Faith and the Dialogue of Civilizations - Part 3 of 8
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
CA
Renewal, the Islamic Paradigm
2. The Codification of Jurisprudence
The spread of Islam across the inter-connecting landmass of Asia, Europe and Africa brought into the Islamic domain large masses of people who were previously Christian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist or Hindu. Conversion to the new faith was slow. The conquering Muslims left the people of the territories alone as long as they paid the protective tax and did not interfere with freedom of choice in religion. Mass conversions to Islam took place in the reign of Omar bin Abdul Aziz (717-719) who abolished unfair taxation, tolerated dissent and treated Muslim and non-Muslim alike with the dignity due to fellow man. Impressed with his initiatives, people in the former territories of the Sassanids and the Byzantines embraced Islam in droves.
The new Muslims brought with them not only their ancient heritage and culture, but methods of looking at the sublime questions of life in ways fundamentally different from that of the Arabs. Historical Islam had to face the rationalism of the Greeks, the stratification of the Zoroastrians, the Gnosticism of the Hindus, the abnegation of the Buddhists and the secular but highly refined ethical codes of the Taoist and Confucian Chinese. Add to it the internal convulsions in the Islamic world arising out of the conflicting claims of the Umayyads, the Hashemites, the Ahl-al Bait and the partisan and fractious approach of the many parties to legal issues, and one has a good idea of the challenge faced by the earliest Islamic jurists. Fiqh was the doctrinal response of the Islamic civilization to these challenges.
Some definitions of the terms Shariah, Fiqh and secular law are in order here. The terms Shariah and Fiqh are not the same. In interfaith dialogue the two terms are used interchangeably even by well-meaning scholars. This leads to erroneous conclusions.
Shariah is the unchanging Law of the Divine. It embraces not just the world of man, but the cosmos and the world of the spirit. For instance, it is Shariah that the sun rises from the East and the galaxies rotate as they do. It is also the Shariah that an orange tree bears oranges whereas an apple tree yields apples.
Fiqh, on the other hand, is the historical dimension of the Shariah and represents the continuous and unceasing Muslim struggle to live up to divine commandments in time and space. It is the rigorous and detailed application of the Shariah to issues that confront humankind as it participates in the unfolding drama of history. As such it embraces the approach, the process, the methodology as well as the practical application of the Shariah. It defines the interface of an individual with himself, his family, his society, his community, as well as the civilizational interface between Islam and other faiths and ideologies. Fiqh is Islamic jurisprudence. It is an evolving, dynamic process. There are multiple schools of Fiqh.
The amalgamation of different nationalities, tribes and people who had previously followed other faiths required the codification of Fiqh. Islamic scholarship rose to the challenge in the eighth century and successfully evolved the schools of jurisprudence. The codification of Fiqh solidified the foundation of Islamic civilization and was the cement for its stability through the turmoil of centuries.
The price that was paid for this process was the emergence of different schools of Fiqh. Stated below are the major schools of Fiqh that are historically valid because they have survived the test of time for more than thirteen centuries:
Sunnah Schools of Fiqh:
Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii and Hanbali
Shia Schools of Fiqh
Ithna Ashari, Ismaili
Other schools of Fiqh
Zaidi, Ibadi
All of these schools claim their origin from the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet. They differ in their emphasis on historical sources. Some were influenced by political events in the succeeding centuries. In addition, there exist various jamaats (groups) that emphasize one or the other aspects of Fiqh, leading to further fragmentation.
3. The Challenge of Greek Rationalism
The challenge of Greek rational philosophy was of fundamental import not only to the world of Islam but to the Christian world, indeed to the development of human thought down to our own times.
The Islamic civilization met up with the Greek system of thought in the eighth century. It was love at first sight. The Caliph al-Mansur adopted the rational approach as the official dogma of the Abbasid court (745CE). A House of Wisdom was set up in Baghdad and Muslims scholars translated the works of the Greek philosophers, the Indian mathematicians, the Persian scribes and the Chinese engineers. The Mutazalites — as the rationalists were called in the Abbasid courts ---integrated the various schools of thought and produced a uniquely Islamic brand of philosophy.
However, the Mutazalites fell flat on their faces when they overextended their methodology to matters of faith. Not mindful of the limitations that the conceptualization of time and space places on philosophy itself, they postulated that the “Divine Word was created in time and space” as opposed to “God who is uncreated”. This dragged them into the doctrinal disputes of the times. The counter-Mutazalite revolution of the ninth century led by Imam Ibn Hanbal dethroned the Mutazalites. They were discredited and fell from court favor (846 CE).
The Islamic civilization shifted its focus from philosophy to empiricism and Sufism. The scientific method based on empirical observation (as opposed to philosophical speculations) was established and the classical period of Islamic science (800-1200 CE) was born. But the rationalists always remained suspect in Muslim eyes and received a final knockout blow in Tahaffuz al Falasafah (Repudiation of the Philosophers) by Al Ghazzali (d 1111 CE).
Thus the first bout of a believing civilization with a non-believing civilization was in favor of the believing civilization, albeit, the price that was paid by the believing civilization was increased rigidity in doctrinal matters, aka, the Hanbali school of jurisprudence, which a thousand years later was adopted by the Wahhabi Movement.
