, who's the greatest muhaddith in Egypt at the moment [and] who's responsible for [the] project of editing the hadith for the first time, he'll say: "Really, classically speaking, none of any of the fatwas that have appeared from the Islamic fiqh academies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in the last 50 or 60 years, can be regarded as binding on Muslims," because in most cases, he says, they actually use printed copies of the hadith rather than the ijazas [license to teach] or the manuscripts."

Islamica on the destruction of the Hijaz

The latest edition of Islamica magazine publishes a series of articles on the sites of religious and cultural importance. One article is by by Irfan Ahmed, "Joint Chairman of the Islamic Heritage and Research Foundation, which was formed to help protect and preserve the holy sites in the Hijaz", on the continuing destruction of the historical buildings in Makkah and Medinah. Some excerpts:

In 1998 the grave of Amina bint Wahb, the Prophet’s mother, was bulldozed in Abwa and gasoline was poured on it. Even though thousands of petitions throughout the Muslim world were sent to Saudi Arabia, nothing stopped this action. One of my late teachers, Sheikh Sayyid Muhammad ibn ‘Alawi al-Maliki, a Meccan who was a great historian on the holy sites and inherited his knowledge from his father and forefathers who were all teachers of the holy Haram, showed me pictures of the grave of Sayyida Amina marked with a pile of stones after the destruction. The House of Khadija was excavated during the Haram extensions, then hurriedly covered over so as to obliterate any trace of it. This was the house where the Prophet received some of his first revelations and it is also where his children Umm Kulthum, Ruqqaya, Zaynab, Fatima, and Qasim were born. Dar al-Arqam, the first school in Islam where the Prophet taught has also been demolished. It was in the area of Shi’b ‘Ali near the Bab ‘Ali door opposite the king’s palace. It is now part of the extension of the Haram.

The authorities plan to demolish the house of Mawlid, where the Prophet was born. About 60 years ago, this house, which used to have a dome over it, was turned into a cattle market. Some people then worked together to transform it into a library, which it is today. It is lined with shelves of books about Mecca, most of them written by Meccans. But the library is under threat again because of the new Jabal ‘Umar project, one of the largest real estate development projects near the Grand Mosque. The birthplace of the Prophet is to make way for a car park and hotels.

[...]

In Medina, of the seven mosques at the site of the Battle of the Trench (Jabal al-Khandaq), where Sura al-Ahzab was revealed, only two remain. The others have been demolished and a Saudi bank’s cashpoint machine has been built in the area. The remaining mosques will be demolished as soon as the new mosque being constructed is ready. One of the mosques slated for destruction is Masjid Fath, the mosque and rock of victory, where the Prophet stood during the battle of the trench praying for victory. On the rock is where he received God’s promises of victory and of the conquest of Mecca.

The last point was made to me by several people I went to Hajj with, most of who last performed a Hajj in the late 80s/early 90s. They all claimed that the houses of the Prophet's (upon whom be peace) closest Companions were marked out, but they have disappeared during the expansion of Masjid-e-Nabawi. I don't know how true this is, but perhaps someone else has some information?

In another article, the magazine claims to have images of the house of Sayyida Khadija, the first wife of the Prophet (upon whom be peace). Unfortunately, the images are not online and are only available in the print edition.

The House of Sayyida Khadija was rediscovered during the Haram extensions in 1989, then hurriedly covered over so as to obliterate any trace. This was the house where the Prophet Muhammad received some of his first revelations and it is also where his children Umm Kulthum, Ruqqaya, Fatima, Zaynab, Qasim and ‘Abdullah were born [...] The House of Sayyida Khadija was located just outside Safa and Marwa and which now falls under the paved area. Above it, the Wahhabi hardliners have built public toilets.

A third article discusses the importance of buildings in relation to the Islamic traditions.

The house in which the Prophet Muhammad was born and where he received the Revelation prior to his emigration to Medina is just one notable example mentioned by the Saudi architectural historian Dr. Sami Angawi. One also has only to read the splendid detailed account of the journeys of Andalusian traveler Ibn Jubayr (d. 614/1217 ) to understand that we display a lack of reverence for our sacred past. Ibn Jubayr and others mention the house of the Prophet. Reading their pages makes one feel connected to the sacred history. It was the custom of both learned and unlettered Muslims before the rise of the Wahhabi movement in the 18 th century to regularly visit these sites for baraka, to contemplate death and the hereafter, and to make supplications on behalf of the deceased. Lamentably, the proponents of such frenetic building activity today cite the need for progress and modernization and more practically, the need to provide the increasing numbers of Hajj pilgrims with adequate facilities.

Time to protest and boycott...?

Jackson on early developements in Islamic law

In an article, which I linked in an earlier post, Dr. Jackson also writes about the early development of Islamic law:

"With the exception of its claim to divine origins, perhaps the most glaring contrast between Islamic law and modern, secular systems is that Islamic law constitutes what the late Orientalist Joseph Schacht referred to as an extreme case of "jurists' law." Islamic law was neither the creation nor the preserve of the early Muslim state. Rather, it developed to a large extent in conscious opposition to the latter. Private Muslims, during the first two centuries or so following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE, succeeded in gaining the community's recognition for their interpretive efforts as constituting the most authentic representations of divine intent." [emphasis my own]

This is a point worth reiterating. Today many Muslim ideologues -- including some religious scholars -- are enamoured with the modern state and its functions, and wish to see an uneven marriage between the state and shari'ah. Worse still, many people from such groups would like to implement a Noddy shari'ah (thanks to Yakoub for that phrase), whose aim is not to recreate the libraries, arts or learning from some distant and romanticised Islamic civilisation, but to stone, behead and liquidate as many people (opponents of their state) as possible. Contrast this with the behaviour of many early scholars who kept at arms length from centres of power; even at the risk of being imprisoned or killed. This way they have been remembered, not as supporters of tyranny, but as defenders of truth against rulers who abused their power.

1924 and all that

Admirable though it is that people write passionately in defence of their beliefs, especially in the face of deceptive politicians who can use the might of state machinery to force their propoganda down the throats of many unsuspecting people, I have to take objection to part of this (two-month old) article by Osama Saeed, a member of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) (Saeed also has his own blog).

Saeed writes

It came as news to many Muslims, and probably non-Muslims too, that one of the things "fundamental to our civilisation" is opposition to any recreation of the Islamic caliphate. That is according to the home secretary, Charles Clarke, speaking last month as an honoured guest of the neocon Heritage Foundation in the US.

It follows hard on the heels of similar comments made by both Tony Blair and George Bush. With such luminaries pushing the policy, there must be significance to the words. The caliphate was wiped from the map, the message seems to be, and they want to keep it wiped.

It is true that deceptive politicians, like Dick Cheney, and just plain stupid ones, like Charles Clarke, will use half-truths, misinformation and other weapons in the arsenal of political rhetoric to push home their message and dupe an unsuspecting electorate (afterall, since when was the definition of the caliphate common knowledge?). And for challenging this Saeed deserves credit and my support. But what is false, and perhaps deceptive itself if not borne of ignorance, is the next parapgraph from Saeed's article:

The institution [i.e. the caliphate] they attack is the idea of a united political leadership of the Muslim world, which was destroyed in 1924 after about 1,350 years.

This is a common belief among various Muslim political groups, which include Hizb al-Tahrir (though we should be careful to distinguish each group), whose sole aim is the restoration of the caliphate (Ar. khilafah). But it is an historical fiction. The whole history is a lot more complex. As the historian Khalid Blankinship writes:

The ‘Abbâsids never ruled in Algeria (except briefly in the extreme east of that country), Morroco, and Spain, so that the unity of the state had decisively ended. This actually first happened when the rebelling Berbers of Morocco set up their own khalîfah in 122/740, and it never happened after that year that all the Muslims ever were under one single khalîfah again.

So, the "united political leadership", whose loss Saeed bemoans so much, was lost centuries before 1924! Well over a thousand years before 1924, in fact! And, as Khalid Blankinship points out, there were numerous claimants to the title of khalifah (caliph). From the Ummayads in Spain to the Fatimids in Egypt, and the many petty principalities in between, all declared themselves as the legitimate rulers of Islam. As far west as Nigeria, where Ottoman power was never even smelt, Usman dan Fodio and his sons declared the Sokoto Caliphate. The last Abbasid caliph, himself, was nothing more than a figure head to give the Mamlukes prestige they needed; indeed, this had been the fate of the Abbasid caliphate for many years, first under the Buyids then under the Seljuks. Eventually the Abbasid caliphate was crushed by the invading Mongols. More importantly, there are questions surrounding the legitimacy of the Ottoman claims to being the caliphs and their equally murky -- and, from a Turkish nationalist's point of view, traitorous -- dealings with the British. [1] Further, the official title of caliphate itself had only been discovered by the Ottomans as late as 1774, after their defeat to the Russians at Kuchuk Kainariji.

So my question would be: just which caliphate does Saeed lament the loss of?

The sad fact is that, in my experiences, many Muslims accept this "1924" and One Continuous Caliphate fiction unthinkingly. This shows how ill-thought ideologies, which rely solely on emotionally-charged rhetoric, have penetrated even the critical minds, the bright and the articulate amongst Muslims today. More often that not, the array of political groups who constantly cry over the loss of the Ottoman caliphate, merely wish to recreate Ottoman statism. For why else has the year 1924 reached such a level that it is seen as the point when the last Muslim polity, perhaps Islam itself in the eyes of some, was "destroyed"?

One could also note that rather than restoring the caliphate, there is a more viable option: the monarch of Morocco. Khalid Blankinship again:

The continuity of the use of such titles in the Muslim West also extends down to the present in Morocco, where Muhammad VI is still to this day amîr al-mu’minîn, just like ‘Umar ibn al-Khattâb [the second of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs], and that is taken with deadly seriousness in Morocco. Thus, the Moroccans, having their own continuous succession of the title, do not at all now and never before did recognize the Ottoman Turkish sultâns’s claim to the title of khalîfah. Indeed, since the sultâns of Morocco claimed descent from the Prophet (SAAS) and were thus Qurashîs, while the Ottomans were not, it might be held against the Ottomans rather that they did not recognize the Moroccan ruler as khalîfah and submit to him.

But I don't suppose we will see Saeed, and other fans of the Never Ending Caliphate, booking one way tickets to Marrakesh anytime soon.

Notes
[1] Khalid Blankinship mentions questions surrouding the legitimacy of the Ottomans in his article. So does this article by Hamza Alavi entitled "The Ironies of History: Contradictions of The Khilafat Movement". Alavi is interested in the Indian Khilafat movement of the 1920s, but I would recommend the references he cites especially Minault, G. The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilisation in India, 1982. Alavi's article also discusses in some detail the intrigues involving the latter Ottoman sultans and the British and the response of Turkish republicans.

Islam and Hegel

From The Philosopher, an electronic reincarnation of the Journal of The Philosophical Society of England which was founded in the 1910s.

"[W]hat did Hegel have to say about Islam? In the section on the German World in chapter II (quaintly entitled Mahometanism) Hegel compares the historic trajectory of the west and Islam:

While the West began to shelter itself in the political edifice of chance entanglement and particularity [Hegel had been thinking of his own middle-European feudal legacy of the Holy Roman Empire before it was blown away by the Napoleonic whirlwind] the very opposite direction necessarily made its appearance in the world, to produce the balance of the totality of spiritual manifestation.    

This took place in the Revolution of the East, which destroyed all particularity and dependence, and perfectly cleared up and purified the soul and disposition; making the abstract One (God) the absolute object of attention and devotion, and to the same extent pure subjective consciousness - the Knowledge of this One alone the only aim of reality: making the Unconditioned (das Verhaltnisslose) the condition (Verhaltniss) of existence.     

"In stating this Hegel was recognising Islamic monotheism as the purest and most universalist type which the Christian Trinity compromised and the Judaic Yahweh had particularised as a tribal God.

"Hegel compares this revolution in the Islamic East to the oriental principal even further east where in Buddhism the Highest Being is only negative (Nirvana) that with it the positive imparts an abandonment to nature (a nature more profuse in South East Asia than in the empty deserts of the Middle East where the monotheistic Absolute was conceived), an enslavement of Spirit to the world of realities. 'Only among the Jews have we observed the principal of Pure Unity elevated to thought - in the adoration paid to the One, as an object of thought', but Jehovah was only the God of one people - the God of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacobin. An exclusive covenant (a covenant that is incidentally at the root of the present Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine).

"But this speciality of relation was done away with in Mahometanism. In this spiritual universality, in this unlimited and indefinite purity and simplicity of conception, human personality has no other aim than the realisation of this universality and simplicity. Allah has not the affirmative, limited aim of the Judaic God. The worship of the One is the final aim of Mahometanism, and objectivity has this worship for the sole occupation of its activity - with the design to subjugate secular existence to the One. This One has the quality of Spirit but is deprived of its concrete predicate. Islam is not monastic immersion to the Absolute. Subjectivity here is living and unlimited - to promote the pure adoration of the One.

"The object of Moslem worship is pure intellectual; no image, no representation of Allah is tolerated. Mahomet is a prophet but still a man. The leading features of Islam involve this - that in actual existence nothing can become fixed, but everything is destined to expand itself in activity and life in the boundless amplitude of the world, so that the worship of the One remains the only bond by which the whole is capable of uniting. In this expansion, this active energy, all limits, all national and caste distinctions vanish; no particular race, political claim of birth or possession is regarded - only man as a believer. To adore the One, to believe in Him, to fast - to remove the sense of speciality and consequent separation from the Infinite arising from corporeal limitation - to give alms - that is to get rid of particular possessions, this is the essence of Islam; but the highest merit is to die for the Faith.

"Their object is to establish an abstract worship - their enthusiasm was Fanaticism, enthusiasm for something abstract. A desolating destructive relation to the concrete, but most of Islam was at the same time capable of the greatest elevation - an elevation free from petty interest, united with all the instance that appertain to magnanimity and valour."