Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
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204 t CHAPTER EIGHT<br />
political limits against “sectaries.” This was the principle of a<br />
united community, jamaa, <strong>and</strong> it survived in the common centrist<br />
conjunction of “people of custom <strong>and</strong> the united community” (ahl<br />
al-sunna wa al-jamaa), briefly characterized as “Sunni.” The connection<br />
between the two notions of custom <strong>and</strong> community may<br />
go back to the days of Ali (r. 656–661), when that caliph refused<br />
to accept the extension of the sunna concept, the notion of normative<br />
behavior, beyond the Prophet to his immediate successors. The<br />
partisans of jamaa, in contrast, regarded the community <strong>and</strong> its<br />
sunna as a continuous process <strong>and</strong> so were willing to accept the<br />
sunna of the first three caliphs as authoritative <strong>and</strong> normative as<br />
that of the Prophet himself.<br />
What was important in the Sunni view was, then, staying close<br />
to “catholic” <strong>Islam</strong> as defined by consensus, first in a political<br />
sense by following the Comm<strong>and</strong>er of the Faithful or leader of the<br />
community: praying with him, paying the alms-tithe into his<br />
h<strong>and</strong>s, following him into holy war if he so decrees, abiding by his<br />
application of the punishments prescribed by the Quran. “Whoever<br />
secedes from the Imam of the Muslims,” said Ahmad ibn<br />
Hanbal (d. 855) in his Creed, “when the people have agreed upon<br />
him <strong>and</strong> acknowledged his caliphate . .., that rebel has broken the<br />
unity of the Muslims <strong>and</strong> opposed the tradition coming from God’s<br />
Messenger.” But there is an even more profound sense in which<br />
consensus defines the community. The Prophet is reported to have<br />
blessed Muslims who “kept close to the community,” a phrase that<br />
<strong>for</strong> Shafii, <strong>Islam</strong>’s most influential jurist, meant deviation “from<br />
what the community of Muslims maintains. ... Error arises in<br />
separation. In the community there can be no total error concerning<br />
the meaning of the Book, of the Prophetic tradition,” <strong>and</strong>,<br />
taking a large step outside the cover of revelation, he adds, “or of<br />
analogical reasoning, please God.”<br />
If the Kharijites were thereby willing to exclude the grave sinner<br />
as well as the unbeliever (kafir) from their midst, there were others<br />
such as the early jurist Abu Hanifa (d. 767) who regarded faith<br />
(iman) as something separate from the moral activity of the individual<br />
Muslim. Neither view entirely prevailed in the end. The definition<br />
of faith as “confessing with the tongue, believing with the