Some academics continue to apply non-Islamic, and in fact
purely secularist, concepts drawn from various currents of
Western philosophy and social sciences to Islam. And then
there are the political ideologues, who often have little
knowledge of Islam yet are presented as experts on the subject; from them one hears the most egregious anti-Islamic
statements touted in the media and in popular books as
authentic knowledge of Islam. They are joined in this chorus
by a number of Christian voices from extremist groups who
speak as if they were living in twelfth-century France at the
time of the Crusades, but who are at the same time completely devoid of knowledge of traditional Christian theology, not to mention Christian humility and charity.
Each period of the study of Islam in the West has produced its own literature usually colored by the prejudices of
the period, which have been for the most part anti-Islamic.
There is, in fact, no religion in the world about which Western authors have written so much and at the same time in
such a pejorative way as Islam. And yet, despite the persistence of this genre of writing and in fact its increase since
the tragedies of September 11, 2001, authentic works on
Islam based on truth and the intention to create mutual
understanding rather than hatred, works of the sort that were
practically nonexistent in the earlier part of the twentieth
century, are now readily available in the English language.
The present book seeks to serve as an introduction to Islam
and its civilization in the spirit of such works, that is, in the
spirit of mutual understanding and respect between Islam
and the West and on the basis of the truth of the teachings of Islam as it has been understood by
its adherents over the ages.
Islam is not only a religion; it is also the creator and living spirit of a major world civilization with a long history
stretching over fourteen centuries. Islamic history concerns
the historic existence of the peoples of many lands, from
North Africa to Malaysia, over vast spans of time. It has witnessed the creation of some of the greatest empires and the
integration into a single social order of many diverse ethnic
and linguistic groups. Islamic history has, moreover, directly affected the history of Europe for over a millennium and
has been in turn deeply affected by the West since the advent
of the colonial period. Islamic history has, furthermore,
been profoundly intertwined with the history of India since
the seventh century and with certain aspects of Chinese history for the past millennium (and to some extent even before
that, going back to the century following the rise of Islam).
Islam created a civilization that has covered the middle
belt of the Old World for over a millennium. This civilization produced great intellectual figures, a distinct art and
architecture, dazzling achievements in science and technology, and an equitable social order based on the teachings of
the Quran. Its thinkers, poets, musicians, and artists created
works that deeply influenced Western as well as Indian and
even to some extent Chinese art and thought. Its scientists
formulated theories and carried out practices that were
widely emulated by Western scientists during the Middle
Ages and even the Renaissance.
In this article I deal briefly with both Islamic history and
the intellectual dimensions of Islam and its civilization, but
in such an introductory work it is not possible to also adequately cover the arts and sciences. Yet it must be remembered how significant they are for an understanding of
Islamic civilization and various Islamic cultures. Because
Islam, like Judaism, does not permit the making of a Divine
image, it has produced an aniconic sacred art in which the
presence of God is indicated by geometric patterns, arabesques, rhythmic repetitions, and empty space pointing to
unity rather than by icons. Islam has made the chanting and
writing of the Word of God, that is, the Quran, its highest
sacred arts. Hence, the central role of Quranic psalmody
and calligraphy, which are ubiquitous in Islamic civilization.
Next it has honored architecture, which creates spaces in
which the Word of God reverberates and therefore, like calligraphy, is related in its essential form and function to the
Divine Word. Furthermore, Islamic art has paid special
attention to the arts that concern us most in our everyday
lives, such as the art of the dress, the carpet, and various
daily utensils. As for painting, although some consider the
Persian miniature, from which the rich Mogul and Turkish
schools of miniature derive, one of the greatest schools of
painting in the world, painting has always been closely related to the art of the book and has never occupied the same
central role in Islamic civilization that it has done in the
West.
Wherever Islam went, it did not destroy the local culture,
but transformed it into an Islamic reality. What were rejected were elements of a clearly un-Islamic nature. As a result,
Islamic civilization developed into several distinct cultural
zones including the Arabic, Persian, Black African, Turkic,
Indian, Malay, and Chinese. In each of these zones Islamic
culture and art were to have a certain distinct local style
while preserving their universal Islamic character. For
example, Moroccan and Turkish architecture are both distinct, yet deeply Islamic in character. Also in calligraphy
certain local styles such as the maghribīin Morocco, Andalusia, and Algeria and shikastahin Persia developed, while
in the same lands one sees the kūfic, thuluth, and naskhī
styles, which are universal throughout the Islamic world.
Islamic civilization produced a very rich tradition in the
aural arts of poetry and music. There are very few civilizations of the past two millennia in which so much attention
has been paid to poetry and in which poetry has occupied
such an exalted position as in Islam. All major Islamic languages, such as Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Swahili, Bengali,
and Urdu, as well as more local languages, such as Sindhi,
Pushtu, and Hausa, have a very rich poetic tradition, and
poetry plays a far greater role in private and public life in the
Islamic world today than it does in the contemporary English-speaking world. Sufipoetry in Persian has been called
by some the most sublime and diversified mystical poetry in
the world, and Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, one of the greatest of the
Persian Sufi poets, who is also deeply venerated by the
Turks, is in fact the most widely read poet in America
today.
Apart from military music, which through Ottoman
channels became the origin of the European and later American military bands, and other forms of music associated with certain vocations or occasions such as weddings, Islamic
civilization discouraged an exteriorizing music that would
simply intensify the worldly passions within the soul. Rather, it drew music toward the inner dimension of human existence. In the hands of the Sufis, music became a steed with
which the soul could journey from the outward rim of existence to the inner courtyard of the soul, where the Divine
Presence resides. Islamic civilization created many musical
instruments, such as the tārand the ‘ūd, which were to find
their counterparts in the guitar and the lute in the West. Furthermore, Islamic philosophers and theoreticians of music
wrote notable works on theory, structure, notation, and the
effects of music on the soul as well as the body, works that
are attracting new interest in the West today, where much
attention is being paid again to the philosophy of music and
especially the relation between music and physical and psychological healing.
The contributions of Islamic science are so great and
complex that they cannot even be summarized in a proper
and meaningful way in a short introduction. Suffice it to say,
for some seven centuries (the eighth through the fourteenth
and fifteenth century), Islamic science was, from the point
of view of creativity, at the forefront of science considered
globally. Not only did Muslims synthesize Greco-Alexandrian, ancient Mesopotamian, Iranian, Indian, and to some
extent Chinese science, but they created many new sciences
or added new chapters to the ancient sciences. For example,
in mathematics they expanded the study of the geometry of
the Greeks and created the new disciplines of trigonometry and algebra.
Likewise, in medicine they furthered the studies of Hippocratic and Galenic medicine while diagnosing and distinguishing new diseases, discovering new remedies, and
proposing new theories. The same can be said for numerous
other sciences, from alchemy to astronomy, from physics to
geology. The global history of science has as one of its central chapters Islamic science, without which there would
have been no Western science. And yet Islamic science had
an understanding of nature and the role of the sciences of
nature in the total scheme of knowledge that was very different from what developed in the West with the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution.