Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

162 t CHAPTER SEVEN
first instance from its source. Scripture was primary in this matter:
though there were traditions before Scripture, at least in Judaism
and Christianity, once the Book was established as the revealed
Word of God and its contents canonized, it enjoyed what appeared
to be an absolute authority for believers. It was what the Quran
calls “The Guidance.” Tradition, which, as remarked, antedated
Scripture and may in fact have eventually produced it, had in the
end to carve out its own place in the face of this apparently unique
claim of Scripture. In Judaism, and later in Islam as well, tradition
is thought to have arisen at the side of Scripture and to have been
transmitted through the same type of prophetic channel.
God’s Way
Implicit in all that Muhammad did and preached was the notion
that there is an Islamic “way” (sharia), which resembled the Jewish
and the Christian way in that it came from God, and which
stood in sharp opposition to both the religious paganism and degenerate
tribal custom of the contemporary Arabs. But the Islamic
way was no more explicit and formal than the random precepts of
the Quran that defined it, and at Muhammad’s death in 632, God’s
revelation was ended and the Quran had become forever a closed
Book. At that very moment, however, the Muslim community,
which was endowed with only the most rudimentary religious and
secular institutions, was poised at the beginning of an immense
military and political expansion that would carry it within a short
space of time from Spain to the Indus.
The Islamic law or sharia is the prescribed pattern of Muslim
behavior, and it originates in only one ground, God’s will, which
was made available to its intended beneficiaries either through his
formal revelation in the Quran or, as it turned out, through the
instruction or example of his chosen Prophet, Muhammad. But
neither the Quran nor Muhammad’s example are themselves
sharia; the divine commands and prohibitions must be lifted or
extracted from either or both. Law that is simply lifted from either
of those two venues is constituted of the precepts lying, without