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The Place of Tolerance in Islam
(On Reading the Qur'an - and Misreading It)
By Khaled Abou El Fadl, Ph.D.
Dr. Khaled Abou El
Fadl is the most important and influential Islamic thinker in the modern
age. An accomplished Islamic jurist and scholar, he is Professor of Law
at the UCLA School of Law where he teaches Islamic law, Immigration,
Human Rights, International and National Security Law. Dr. Abou El Fadl
previously taught Islamic law at the University of Texas at Austin Law
School, Yale Law School and Princeton University. He holds degrees from
Yale University (B.A.), University of Pennsylvania Law School (J.D.) and
Princeton University (M.A./PhD.).
A high-ranking Shaykh, Dr. Abou El Fadl also received formal training in
Islamic jurisprudence in Egypt and Kuwait.
Dr. Abou El Fadl is a world renowned expert in Islamic law and an
American lawyer, offering a unique and seasoned perspective on the
current state of Islam and the West. He is a strong proponent of human
rights and serves on the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch. He
was also appointed by President George W. Bush as a commissioner on the
US Commission on International Religious Freedom. He regularly provides
expert testimony in a wide variety of cases ranging from human rights
and political asylum to terrorism, national security, and international
and commercial law.
Dr. Abou El Fadl is a prolific author and prominent public intellectual
on Islamic law and Islam, most noted for his scholarly approach to Islam
from a moral point of view. He writes extensively on universal themes of
morality and humanity, and the notion of beauty as a moral value. Dr.
Abou El Fadl is a staunch advocate and defender of women's rights, and
focuses much of his written attention on issues related to women. As the
most critical and powerful voice against puritan and Wahhabi Islam
today, he regularly appears on national and international television and
radio including CNN, NBC, PBS, NPR, and Voice of America (broadcast
throughout the Middle East). His most recent work focuses on issues of
authority, terrorism, tolerance, Islam and Islamic law.
He is the author of seven books and over fifty articles on Islamic law
and Islam. His recent books include: Islam and the Challenge of
Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2004); The Place of Tolerance in
Islam (Beacon Press, 2002); Conference of the Books: The Search for
Beauty in Islam (University Press of America/Rowman and Littlefield,
2001); And God Knows the Soldiers: The Authoritative and
Authoritarian in Islamic Discourses (UPA/Rowman and Littlefield, 2001);
Speaking in God's Name: Islamic law, Authority and Women (Oneworld
Press, Oxford, 2001) and Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law
(Cambridge University Press, 2001).
The terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon have focused
public attention on the state of Muslim theology. For most Americans,
the utter indifference to the value of human life and the unmitigated
hostility to the United States shown by some Muslims came as a great
shock. Others were confirmed in their belief that we face a great
struggle between civilizations. Islamic values, they say, are
fundamentally at odds with Western liberal values. The terrorist attacks
are symptomatic of a clash between Judeo-Christian civilization, with
its values of individual freedom, pluralism, and secularism, and an
amoral, un-Westernized, so-called "authentic Islam." Indeed, Islamic
civilization is associated with the ideas of collective rights,
individual duties, legalism, despotism, and intolerance that we
associated with our former civilizational rival, the Soviet bloc. We
seem to project onto the other everything we like to think that we are
not.
This intellectual trap is easy to fall into when we deal with the
theology of Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia,
and the Jihad organizations. The theologically-based attitudes of these
Muslim puritans are fundamentally at odds not only with a Western way of
life, but also with the very idea of an international society or the
notion of universal human values. They display an intolerant
exclusiveness, and a belligerent sense of supremacy vis-ŕ-vis the other.
According to their theologies, Islam is the only way of life, and must
be pursued regardless of its impact on the rights and well-being of
others. The straight path (al-sirat al-mustaqim) is fixed, they say, by
a system of Divine laws (shari-ah) that trump any moral considerations
or ethical values that are not fully codified in the law. God is
manifested through a set of determinate legal commands that specify the
right way to act in virtually all circumstances. The sole purpose of
human life on earth is to realize the Divine manifestation by dutifully
and faithfully implementing God's law. Morality itself begins and ends
in the mechanics and technicalities of Islamic law (though different
schools of Islamic law understand the content of those laws
differently).
A life devoted to compliance with this legal code is considered
inherently superior to all others, and the followers of any other way
are considered either infidels (kuffar), hypocrites (munafiqun), or
iniquitous (fasiqun). Anchored in the security and assuredness of a
determinable law, it becomes fairly easy to differentiate between the
rightly-guided and the misguided. The rightly-guided obey the law; the
misguided either deny, attempt to dilute, or argue about the law.
Naturally, the rightly-guided are superior because they have God on
their side. The Muslim puritans imagine that God's perfection and
immutability are fully attainable on earth----as if God's perfection had
been deposited in the Divine law, and, by giving effect to this law, we
could create a social order that mirrors Divine Truth. By attaching
themselves to the Supreme Being, puritan groups are able to claim a
self-righteous perfectionism that easily slips into a pretense of
supremacy.
Extremism in Islamic History
Perhaps all firmly held systems of belief, especially those founded on
religious conviction, are in some way supremacist: believers are
understood to have some special virtue that distinguishes them from
adherents of other faiths. But the supremacist creed of the puritan
groups is distinctive and uniquely dangerous. The supremacist thinking
of Muslim puritans has a powerful nationalist component, which is
strongly oriented towards cultural and political dominance. These groups
are not satisfied with living according to their own dictates, but are
actively dissatisfied with all alternative ways of life. They do not
merely seek self-empowerment, but aggressively seek to disempower,
dominate, or destroy others. The crux of the matter is that all lives
lived outside the law are considered an offense against God that must be
actively resisted and fought.
The existence of Muslim Puritanism is hardly surprising. Most religious
systems have suffered at one time or another from absolutist extremism,
and Islam is no exception. Within the first century of Islam, religious
extremists known as the Khawarij (literally, the secessionists)
slaughtered a large number of Muslims and non-Muslims, and were even
responsible for the assassination of the Prophet's cousin and companion,
the Caliph Ali b. Abi Talib. The descendants of the Khawarij exist today
in Oman and Algeria, but after centuries of bloodshed, they became
moderates if not pacifists. Similarly, the Qaramites and Assassins, for
whom terror became a raison d'etre, earned unmitigated infamy in the
writings of Muslim historians, theologians, and jurists. Again, after
centuries of bloodshed, these two groups learned moderation, and they
continue to exist in small numbers in North Africa and Iraq. The
essential lesson taught by Islamic history is that extremist groups are
ejected from the mainstream of Islam; they are marginalized, and
eventually treated as heretical aberrations to the Islamic message.
But Islam is now living through a major shift, unlike any it has
experienced in the past. The Islamic civilization has crumbled, and the
traditional institutions that once sustained and propagated Islamic
orthodoxy----and marginalized Islamic extremism----have been dismantled.
Traditionally, Islamic epistemology tolerated and even celebrated
divergent opinions and schools of thought. The guardians of the Islamic
tradition were the jurists (fuqaha), whose legitimacy rested largely on
their semi-independence from a decentralized political system, and their
dual function of representing the interests of the state to the laity
and the interests of the laity to the state.
But in Muslim countries today, the state has grown extremely powerful
and meddlesome, and is centralized in ways that were inconceivable two
centuries ago. In the vast majority of Muslim countries, the state now
controls the private religious endowments (awqaf ) that once sustained
the juristic class. Moreover, the state has co-opted the clergy, and
transformed them into its salaried employees. This transformation has
reduced the clergy's legitimacy, and produced a profound vacuum in
religious authority. Hence, there is a state of virtual anarchy in
modern Islam: it is not clear who speaks with authority on religious
issues. Such a state of virtual religious anarchy is perhaps not
problematic in secular societies where religion is essentially reduced
to a private matter. But where religion remains central to the dynamics
of public legitimacy and cultural meaning, the question of who
represents the voice of God is of central significance.
Puritanism and Modern Islam.
It would be wrong to say that fanatic supremacist groups such as the al-Qa'ida
or al-Jihad organizations now fill the vacuum of authority in
contemporary Islam. Though they are obviously able to commit highly
visible acts of violence that command the public stage, fanatic groups
remain sociologically and intellectually marginal in Islam. Still, they
are extreme manifestations of more prevalent intellectual and
theological currents in modern Islam.
Fanatic groups derive their theological premises from the intolerant
puritanism of the Wahhabi and Salafi creeds. Wahhabism was founded by
the eighteenth-century evangelist Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab in the
Arabian Peninsula. 'Abd al-Wahhab sought to rid Islam of the corruptions
that he believed had crept into the religion. He advocated a strict
literalism in which the text became the sole source of legitimate
authority, and displayed an extreme hostility to intellectualism,
mysticism, and any sectarian divisions within Islam. According to the
Wahhabi creed, it was imperative to return to a presumed pristine,
simple, straightforward Islam, which could be entirely reclaimed by
literal implementation of the commands of the Prophet, and by strict
adherence to correct ritual practice. Importantly, Wahhabism rejected
any attempt to interpret the divine law historically or contextually,
with attendant possibilities of reinterpretation under changed
circumstances. It treated the vast majority of Islamic history as a
corruption of the true and authentic Islam. Furthermore, Wahhabism
narrowly defined orthodoxy, and was extremely intolerant of any creed
that contradicted its own.
In the late eighteenth century, the Al Sa'ud family united with the
Wahhabi movement and rebelled against Ottoman rule in Arabia. The
rebellions were very bloody because the Wahhabis indiscriminately
slaughtered and terrorized Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Interestingly,
mainstream jurists writing at the time, such as the Hanafi Ibn 'Abidin
and the Maliki al-Sawi, branded the Wahhabis the modern day Khawarij of
Islam, and condemned their fanaticism and intolerance.1 In 1818,
Egyptian forces under the leadership of Muhammad Ali defeated this
rebellion, and Wahhabism seemed destined to become another fringe
historical experience with no lasting impact on Islamic theology. But
the Wahhabi creed was resuscitated in the early twentieth century under
the leadership of 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Sa'ud, who allied himself with
Wahhabi militant rebels known as the Ikhwan, in the beginnings of what
would become Saudi Arabia. Even with the formation of the Saudi state,
Wahhabism remained a creed of limited influence until the mid-1970s when
the sharp rise in oil prices, together with aggressive Saudi
proselytizing, dramatically contributed to its wide dissemination in the
Muslim world.
Wahhabism did not propagate itself as one school of thought or a
particular orientation within Islam. Rather, it asserted itself as the
orthodox "straight path" of Islam. By claiming literal fidelity to the
Islamic text, it was able to make a credible claim to authenticity at a
time when Islamic identity was contested. Moreover, the proponents of
Wahhabism refused to be labeled or categorized as the followers of any
particular figure including 'Abd al-Wahhab himself. Its proponents
insisted that they were simply abiding by the dictates of al-salaf al-salih
(the rightly-guided predecessors, namely the Prophet and his
companions), and in doing so, Wahhabis were able to appropriate the
symbolisms and categories of Salafism.
Ironically, Salafism was founded in the early twentieth century by
al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, and Rashid Rida as a liberal theological
orientation. To respond to the demands of modernity, they argued,
Muslims needed to return to the original sources of the Qur'an and
Sunnah (tradition of the Prophet), and engage in de novo interpretations
of the text. By the 1970s, however, Wahhabism had succeeded in
transforming Salafism from a liberal modernist orientation to a
literalist, puritan, and conservative theology. The sharp rise in oil
prices in 1975 enabled Saudi Arabia, the main proponent of Wahhabism, to
disseminate the Wahhabi creed under a Salafi guise, which purported to
revert back to the authentic fundamentals of religion uncorrupted by the
accretions of historical practice. In reality, however, Saudi Arabia
projected its own fairly conservative cultural practices onto the
textual sources of Islam and went on to proselytize these projections as
the embodiment of Islamic orthodoxy.
Despite its intolerance and rigidity, however, Wahhabism itself does not
bear primary responsibility for the existence of terrorist groups in
Islam today. To be sure, Wahhabism and its militant offshoots share both
attitudinal and ideological orientations. Both insist on a normative
particularism that is fundamentally text-centered; both reject the
notion of universal human values; and both deal with the other, however
defined, in a functionalist and even opportunistic fashion. But
Wahhabism is distinctively inward-looking----although focused on power,
it primarily asserts power over other Muslims. This is consistent with
its obsession with orthodoxy and correct ritualistic practice. Militant
puritan groups, however, are both introverted and extroverted----they
attempt to assert power against both Muslims and non-Muslims. As
populist movements, they are a reaction to the disempowerment most
Muslims have suffered in the modern age at the hands of harshly despotic
governments, and at the hands of interventionist foreign powers. These
groups compensate for extreme feelings of disempowerment by extreme and
vulgar claims to power. Fueled by supremacist and puritan theological
creeds, their symbolic acts of power become uncompromisingly fanatic and
violent.
The Theology of Intolerance
Islamic puritans, whether of the Wahhabi or more militant varieties,
offer a set of textual references in support of their exclusionary and
intolerant theological orientation. For instance, they frequently cite
the Qur'anic verse that states: "O' you who believe, do not take the
Jews and Christians as allies. They are allies of each other, and he
amongst you who becomes their ally is one of them. Verily, God does not
guide the unjust."2 Wahhabi and militant puritanism read this and
similar Qur'anic verses literally and ahistorically, and therefore reach
highly exclusionary conclusions. For example, while Muslims may elicit
the support or aid of non-Muslims over particular issues when the
self-interests of Muslims so require, they may not befriend or share the
normative values of non-Muslims. This orientation often demands the
performance of symbolic acts, which aim to distinguish Muslims from
non-Muslims----for instance, dressing in a particular way or marking
non-Muslims with distinctive symbols.
Islamic puritanism also often invokes the Qur'anic verse asserting that,
"whomsoever follows a religion other than Islam this will not be
accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he will be among the losers."3
This verse is invoked in arguing that the theology and rituals of Islam
are the exclusive path to salvation. Moreover, a mere testament of faith
or a general act of submission to God is insufficient to attain
salvation in the Hereafter; rather, a person must comply with the
particulars of the Divine law in order to qualify as a "true" believer.
The puritan trend is thus uncompromising in its rejection of all forms
of belief and ritual that do not qualify as the "true" religion of God.
As to the principles that should guide the interaction between Muslims
and non-Muslims, the puritan trend cites the Qur'anic verse commanding
Muslims to fight the unbelievers, "until there is no more tumult or
oppression, and until faith and all judgment belongs to God."4 Moreover,
justifying an essentially supremacist view towards non-Muslims,
proponents of puritanism often quote the following Qur'anic injunction:
"Fight those among the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) who do
not believe in God or the Hereafter, who do not forbid what God and His
Prophet have forbidden, and who do not acknowledge the religion of
truth----fight them until they pay the poll tax (jizyah) with willing
submission and feel themselves subdued."5
Relying on such textual evidence, Muslim puritans assert that Muslims
are the inheritors of an objectively ascertainable and realizable Divine
Truth; while Jews and Christians may be tolerated, they cannot be
befriended. Ultimately, however, they must be subdued and forced to
acknowledge Muslim supremacy by paying a poll tax. The puritan doctrine
is not necessarily or entirely dismissive of the rights of non-Muslims,
and it does not necessarily lead to the persecution of Jews and
Christians. But it does assert a hierarchy of importance, and the
commitment to toleration is correspondingly fragile and contingent. So
it is conducive to an arrogance that can easily descend into a lack of
respect or concern for the well-being or dignity of non-Muslims. When
this arrogant orientation is coupled with textual sources that exhort
Muslims to fight against unbelievers (kuffar), it can produce a radical
belligerency.
The Place of Tolerance in Islam
The puritans construct their exclusionary and intolerant theology by
reading Qur'anic verses in isolation, as if the meaning of the verses
were transparent----as if moral ideas and historical context were
irrelevant to their interpretation. In fact, however, it is impossible
to analyze these and other verses except in light of the overall moral
thrust of the Qur'anic message.
The Qur'an itself refers to general moral imperatives such as mercy,
justice, kindness, or goodness. The Qur'an does not clearly define any
of these categories, but presumes a certain amount of moral probity on
part of the reader. For instance, the Qur'an persistently commands
Muslims to enjoin the good. The word used for "the good" is ma'ruf,
which means that which is commonly known to be good. Goodness, in the
Qur'anic discourse, is part of what one may call a lived reality----it
is the product of human experience and constructed normative
understandings. Similarly, the Qur'anic term for kindness is ihsan,
which literally means to beautify and improve upon. But beautification
or improving upon can have meaning only in the context of a certain
sociological understanding and practice.
In a further example, as to justice, the Qur'an states: "O you who
believe, stand firmly for justice, as witnesses for God, even if it
means testifying against yourselves, or your parents, or you kin, and
whether it is against the rich or poor, for God prevails upon all.
Follow not the lusts of your hearts, lest you swerve, and if you distort
justice or decline to do justice, verily God knows what you do."6 The
idea that Muslims must stand up for justice even against their own
self-interests is predicated on the notion that human beings are capable
of achieving a high level of moral agency. As agents, Muslims are
expected to achieve a level of moral conscientiousness, which they will
bring to their relationship with God. In regards to every ethical
obligation, the Qur'anic text assumes that readers will bring a
pre-existing, innate moral sense to the text. Hence, the text will
morally enrich the reader, but only if the reader will morally enrich
the text. The meaning of the religious text is not fixed simply by the
literal meaning of its words, but depends, too, on the moral
construction given to it by the reader. So if the reader approaches the
text without moral commitments, it will almost inevitably yield nothing
but discrete, legalistic, technical insights.
Similarly, it is imperative to analyze the historical circumstances in
which specific Qur'anic ethical norms were negotiated. Many of the
institutions referenced in the Qur'an----such as the poll tax or the
formation of alliances with non-Muslims----can be understood only if the
reader is aware of the historical practices surrounding the revelation
of the text. By emptying the Qur'an both of its historical and moral
context, the puritan trend ends up transforming the text into a long
list of morally non-committal legal commands.
The Qur'anic discourse, for instance, can readily support an ethic of
diversity and tolerance. The Qur'an not only expects, but even accepts
the reality of difference and diversity within human society: "O
humankind, God has created you from male and female and made you into
diverse nations and tribes so that you may come to know each other.
Verily, the most honored of you in the sight of God is he who is the
most righteous."7 Elsewhere, the Qur'an asserts that diversity is part
of the Divine intent and purpose in creation: "If thy Lord had willed,
He would have made humankind into a single nation, but they will not
cease to be diverse…… And, for this God created them [humankind]."8 The
classical commentators on the Qur'an did not fully explore the
implications of this sanctioning of diversity, or the role of peaceful
conflict resolution in perpetuating the type of social interaction that
would result in people "knowing each other." Nor does the Qur'an provide
specific rules or instructions about how "diverse nations and tribes"
are to acquire such knowledge. In fact, the existence of diversity as a
primary purpose of creation, as suggested by the verse above, remained
underdeveloped in Islamic theology. Pre-modern Muslim scholars did not
have a strong incentive to explore the meaning and implications of the
Qur'anic endorsement of diversity and cross-cultural intercourse. This
is partly because of the political dominance and superiority of the
Islamic Civilization, which left Muslim scholars with a sense of
self-sufficient confidence. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that the
Islamic civilization was pluralistic and unusually tolerant of various
social and religious denominations. Working out the implications of a
commitment to human diversity and mutual knowledge under contemporary
conditions requires moral reflection and attention to historical
circumstance: precisely what is missing from puritan theology and
doctrine.
Other than a general endorsement of human diversity, the Qur'an also
accepted the more specific notion of a plurality of religious beliefs
and laws. Although the Qur'an clearly claims that Islam is the Divine
Truth, and demands belief in Muhammad as the final messenger in a long
line of Abrahamic prophets, it does not completely exclude the
possibility that there might be other paths to salvation. The Qur'an
insists on God's unfettered discretion to accept in His mercy whomever
He wishes. In a rather remarkable set of passages that, again, have not
been adequately theorized by Muslim theologians, the Qur'an recognizes
the legitimate multiplicity of religious convictions and laws. In one
such passage, for example, the Qur'an asserts: "To each of you God has
prescribed a Law and a Way. If God would have willed, He would have made
you a single people. But God's purpose is to test you in what he has
given each of you, so strive in the pursuit of virtue, and know that you
will all return to God [in the Hereafter], and He will resolve all the
matters in which you disagree."9 On this and other occasions the Qur'an
goes on to state that it is possible for non-Muslims to attain the
blessing of salvation: "Those who believe, those who follow Jewish
scriptures, the Christians, the Sabians, and any who believe in God and
the Final Day, and do good, all shall have their reward with their Lord
and they will not come to fear or grief."10 Significantly, this passage
occurs in the same chapter that instructs Muslims not to take the Jews
and Christians as allies. How can these different verses be reconciled?
If we read the text with moral and historical guidance, we can see the
different passages as part of a complex and layered discourse about
reciprocity and its implications in the historical situation in
Mohammed's Medina. In part, the chapter exhorts Muslims to support the
newly established Muslim community in Medina. But its point is not to
issue a blanket condemnation against Jews and Christians (who "shall
have their reward with their Lord"). Instead, it accepts the
distinctiveness of the Jewish and Christian communities and their laws,
while also insisting that Muslims are entitled to the same treatment as
those other communities. Thus it sets out an expectation of reciprocity
for Muslims: while calling upon Muslims to support the Prophet of Islam
against his Jewish and Christian detractors, it also recognizes the
moral worth and rights of the non-Muslim "other."
The challenge most often invoked against an argument for tolerance in
Islam is the issue of jihad. Jihad, especially as portrayed in the
Western media, is often associated with the idea of a holy war that is
propagated in the name of God against the unbelievers. Therefore, jihad
is often equated with the most vulgar images of religious intolerance.
At the most rudimentary level, the Qur'an itself is explicit in
prohibiting any form of coerced conversions to Islam. It contends that
truth and falsity are clear and distinct, and so whomever wishes to
believe may do so, but no duress is permitted in religion: "There is no
compulsion in matter of faith."11 Of course, this response is
incomplete----even if forced conversions to Islam are prohibited,
aggressive warfare to spread Islamic power over non-believers might
still be allowed. Does the Qur'an condone such expansionist wars?
Interestingly, Islamic tradition does not have a notion of holy war.
"Jihad" simply means to strive hard or struggle in pursuit of a just
cause, and according to the Prophet of Islam, the highest form of jihad
is the struggle waged to cleanse oneself from the vices of the heart.
Holy war (in Arabic al-harb al-muqaddasah) is not an expression used by
the Qur'anic text or Muslim theologians. In Islamic theology, war is
never holy; it is either justified or not, and if it is justified, those
killed in battle are considered martyrs. The Qur'anic text does not
recognize the idea of unlimited warfare, and does not consider the
simple fact of the belligerent's Muslim identity to be sufficient to
establish the justness of his cause. In other words, the Qur'an
entertains the possibility that the Muslim combatant might be the unjust
party in a conflict.
Moreover, while the Qur'an emphasizes that Muslims may fight those who
fight them, it also insists that Muslims may not transgress.12
Transgression is an ambiguous term, but on several occasions the Qur'an
intimates that in order not to transgress, Muslims must be constrained
by a requirement of proportionality, even when the cause is just. For
instance, it states, "Mandated is the law of equality, so that who
transgresses against you, respond in kind, and fear God, and know that
God is with those who exercise restraint."13
Despite the prohibition against transgression and the condemnation of
unlimited warfare, many classical jurists adopted an imperialist
orientation, which divided the world into the abode of Islam and the
abode of war, and supported expansionist wars against unbelievers. But
this view was not unanimous. Classical Muslim jurists debated whether
unbelief is a sufficient justification for warfare, with a sizeable
number of classical jurists arguing that non-Muslims may not be fought
unless they pose a physical threat to Muslims. If non-Muslims seek
peace, Muslims should make an effort to achieve such a peace. This
discourse was partly inspired by the Qur'anic injunctions concerning
peace. The Qur'an asserts that God does not prohibit Muslims from making
peace with those who do not fight Muslims, but God does prohibit Muslims
from making peace with those who have expelled Muslims from their homes
and continue to persecute them.14 Elsewhere, the Qur'an pronounces a
stronger mandate in favor of peace in stating: "If your enemy inclines
towards peace, then you should seek peace and trust in God."15 Moreover,
the Qur'an instructs Muslims not to haughtily turn away unbelievers who
seek to make peace with Muslims, and reminds Muslims that, "If God would
have willed, He would have given the unbelievers power over you
[Muslims], and they would have fought you [Muslims]. Therefore, if they
[the unbelievers] withdraw from you and refuse to fight you, and instead
send you guarantees of peace, know that God has not given you a license
[to fight them]."16 These discussions of peace would not make sense if
Muslims were in a permanent state of war with non-believers, and if
non-believers were a permanent enemy and always a legitimate target.
The other major issue on the point of tolerance in Islam is that of the
poll tax (jizyah) imposed on the People of Book (Christians and Jews)
who live in Muslim territory. When the Qur'an was revealed, it was
common inside and outside of Arabia to levy poll taxes against alien
groups. Building upon the historical practice, classical Muslim jurists
argued that the poll tax is money collected by the Islamic polity from
non-Muslims in return for the protection of the Muslim state. If the
Muslim state was incapable of extending such protection to non-Muslims,
it was not supposed to levy a poll tax. In fact, 'Umar (r.
13-23/634-644), the second Rightly-Guided Caliph and close companion of
the Prophet, returned the poll tax to an Arab Christian tribe that he
was incapable of protecting from Byzantine aggression.
Aside from the juristic theory justifying the poll tax, the Qur'an does
not, however, pronounce an absolute and unwavering rule in favor of such
an institution. Once more, attention to historical circumstance is
essential. The Qur'an endorsed a poll tax as a response to particular
groups in Arabia who were persistently hostile to the early Muslims.
Importantly, the Prophet did not collect a poll tax from every
non-Muslim tribe that submitted to Muslim sovereignty, and in fact, in
the case of a large number of non-Muslim but non-hostile tribes, he paid
them a periodic sum of money or goods. These tribes were known as "those
whose hearts have been reconciled." Furthermore, 'Umar entered into a
peace settlement with Arab Christian tribes pursuant to which these
tribes were obligated to pay the Islamic annual tax known as the zakah
(almsgiving), and not the poll tax. Reportedly, although they refused to
convert to Islam, the Christian tribes contended that paying the jizyah
(poll tax) was degrading, and instead, asked to pay the zakah, and 'Umar
accommodated their request.17
In short, there are various indicators that the poll tax is not a
theologically mandated practice, but a functional solution that was
adopted in response to a specific set of historical circumstances. Only
an entirely ahistorical reading of the text could conclude that it is an
essential element in a Divinely-sanctioned program of subordinating the
non-believer.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, the Qur'an, or any text, speaks through its reader. This
ability of human beings to interpret texts is both a blessing and a
burden. It is a blessing because it provides us with the flexibility to
adapt texts to changing circumstances. It is a burden because the reader
must take responsibility for the normative values he or she brings to
the text. Any text, including those that are Islamic, provides
possibilities for meaning, not inevitabilities. And those possibilities
are exploited, developed and ultimately determined by the reader's
efforts----good faith efforts, we hope----at making sense of the text's
complexities. Consequently, the meaning of the text is often only as
moral as its reader. If the reader is intolerant, hateful, or
oppressive, so will be the interpretation of the text.
It would be disingenuous to deny that the Qur'an and other Islamic
sources offer possibilities of intolerant interpretation. Clearly these
possibilities are exploited by the contemporary puritans and
supremacists. But the text does not command such intolerant readings.
Historically, Islamic civilization has displayed a remarkable ability to
recognize possibilities of tolerance, and to act upon these
possibilities. Islamic civilization produced a moral and humanistic
tradition that preserved Greek philosophy, and generated much science,
art, and socially benevolent thought. Unfortunately, however, the modern
puritans are dissipating and wasting this inspiring moral tradition.
They are increasingly shutting off the possibilities for a tolerant
interpretation of the Islamic tradition.
If we assess the moral trajectory of a civilization in light of its past
record, then we have ample reason to be optimistic about the future. But
the burden and blessing of sustaining that moral trajectory----of
accentuating the Qur'anic message of tolerance and openness to the
other----falls squarely on the shoulders of contemporary Muslim
interpreters of the tradition.
Khaled Abou El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Fellow
in Islamic Law at UCLA and author of Rebellion and Violence in Islamic
Law.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Muhammad Amin Ibn 'Abidin, Hashiyat Radd al-Muhtar (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi
1966), 6:413; Ahmad al-Sawi, Hashiyat al-Sawi 'ala Tafsir al-Jalalayn
(Beirut: Dar Ihya al-Turath al-Arabi, n.d.), 3 :307-308. See also Ahmad
Dallal, "The Origins and Objectives of Islamic Revivalist Thought,
1750-1850," Journal of the American Oriental Society 113/3 (1993), who
demonstrates that Wahhabism in the nineteenth century was considered a
fringe fanatic group.
2 Qur'an 5:51.
3 Qur'an 3:85.
4 Qur'an 8:39.
5 Qur'an 9:29.
6 Qur'an 4:135.
7 Qur'an 49:13.
8 Qur'an 11:118-9.
9 Qur'an 5:49.
10 Qur'an 5:69; 2:62.
11 Qur'an 2:256; 10:99; 18:29.
12 Qur'an 2:190; 5:2.
13 Qur'an 2:194.
14 Qur'an 60:9.
15 Qur'an 8:61.
16 Qur'an 4:90. Also 4:94.
17 Abu Zakariyya al-Nawawi, Rawdat al-Talibin, 3rd edition, edited by
Zuhayr al-Shawish (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1991), 10:316-317.
Originally Published in December 2001/Jan at
http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR26.6/elfadl.html
Please also see "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/elfadl.html
A PBS interview with Khaled Abou El-Fadl |
