Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

DIVINE AND HUMAN LAWS: CRISIS AND CONFRONTATION TODAY

Already in the middle of the nineteenth century in many Islamic countries, the rule of theShari‘ah as a legal system was either limited to personal laws governing the family, inheritance, and so on or replaced by Napoleonic codes or English common law and European-style courts. By the time most Islamic countries gained their independence after World War II, the fullShari‘ah was applied only in a few lands such as Saudi Arabia, the Yemen, and Afghanistan.

These countries may have had various political and economic problems, but at least they did not experience the tension between two different legal systems and philosophies that other Islamic countries did. Unfortunately, the application of theShari‘ah did not prevent Yemen and Afghanistan from being invaded by foreign forces and having their traditional patterns of life, including their legal aspects, deeply disturbed and in some places shattered.

Despite these tragedies, however, Shari‘ite Law played a central role in preserving the religious character of the life of the people of these countries even under great duress.

Despite all the political turmoil in the Islamic world during the past half century, there has been an attempt in most Islamic countries to return to the Divine Law as contained in theShari‘ah , while incorporating and taking into consideration human laws associated with modern situations in which Muslims find themselves. Moreover, there continues to be extensive discussion on theShari‘ah itself.

In the Sunni world, as already mentioned, many want to open the gate of ijtihad again, and there are those who speak of combining rulings from different classical schools of Law such as the Shafi‘i and the Hanafi. Also, there are now a number of lay lawyers (not formal members of the class of ‘ulama’, the traditional custodians of theShari‘ah ) who believe that they have the right to make juridical decisions(fatwas) and formulate new Shari‘ite rulings. Even in Shi‘ite Iran, where the ijtihad is practiced afresh in every generation, a number of modernized religious thinkers speak of the “dynamicShari‘ah ,” which they contrast with the old static one. In the field of law, just as in the field of politics, which is closely related to it, there is much debate and discussion going on throughout the Islamic world, but there is no doubt that the question of the revival of theShari‘ah after its eclipse during the colonial period is at the center of the concerns of contemporary Islam.

THE DIVINE LAW, ETHICS, AND THE RELIGIOUS ETHOS

TheShari‘ah is not only concrete positive law, but also a set of values and framework for the religious life of Muslims.

The books of jurisprudence(fiqh) contain the specific laws of theShari‘ah , but theShari‘ah itself also includes ethical and spiritual teachings that are, strictly speaking, not of a legal nature, although the legal is never separated from the moral in Islam. On the basis of the Quran andHadith , theShari‘ah teaches Muslims to respect their parents, to be kind to their neighbors, to be charitable, to be always truthful, to keep their word, to be honest in all affairs, and so forth. The whole ethics of Islam is related on the individual and social plane to theShari‘ah , while the inner purification of the soul and the penetration into the inward meaning of theShari‘ah are for the spiritual path, or the Tariqah, which is of necessity always based on the formal practice of the Divine Law.

Today, in many parts of the Islamic world, Divine Law, or theShari‘ah , is no longer fully practiced on the level of law, but the ethics that are contained in its teachings still permeate Islamic society. TheShari‘ah , in fact, determines the religious ethos of Islam on both the personal and the social level and is inseparable from the life of faith. For the vast majority of Muslims, the practice of the injunctions of theShari‘ah is their manner of practicing their surrender to the Will of God and of living a virtuous and righteous life leading to felicity and salvation in the Hereafter. Even those who do not practice theShari‘ah but still consider themselves Muslims draw their ethics, their understanding of right and wrong, and their frame of reference in the chaos of this world from theShari‘ah . And those who aim to reach God in this life and to walk the path of the Tariqah to that Truth, or Haqiqah, which is the source of both the Law and the Way are more aware than anyone else how indispensable the Divine Law is, the law that alone can provide the sacred forms that are the sole gateways in this world of change and becoming to the immutable empyrean of the Formless.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE VISION OF COMMUNITY AND SOCIETY

People were one community and God sent unto them prophets as bearers of good tidings and as warners, and revealed therein the scripture with the truth that it might judge between people concerning that wherein they differed.

Quran 2:213

This community of yours is a single community.

Quran 21:92

THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNITY

One of the key concepts of the Quran and of Islam as a religion is that of community(ummah) . There is no doubt that Islam meant to create a community based on justice, one in which the pursuit of the Divine Law was made possible, not just injunctions for private behavior. In the debate between those who claim the primacy of society and those who emphasize the primal significance of the individual, Islam takes a middle course and believes that this polarization is in fact based on a false dichotomy. There is no society without the individual; nor can the individual survive without society. The social nature of the human being is part of the wisdom of God’s creation, and the Quran asserts, “There is no secret conference of three but He is their fourth, nor of five but He is their sixth, nor of less that that or more but He is with them wheresoever they may be” (58: 7). This truth does not refer only to God’s omniscience, but also to the profound reality of God’s Presence in all human assembly. He is present in human community as He is within the heart or center of the individual.

Yet the role of religion is to save human souls, and on the Day of Judgment, according to Islam, human beings are judged individually and not collectively. The human community is judged in the Quran according to the degree to which it allows its members to live the good life, in the religious sense, based on moral principles. It judges a community to be good to the degree that it reflects the constant presence of the Transcendent Dimension in human life and is based on spiritual and religious ideals. A community as a whole can be judged and punished by God in this world, but a whole community does not enter paradise or hell as a collectivity. Only individual souls do so. Hence our personal responsibility before God remains, in whichever community we happen to live.

Islam recognizes communities according to their religious affiliation. Christians are referred to as the ummah, or community, of Christ and Jews as the ummah of Moses, as Muslims constitute the ummah of the Prophet. Abraham himself is called an ummah “obedient unto God” (16:120), and each community has a set of rites chosen for it by God, “And for every community have We appointed a ritual” (22:34). Originally there was only one ummah: “People were only one community” (10:19), but with the passage of history, different communities came into being and many faded away or were destroyed. The Quran depicts in elaborate terms the rise, decay, and falling away of various communities, which can also be understood as nations in the biblical sense. In fact, “every community has a term, and when its term comes, they cannot put it off an hour nor yet advance [it]” (7:34). And the decay and destruction of communities or nations has happened, according to the Quran, not because of loss of wealth or economic power or even military defeat, but because of moral corruption and straying from the religious norms willed by God for the community in question. The earth belongs to God, and He allows deserving communities or nations to rule over it as long as they deserve to do so. Once they lose their moral authority, they are replaced by God with other communities or nations.

For Islam, community implies above all a human collectivity held together by religious bonds that are themselves the foundation for social, juridical, political, economic, and ethical links between its members. In our period of human history, there is not one, but many communities or nations, which means many religions, as mentioned in Chapter 1, and this is set in the Quran as a condition willed by God, for, “Had God willed, He could have made them one community” (42:8). It is within the context of a world with many communities, all of which Islam sees in religious terms, that the Islamic understanding of itself as an ummah must be situated and understood.

First of all, Islam emphasizes the unity of its own ummah. Although after the first few years of Islamic history various theological and political rifts began to set in and although after the end of the Umayyad caliphate in the East in the eighth century the political unity of Islam was never again realized, the ideal of the unity of the ummah has remained strong throughout Islamic history. In modern times it has manifested itself in various pan-Islamic movements going back to Jamal al-Din al-Afghani in the nineteenth century. The unity of the Islamic community lies, however, primarily in ethical and spiritual realities within the hearts of the true believers, who emphasize the Quranic dictum that “Verily the believers are brothers” (49:9). Yet although this theme is repeated endlessly in sermons in mosques and elsewhere on various religious occasions, in practice some Muslims have made a mockery of it. This sense of unity and brotherhood, which also includes of course sisterhood, has become weakened by many ethnic, sectarian, and personal factors over the ages, especially in modern times.

Besides seeing themselves as an ummah ordered by God to “call to the good,” Muslims also see themselves as the “middle community” in the world on the basis of the famous Quranic verse in which Muslims are addressed as follows: “Thus We have appointed you a middle community (ummah wasat.ah) that you may be witnesses unto the people and the messenger may be a witness unto you” (2:143). This verse can be and in fact has been understood in many ways. On the most external level, it means that Islam was destined to occupy the middle belt of the classical world from the Mediterranean to the China Sea, with many non-Muslim communities and peoples to the north and south. On a theological level and within the Abrahamic family, Muslims interpret this verse to mean that while Judaism emphasizes laws for this world and Christianity otherworldliness, Islam came to emphasize the middle ground, to strike a balance between this world and the next. Another interpretation, which is primarily ethical, is that “middle community” means that God chose for Muslims the golden mean, the avoidance of extremes in ethical and religious actions. Yet another meaning of this verse, with global implications, is that Muslims constitute “the middle community,” because they have been chosen by God to create a balance between various communities and nations.

This last interpretation, however, does not at all mean that Muslims see themselves as the chosen people in the Jewish sense of the term. On the contrary, Muslims see all communities, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, to have been chosen by God, given their own sacred institutions and rites, and

held responsible to Him. The role Muslims have always envisaged for themselves in the arena of human history as the “middle community” does not mean that other human collectivities do not have their own God-ordained roles to play. Nothing is further from Islam’s traditional understanding of itself than being God’s chosen people, unless one expands this claim to say that all ummahs, or communities, are God’s chosen people, each brought into this world to perform a function in accordance with the Divine Wisdom and Will.

Today in the Islamic world, the ummah is politically more divided and even culturally more fragmented, as a result of the impact of modernism, than at any time in its history. And yet it would be a great mistake to underestimate the significance of the Quranic vision of community that most Muslims bear within their hearts and minds. This vision is still very much alive and manifests itself in unforeseen ways not only politically and economically, but also socially and culturally, not to mention within the domain of religion itself.

DAR AL-ISLAM AND DAR AL-HARB

The Islamic idea of community, or ummah, is closely related to that ofdar al-islam , or the “Abode of Islam,” which corresponds in many ways to the Western notion of Christendom.Dar al-islam is the geographic area in which the Islamic ummah lives as a majority and where Islamic Law is promulgated and practiced, although there may be other ummahs such as Jews and Christians living within its borders. Classically,dar al-islam was juxtaposed withdar al-harb , or the “Abode of War,” in which Muslims could not live and practice their religion easily because theShari‘ah was not the law of the land, although there were in practice always Muslim minorities living in various parts of it. Later Islamic jurists added a third category, daralsulh , the “Abode of Peace.” By this category they came to mean a land that was not part of the Islamic world but one in which Muslims could practice their religion in peace. In the contemporary context Muslims living in America or Western Europe could be said to be living in dar al-sulh, in contrast to those living in the former Soviet Union or present-day Burma, who would be or are living indar al-harb .

The presence of the “Abode of War” did not necessarily mean, however, that the Islamic world should be at war with that region, as some have claimed. According to the Islamic law of international treaties, Muslims could make treaties of peace and live at peace with countries outside ofdar al-islam if they themselves were not threatened by them. The best example of such a situation is the friendly relations the Prophet himself had with then Christian Abyssinians, who had in fact given refuge to some of the Muslims from Mecca shortly after the advent of the Quranic revelation. Many instances of such peaceful coexistence are also to be seen between Muslim and Christian kingdoms in Spain and Hindu and Muslim states in India. In this domain the Islamic principles must not be confused with matters of political expediency and particular actions of this or that ruler over the ages. What is important is to understand the Islamic principles involved.

As far as living indar al-harb is concerned, Islamic Law requires that Muslims in such a situation respect the laws of the land in which they live, but also insists that they be able to follow their own religious practices even if to do so is difficult. If such a way of living were to become impossible, then they are advised to migrate to the “Abode of Islam” itself. As for following local laws and practices, as long as they do not contradict Islamic laws and practices, the same injunctions hold for dar al-sulh as they do fordar al-harb . The Shi‘ites, who have been a minority during most of their history and often suffered persecution, have added the principle of dissimulation(taqiyyah) , according to which they should hide their religious beliefs and practices from the larger public if revealing them would endanger their lives or property.

MUSLIM MINORITIES

In the same way that throughout history many Christians have lived outside of Christendom, throughout Islamic history parts of the Islamic ummah have lived outside ofdar al-islam in many different cultural and religious settings from West Africa to China. Today, the largest single minority in the world is the Islamic community in India, which has a population of around 150 million. There are also tens of millions of Muslims living in China, possibly 20 million in Russia, sizable minorities in many Black African countries, and small but old and firmly established communities in the Balkans, Finland, Bulgaria, Greece, Tibet, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

There are also, of course, newer Islamic communities in most European countries as well as in North and South America. As already mentioned, in the United States alone there are some 6 million Muslims.

In practice, the situation of such minorities has varied and still varies greatly from country to country. In some places they have established a notable local culture of their own; in others they have remained as an enclave within the much larger society, clinging to their religious identity but not able to express much creativity on the larger cultural scene.

These minorities have represented over the ages an Islamic presence in different parts of the world and have interacted with many diverse cultures, often acting as a bridge between those non-Islamic cultures anddar al-islam . Such Muslim minorities now have a major responsibility to fulfill this task as far as the relation of the Western world todar al-islam is concerned.

MINORITIES WITHIN THE “ABODE OF ISLAM”

Except for the central part of the Arabian Peninsula, there is no area in the “Abode of Islam” where there are not minorities belonging, from the Islamic point of view, to other ummahs. In the heartland of the Islamic world these minorities have been usually Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, but there have also been and continue to be other minorities, such as the Druze, the Yazidis, and the ‘Alawis, who have survived over the ages in the very cradle of Islamic civilization. Traditionally Islam has categorized societal groups on the basis of religious affiliation, and therefore categories of minorities based on factors such as race or language have been of much lesser consequence.

Kurds, who are linguistically a distinct minority, have become rulers of Arabs, as have Blacks, who in some cases were members of a racial minority in those lands where they gained political power.

Islamic Law requires the lives, property, and freedom of religion of religious minorities to be guaranteed if they are a “People of the Book,” a category applied widely during Islamic history. On the basis of the verse of the Quran that speaks about fighting nonbelievers and those who do not acknowledge the Religion of the Truth even among the People of the Book “until they pay the jizyah” (9:29), religious minorities were required to pay a special religious tax(jizyah) and given in return protection from external attack and security for their lives and property. In the modern world, where the idea of the modern nation and citizenship in it has become prevalent, the classical Islamic theory has been often criticized, and in the contemporary Islamic world it is not even always practiced. That is because even in the Islamic world, on the outward level for certain groups loyalty to the state and the modern nation has lately come to replace to some extent loyalty to religion, something that did not occur even in Europe until fairly recently.

The Islamic system must be understood in terms of the premises of the Islamic conception of society, whose goal is to provide a just system and a beneficial environment for the spiritual and religious growth of human beings. From that point of view, minorities in the Islamic world certainly did not fare worse than those in the West, as one can see in a comparison of the history of Judaism in the “Abode of Islam” and its history in Europe. Also during five hundred years of Ottoman domination of Greece, Mt. Athos remained the most vibrant and living center of Orthodox spirituality. As for economic life, it might seem a paradox, but in most Islamic countries the religious minorities are in a better economic situation than the Muslim majority, as one can see in the case of the Christians of Lebanon and Egypt.

Of course, no human institution is without imperfections and abuses. Each theory of viewing the component communities that make up society is based on certain premises and provides certain advantages as well as disadvantages.

The Islamic system, sometimes called the millat system (the word millah, “community,” also means “nation” in the biblical sense), first of all eradicated distinctions based on race, ethnicity, or language. Second, by according protection to minorities on the basis of religion, it therefore created the means for these religions to survive in contrast to the situation

in, let us say, Europe, where after Christianization, other religions such as those of the Druids and the ancient Germans were totally eradicated, as were certain later movements within Christianity such as the Cathars.

In the Islamic world today, however, no nation lives any longer under the old Ottoman millat system, but people live according to the Western-style idea of citizenship in a nation. The modern nation-state system removes distinctions based on religion, at least in theory, but at the expense of subordinating minority and majority religious laws to secular laws. And yet within that system based on nationalism, people continue to insist upon the significance of religious laws and practices, and the very tension between the two has made the question of minorities more difficult than before. In days of old the Kurds did not have the same problems with the Turks and Iraqi Arabs that they do now, nor did the Copts in Egypt experience the same tensions they now face with the so-called fundamentalists, who are themselves reacting to the secularization of the laws of the land.

ISLAMIC SOCIETY: THE IDEAL AND THE PRACTICE OF THE GOOD LIFE

It is essential to distinguish between the ideal society described in the Quran andHadith and historical Islamic society. If the two were identical, there would be no evil or shortcomings in the world, and the world would not be the world with all its imperfections. In fact, throughout their own history, Muslims have looked upon the society of Medina at the time of the Prophet as the ideal society, as the golden age of Islam, religiously speaking, and have sought to emulate that society to the extent possible, but have always fallen short. Generations of young Muslims have been told stories of that period, when, one might say, Heaven and earth touched either other. I remember as a child hearing stories about the Prophet or other great early saints helping the poor, being honest in all affairs, administering justice, and the like from my parents and others.

Almost always, numerous contemporary actions in society were contrasted with the ideals set forth by them. Yet tallying up and bemoaning shortcomings is far less profitable than seeking to understand the extent to which Islamic ideals have been implemented and realized in each Islamic society despite the imperfections inherent in the human state, imperfections that the original teachings of Islam itself have taken into consideration. Although every subsequent generation of Muslims has fallen below the standards established by the Prophet in Medina and despite human frailties, each generation until modern times has in fact realized many of the values established by Islam within the society in which it lived.

The ideal norms of society as envisaged by the Quran andHadith include the establishment of justice and equality before the Divine Law, economic fair play, and the just distribution of wealth, while legitimizing private property and encouraging economic activities, equitable treatment of all human beings (Muslims and non-Muslims living as members of their own respective religious communities within Islamic society), and the creation of a religious social environment in which the presence of the Transcendent is never forgotten. In such a society family bonds are honored over tribal ones, but the truth is considered to be above even family affiliations. It was Christ who said, “Leave all and follow me” and that one should hate one’s parents if they oppose the truth. Likewise, the Quran states, “We have enjoined on human beings kindness to parents, but if they strive to make you join with that of which you have no knowledge, then obey them not” (29:8).

Since the goal of Islamic society is to make possible “Thy will be done on earth,” in the ideal society it is the duty of each Muslim, as stated in several Quranic verses, to “enjoin the good and forbid the wrong” (3:110). This does not mean that individual Muslims should interfere in the affairs of others; rather, each person has the social responsibility to make certain that moral authority reigns in the community.

In such a society keeping the peace and fostering social harmony are requirements, but if moral authority is destroyed for one reason or another and the religious norms flouted by those who wield political power, then there is a right to rebellion and the reestablishment of an order based on ethical norms and the Divine Law.

Also in the ideal Islamic society, virtue, goodness, and knowledge should be the only criteria for honoring and elevating individuals. The hierarchy of society should be based on the God-fearing quality called taqwa and on knowledge, both of which the Quran refers to explicitly. All other honors and distinctions should be evaluated in light of the truth of the transience of the world. This ideal has not been totally realized, but devout Muslims remain very much aware of it, as seen in the attitude of many powerful rulers toward the saintly and the knowledgeable. Even in my own life I have witnessed the great respect shown to virtuous and pious scholars not only by ordinary people, but also by the wealthy and the politically powerful.

Islamic social teachings also include support and help for those who have been oppressed or deprived in one way or another. In the reform that Islam carried out in Arabian society, it sided with the poor, and, like Christ, who said, “Blessed are the poor,” the Prophet said, “Poverty is my pride.” Of course, in both instances poverty means, above all, spiritual poverty, but also on the material level the Prophet, like Christ, lived in simplicity and was closer to the poor and weak than the wealthy and the powerful.

Although the Prophet said that wealth is like a ladder with which one can either ascend to Heaven or descend to hell, he always emphasized that the poor must be helped and respected regardless of their lack of worldly provisions.

Likewise, Islamic social ideals emphasize being kind to slaves, treating women gently, and being generous to those who have suffered economic loss and are in debt or others in society whom modern sociologists would call the deprived classes.

Again, these and other ideals were not always fully realized by later Islamic societies, but as ideals set forth for one generation after another, they are crucial for the understanding of the dominant values in Islamic society. Of course, the sentiment that “my religion is the best” is to be found of necessity in every religious climate, and the Islamic is no exception. The Quran, in fact, refers to Muslims as the best community. But in practice individual Muslims often found that certain virtues that were supposed to be displayed among members of the Islamic community were in fact lacking in their own but found in members of other religious communities. For example, usually those who have performed the hajj and are called hajjiare deeply respected as pious and trustworthy, a reputation most have lived up to, but there have been exceptions, deceptive hajjis who, in the guise of piety, have often dealt dishonestly with their customers in the bazaar. In my own family in Persia we always bought our carpets from an extremely honest Jewish rug dealer, and everyone in the family used to say that he was as honest as a real hajji. In any case the dynamics between ideals and everyday practices for Muslims, as for Jews, Christians, or Hindus, is a complicated matter.

They should not lead to either a self-righteous attitude or the deprecation of one’s own religious community as being devoid of any virtues. As far as the Islamic world is concerned, both of these attitudes have been expressed by outsiders as well as by small groups within Islamic society itself in

modern times. The phenomenon has led to unfortunate extremist positions and movements.

THE STRUCTURE OF ISLAMIC SOCIETY

Of course, not all Islamic societies are exactly alike and it would be wiser to speak of Islamic societies rather than society if one were to analyze every part of the ummah in detail. But for our present purpose and concentrating on the heartland of the Islamic world, where classical Islamic civilization was created, it is possible to speak about Islamic society when trying to bring out salient features of social structure shared by countries as far apart as Morocco and Persia. In contrast to the West and also Hindu India before modern times, Islamic society did not possess as rigid a stratification and there was, relatively speaking, more dynamism and fluidity within Islamic society than was the case with its two neighbors in medieval times. Social mobility in Islamic society was achievable, especially through the acquiring of religious knowledge, on the one hand, and personal, military, and administrative prowess, on the other.

There was, strictly speaking, no feudal system in Islam, and there was nothing corresponding exactly to the landed aristocracy in the West with its lords and other feudal powers, although, in certain lands such as Persia and what is today Pakistan, powerful landowners existed and in fact still exist.

Nor did the peasantry play as important a role as it did in medieval European society.

One important factor present in Islamic society but absent from the Christian West was the nomadic element.

In fact, as the great fourteenth-century Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldun, whom many consider to be the father of sociology, wrote, the rhythm of Islamic history can be understood as the constant interplay between sedentary people and nomads. The Arabs were originally nomads, while Islam arose in Mecca, which was a sedentary environment.

Yet something of what one might call “nomadic spirituality,” with its emphasis upon the transience of the world, closeness to nature, love of language, and respect for the power of the word, is contained within the spiritual perspective of the Islamic revelation itself and is manifested clearly in Islamic art. On the social level also the constant dynamic between the nomad and the urban dweller continued throughout most of Islamic history.

The Prophet sought to replace tribal bonds with those of the Islamic community, or ummah, dominated by the truth of the Quranic revelation. Although he succeeded to a large extent, tribal allegiances did not by any means disappear and occasionally burst forth in political movements based on tribal affiliations. This tension between the unifying force of Islam and the dispersing and centripetal forces of tribalism has manifested itself in many ways in Islamic history and is still alive under new forms. Some have, in fact, interpreted the present opposition of local cultural, ethnic, and religious forces to globalization as “tribalism” and have considered both tribalism and globalization to be enemies of democracy. Such an analysis must not, however, be confused with the role and function of tribalism in Islamic history, which was witness to the tension between the nomads and sedentary people but also to the positive role of the tribal nomads in the constant renewal and revival of sedentary life and even in the unification of vast areas of the Islamic world under one “global” order as we see with the

Seljuqs and Ottomans. The civilization of Islam, which was global in its own way, was created in urban environments, and, in fact, during the medieval period the Islamic world had many cities of much greater population than the largest European cities of the time. But the city is at once the locus of refinement in the arts and sciences, on the one hand, and moral decadence and excessive luxury, on the other. The city has produced great sages and saints, but it is also the only place that has produced skeptics and even atheists.

History has not recorded any nomadic agnostics or skeptics, not to mention atheists. Even the Quran alludes to the fact that every city will be punished one day before the end of time.

In the Islamic world, nomads, who constantly threatened the cities, would invade and dominate them once decadence had set in. The nomads would inject new energy into the city, revive its moral character, and help keep the fire of tradition burning. Then they in turn would become sedentary, gradually losing their nomadic virtues and becoming immersed in decadent luxury until they were themselves swept over by a new wave of nomadic invasion. The Islamic world knew not only Arab nomads, but also Turkic ones, who began to migrate to the heartland of the Islamic world from the tenth century onward, and later the Mongols, who destroyed much of Islamic sedentary life, but also rejuvenated its art and architecture as well as its political power. To this day, despite the forced settlement of so many nomads, there are still Arab, Black, and Berber nomads in all of North and Saharan Africa, Turkish and Turkic nomads in Anatolia, Persia, and Central Asia, Arab nomads in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq, and even Iranian tribes such as the Pashtus, some of whom have now settled, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Even Egypt, which has been a sedentary society from time immemorial, has nomads in the south. Just recently, while visiting the tomb of a great Sufi saint in southern Egypt, I was surprised to discover that the Egyptian desert near the Sudanese border is still dominated by nomadic tribes. So one can hardly overemphasize the importance of the nomadic element, socially, psychologically, and spiritually in Islamic society. Moreover, one must not forget that something of the nomadic spirit survives even among those who have become settled in towns, for as the Arabic adage affirms, “You can take a nomadic boy out of the desert, but you cannot take the desert out of that boy.”

As for classes within sedentary Islamic society, the most important before the advent of recent social changes included the learned and the scholarly (‘ulama’), the ruling and military class, the merchants, the guilds, and in certain areas such as Egypt and Persia the peasantry. The ‘ulama’, meaning literally “those who know,” referred originally to savants in every field, including astronomy and medicine, not only Islamic Law, and it is still used to some degree in this general sense. But gradually it gained the more particular meaning of religious scholars, especially those who specialized in knowledge of theShari‘ah . Although there is no priesthood in Islam, this class is the closest to that of rabbis in Judaism and to a lesser extent priests in Christianity or the Brahmins in Hinduism, although their religious function is not exactly the same. Throughout Islamic history the ‘ulama’,

who to this day usually wear the dress of the Prophet and a turban to follow his example, have been the guardians and interpreters of theShari‘ah . As a result, they have wielded great power and before modern times supervised both the educational and judicial activity of Islamic society. They were also traditionally protectors of the people against the power of political and military authorities. Generally Twelve-Imam Shi‘ite ‘ulama’ have been more powerful than Sunni ones because, in contrast to the latter, they have been traditionally independent of political power and collected religious taxes directly, so that they have also been to a great extent economically independent. The Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979 would not have been possible if such a power had not existed at the same time. The direct political rule of the ‘ulama’ in Iran today, for the first time in Islamic history, has, however, posed important challenges to it as a distinct religious class within Persian society and to its role and function within that society.

Many Sufis have been among the ‘ulama’, and most Sufi masters are also well versed in Islamic Law, but they do not constitute a distinct class in Islamic society. They, in fact, constitute a “society” within society to which men and women from all walks of life can belong. According to ahadith , “There is no monasticism in Islam,” and the Quran states, “The monasticism which they invented for themselves, We did not prescribe for them” (57:27). Therefore there is no distinct class of monks in Islamic society, but the ideal of leading a spiritual life devoted wholly to God has been realized within the Sufi orders, which are integrated outwardly within society at large. It is also interesting to note that although Islam did not accept the monastic institution, the Prophet and, following him, generations of Muslims have looked very kindly upon Christian monks.

There is, moreover, a Sufism meant for the spiritual elite, who usually study advanced texts of Sufism combined with advanced spiritual practice, and there is a popular Sufism that brings the blessings, or barakah, of Sufism to a large number of people who usually participate in it passively and do not travel actively on the path to spiritual perfection of the first group. This distinction between the elite (khawass ) and commoners (‘awamm ), so conspicuous in Sufism, can in fact be found throughout Islamic society and must not be confused with “elitism” in the modern sense. Today the word “elite” is disliked in public discourse especially in America, but in fact it exists in various domains of life and corresponds to what is widely practiced openly in its Islamic sense. For example, a small number of mathematicians know advanced mathematics. They are the elite of this field, while the rest of us are “commoners” in this domain. But one of the commoners can be an elite in knowledge of the medical properties of herbs, in which a mathematician who belongs to the elite in mathematics is a commoner. It is in this sense that the important category of khawas and‘awamm used by the Sufis and elsewhere in Islamic society must be understood. When used in an absolute sensekhawass refers to those who possess advanced spiritual knowledge and exceptional virtue.

The practitioners of Sufism on all its different levels constitute an important group in Islamic society, even if not sociologically distinct as a class, and they have exercised great influence over the ages on fields as far

apart as the inner life and public ethics, psychology and art, metaphysics and the guilds, poetry and politics. Sufism cannot be reduced to its social manifestations or analyzed simply in sociological terms. But one cannot understand the structure of Islamic society without considering fully the significance of the Sufis along with the ‘ulama’ and other distinct classes.

If in a sense the ‘ulama’ and the Sufis, at least their leaders, correspond to the sacerdotal class in medieval Christianity, the political and military classes in Islam can also be compared to their counterpart in the Christian West, although the differences between the types of monarchy and political aristocracy in the Islamic world and the West as well as differences in hereditary titles must be fully considered.

Besides the supreme ruler of society, whether he is a caliph, sultan, or amir, whom we have already discussed, Islamic society has always had two groups involved in the political and military life of the country. The first is the class of administrators and the second that of the military.

The class of administrators developed early in Islam on the basis of older Persian Sassanid models. In earlier Islamic history this class was practically the only one in Islamic society outside of the cadre of ‘ulama’ to be well educated as a class in the arts of reading, writing, logic, and so forth; it even played a role in the development of a new style of Arabic associated with the activity of those who worked in the various diwans, which came to be known later in the West as ministries. The contribution of this class to Islamic learning, literature, ethics, and political thought as well as the running of the state has been of great importance in Islamic history. During the ‘Abbasid caliphate, from the eighth to the thirteenth century, while the Arabic element was primarily associated with religion and the Turkic element with military power, the Persian element was associated most of all with administration, and some of the most outstanding grand-viziers, or prime ministers, of the Arab caliphs or later Turkic sultans were Persian.

The military class has of course been important throughout Islamic history, as it has been in other societies, although Islam never emphasized the hereditary aspect as much as did many other traditional cultures. With the breakdown of the traditional political structures in modern times, however, many Islamic countries were witness to a military coup followed by a military rule very different from the traditional Islamic political order. Traditionally, a new military commander who was able to establish rule became a sultan or amir, but he was still bound by theShari‘ah and traditions of rule. Such is not the case with the modern military dictators who took over the reins of power in so many Islamic countries during the second part of the twentieth century.

The merchant class has always played a major role in Islamic society and has been an important guardian of Islam. The Prophet began his adult life as a merchant and his wife Khadijah was also a major merchant in Mecca.

From the beginning, the profession was considered a very honorable one, and the merchant class played a greater role in Islamic society than did the mercantile class in medieval Europe before the rise of the bourgeoisie in Italy during the Renaissance. To this day the bazaar is not only the heart of business activity in the still relatively traditional Islamic cities, but the

religious heart of the urban environment as well, where major mosques and religious schools are usually located. In Persian as in other Islamic languages, the term bazari, that is, a merchant in the bazaar, is associated with piety and religious fervor, and this class has always been close to the ‘ulama’. I still remember my childhood days when during the mourning period of Muh. arram my mother would take me to the Tehran bazaar, where I was so moved by all the black flags and curtains covering everything. To this day the most intense religious activities, such as religious processions in streets and functions within mosques, in Persia are associated with the bazaar. Nor are matters different in the Arab world. The heart of Cairo is the mosque of Ra’s al-H. usayn, and whenever I visit it, inevitably I also pay a visit to the Khan-Khalili bazaar adjacent to it, where one observes clearly the wedding between religious piety and trade.

In traditional Islamic society a major institution associated with the bazaar and the production of goods was the guilds (as.naf). Considered to have been founded by ‘Ali ibn AbiTalib, the guilds combine apprenticeship in various arts and crafts with moral and spiritual discipline. In the guilds the masters are usually also moral and spiritual teachers, and apprentices receive initiation into a guild once they meet the moral and practical qualifications for acceptance.

The Islamic guilds are like the medieval European guild of masons, which was a secret organization with knowledge of both theory and practical techniques that was transmitted orally. In fact, Freemasonry began when the guild of masons became “speculative” and cut off from the practice of masonry and turned into a secret organization with particular political and social goals. Although European Freemasonry came into the Islamic world through colonizing powers in the nineteenth century, the Islamic guilds themselves never underwent such a transformation. They remained closely wed to Sufism and the spiritual practices of the Islamic religion. With the advent of modern technology and the introduction of industrialism into many parts of the Islamic world, many of the guilds disappeared, but some survive to this day from Fez to Benares. It is interesting to note that the famous Benares silk has been made and is still made to a large extent by Muslim guilds of weavers and cloth printers. A few decades ago when I visited this holiest of Hindu cities, I was astonished to see the traditional Islamic guild still very much alive; the master of the guild that made the most beautiful saris was one of the dignitaries of the local branch of the Qadiriyyah order, which is one of the oldest Sufi orders.

Finally, in discussing the structure of Islamic society one must mention the peasantry, which of course exists throughout the Islamic world but which, except in certain areas, has not played the same central historical role it has in the West. In such lands as Egypt, parts of Persia, and the Punjab, there has always existed a large peasantry, which has usually been educated religiously from urban centers.

In such lands the peasantry has also been a conservative social force and has provided many of the religious students for madrasahs in bigger cities, students some of whom later became major religious leaders. Popular Sufism has also been strong among the peasantry, as we see among the

fillah in of Egypt and in the spread of Maraboutism, which is a popular Sufi movement, in North and West Africa.