Islamic Civilization in Pre-Mongol Era and Today - Assignment Example

Question What are the major characteristics of Islamic civilization during the ical (pre-Mongol era) period of Muslim History? How are the development and nature of Theology, Philosophy, Law, Sufism etc. contribute to the growth and expansion of Classical Islamic Civilization? Islamic civilization in the pre-Mongol, or the classical era, had several major features. One of these was the fact that it was composed of an amazingly cosmopolitan society, made up of a number of different cultural and ethnic groups, as well as religions. On one hand, Islam proved to be a uniting force, which meant that people from Iran to North West Africa could all speak to the same issues using the same language, and could mix their diverse cultural backgrounds (). But beyond this, the Muslim World had a great deal of religious diversity as well, because the areas that Muslims had conquered during the expansionary era (such as Northern Africa, Syria and Palestine) had perivously been some of the heartlands of the Christian and Jewish religions as well. This cosmopolitan nature was not universal, but rather was restricted to a select group o religions which were considered the kin of Islam. “The People of the Book” (108), Jews and Christians, who had founding religious documents in the same vein as Islamic ones (as in they were both Abrahamic religions) were allowed to continue worshiping freely in Muslim territory, because their religions were brother religions to Islam. This category of accepted religions was later expanded into a legal category, called the Dhimmi (98), which included not just Jews and Christians, but a variety of other religious peoples including Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Hindus and Buddhists, with the list tending to expand when areas of those populations were conqured by the Muslims or otherwise became an important part of Muslim society (for instance, Zoroastrianism’s heartland was in Iran, so Zoroastrians began being accepted when Islam expanded into Iran). The Dhimmi were not full citizens, and were treated as being below Muslims in many ways, they pad to pay higher taxes (109), and could not serve in Muslim militaries. But they were still treated with a remarkable amount of respect, especially compared to the way Christians treated people from other religions in their territories, and were often considered important parts of Muslim society. The cosmopolitan composition of Muslim society in the Classical Era meant that Muslims were exposed to, and exposed others two, a much broader depth of cultural experiences than other peoples. This impacted the development of theology and law, because, unlike Christian theologians, who existed in something of a religious vacuum, the ‘Ulama, or Muslim scholars, had constant interchange with peoples from other religions. One of the greatest examples of this is Sufism, a brand of mysticism that grew wildly in the Classical Period of Islam (138). This religious practice had a great deal of common ground with religious mystical practices that were growing in other religions, such as the explosion of monastic Christianity in Europe. The maxims of Sufism, for instance “ to possess nothing, and to be possessed by nothing” could just as easily describe Christian monasticism as it does Sufism (138). This syncretism that developed because of the cosmopolitan nature of Muslim society probably contributed to its spread – conquered peoples were often able to make their own practices and beliefs mix with those of Islam, and there was a give and take between Muslims and non-Muslims. One of the defining features of Classical Islam is an incredible syncretism and mixing of religious and cultural ideas, which was allowed to occur because of the development of a protected class of non-Muslims. Question 2: What is modernity? How do we define it? Modernity is one of the hardest things to define, because it means different things in different places and can mean very different things depending on what view you use to look at it. One feature of modernity that seems to affect everyone is the development of technology and changes in social structure of humanity. More and more people live in urban areas than ever before, and they are more interconnected with technology. There are also features of modernity such as changes in the methods of governance – governments tend to have a much greater control over populations than they ever had previously, and the types of governments in the world are shifting – some are more democratic than ever before, but some, largely in the Arab world, are more dictatorial with tighter control over their populations than they have ever had (though the recent events of the Arab Spring show that even that power is fleeting). There are also often connections between modernity and the growth of personal liberties, and the fuller integration of people who are often excluded from society into society, such as women, people of divergent gender and sexual identities and so on. For the discussion of Islam, however, one of the most contentious issues is the association between modernity and secularism (301). In many parts of the world, and especially in the West, the growth of modernity has been associated with a growth in secularism, and with declining identification with religious ideas or groups of any sort. This is something that most people involved with Islam (obviously) want to avoid. They want to find ways to integrate modernity into their lives without necessarily losing religion, and find a way to make modernity and religion in support of each other instead of in opposition to each other. Question 3: How various Muslim thinkers (modernists, fundamentalists, feminists, progressive Muslims) responded to the crisis of modernity? How did they understand Classic Islamic history? How their responses to modernity differed from each other? Modernity, as mentioned above, is one of the hardest things to make consistent with Islam because there are times that modernity can be inexorably linked to secularism, something which is by its very nature abhorrent and opposed to Islam. There have been a wide variety of different ways to deal with the crisis of modernity. “Fundamentalists” a term that is widely misunderstood by the West and misused by Western media, largely seek to return to the mores and structure of the Islamic Golden Age, or the Islamic Classical Era. They believe that the essence of Islamic thought is enshrined in the Qur’an. They believe that the best way to deal with Modernity is to return to the fundamental practices of Islam, at least religiously (205). Interestingly, fundamentalists are in many ways revisionists in terms of history – the Classical Period of Islam, and all of the periods that preceded it, always understood the Qur’an as a living document, and tried to deal with it in that light, and realized that interpretation could be made in a wide variety of ways and that one could live a wide variety of lifestyles and still be in line with Qur’anic teachings. Fundamentalists today tend to reject this idea, and have created a new and different kind of Islam based solely on the text of the Qur’an, along with a few other sources like Hadith, and tend to feel that they have a monopoly on truth A similar idea, in terms of bearing a great backwards looking perspective, is Islamist practice. Islamists understand the Qur’an as being a document that does not just teach personal behavior, but also describes the structure and composition of the state, and believe that the laws of Islam are laws that were meant to be enshrined politically, and not just used in moral personal choices. This idea, or political Islam, is on the rise in Muslim countries (especially after the Arab Spring), and tends to try to blend the modern idea of the nation-state with political Islamic thought. They would, for instance, espouse a democratic election, because that is the best form of modern state, but then would advocate that the legislature of that democratic country should base its laws on the practices and mores described in Islamic documents, such as the Qur’an and Hadiths. Different from both fundamentalist and Islamist understandings of modernity are the feminists understandings of it. Islamic feminists tend to question a great deal of Islamic thought, and there is some debate whether “Islamic Feminism” itself can be a non-oxymoronic term (255). But the basic understanding of Islamic feminism rests on Islam as a religious practice that has to be taken on with the free will of participant – they focus on the idea, for instance, that if someone freely chooses to behave in line with Islamic thought out of personal choice, this would be okay. They also try to parse out the fundamental teachings of Islam, as they see it, from the constructions of the society that surround and penetrate Islam. The head and face coverings that many fundamentalists think should be worn by women, for instance, actually have a long history before the rise of Islam, and Islamic feminists would point out the fact that the teachings of Islam in terms of modesty should be in relation to the culture and society in which one lives, and with one’s own perception of modesty. They would argue that aspects of modernity, such as freedom of choice, must be a fundamental part of the future development of Islam. Read More