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