Video Transcript: Lecture 2 Islam
Now we continue our brief introduction into the religion of Islam. And when we last left off, we had talked about the official writings, the scriptures, of course, the Quran and the Hadith, the traditions, the traditions, about what Mohammed did or said, which become also authoritative for the interpretation of Muslim life. So on. This is, these are the most important of all the writings. There are six books of Hadith. And we find that there grew up a number of ways of viewing them. The Kharijites were separatists or purist and they held that was strictly held to strictly Quranic teaching. And there are several controversies that arose in doctrine, and one of them was how do we tell who's a true Muslim? Really difficult. Can't look into the heart of someone else, but they want signs and ways of telling that someone was a genuine believer or not. Murji'ites were the people who said only God can tell us is a true Muslim. Sounds right? Anyway, the other issues have to do would have to decide questions that are not answered in the Quran. And there's grew up a way a procedure for for dealing with such questions. And here is one of the Hadith says about this. When being appointed governor of Yemen, Muhtar Milan was asked by the Holy Prophet as to the rule by which he would abide? And he replied by the law of the Quran, but if you do not find any direction in the Quran, asked the Prophet, then I'll act according to the Sunnah of the Prophet, the traditions of his behavior and sayings. was the that was his reply. But if you don't find any direction in the Sunnah, he was asked again, then I'll exercise my judgment and act on that came the reply, and that is the procedure that prevails among the majority of Muslims. The behavior of practice of Mohammed comes after the Quran and and then there's a consensus of opinion. And finally, there's an analogy from the principles of the Quran applied by right use of reason. And this is what characterizes the Sunni branch of Islam, and that is the majority party we'll come to the Shiites later. But this is the majority This is what Sunni refers to. It refers to the people who accept these procedures in order and it leads to the development of Sharia. This is the development of the code of laws. Sharia means the way that's a code of laws for behavior for leading a genuinely Muslim life. And there are several schools of thought that arise about interpreting the Quran and the Hadith in the Sharia. Hanafite, I'll put these on the board for you so you can copy them down. The Hanafite is the most allows the most liberal use of reason in interpreting these things, is not bound by the strict literal sense of what it's stated there. The Malikite is a branch of interpreting a lot leans heavily on tradition, consensus. Let's see how people generally are taking our understanding this rule, or this passage of the Quran, this part of the Sharia, and so on, and then the Shafiit, let's see if I've got that, yes. And this group gives equal weight to the Hadith, the traditions, sometimes even more weight to the traditions, then even the Quran. And finally, there's the, the Hanabilite and this is the strictest emphasizing the, the, the literal meaning of the Quran. And it's the founder of this school of thought was, in fact, however arrested for denying that the Quran was eternal.
And that's another issue that came up among them is the Quran created or not. And it was an issue that went back and forth for a while. And finally, it was decided, say that the Quran was not created. The Quran has existed eternally in the mind of God as ideas in his mind now. There are at least three senses in which something can be said to be created. The first is to mean that it has a beginning in time, there was a time when it didn't exist. And then it was created and began to exist. And that's clearly the one they're talking about. And so they want to say the Quran is uncreated. It didn't have a beginning in time, it always existed in the mind of God. But you could also distinguish two other senses. This is created one, created two would mean is distinct. From God, creatures created things are distinct. They're not God. There a distinct reality that's part of this, the general schema that we started with right with the divine, and the non divine world brought into being out of nothing. And then there's the third sense and this is the most fundamental that something depends on God. So if something depends on God, it is, in that sense created by God, it depends on his will, that it exist. And so it seems to me that they're speaking of the Quran, you could you could argue it's uncreated in sense one but created in sense three. And you could, you might argue over its distinctness, but it's certainly a distinct thing. So the uncreated one, created two created three. And that's not what happened in this controversy, the distinctions were not drawn. And the conclusion was finally reached that the Orthodox position is that the Quran is uncreated. And so, the founder of this Hanibilite movement, refused to deny the eternality of the Quran. And at that point, he was arrested. That was when things were swinging in the way of saying it is created. Later it came back and it exonerated him, I mean, the ultimate outcome of that controversy is the Mutazilite said that the Quran was created and took a hard line on predestination and the literal meaning of the Quran became champions of orthodoxy held The Quran is uncreated. And it's that its influence still lingers in the among Shiites. I said that we would not be treating these religions as a story of their history, which is why we have such an abbreviated introductions to them. But I didn't go into the history of Christianity and all the, the, the historic events in the denominations that have developed and so on. And I'm not I'm not trying to do history here either sticking with doctrine, with how does what's divine and how do people come to stand in proper relation to the divine. And that's why we're now going through these doctrinal controversies. There are some very distinguished scholars produced, that came out of Islam, and now have Avicenna, Averroes. You'll read about them in your reading. And I'd like to spend some time a bit of time with Al Gazali. A favorite author of mine. And I've read something that he wrote, Gazali appeared on the scene. When when there was a great controversy over the Sufi movement, this is a movement of mystics, within Islam, seeking unity with God. And some of it went to pretty became pretty extreme and copied really Buddhism as though they wanted to be absorbed into God or something like
that. And that was rightfully, I think, regarded by the Orthodox Muslims as a heresy as a false teaching. And so they, they became suspicious of all Sufism Gazali traveled all through the Muslim world and tried to contact make contact and understand all of the different viewpoints and then route his his great work, which was, he titled The Revival of the Religious Sciences. Here's what he says about his own sojourn. Ever since I was 20. And I'm now over 50. I never cease to investigate every dogma and belief. No Batinite that I come across without desiring to investigate his esotericism. No Zahirite without wishing to acquire the gist of his literalism, no philosopher without wanting to learn the essence of his philosophy. No theologian, without striving to ascertain the object of his dialectics and theology, no Sufi without coveting to probe the secret of his Sufism, Sufism, no ascetic, without trying to delve into the origin of his asceticism, no atheist, without groping for the causes of his bold atheism, as such was the unquenchable thirst of my soul for research and investigation, from the early days of my youth, and instinct and temperament implanted in me by God, through no choice of my own. And in this work, the Revival of the Religious Sciences, how Gazali defends Sufism, not the extreme version, where people say they're absorbed into God, but to experience a oneness with God. And in fact, Gazali goes on to defend the position, that the true belief rests, true Muslim belief rests on religious experience experiencing God through reading the Quran and prior through Muslim practice, or maybe through being a mystic. And Sufism in its moderate form is to be accepted that moderate form meaning that the worshiper doesn't become part of God doesn't say, there's really only God. There's creation too and even, but even as a creature, I may have a close union experience a close union with God. The core of the religion, he holds can be even practiced by a non Muslim. It's simply to repent of one's sins, purge the heart of all but God by exercises of religion and attain a virtuous character. And that becomes then the, the core of Islam and it's a marvelous thing, see this, this work and it came to prevail among the theological as theological Orthodoxy in Islam. It's a remarkable achievement. Now, what I haven't Oh, let me put place Al-Gazali in time for you let me make sure I get the spelling right here. Yeah. He died in 1111 That should be easy to remember. Now, what we haven't said anything about yet is the other major branch of Islam called the Shia branch or the Shiites. And so that's a bit of a separate story. So I've kept it off here till the end, and given to give it separate treatment, The Shiite branch of Islam dates from and is caused is brought about by the question of who will succeed Muhammad upon his death. And the first couple of successors by the way, the successor is called a Caliph, successor to head up the religion and and of course in the early days that made him commander of the armies as well. So after Mohammed died, his successor was chosen and he dies then another successor was chosen. But when the third successor was about to be named, there is a controversy over whom it should be. And there was one party that
backed a man named Ali who has one of Muhammad sons in law and whose whose sons were the only male heirs, direct descendants of Muhammad and there was a contender who wanted the Caliphate, to be the next Caliph. And
there had lined up opposing armies and to the the other contender proposed to Ali that they negotiate. So they held off the battle and a great number of Ali's army left. They went AWOL, because they were disgusted with him for not pursuing that his rightful claim they thought and in the ensuing confusion, somebody assassinated this man. And the Shiites never got it will not get over that. That's the he was the rightful successor. That's the way the succession should have gone of the leadership for Islam. And the fact that it did not is still remembered every every year they have a celebration or remembrance of Ali's assassination includes a march through the streets whipping themselves, so that blood comes down their backs and so it's a reminder of his that he was wrongfully killed and deprived of the caliphate. And the another term you need to know is Imam which simply means leader. And he was to be Imam and Caliph, the local clergyman in charge of a mosque is also today called an Imam, and is regarded as the interpreter of Islam to that congregation. So the the Shiite party splits from the Sunni party. It says they have a great emphasis on the last day and the judgment and which time an Imam called al-Mahdi is to is to appear just before the last judgment and gather his own people together. And to, they also took a position different from the Sunnis about freewill or the Sunni party generally emphasizes predestination and everything being foreordained by God by Allah. The Sunnis affirm human freewill. And they take the opposite position on the Quran, they take it to the that is created by God now. Again, they may be meaning created in the sense that in the third sense that it depends on God, I don't know. I'd have to, I'd have to ask a Shiite and a Sunni about this sort of thing. But I think the three senses allow for it to be created in one sense and not in another. Created in the sense of depending on God, and uncreated in the sense maybe that God always had it in mind, if you want to put it that way. That's the way that the Sunni doctrine is phrased. These different sects, interpretations of the law and so on, still exist today, the two main branches of Islam are Shiite, Sunni. And the Sunni is the majority. Shiites the minority party, and have tried to give you the overview of their their relative positions, what they take on the doctrinal issues. There's a lot more to read about all of this, of course, there's great there's detail and there are people involved and that I haven't named they're in your reading. Again, I remind you, there stuff in your reading, I'm not covering that I'm covering stuff that's not your reading, you put them together, so as to get the whole picture that enables you to write the final exam. So this finishes our brief introduction, very brief introduction to the the three theistic religions. Of course, there are more religions in the world than these. But these are the five big ones. So far as numbers of believers are concerned, or influence, influential thought, influential in one another. The
number of practicing Jews in the world is not anywhere near the number of Muslims or Christians, and is less than the number of Buddhists or Hindus, but still, that the Jewish thought is so important, and so consequential for the others, not just for itself, but for the others that it deserves to be included in the five. And of course, for no less reason than the fact that Christianity claims to be the right interpretation of Judaism. I mean, the New Testament even speaks of, of Gentiles now being grafted into the covenant of Israel through the work of Jesus Christ. And that's an understanding that that comes out in the apostle Paul, the book of Romans, and so on. The the Christian church doesn't replace Israel, it's becomes part of Israel. It's a transformed idea of what it is to be a Jew that makes a Christian an honorary Jew. The Muslims recognize that I mentioned this once before. They recognize the commonality that we have, where the Jews, Christians and Muslims have, as in being people of the book. I like that expression. I think that people hold divinity, beliefs, whatever they regard as divine, because it looks self evidently right to them. There, these intuitions of self evidency can't all be right because they yield contrary beliefs. But for the one who has the experience, it's enough to justify the belief. And that's where we're going to pick up next time we meet we're going to evaluate these schemas, the relation of the pantheist relation of the Divine to the non divine, the theist relation of the Divine to the non divine, and then the differences among the theist the three theistic religions. But people hold these as I started to say, because they're, they're self evident to them but self evidency is not infallible. And we know that because, contrary conclusions appear self evident to different people contrary beliefs, I should say? Not conclusions. What I wanted to say is that these beliefs are not the conclusions of long arguments, logical proofs that they're, that this world is Maya, and probably not Maya is the only reality or logical proof that God exists and so on. That's not the way to go at it. And for the reason that, and from the pantheist perspective, logic is itself part of the world of Maya, it's part of the illusion, it doesn't get at the heart of reality, for the Hindu logic works for the world of Maya, but not when you're reasoning about the Brahman Atman, the divine, and for the Buddhist logic doesn't even work for this reality. It's, It's so chaotic. And that's what shows it to be unreal. For the theist, God has created everything visible or invisible, including the laws of logic. So we have a big mistake to try to subject God to those laws, and construct a proof of his existence that demotes him to being one more creature subject to those laws, rather than the Creator of those laws. So with this little anticipation of what's to come, we'll end our survey of these religions. And next time we'll talk about how to view these, these two different schemas. And we'll be make critiquing them and pointing out the problems raised by each. And drawing conclusions about whether those problems can in terms of that tradition be solved, be resolved. And it will not come as a surprise to you that I think that the difficulties with the pantheist schema of the pantheist traditions can't be
resolved, and that the difficulties with Judaism and Islam, are that they reject the idea of incarnation increaturation, which is the only way we could know anything about God, and they make use of that knowledge while denying the increaturation or incarnation, and I'm going to point out how that all shakes out, when we meet again next time