Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

DEFINING AND DEFENDING BELIEVERS t 205
mind, and knowing with the heart” was generally accepted by
Sunnis as applicable to membership in the community of believers
whose profession rendered them subject to the Islamic law. All
agreed, moreover, that the one unforgivable sin of polytheism
(shirk; “association,” that is, of other gods with the God) excluded
one from that community. As regards other grave sins such as murder
and fornication, eternal punishment in the Afterlife was probable
but not inevitable. The sinner could only put his hope in God’s
goodness and the Prophet’s intercession; for their part, the other
Muslims here below must suspend judgment.
The Shiites would not have it entirely so. In Shiite eyes, the
Sunnis are assuredly Muslims (muslimun) in that they have professed
the essential monotheism of the shahada; but it only the
Shiat Ali were muminun, or true believers. Shiites have not hesitated
to enforce this conviction on Sunnis when they have had the
power to do so—in Safavid Iran, for example—but more often the
power shoe was on the Sunni foot. To avoid having Sunni practices
forced on them under threat, Shiites, despite their deep veneration
for the martyr, have resorted to the practice of dissembling (taqiyya)
their true beliefs. Neither Sunnis nor Shiites, however, despite
their often antagonistic feelings toward one another—often most
openly and violently manifested on the hajj or annual pilgrimage,
when they are in close quarters and religious emotions run high—
have read the other out of the umma.
Obvious deviance apart, the Sunnis’ tolerant attitude of suspending
judgment on the moral conduct of one’s neighbor had
some extremely disagreeable political implications that were, in
fact, the chief point in the discussion. Postponement of judgment
effectively removed the religious and moral issue from the political
life of the Islamic empire, and the acceptance of this principle
marked another stage in the secularization of the caliphate, whose
tenants could no longer be challenged on the grounds of their personal
morality. The predestination argument led in the same direction—de
facto was in fact de Deo. The predestination versus free
will argument drifted off into quite another direction, into the
metaphysical thicket of atoms, accidents, and “acquisition,” but
the postponement thesis held because it represented some kind of