No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam

by Reza Aslan

That the veil applied solely to Muhammad’s wives is further demonstrated by the fact that the term for donning the veil, darabat al-hijab, was used synonymously and interchangeably with “becoming Muhammad’s wife.” For this reason, during the Prophet’s lifetime, no other women in the Ummah observed hijab.

But the veil was neither compulsory nor, for that matter, widely adopted until generations after Muhammad’s death, when a large body of male scriptural and legal scholars began using their religious and political authority to regain the dominance they had lost in society as a result of the Prophet’s egalitarian reforms.

India, Sayyid Ahmed Khan (1817–98) used Ibn Taymiyya’s argument to claim that jihad could not be properly applied to the struggle for independence against British occupation because the British had not suppressed the religious freedom of India’s Muslim community—a Quranic requirement for sanctioning jihad (as one can imagine, this was an unpopular argument in colonial India). Chiragh

He imposed a mandatory fast upon his community, which was to take place annually on the tenth day (Ashura) of the first month of the Jewish calendar, the day more commonly known as Yom Kippur.

One by one, he carried the idols out before the assembled crowd and, raising them over his head, smashed them to the ground. The various depictions of gods and prophets, such as that of Abraham holding divining rods, were all washed away with Zamzam water; all, that is, except for the one of Jesus and his mother, Mary. This image the Prophet put his hands over reverently, saying,

And al-Tabari notes that the first Muslim fast coincided with Yom Kippur; Muhammad specifically ordered his followers to fast with the Jews in commemoration of their flight from Egypt.

Even the interpretation of the Quran and the traditions, or Sunna, of the Prophet were, for the Rationalists, subordinate to human reason. As Abd al-Jabbar (d. 1024), the most influential Mu’tazilite theologian of his time, argued, the “truthfulness” of God’s word cannot be based solely on God’s Revelation, for that would be circular reasoning.

According to Ibn Rushd, religion simplifies the truth for the masses by resorting to easily recognizable signs and symbols, regardless of the doctrinal contradictions and rational incongruities that inevitably result from the formation and rigid interpretation of dogma.

Alongside the “vocal dhikr” of the Qadiri is the so-called “silent dhikr” popularized by the Order of the Naqshbandi. Considered the most traditional of the Sufi Orders, the Naqshbandi primarily comprised politically active pietists who traced their lineage back to Abu Bakr and who maintained strict adherence to the Shariah. The Naqshbandi’s traditionalist brand of Sufism led them to reject music and dance in favor of more sober ritual activities like the silent dhikr, in which the names of God are repeated inwardly in an act of meditation, rather than aloud in an act of communion. The silent dhikr does not exactly correspond to the meditation rituals found in, for example, Theravada Buddhism. However, the Naqshbandi, as well as a few other contemplative Sufi Orders, do practice something called fikr, which Ian Richard Netton correctly translates as “contemplation resulting in certitude of the divine.” In any case, like the Qadiri, the Naqshbandi have only one goal in pursuing either dhikr or fikr: union with God.

In return for the pillaging of their lands, the suppression of their independence, and the destruction of their local economies, the colonized peoples were to be given the gift of “civilization.” Indeed, in every region to which Europeans laid claim, the colonialist project was presented in the guise of a “civilizing mission.” As Cecil Rhodes, founder of the De Beers diamond company and at one time the virtual dictator of modern-day South Africa, famously declared, “We Britons are the first race in the world, and the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race.”

Al-Afghani agreed with Sayyid Ahmed Khan that the Ulama bore the responsibility for the decline of Islamic civilization. In their self-appointed role as the guardians of Islam, the Ulama had so stifled independent thought and scientific progress that even as Europe awakened to the Enlightenment, the Muslim world was still floundering in the Middle Ages. By forbidding rational dialogue about the limits of law and the meaning of scripture, the Ulama, whom al-Afghani likened to “a very narrow wick on top of which is a very small flame that neither lights its surroundings nor gives

Young Ottomans had developed an intriguing reformist agenda based on fusing Western democratic ideals with traditional Islamic principles. The result was a supernationalist project, commonly referred to as Pan-Islamism, whose principal goal was the encouragement of Muslim unity across cultural, sectarian, and national boundaries,

The only path to Muslim empowerment, he argued, was to liberate Islam from the iron grip of the Ulama and their traditionalist interpretation of the Shariah. Like Sir Sayyid, Abdu demanded that every man-made source of law—the Sunna, ijma, qiyas, and the like—must be subject to rational discourse. Even the holy Quran must be reopened to interpretation, questioning, and debate from all sectors of Muslim society. Muslims do not need the guidance of the Ulama to engage

Abd al-Wahhab was deeply influenced by Wali Allah’s puritanical ideology.