Allahs Constitution

ALLAH’S CONSTITUTION: A POLITICAL READING OF THE KORAN Ramy Nima For B.M & F.P Contents A Note on the Text Foreword: Statement of the Issue Considered Introduction: The Socio-Historical Setting of the Koran Pre-Islamic social conditions Pre-Islamic religious conditions Chapter One: The Politics of Faith Revealing Faith: A Process in Reverse The Koran as the Word of God The Koran as The Holy Book The Koran as Allah’s Constitution Chapter Two: The Act of Submission The Estrangement of Power Personal Dependence and its Sublation Islam: The Deen of Submission Chapter Three: Koranic Divine Law Divine Law and the Form of Domination Koranic Commandments and the Sharia The Sharia as Islam’s Legal System The Sharia and Social Control Chapter Four: Divine Power and Mohammad’s Apostleship The ‘Ideal’ Form of Divine Power The Personification of Divine Power Towards Theocratic Rule Chapter Five: The Koranic Concept of ‘Faith’ and the Right to Rule The Concept of Iman The Mu’mineen as a ‘Distinguished’ Group Iman: the Illusion of Certitude Iman and the Right to Rule Chapter Six: The Divine Gift of ‘Knowledge’ The Concepts of ‘Ilm and ‘Aql The Political Basis of ‘Ilm ‘Ilm as ‘Revealed Knowledge’ The ‘Will to Power’ and the Divine Gift of ‘Knowledge’ Subjective Synthesis of ‘Ilm and Iman and the Justification of Authority Chapter Seven: Allah’s Chosen Servants: Successors as Rulers The Conception of ‘the Inheritance of the Land’ The Concept of Khalifa The Right of Succession The Making of a ‘Ruling Class’ Domination as Social Subjection and the Role of Allah’s Chosen Servants Chapter Eight: Jihad: A Divine Obligation Jihad and Tawhid

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Jihad in the Way of God Jihad: a Test of Faith and a Determiner of Status Jihad: A Sure Way to Paradise Jihad and Islam’s Hegemony Jihad and the Notion of ‘Holy War’ Jihad as a Means of Social Control The Expansion of the Umma: Compulsion v. Conversion The Concept of Qital Fighting against Fitnah ‘Fee Sabila Allah’: The Koranic Justification of Violence Jihad against Kufr Jihad and the Acquisition of Wealth Jihad and Martyrdom Jihad: the Making of Arabic as the Language of Power Jihad: Defensive or Offensive? In conclusion Glossary Copyright © Ramy Nima, 2007 All rights reserved

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Note on the Text In the use of the text of Al-Qur’an al-Kareem or the Holy Qur’an, I have taken the liberty of citing the English translation of verses from a number of editions interchangeably without stipulating the particular translated edition used. The following translations of the Koran were used: The Meaning of the Holy Quran, by Yusuf Ali, revised by Ismail al Faruqi, Amana Publications, Beltsville, Maryland, 1996. The Noble Qur’an in the English Language: A Summarised Version of At-Tabari, AlQurtubi, and Ibn Kathir with Comments from Sahih al-Bukhari, by Muhammad Taqi al-Din al-Hilali and Muhammad Muhsin Khan, Darussalam Publ., Riyadh, 1996. The Holy Qur’an, by Muhammad Ali, Ahmadiyyah Anjuman Isha’at Islam Lahore Inc. Columbus, 1991. The Message of the Qur’an, by Muhammad Asad, Andalus Press, Gibraltar, 1980. Holy Qur’an, by M.H. Shakir, Dar-U-Sseqafe, Qum, Iran (n.d.). The Holy Qur’an, by S.V. Mir Ahmed Ali, the Sterling Printing and Publishing Co., Karachi, 1964. The Koran Interpreted, by A.J. Arberry, Oxford University Press, London, 1964. The Qur’an, A New Translation, by M.A. Abdel Haleem, Oxford University Press, New York, 2004. I have used all the above translations for cross-checking of the rendering of the Arabic text. I have quoted verses (or even sentences and parts of verses) from which ever of these translations I thought gave a closer rendering of the original Arabic, and where these translations seemed to me to be inappropriate, deficient, or incorrect either changing the translator’s rendering or, more frequently, giving my own alternative rendering or explanation (interpretation) in parenthesis, as […]. Koranic terms are often rendered by different English equivalents; Arabic words are constructed from three-letter roots to which prefixes, infixes, suffixes and vowels are added; thus in their particular context and usage Koranic terms can lead to a wide range of meanings, resulting in translation difficulties in terms of English equivalents. In this essay I have attempted to give the closest possible rendering by consulting a number of Qur’an and Arabic dictionaries. However, in order to avoid confusion, where necessary I have given the Koranic-Arabic transliteration of the term, word, or sentence in parenthesis, as […]. The following Arabic dictionaries were used for cross-reference purposes: Edward William Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon (originally in 8 vols., London, 186393, with Book I containing the Classical words, their derivatives and their usages) reproduced in 2 vols. by the Islamic Texts Society, UK, 1984. Lugh’at-ul-Quran, Dictionary of the Words and Concepts of the Quran, (4 vols.), Tolu-e-Islam Trust, Lahore, 1941. John Penrice, A Dictionary and Glossary of the Quran, Library of Islam, Des Plaines, Ill., 1988. Abdul M. Omar’s The Dictionary of the Holy Qur’an: Arabic Words-English Meanings (with Notes), Noor Foundation-Int., India, 3rd ed., 2005. It remains to be said that in all works of translation, or even the use of existing translations for cross-reference and cross-checking purposes, the element of ‘interpretation’ is always present. This applies, of course, to the rendering and the choice of English equivalents of Koranic ‘technical’ terms given in this essay which, no doubt, some may disagree with.

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Foreword: Statement of the Issue Considered For Muslims, no matter of what denomination, faction, sect or persuasion, the Koran is God’s Word as conveyed through the Prophet Mohammad, who is deemed to be the last of the prophets. It is for this reason regarded as not merely a Holy Book, but as the Holy Book, as God’s final and Absolute Word. As the verbatim Word of God, and not an interpretation, rendering, translation or understanding of God’s message to the Prophet, it is considered as the highest form of cognisance, of divine knowledge, and specifically of jurisdictional and judicial knowledge – the highest form of wisdom, judgement and authority. In its true content, as unfolded in its totality, it is, in other words, the sum of the ways and means of the regulation of the whole matter of life – and not merely of ‘religious life’. The Koran is, indeed, for all Muslims, more than simply a book of scriptures or the setting down of prescriptions of the Islamic faith; it is more than the conception of the Truth of God in its final form; more than that knowledge as the subject of faith in its individual form; it is, rather, the substantiality of the being of God, which has, as such and in itself, the perfected, supreme dignity of a universal constitution. Consequently no other scripture or prescribed code of conduct or form of wisdom, of judgement and guidance of life as a whole, has such a dignified status. Its authority is thus unparalleled and eternal. Not even the Sunnah or the Hadith, the totality of what are called ‘Traditions’ – i.e. words, deeds and conduct attributed to the Prophet second-hand, as it were, and which were only set down in writing some two or three centuries after his death in accordance with a method of documentary recording allegedly supported by reference to a chain of named witnesses – has such a fundamentally universal and irrefutably absolute authority. What is of critical importance about the Koran is that in it directives on the whole matter of life are constituted not simply as commanded guidance outlining a process of transition towards the personal and the spiritual ideal, but as the actual substantiation of God’s authority in the here and now, or the realisation of the actuality of the jurisdiction of His Word (expressing His Will) in this world. It is, as regarded by Muslims, the absolute and complete knowledge of the Way of God to achieve the institution of the Kingdom of God on earth. The Koran, in short, is Allah’s Constitution. Fundamental in this context is thus the notion of the political. Essentially, of course, all religions are deeply political. As a form of ideology, religion has a profoundly political function as a powerful means of social control; and even in its very notion of spirituality – indeed, precisely because of it – the political is intrinsic to it. In the case of Christianity and Judaism, for example, the scriptures embrace and engage the political: they speak of the authority of God and set down guidance and rules, which are meant to be and are seen as God’s commandments, as divine laws – e.g. the Torah’s principal commandments or mitzvoth (the famous Ten Commandments, though substantially expanded to number 613). Islam, though more closely related to Judaism than Christianity, takes on this same political role, but with the added emphasis of making the actual implementation of its principles, more directly and more concretely than either of the other two monotheistic religions, an absolute political necessity as commanded by God Himself – i.e. as a collective institutional obligation and duty laid down in the Koran. That is to say, these principles are meant to be directives defined in terms of the fusion of the divine, the canonical and the legal. Basically, the Koranic directives are, in terms of their purpose and function, similar to, for example, the commandments set down in the Torah’s Five Books, the

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Old Testament (the Tanakh) or in the Talmud (the Oral Torah, compiled and written down in a document called the Mishnah at around the second century AD). The point of distinction between Koranic and the other divine prescriptions, however, is with regards to the difference of emphasis placed within the text of the scriptures on the attribute and character of the sanctioning of the divine laws. In the Koran, the sanction, as with the role and function of the divinely ordained earthly authority, is more explicitly defined in political terms than in the moral sense; the moral, in other words, is conceptually subordinate to and a function of the political. For the Koran tends to place a greater emphasis, within the text itself (by the very Word of God Himself), on institutionalised social power in the concrete exercise of earthly authority. Consequently, Koranic laws have an irreducible constitutive legal form, though they are, like Talmudic or Biblical laws, also, of course, ideological formations and moral rules. Koranic laws, it can be said, are distinguished in their prescribed form by the fact of the sacredness of their corporeal sanction; they do not stand apart from the politics of submission basking in the sunshine of divine patronage. The Koran thus accords a much more significant place to, and a more concrete and immediate emphasis on, the actual political sanctioning of divine commandments than do the Holy Books of Judaism and Christianity. Its moral universals, its holy language, its rituals of propriety, serve the important politico-ideological function of domination in the form of social subjection. Total obedience and worship of its divine authority through the act of submission incorporates the legitimacy of its laws in this world under the aegis of beneficent earthly authority as the executor of divine power. Thus, the distinction between Koranic sanctioning of commandments and that indicated in other Holy Books may appear simply as a matter of emphasis; but it has actually a great significance. The principle of divine power represented in this world rests, of course, in the Koran itself, which in its totality is asserted (affirmed) as being the Word of God and not a rendition or version of His Word – the notion of ‘being’ here is critical and central: it declares that the collection, in its individual parts and as a totality, is unequivocally and explicitly literal and not the result of a process of later apostolic reporting or elucidation of the text, but that it is the result of a divinely directed process. According to Muslim faith and myth, the process is affirmed as a series of revelations (initiated with the aid of the Angel Gabriel in a cave on Mount Hira) that were initially committed for the most part to memory as a means of their preservation (though some of the revelations were, according to one Zayd Ibn Thabit, one of Mohammad’s companions, written down by him – and perhaps some other companions – as Mohammad dictated these) and later, after the Prophet’s death, collected and compiled and set down firstly under Caliph Abu Bakr, then completed into its officially presented written book form under Caliph Uthman (its master-copy, al-mushaf alimam, is believed to have been held at Medina). There is, however, a longstanding debate as to the historical accuracy of this latter point – the present Koran may have indeed been ‘made’ (composed) over a much longer historical period. Nonetheless, whatever the actual truth of this matter, Muslim belief in the Uthman compilation as being the veritable Koran prevails, as does the myth of the divinely directed process of its revelations. In its divinely directed process, the different verses were, apparently, revealed as and when appropriate. In other words, the process of revelation, as evident from the different verses in the Koran, had decidedly a practical function derived from the Prophet’s life experiences. That which is revealed appears in a real process of continuous struggle to comprehend life as it was and to provide guidance (directives) to transform it in accordance with the Truth revealed. The process not only combines the social and the personal dimensions, but it essentially incorporates these into a

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higher order of divinity. The revelations concerning the personal aspects of life are thus no more than means to an end; the fulfilment of God’s commandments, revealed to the Prophet and set down in the Koran, is not, either contextually or fundamentally, a means of achieving individual transcendence in and for itself, but rather a necessary stage in the realisation of the Truth of God in the spatio-temporal world. The process of revelation is actually directly grounded on the social situation and state of affairs in which the Prophet was actively involved; it is engaged with Mohammad’s concrete historical circumstances of generating his Islamic movement. Mohammad’s recited revelations, therefore, are not abstract or mystical or esoterically spiritualistic and individualistic, but the result of a constant active overcoming of everything that stood against his universalistic socio-political project, which necessarily, given its time, had a religious form. The later composition of these revelations as the Koran had, at least ideologically, the same basic aim. The Koran as the holy book, in other words, in its very transhistorical appeal, was meant essentially to have a historical force. Mohammad’s recitation as the Koran (i.e. his revelations later composed into book form), thus has a distinctly political, and even polemical and fighting, character. The Koran (as with all scriptures down the ages) is of course simply a human product; it was fashioned and made, and like any product it has a purpose, a social function. As a human product, both its content and form thus have the stamp of history all over them, which as such express the conditions and relations of the time of its making. It is history, moreover, that of course gives it its initially geographically limited and later widespread imperial sovereignty, its absolute global authority. But for it to become such a powerful force, it had historically to be made to appear as something transcendent. The formalistic message (revelations) of the Koran is thus presented through the apotheosising of the Arabic language and within an inspirational framework and terminology based on that language. In this, the fact of historico-linguistic necessity (i.e. Mohammad’s native tongue being obviously Arabic) is made into the necessity of submission to God’s Will in a language that is made holy. Arabic, in short, is the Koranic language, period! The Koran may have been translated into other languages, but it is in Arabic, and only in Arabic, that the act of submission must take place. The Koranic language is the mode of being or existence of Islam. It is not something that merely frames, conveys and communicates Islamic values and beliefs, but is their true reality; it is the language in which all divine (Islamic) potentialities are realised and in which all earthly transmission of the divine will reaches its highest, ultimate form. Here, then, the language itself and in itself is a political instrument. The historical circumstances of this are of course irrefutable: Mohammad was an Arab; Arabia was the birthplace and home of the Islamic movement; and the language, naturally, was Arabic. But the interdependence of history and language denotes a determination more intrinsic than the blind forces of chance. The Koranic language possesses a definite political role which has a determination that is over and above its accidental birthplace. The poetical Arabic language of the Koran is the medium in which the first integration between divine power and human submission within the Islamic movement takes place. For Mohammad, the language was simply nothing more than his native tongue; but the style and form of recitation, delivered in fervent and moving tongue, and meant to be powerfully rousing, were clearly important to enhance the significance and solemnity of his message – in this he had apparently followed the convention of the poetic and oracular idiom of his time. For his successors, the language itself became a key component of Islamic imperial domination; Mohammad’s successors stake out their sphere of influence through the medium of the language of divine revelations communicated by the Prophet to others. The language itself thus becomes a medium of power, since, on the one hand, the knowledge (the Truth) it communicates is made possible only in its specific form; and on the other

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hand, it is only in that language that communication with God (prayers, etc.) is made possible in order to facilitate salvation and wellbeing in the here and now as also in ‘life after death’. In enabling access to the divine world, the language takes on a political role and actually becomes a powerful political instrument. It is partly by virtue of this political role that the Koranic language becomes transhistorical, and universal. Through the Koranic language, so it is believed, Muslims overcome the estrangement between the earthly world and the divine world; and with this they transform their consciousness of the knowledge thus gained into an appropriate means of Islam’s expansion. The complete subordination of the individual to the Will of God – his/her submission to His commandments revealed to Mohammad – takes as its starting point the reading (reciting) of the Koran in its Arabic original. Leaving aside either the Sunni or the Shia theological apologia for such a deification of the language, from a socio-historical viewpoint, the only reason for this is political. The Koranic language’s political aspect is of course conditioned by the (presumed) source of the message and the process of its communication. The presupposition is that the language possesses a certain power because it is the language in which God’s eternal miracle (the Koran in its totality) was revealed. The presupposition, certainly and inevitably, appeals to faith on a grand scale and shows that the notion of faith is, axiomatically, the basic principle of Islam, just as with any other religion. Yet, notwithstanding the fact that for all religions all determination is posited by faith, in Islam the message (revelations) and the mode of its communication (the Koranic language), standing under faith’s determining influence (its force), constitute themselves as the actuality of faith. Islam has an essential unity that contrasts with the passive and changeable reflection of faith in its general conception; it is determinate as it is actively determining. In other words, the faith in God, His message, His messenger and the latter’s mode and language of communication, all as a determinate unity, determine and justify themselves in the Koran. The Koran (and hence its message and its language) is thus as much historically decisive as it is in itself for Muslims the truly actual verification of faith. In the Koran faith follows the inherent laws of its own making and remains in all conditions the same, so that to the faithful what the Koran reveals is established once and for all, nothing in it can be changed, nothing needs to be added; it is thus the eternal miracle, the true form of faith actualised, God’s very own Word objectified. In this, in its determinate unity, no change is possible – thus there can be no amendments to or improvement of the Koran (based on this there can be no textual justification for a process of reformation in Islam as, for example, had occurred within Christianity). The actuality of faith posited in it is final, not subject to change; and for this reason the Koran exercises autonomous power over the spirit of the historical movement of Islam. In this sense, it transforms faith, which is inherently subjective, from the individual, personal level into an objective social force; with the Koran, faith assumes a directly political role. The task of faith, then, consists in the transcendence of Mohammad’s proclamation from its mere appearance of divine revelation to the essential jurisdiction of God’s Word, which manifests itself in the Koran only. With this, the Koran expresses divine power and exercises a definite authority over the community of believers, the faithful, so that the truth of its authority becomes a force in the here and now as the law of God. The realm of its authority is not, therefore, a blind play of miraculous, spiritual or unearthly forces, but a domain of permanent laws determining the perception of social reality. Power and authority, however one looks at or defines them, need agency and mediation. In the case of the Koran, too, there is mediation, of course: there is firstly what can be called primary mediation, i.e. that of Mohammad himself in initiating and establishing the Word of God. Here the mediation is believed to be first-hand. With

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the Koran, God speaks not ‘to’ Mohammad, but through him. The Prophet is, as it were, the vocal instrument. The claim (and the belief) is that God (even when using the Angel Gabriel) puts across His Will and authority, in verses, through Muhammad as the medium. The Koran is, thus, a unity of the words of God that prevails only as the result of a process of mediation between the living, active messenger as the subject and his objective conditions. The mediation is, indeed, the proper function of the Prophet as an actual subject, and at the same time it thereby affirms his being a living, active divine messenger. The Koran is the first form in which the substance of Islam is conceived as the subject of a universalistic movement and is thus the first embodiment of divine jurisdiction, authority and governance. Only God, in the eyes of believers, by virtue of His all-knowingness, can achieve such a perfect union of subject and object of the matter of life as it is revealed in the Koran. The union, of course, presupposes the Truth, meaning divine cognisance of life without boundaries of time and space. The Koran, thus, is in turn a medium for an individual’s subjective development. And the Truth it holds is meant and believed to free not only the individual’s own potencies, but those of society as well. It brings the Truth into the world, and with it everything (the whole matter of life) in the world is organised in conformity with God’s Will. The Koran is seen as the Truth enduring throughout a movement in which it unifies and holds together the various states and phases of human existence. This is significant. For, the Koran, in its original recitation form, can be regarded as a ‘manifesto’ (that is, Mohammad’s manifesto of his Islamic movement) declaring that the world must be transformed to become the reality of the divine truth it proclaims. Human reason and the truth of human existence are but a weak estimation of this Absolute Truth, which is their prime mover towards the highest form of life and the highest good on earth. The understanding of this primary mediation is, however, intimately connected with what can be called secondary mediation in the reality of the concept and exercise of power. And the agency that achieves this mediation is no longer formally abstracted from the actuality of political power. Here mediation manifests its concrete political significance in the agency of Mohammad’s Islamic movement and its eventual transformation into a theocratic state. This elevation of the realm of power to the position of the sole domain of divine truth was conditioned by and in opposition to what is in Islamic thought referred to as a world dominated by ‘ignorance’; preIslamic world of Arabia, according to Muslim theological thought, was at a stage of ignorance or Jahiliyah, which is a term that refers to the conditions of idolatry (though this should be seen in the historical context of tribal conflicts and rivalries, and of the clash of the empires of Byzantium and Sasanid Persia). Thus, the historical conditions that prevailed during Mohammad’s time were of course the necessary backdrop to this secondary form of mediation. It is, moreover, significant that it was within those conditions and upon the continuing historical development of the nascent Islamic socio-political system that the mediating political agency became self-conscious of its divinely ordained function to use all means at its disposal in the interest of and towards the establishment and expansion of the Kingdom of God. From its very inception, in short, in its actual religious form, Mohammad’s movement was a political medium. And after the Prophet’s move (hijrah, emigration) from Mecca to Medina (in AD 622), the established community of Muslims there (the umma) became essentially a proto-political institution (a ‘community-state’). The place of settlement, an oasis town called Yathrib, where the umma was founded, then became known and was renamed al-Madinat an-Nabee, or the City of the Prophet, shortened to al-Madinah (or Medina, meaning the City). The symbolism of this renaming is inseparably connected to the political significance of the

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institutionalisation of Mohammad’s politico-ideological movement. From this moment on, the community of the faithful, of believers in ‘the One God and Mohammad as His Messenger’, identified itself with a single all-embracing political institution based on and defined by Mohammad’s divine message. It is also not at all accidental, therefore, that the Islamic calendar (instituted by ‘Umar Ibn al-Khattab, the second Caliph of Islam) dates from this fundamental transformation (in AD 622). Here, then, the activity of mediation is the activity of the Islamic proto-state (initially, as the Arabic term umma signifies, it was simply as an institution founded on the community of Mohammad’s companion migrants, followers and supporters, which had taken on the basic characteristics of the prevalent tribal mode of social relations, though with some essential modifications, particularly as regards the subordination of the individual). With the formation of the umma Mohammad transforms his movement into an apparatus of power, and concomitantly his revelations become more explicitly legislative in content and take on a more peremptory and a more expansionist character. This proto-state, then, becomes an appropriate medium for the expansion of Islam. The defence of the umma and its expansion, moreover, becomes a divinely sanctioned obligation on the part of each and every Muslim. The notion of political power is thus not peripheral in the revelations compiled in the Koran, but is the central notion through which they conceive the development of the Islamic social relations and form of domination from the stage of ignorance (Jahiliyah) to the proposed eventual establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. The idea of Islam as a religion that is behind the consciousness that separates the spiritual inner world from the outer world of societal relations, a set of beliefs removed from politics, is rendered absurd by the conception and the historical role of Mohammad’s community-state (umma). Accordingly, in the reality of Islamic social relations, the individual bears primarily the relation of submission, and of duty, to the state (initially in the shape of the governing form of the umma) and his/her right is subordinate to it. State-power is sanctioned by the divine authority of the Prophet’s revelations, later arranged as the Koran, and the Islamic state’s very existence is conditioned only through the medium of Koranic jurisdiction of divine directives, which were at a later date (long after Mohammad’s death) transformed and modified into the legal system known as the Sharia. The Sharia is meant to (and believed to) express the interests of all Muslims, and since its ultimate jurisdiction has the Koran to thank for, it is, in spite of its later historical determination and political formulation (based on certain theologically developed rules and principles chiefly justified on the basis of the ‘sunna of the Prophet,’ or the tradition or custom of Mohammad’s conduct), presented and promoted as if divine and perpetual. It is, of course, only the Koran that contains the Divine Law, which establishes the highest, absolute standard of authority. Society cannot be bound by a higher law, for such a law would amount to an external restriction of the authority and jurisdiction of the Word of God (the Koran). Upon this notion, the sovereignty of the Koran, in its fundamental sense, cannot be circumscribed by civil laws grounded in a secular political institution. Any challenge to its sovereignty, any restriction or circumscription of the Koranic jurisdiction (and that of the Sharia), thus must as a matter of necessity (by the very command of God) be met and counteracted by the all-embracing struggle of the faithful, by a jihad. The Koran, moreover, sanctions the use of force, violence and war in its own defence. For the Koran, as Muslims see it, brings to a close the entire world religions and to oppose its authority or corrupt its absolute knowledge is tantamount to a declaration of war against God Himself. The notion of jihad is, indeed, the ultimate and highest form of duty, of reverential obligation; and in it religion and politics are finally and absolutely fused. The Koran thus has a distinctly political character. It proclaims the hegemony of the political within the conceptual structure of religious dogma, in the emphatic sense of

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the word. The political comes to mean not actions and institutions that actually exist, but those that must exist in forms concordant with divine standards. The political in the Koran is an immediate unity of divine sovereignty and earthly authority. It is this understanding of the political that I believe is the propulsive force of Koran’s message. The content, the divine message, of a holy book such as the Koran, by definition, does not change with time. But if the Koran’s message has an essential bearing upon the attitude and behaviour of the believers, then, the ever-deepening contradictions and changes in the global situation today do make its commandments and its teachings politically relevant. In our time, the conflicts and struggles being waged increasingly in the name of Islam, which are as much conducted within the Islamic world itself as against the perceived external enemies of Islam, call for a political reading of the Koran. The conflicts are of course socio-historically conditioned; though in this, they do not signify what is in some quarters referred to as a ‘clash of civilisations’ (which is nothing more than an unhistorical and ideologically motivated conception). They have, indeed, deep-rooted economic and geopolitical causes that are essentially systemic, in that they are the necessary attributes of the inherent contradictions of a single globally dominant ‘civilisation’ (the ‘civilising’ empire of capital). Notwithstanding this fundamental (conceptual) understanding, the religious appearance of these conflicts is, however, profoundly significant; it is foolhardy to dismiss this appearance as irrelevant. It is hoped that the political reading of the Koran offered here would shed some light on the condition peculiar to Islam (certainly more so than to other world religions) of the fusion of the religious with the political. The light, however, is finely focused, like a spotlight; it ‘homes in’ on one single source – the Koran. I am well aware that there are a host of other factors, historical, cultural, socio-economic, and, indeed, emotional and psychological, that are clearly significant to the making of Islam as a world religion and as a potent political force. And in concentrating on the Koran, I am in no way denying or belittling the considerable importance of such factors. Nonetheless, there can be no denying the fact that the Koran is unquestionably the ‘heart and soul’ of Islam. Its study is without a doubt essential to the understanding of Islam. There are, of course, a great many studies of the Koran (from within the Muslim tradition itself, dating back to the very early days of Islam, and perhaps equally as many from well beyond that tradition, from a wide variety of non-Muslim perspectives, both hostile and sympathetic towards Islam); and there are many that touch on some or other aspect associated with the ‘politics’ of Koranic edicts and directives. But, as a rule and for the most part, the specific issue of political power is peripheral, often even incidental, and if or when considered at all is as part of a wider more general discussion of Islam as a religion or that of the problematic of the Muslim world. Here, however, power is the central issue; and thus the essay focuses exclusively on the political reading of the Koran as such. The reading here, however, is not an exegesis, in the strict theological terms; it is exegetical in the expository sense of textual interpretation from the ‘outside looking in’, as it were. Consequently, it might be regarded as polemical. But though I do not shy away from this, the intention is, strictly speaking, the examination of the text from a critical social perspective; my reading of the Koran is, in other words, a nonbeliever’s attempt at its political interpretation, with due regard to fairness and honesty of approach and indeed respect for the source. Yet, I give notice here that honesty and fairness of approach and respect for the source does not mean neutrality. I am of the firm opinion that religion as such (all religions), and Islam in particular, is inherently antidemocratic and irreconcilably opposed to the socio-political forces and tendencies that struggle for the attainment of justice and human-rights and democracy based on

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the very earthly notion of self-emancipation. According to my understanding of the politics of freedom, of democracy, justice and human-rights, the notion of selfemancipation is not optional, it is a necessity. This necessity is freedom because freedom (democracy, justice, human-rights, etc.) is not determined from the outside, by external forces, but is the result of a self-development based on self-consciousness. No external force, so-called divine, beneficent or otherwise, can give freedom and justice; for that which gives freedom can equally well take away that freedom! The power of ‘giving’ presupposes its negative potentiality, that of ‘taking’. With Islam (indeed all religions) this power, being divine, is supreme and absolute. It is thus hoped that my attempt at a political interpretation of the Koran will contribute towards the dispelling of the myth that somehow Islam is a force solely in the service and for the freedom of the oppressed and the dispossessed. Such a reading, moreover, will, I hope, demonstrate the erroneousness of the arguments put forward, both from within and outside of Islam, for there being a spiritual, transcendental preponderating tendency in Islam in contradistinction to its worldly social-political one, and for it being in any way capable of having a non-political role in society. No ‘reading’ is, of course, wholly innocent. It would, therefore, be quite dishonest of me to claim that the political reading of the Koran presented here is innocent; that is, lacking the force of my own (ideological) convictions, free of preconceptions, independent of my socio-political predispositions, interests and commitments. All I can say, as already noted, is that there is honesty of approach, observance of regard for textual accuracy (insofar as translation allows), and an endeavour to be respectful to what is after all a ‘document’ revered by millions of individuals of whose sincerity of belief, for the most part, I have no doubt (and whom I do not wish to insult or offend in any way). All this apart, my interpretation, though not a critique of the theological foundations and fundamentals of the Koran, is, nonetheless, the result of a critical reading strictly and exclusively concerned with the political substance of the Holy Book. In other words, and this is extremely important to point out at the outset, I take the Koran as Muslims perceive it in terms of its holiness, its divine status. This, indeed, is crucial to the understanding of the potency of its ideological force; for it is because millions of people actually believe it to be the Word of God, that the Koran can take on such an instrumentally powerful role – to be sure, the locus of the truth of this is not the supposition of its divinity, but the dynamic social reality of the need for such a faith. Even today this need is so great that what is a very human invention seems to result in endowing the ‘book’ and the ‘word’ with power; and the illusion is so intense and great that even the brilliant and spectacular ‘light of science’ seems still quite unable to clear up the affected darkness of ignorance. The challenging of such a supposition, or that of the force of its illusion, is the aim (ambition) of my critical reading. My reading is thus restricted to an attempt to see with a political eye through the Koran’s divine ‘veil of appearance’, and to look beyond its mode of mystification of the politics of subjugation and domination in its making eternal the act of submission. Introduction: The Socio-Historical Setting of the Koran The history of the making of the Koran is less than precise; it relies heavily on the tradition and custom of oral historiography. The ‘Recitation’ (Qur’an means ‘recitation’, from the root verb qara’a ‘to recite’) which is the Koran was for a long while during and after the death of the Prophet Mohammad transmitted for the most part by word of mouth. In its early stages, moreover, memory was its chief means of preservation (the evidence supporting its documentation in written form during Mohammad’s lifetime is scant, and much of it based on hearsay). Its making was piecemeal, and it took Mohammad some twenty-two years or so to proclaim its verses (ayah, pl. ayat, meaning ‘sign,’ as in divine communications, revelations), later

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arranged in 114 chapters (surah, pl. surat) – though it should be noted that both Sunni and Shia traditions seem to agree that the Koran was first sent down by God in complete form, from which verses were recited by Mohammad during his mission (the ayah that is often quoted as the confirmation of this fiction is II:185). It was, at any event, left to Mohammad’s ‘companions’ (Sahaba) to commit these revelations to memory. Neither memory nor the word of mouth is a precise or satisfactory method of recording. Both are treacherously unreliable; as purely subjective means and method, they are not innocent of corruptions, of interpretive pollution, of distortion, exaggeration and even falsification. But even if we leave these problems aside, what cannot be ruled out are distortions based on political expediency, or even personal self-interest, in the recording of the Koran, in its actual documentation. There were, moreover, grammatical problems in its first written form – Arabic writing was at the time of early Islam still quite undeveloped (the grammar of written Arabic was established during the Abbasids Caliphate, about 780 AD, some 150 years after Mohammad’s death). The earliest collection of the revelations is said to have begun, though this is unsubstantiated, under the first Caliph, Abu Bakr (and continued under ‘Umar, the second Caliph). But the first compilation proper apparently dates back to the reign of the third Caliph, Uthman (644-56 AD), and it is this supposedly ‘standardised’ consonantal text that became the officially authorised written form of the collected revelations recited by Mohammad – though consonantal variations and grammatical problems persisted until the 10th century AD (it was under the influence of the notable scholar Ibn Mujahid of Baghdad that consonants or huruf were fixed and variation in vowels restricted to seven different systems of pointing and thus standardisation was instituted). In fact, diacritical points (borrowed from Hebrew and Aramaic) had not been in existence at the time of Uthman, and until well into the Umayyad Caliphate. Therefore unless orally instructed or already familiar with its recitation, the reading of this original text, still lacking proper standardised diacritical points for identifying consonants, could result in uncertainties of interpretation, understanding and meaning; in short, there could be (and were) alternative readings. Indeed, even after Ibn Mujahid’s so-called standardisation, there were perhaps as many as 14 canonical variations in Koranic reading. Nonetheless, it is this ‘official’ text, the Uthman Codex, that was to become, after a process of development and refinement (perhaps taking as long as about 300 years or so), the complete written version of the Koran now before us. Such issues are, undoubtedly, of fundamental importance for any appraisal of the history of the making of the Koran. But they are impossible, in view of the scantiness and unreliability of the available evidence, to verify with complete certainty. Nonetheless, even if one were to accept the Muslim point of view as regards the compilation of Mohammad’s revelations as historically authentic and genuine, it is certainly not unreasonable to suggest that from the time of its presumed initial collection during the reign of the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, to its supposed official version at the time of the third Caliph, Uthman, and even well beyond this point, some verses of the Koran were deliberately manipulated, or at the very least modified, in order to meet the ideological requirements and political agenda of the rising politicalreligious class. However, notwithstanding problems of such kind, in whatever way, and at whatever historical period, the ‘final’ official version of the Koran was actually made, the revelatory content of the composition is firmly believed by Muslims to be divine in origin. In other words, the widely accepted view among Muslims (Sunni and Shia, as well as other sects) is that what we have now before us, as the presumed historical document put together under Uthman, is a presentation in content (though not form) faithful to Mohammad’s own recitation of his revelations. It is this officially compiled document (noting here the reservations and qualifications raised above), at any rate, that has ever since the rise and expansion of the Islamic order been taken as the Holy Book of Islam. And it is in this written form that the compilation has come to

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be accepted as the Prophet’s message, containing his true revelations of God’s Will; and thus also as a ‘documented representation’ of the epoch and for the epoch of the rise and formation of Mohammad’s Islamic movement. The Koran’s message – that is Mohammad’s recitation as complied into the Holy Book, or the Koran as we have it today – can thus be regarded as Mohammad’s ‘manifesto’ for the establishment of an Islamic movement. This does not imply, as already hinted at, that Mohammad furnished a ready-made finished recitation, let alone a document, of policies and principles, but that he publicly declared his aim and objectives (his message) largely as a response to the challenges facing him in the reorganisation of pre-Islamic life and the social institutions dominant at the time. It is sufficiently clear from an examination of the text that (however one views it) aspects of Mohammad’s recitation (even if modified at later stages), at least in the main, show it to be a product of pre-Islamic western Arabia, albeit during an epoch of social crisis and ‘tribalism’. Moreover, in the figure of Mohammad as a ‘leader-in-the-making’ pre-Islamic Arab features have, naturally, a definite and determining role: his form of communication (as the reciting of revelations) presupposes the custom and tradition prevalent at the time; his vision and programme have all the hallmarks of a tribal mode of life (with its principles of ancestry and kinship, and the essential historical modifications brought about locally which comprised the existence of nomadic forms alongside forms of clan settlements in certain specific sites); and the prescriptions he initiated presuppose the objective conditions of the given social reality in terms of its contradictions and their resolution. Thus despite the bitter condemnation of the prevalent pre-Islamic social norms and institutions and forms of beliefs, Mohammad’s revelations are actually to a great extent based on the conceptual structure of the socioreligious systems in existence at the time of their original making (recitation). Pre-Islamic social conditions The pre-Islamic life of the Arabs proper (as distinguished from the Semitic peoples of Ma’in, Saba’, Qataban, and Hadramawt, who are sometimes collectively referred to as the Yemenites, inhabiting the south-western triangular part of the Arabian peninsula, as well as those of Mesopotamia and those settled on the western edges of the peninsula by the Mediterranean sea) was based on tribal social relations that had two distinct forms of existence: the nomadic, often characterised by the term Bedouin, and the sedentary, the tribal settlements of former Bedouins in the oases. The interaction between these two forms and between these and their neighbouring regional power structures provided the dynamics of pre-Islamic Arab history. Both forms, moreover, contributed to the rise and expansion of Mohammad’s movement: the former, the Bedouin proper, were to play a crucial military role, as fighters in the Islamic army, similar to the one they had effected in pre-Islamic times; the latter, the settled and town dwellers, played the economically crucial role, some as important trading establishments, such as Mecca, and others as agricultural communities, like Yathrib, later renamed Medina. Both forms, also, influenced the making of the Koranic revelations. The ideals of Mohammad’s movement had therefore their birthplace in the Hijaz in western Arabia and their resting-place in the processes of the development of the caravan trading communities and that of the Bedouin culture of militancy. Their historic precondition was what has come to be called the age of Ayyam al-Arab – the beginnings of the rise of the specifically Arab identity (an identity which was, however, still fully tribal and ethnic rather than national or remotely nationalistic in the proper sense). It was in that age that the linguistic foundations of expressing these ideals were evolved in the form of al-‘arabiyya, becoming eventually the ruling

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language of Mohammad’s Islamic movement, and much later to be cultivated and developed into Classical Arabic which was to become the language of the Koran. It was during this age that the sedentary communities of the Hijaz, in particular Mecca, gradually gained their greater strategic significance as trading settlements on the Near Eastern trade route between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean regions. The background to this was, on the one hand, the heightening of the territorial conflicts between the Sasanid and Byzantine Empires as the two most powerful states in the region, and on the other, a decisive shift in the overland trade-route, especially after the fall of Petra and Palmyra as the two most important centres of commerce, as a result of the increasing regional instability caused by the confrontation and wars between the two Empires. It was from this historical background that the birthplace of Mohammad, Mecca, gradually emerged, by the sixth century AD, as perhaps the most important trading centre in western Arabia. Its ascendancy as a caravan trading station, of course, depended on its geographical situation and crucially on having access to a source of water, the famous well of Zamzam. Given the extreme aridity of the region, which thus makes access to water the most decisive of all factors, the overland trade naturally necessitated oases settlements as staging posts. As an oasis-settlement, Mecca had long been slowly growing in importance as such a staging post on the trade-route linking the Yemen with Damascus. Its geographic situation and source of water had, then, already placed it at the junction of the important caravan-route going from south to north. But later on, with the change in the east to west overland traderoute, as well as that connecting the Red Sea coast with the Persian Gulf, Mecca became a much more significant staging post in this alternative route, all be it not a direct one, that was established through Arabia. It was under these historical and geographical circumstances that by the time of Mohammad’s birth, this once small caravan staging post had raised itself to become an extremely prosperous commercial and trading centre. But there was yet another factor, directly connected to its source of water (the well of Zamzam), that had made Mecca a special place, and raised its status in addition to its growing prosperity as a trading-post: Mecca (known in pre-Islamic times under its early Arabic name of Makorba, meaning a ‘shrine-setting’ or ‘temple-site’) had been a sanctuary of long standing. Constructed beside the well of Zamzam, and certainly directly related to and in worshipful recognition of this source of water as the original community’s life-giving source, was a shrine in the shape of a cube, known as the Ka’ba (meaning ‘cube’). The pagan shrine had long attracted pilgrims, who performed idolatrous rites in worship of numerous gods represented by idols at the shrine, and was, in itself, for this very reason, a very important source of income, prestige and power for the oasis-settlement and of course for those who controlled access to it. Consequently, given the shrine’s reverential status even in pre-Islamic times, besides its slowly growing commercial position, Mecca was, moreover, both a sanctuary, ensuring the safety of the caravan traders and merchants against plundering Bedouins, and an ideologically and culturally significant focal point in western Arabia. By serving to secure access to the gods, and to the well of Zamzam, the shrine had thus an important political role not only in Mecca itself, but in the region surrounding the settlement, and gave those who controlled it great political influence. The original conditions of this proprietorial control, naturally of course, given the dominant social relations and mode of life at the time, rested on the tribal or clan system. Initially, this control rested with a tribe called Jurhum, which at some stage was passed on to (or taken over by) another tribe known as the Khuza’a. By the end of the fifth century AD (though by some accounts around the beginnings of the sixth century), however, it had already been taken over (by force or other means) by the tribe of Quraysh, under its then head and strongman, Qusayy, an ancestor of Mohammad’s, whose control over

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the shrine (and hence essentially over the source of the water of Zamzam) had thus made the Quraysh the most powerful tribe in the whole of Hijaz. The Quraysh, an assembly of several clans, was subdivided by ‘tenure’ or territorial occupancy into the Quraysh az-Zawahin (or the ‘outer’ Quraysh) occupying areas on the periphery of the Ka’ba, and the Quraysh al-Bata’ih (or the ‘inner’ Quraysh) dwelling in the actual shrine quarter of Mecca, immediately around the well of Zamzam. Yet within this structure, there was intense, almost constant rivalry among the various clans (or coalition of clans) over the control of the shrine. Among the Quraysh, decisions concerning disputes and allocation of authority (though not absolutely binding or backed by the use of force) were taken within the context of the mala’, or the assembly of the chiefs and notables of the principal clans. At some stage in the sixth century, most probably after one or more of such assembly meetings, among all the clans two were to achieve prominent positions: the Hashim, to which Mohammad belonged, and the Umayya. The prominent position of the Hashim clan within the Quraysh and within Mecca’s socio-political structure was the result of its having gained the custodianship of the Ka’ba; while that of the Umayya clan rested on its militaristic role, based on its hereditary leadership in war, as the defender of the Ka’ba and Mecca. As a tribe, the Quraysh (who, in the mythology of Islam, were said to be the descendants of Ishmael) were to provide the leaders, commanders and caliphs of early Islam. It was under the Quraysh, then, that Mecca grew in prosperity, attained its position of commercial supremacy and its central position as a holy place in the whole of western Arabia. Pre-Islamic Mecca had thus already the makings of a ‘holy city’, which was later, in the seventh century AD, to be reconstituted, purged of its pagan and idolatrous custom, as the holiest place in the world of Islam. Indeed, in Mecca we have the symbolic fusion of religion, politics and economics so characteristic of Mohammad’s formulation of Islam as represented in the Koran. The formulation of divine revelations, or the divine message, reflects and deals with the pre-Islamic social, economic and political tensions which Mohammad had become aware of during his life and work in and beyond Mecca. Mohammad, though not a fully-fledged merchant, made his living from an early age possibly initially as a ‘camel-driver’ in the caravan trade and subsequently, it is said, as a trading agent for a twice-widowed Meccan wealthy woman, named Khadijah Bint Khuwaylid, much his senior in age, whom he married at about the age of twenty-five. It was his work as such an agent that no doubt provided him with insights into the conditions of trade, the importance of mercantile activities in the region, the tribal divisions and antagonisms, the tensions associated with rivalry among the fast emerging caste of wealthy and powerful merchants, the hazardous nature of the caravan trade, and its exposure to great vicissitudes and dangers, all of which are, in the specifically religious language of the time, in one form or another reflected in the Koranic revelations. Economically, therefore, the Koranic revelations reflect something of the mercantile features and attitudes that had developed by the time of Mohammad, which were increasingly coming into conflict with those of the tribal communal mode of life. By the early seventh century AD, there were definite signs of the formation of a caste of merchants (still perhaps rather embryonic in form) within the Qurayshite controlled Mecca. Social divisions were taking shape both between the different clans and, to a much lesser extent, within the clans. Powerful merchants, as heads of clans, while united in attitude and behaviour as merchants and in opposition to the restrictions of tribal traditions and custom, were, by the very nature of their activity, becoming

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significantly more engaged in power struggles. Rivalry and competition divided them, while their wealth, their activity as merchants, brought them together in association and against members of their own clans. By at least around the time of Mohammad’s fortieth birthday, it appears that the mercantile spirit of greed and selfishness was debasing the clan and kinship conventions; communal property of the clan was becoming increasingly subject to the will of the merchant clans’ heads; distribution of gains (profits of trade) within the clan was beginning to be tightened up, controlled and redirected to the advantage of the heads of the clans; the traditions of protection and assistance provided by the clan to its weaker and more needy members were being more and more neglected; and there was a distinct move towards exclusive control (monopolisation) of the very lucrative caravan trade by certain powerful clan-chiefs and notables. In short, by the time Mohammad proclaims his mission, there were clear indications of the beginnings of discord, dissociation and incohesion in the tribal mode of life. It would be wrong, however, to conceptualise such a changing status of merchant clanchiefs as the formation of a ruling class or to see the appearance of the elements of disintegration of tribal relations as a sign of class division and the rise of the Islamic movement as a form of class struggle. There was as yet, at this period of social transition, no actual class distinction between an ‘aristocracy’ of merchants and a dispossessed mass of ‘plebeians’. What seems clear, nonetheless, is that Mohammad’s revelations (later composed into the Koran, the Holy Book) are, on the one hand, reflecting the process of dissolution of the old property relations, the clan system, as a result of the development of trade; and, on the other, attempt to deal with the contradictions of such a process with ‘idealised’ (religiously constituted) resolutions that support the formation of a dominant political structure, which seems, in appearance, simply an extension of the older system of tribal/clan assembly, yet, in substance, having definite features that gives it an absolute power of control. The conflicts during the period in question were still, thus, tribal in form; and Mohammad’s struggle for power was confined firmly within the orbit of tribal politics. With the rise of the Islamic movement, specifically after 622 AD, however, relations of tribal dependence were incorporated into Mohammad’s newly formed proto-state (the community-state, or umma). Submission to the Will of the One and Only God, became the mediated form of direct and immediate subordination, and upon this basis, relations of tribal dependence became transformed into a religiously coloured form of relations of personal dependence, whereby submission to God’s Will was at once submission to Mohammad as God’s messenger. Thus, for example, at what has come to be known as the Second Pledge of al-‘Aqabah, a number of Mohammad’s followers in Yathrib (Medina) were bound to his person under a pledge that carried the promise of fighting for him to the death (this is also referred to as the Pledge of War). Within about three years of the establishment of the umma in Medina, submission to the Will of the One God, to Allah’s Will (i.e. becoming a Muslim, from musalman meaning the ‘submitted’) clearly and unequivocally meant a pledge before God of being bound to the person of Mohammad as God’s messenger (rasul-allah) and, by divine decree, as the Head of the umma. With this the ground was prepared for the spread of Islam by means of jihad which invariably involved the force of arms, with military expeditions (actually ‘raids’ or razziah, very common among Arab tribes) led by Mohammad himself (referred to as ghazwah) particularly against the Quraysh of Mecca who were Mohammad’s great adversaries. There were numerous such expeditions headed by Mohammad (there were also many others which were headed by an appointee, referred to as sariyyahs), which were intended to disrupt the caravan trade and hit the Meccans where it most hurt and where they were most vulnerable. It was under this condition of armed conflict between Mohammad’s umma and the Qurayshite Mecca (particularly its Umayya clan under its head Abu-Sufyan)

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that the young Islamic state became, specifically after its victory at the Battle of Badr (624 AD), conscious of its own power. By around 630 AD, with his victory over AbuSufyan, Mohammad had taken Mecca, and with this move had proved the strength of his umma as the expression of God’s jurisdiction in the here and now. The force of arms was thus crucial to the development of the umma and its powerful role in the unification of Arab tribes (with the exception of those bordering Mesopotamia and Damascus), whether through alliances or conquest, under the banner of Islam. From this basis a political structure was thus forged that had all the necessary attributes of what is known in anthropology as a ‘conquest state’, which was to (after the death of Mohammad in 632 AD) further develop under the so-called ‘Rightly-Guided Caliphs’ (i.e. the first four successors, or khalifas, of the Prophet who headed the young Islamic state from 632 to 661 AD). During this period, this form of conquest state had become fully institutionalised, and no longer bore any real resemblance to its origins as a community-state; and by the end of this period, the Islamic state, under the Caliphate regime, was increasingly taking on the characteristics of the form of despotic state hitherto dominant in the Near East. The myth of the umma as the ‘ideal’ form of an Islamic state based on the community of Muslims, however, prevailed down the ages. But even in its original formation (though modelling itself on the dominant Arab tribal political structures in existence) it contained, within its very conception and structure, the fundamental element of its later transmutation. For at the heart of its very conception was not only the notion of submission to God’s Will, but that of the acknowledgment, the unquestioning acceptance, of the will of Mohammad, as the Messenger of God, as law. Essentially, therefore, it already had the elemental force of its later profound transformation that involved the fusion of the personal and the strictly political into an all-embracing state-structure as a ‘higher unity’ standing above all the communities and peoples conquered and (to a varying extent) converted. It was, however, actually under the Umayyad Caliphate, and subsequently under the Abbasid Caliphate, that it was completely transformed to model the form of despotic state so characteristic of state-forms throughout the history of the Near East – i.e. a pyramidal form of hierarchical (‘bureaucratic’) state structure with a state-head (GodKing, King of Kings, Caliph. Sultan, etc.) appearing as the ‘higher unity’. The Koran is necessarily (because of socio-historic conditions of its time) associated with the political order essentially derived from relations of personal dependence. The dialectic between God’s messenger and the myth of the umma is not incidental in the Koran’s ‘vision’ of power. The Koran’s basic message is, on the other hand, but the culmination of the entire tradition of pre-Islamic religious ideas. It becomes understandable only when interpreted within this tradition. I have thus far attempted in brief compass to place Mohammad’s making of the foundations of the Koran in its socio-historical setting. What is needed now is to trace the starting point of Mohammad’s ideas, his message (set out in the form of recited revelations later collected and composed into the Koran) to its sources in the religious situation of his time. Pre-Islamic religious conditions Religious ideas and belief systems of pre-Islamic life in Arabia proper appear at the very core of the Koranic message. Within this life polytheism dominated the realm of morality, beliefs and religious thoughts, which was not shaken by the monotheistic religions that had long existed in the surrounding regions and had even made some inroads into the region of western Arabia itself (as, for example, with Jewish tribes of Yathrib, Medina). At the time of Mohammad, religion here and particularly in his birthplace, Mecca, was, then, essentially pagan, occupied with idolatry. The Ka’ba in Mecca was a shrine (‘bethel’ also known before Mohammad’s day as the Bait Allah or

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the ‘House of God’) to a number of deities, and the shrines at Ta’if and others in the region of Mecca were ‘homes’ to gods and goddesses among whom one seemed to have a superior position. Known as the ‘Divine One’ or in Arabic as al-ilah or Allah, with a triad of goddesses, al-Lat, al-‘Uzza, and Manat, as his daughters (banat Allah), he was in this ‘paganish’ form worshiped in western Arabia long before as the Divine One he became the One and Only God of Mohammad’s Islamic movement. Mohammad’s form of recitation had also antecedents in pre-Islamic Arabia. Arab poets were known to recite verses as if inspired by ‘spirits’, and the language they used was of the form Mohammad had employed. More importantly, there were the Kahin or soothsayers, who were known and believed to have visions and also possessed ‘spirits’ called ‘companions’ or ‘seers’, which spoke through them revealing visions in ‘poetic’ form and in breathless, rhythmic voices through their mouths. The Kahin were highly and widely respected and were consulted as oracles, seers, and priest-like advisers in both public and private matters. There is however no evidence at all that Mohammad was either regarded as a Kahin or himself acted as one. Yet from what is related about his manner and form of recitation, of the modus operandi of his revelations, he appears to have had many traits in common with such ‘seers’ or perhaps more likely, he had adopted, borrowed, their formal method of reciting his God’s revelations. Now, whatever is the truth, it is hardly surprising or strange that, in attempting to bring about a new movement, Mohammad had used all the techniques and ideas commonly practiced by such highly respected spiritually-inspired persons. Both religiously and politically such embracing of prevailing practices is clearly a shrewd move. There is also no question that he was not alone in taking up such practices or in his proclamation of prophethood. Pre-Islamic Arabia at this time, as with other parts of the Near East at the time of other prophets, had its own share of men who rose up and proclaimed to be prophets of one sort or another. At this historical time, for example, one of the best known of such men that Arab historians mention was one who called himself Maslama (or Musaylima) of the tribe of the Banu Hanifa in the Yamama, a place in the middle of Arabia. Maslama, too, had a mission. He clearly regarded himself as a ‘messenger’ of a one and only God he called Rahman (meaning ‘merciful’). Evidence from inscriptions of the period confirm that the word ‘Rahmanan’(in Aramaic/Hebrew usage) was that which in Southern Arabia was used to refer to the God of Jews and to God the Father in the Christian Trinity, meaning ‘The Merciful’. It is known that Maslama was referred to and/or called himself Rahman, after this God the Merciful. And according to some historians Mohammad was accused of gaining some of his ideas of monotheism from a person widely known as ‘Rahman of the Yamama’. Yet by some accounts the reverse is the truth; i.e. that Maslama, as well as yet another prophet in the Yemen called al-Aswad, was copying Mohammad. At any rate, historically speaking, there is no doubt that Mohammad had naturally been influenced by the religious ideas and practices of his time and had by the age of forty come to realise the political significance of monotheism at a time when there was a great deal of tension in the tribal life and relations in Arabia. Politically, the vision of one God was recognised as clearly supremely crucial in dealing with contemporary tensions and in facilitating tribal unity under the specifically Arab identity. In the Near East as a whole, for some centuries before this historical juncture, monotheism had already advanced its ‘rescue’ of religion from the thousands of years of domination by polytheism, and the struggle between the two had by the time of Mohammad become not merely a localised clash, but a worldly struggle for the very notion, the heart and soul and life, of religion as such.

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Religion, of course, had always claimed the absolute right to ‘guide’ human ways of dealing with tensions and problems of a natural or societal kind, and based this claim upon the elaboration of the highest form of ‘knowledge’ as being divine in origins. With Judaism, which was by far the most developed and organised monotheistic religion, the practical bearing of religion had assumed a new form, which accorded with the sweeping changes of ancient societies. It had announced a ‘practical’ religion by means of which humanity could (would) progress towards the kingdom of heaven. The achievement of this task was, to an ever increasing extent, bound up with the establishment of universally valid laws within the conceptual structure of divine knowledge and the affirmation of the existence of one God. The truth of this was claimed and believed to be universal, as contrasted to the multi-kind appearance of gods, which were generally localised in their immediate forms and thus in the perception of individual groups (tribes, clans, or settled village communities). The conception of a single God was a unifying principle that was meant to preserve the basic ideals of communality of individual groups without falling victim to its antagonisms. With polytheism not a single god or law could lay claim to universality (one god could be dominant or superior for a certain period and/or in certain locality, but could never assume universality); the unity of deities was based on localised custom or habit, adhering to the facts of life but never governing them absolutely and universally. The struggle between monotheism and polytheism was thus not merely a religious struggle, it was a struggle born of the history and evolution of human society and concerned the historical destiny of humanity. The Koran gives not only a clear expression of this struggle between monotheism and polytheism, but also voices its own struggle for the overthrow of all other past monotheistic religions. Ever since the age of Ayyam al-Arab, the Arab tribes had become more aware of their own distinctly Arab identity. A long process of cultural adjustments, under conditions of imperial domination (Byzantium to the north, but particularly Persian Sasanid to the east), had introverted the idea of Arab identity but only within the context of tribal relations. The tribes, nomadic and settled, distributed among numerous oases, each with its own ‘governing’ authority and its own local interests, were impotent to crystallize and effectuate any serious progress towards unification based on the recognition of their Arab identity. Culture at this age was, then, essentially occupied with the mere idea of Arab identity rather than with a unified Arab entity. This development is an important source of a tendency widely visible in western Arabian religious beliefs of reconciling the social reality of the ‘tribalism’ of Arab identity with polytheism. It is a tendency, however, that became frustrated and was eventually transformed into its opposite – a complete break with polytheism. Mohammad’s message, later set forth in the Koran, is the first great expression of this complete break with polytheism within the Arab tribes, and yet, at the same time and paradoxically, the last great attempt to reconcile Arab tribal identity with pagan religious beliefs by giving a refuge to its gods. Mohammad’s message is a synthesis; a system subsuming all the gods of Arab pagan religions under the all-embracing idea of a single God, already widely worshiped as a ‘superior’ god, as mentioned above, known and referred to in Arabic as Allah, meaning the Divine One. This one and only God becomes the veritable form of the reality of all gods in which all antagonisms of beliefs are integrated to form a genuine unity and universality. The task of Mohammad’s revelations in this period of tribalism was thus to set forth and demonstrate the religious principle that would bring about the realisation of the ideals of Arab identity which had surfaced in the age of Ayyam al-Arab and to institute the missing concrete unity (unification) of all the Arab tribes.

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The dialectic between these ideals and monotheism is not, then, incidental in the Koran. It of course presupposes the social reality of pre-Islamic life. It is the product of the given historical situation and its principle rested with the unification of opposites in religious ideas and beliefs upon which there could arise the fulfilment of the potentialities inherent in the notion of Ayyam al-Arab. The realisation of this was a political task that could have only been executed in the form of a religious struggle. The form in which this religious struggle initially appeared was, however, not yet its true form. It was at first negative; the smashing of idols, Mohammad’s constant struggle to ‘prove’ his prophethood, his needing to establish a direct line between his mission and those of the past prophets, etc. It took on its true form only in the process of overcoming this negativity, so that the birth of Islam required the death of the given state of religious beliefs, specifically polytheism. Mohammad’s task, or mission, was, moreover, to not only abolish idolatry, replacing it with monotheism, but to also ‘dethrone’ the existing monotheistic religions (specifically Judaism and Christianity) by ‘completing’ what those religions had started with a restatement of the transcendental notion of the divine in a form that makes the divine experientially realisable. The revelations, later collected in the Koran, had this practical aim of moving from the negative to bring about the truth of a new religion. Consequently, in Mohammad’s revelations tenets pass from one form to another governed by the dynamics of his state of affairs and reflecting the fact that in his task he had the practical political aim of dealing with particular conditions and problems as and when they occurred. This is why the revelations were said to come to him as and when appropriate; and that in their final compilation, the order of which has no bearing on the actual chronology of their recitation by Mohammad, they seem to be contradictory – an ayah in one place being incompatible with another or contradicting some others. Mohammad’s religious mission, however, which began with the negation of the given state of religious beliefs and retained this negativity throughout, was concluded only well after his death with the proclamation of his collected revelations as the holy book. The publishing of the holy book, bound to the Islamic state symbiotically, was the declaration (by his successors) that Mohammad had achieved the institutional stage of his mission and that Islam had finally attained the status hitherto only conferred upon the great religions of Moses and Jesus with their holy books. With the publishing of the Koran, Islam’s position in the world was no longer dependent on the negation of other forms of religious systems or merely on some transcendental ‘abstraction’, but on its own mode of practice. Religion, with Islam, at least according to its followers, had passed the long period of ‘immaturity’ during which it had relied on and attempted to incorporate into itself the existing forms of beliefs, and had become, with the Koran, an autonomous force, subject only to its own universal laws. From the publication of the Koran, the struggle of believers with social forces and organisations external to Islam was to be guided by their own practice of the knowledge contained in the Koran. The world was to be the actual realisation of an order based on divinely commanded submission to the Will of God and His Messenger, as set down by His Word. At this point in time (roughly from the mid-seventh century AD) socio-political reality contained the conditions necessary to materialise the ideological force of faith in the Koran in fact. The specifically religious element of faith did not cease, of course, but assumed a new form. Faith in the Koran became a powerful political weapon for statebuilding, for the creation of an Empire.

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There is no doubt, at any rate, that from its very conception, the Koran was deeply and irrefutably concerned with the politics of faith. It is with this ‘politics of faith’, then, that I shall begin my political reading, interpretation and examination, of the Koran. Chapter One: The Politics of Faith Faith is to the Koran what matter is to life. It is at once its most general and its most elementary substance. Faith is the indispensable condition for the sacredness of all the Koran’s textual representation of revelations. Every single verse in the Koran has faith as its absolute foundation. Faith is what determines the essence of the Koran: ‘And in the earth are signs [ayat, revelations] for those who are sure in faith.’(LI:20) And: ‘We have indeed made manifest the signs to people with certitude [who are certainly sure in faith].’(II:118) Without faith the Koran is nothing more than a mere historical document, having no basic function in world history. The concept of faith incorporates all the elements that characterise the Koran as in origin divine. This determination cannot, however, be grasped as a simple relation; for with faith we are in the realm of mystification. As it is famously put (Heb 11:1): ‘faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’ The relation between faith and the Koran must therefore be apprehended in a way which subverts rational understanding; the relation must be seen as created by the Koran’s own reality. The Koran must be seen not as a mere ‘object’ of faith, but as a ‘subject’ in its relations to its ‘otherness’ which is faith. In other words, the Koran is regarded as divine, but that this divinity appears as a property of the Koran itself. The divinity of the Koran seems to be independent of this or that individual’s faith in it. Hence the divinity of the Koran appears to be something purely and objectively outside of the realm of human relations and consciousness, and consequently inherent in the text itself. The Koran, thus, manifests itself as a text that by its revelations answers faith that it itself establishes. In appearance, then, the necessary relation of the Koran to faith is one that makes its divinity in all conditions not contingent but necessarily determined by itself. The understanding of this mystification is necessary in order to grasp the political force of faith in Islam; for it presupposes that the Koran has a definite power over the development of faith, so that it can remain itself a force in spite of the fact that its existence is purely subjective. Thus, the Koran exalts the notion of faith and articulates the proof of faith-as-such, that is, as its most profound testimony or confirmation. It is as if it is the Koran itself and in itself that produces and determines faith. Essentially having faith in the Koran makes the nature of the divine order presented in it something apparently real. Yet there is an intrinsically reverse relation between faith and the nature of the divine order in the Koran: it is the representation of the divine order as given in the Koran that appears to reproduce the expression of faith and brings it to its true form. In this mystification, faith in the divine order is conditioned by faith in the document which is the Koran; the text itself becomes the divine element, seemingly providing the very cognisance of the divine through the divine, which then rediscovers itself in the believer as faith. The subjectivity of faith seems transformed to become the objectively ideal. Faith appears externalised: it seems and is perceived to have an external source, having external causality and substantiality in the Koran. In other words, the subjectivity of faith passes into the form of ‘divine revelations’, of the Word of God, into the Holy Book, which, accordingly, attains a universality and permanence that seems independent of the particular individual believer. The Koran assumes the dignity of the ‘objectivity’ of faith, and its ‘pure selfexistence’ seems assured by this means of faith’s apparent objectification – as the Word and the Holy Book. By this means the Word of God takes on the appearance of an independent power – in the form of Allah’s Constitution. But the Koran assumes

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this form as a consequence in essence of the fact that the power of the divine Word has become, through faith itself, the manifestation of an actual earthly power – the Islamic state. It is in this process that the politics of faith operates. There are basically two interlinked aspects to the politics of faith that can be discerned in the Koran: One is concerned with the substantiation of faith in the divinity of Mohammad’s revelatory message, which, axiomatically, includes substantiating faith in his vision of the Oneness of God, divine power and God’s Will. The other is the establishment of faith in the actual textual representation of divine revelations, of the divine message, as the true Book of Commandments, the Holy Book, and hence as Allah’s Constitution. These two aspects are concerned with and reflect changing power relations but within the continuum of Islam’s ideological movement. Both aspects, inseparable though distinct, are concerned with political interests and the direction of the structural adjustments to the institutions of power within the specifically Islamic mode of domination. Fundamentally, they are concerned with power and its exercise. Revealing Faith: A Process in Reverse The politics of faith as reflected in the Koran appear in a form that reverses the process of revelations. Assuming the historical authenticity of the revelations given in the Koran, the presentation of these is more or less and for the most part the direct opposite to that of their actual (or presumed) recitation by Mohammad. The Koran begins not with the revelations recited by Mohammad at the beginning and early period of his mission but with those affirming and substantiating faith in the Divine Order. The design of this format was not for mere religious reasons; or, to put it more precisely, the apparent religious motive behind this deliberate formulation rose out of political considerations. Let us look at the manner in which this is reflected in the Koran. The Koran’s first and foremost task is in the revealing of faith in the Divine Order as the well-spring of faith in itself as the Word of God. It is this first-principle task that underlines its formal structure. The first surah (The Opening or Fateha) thus opens the composition with the affirmative, unequivocal statement of faith in the omnipotence of God. It is a concise and simple declaration, firstly asserting the absolute sovereignty of God: ‘Bessmellah-e Rahman-e al-Rahim’ ‘In the Name of God [Bessmellah – has also the connotation of ‘In the Service of God’], the Beneficent, the Merciful.’ ‘Praise [al-hamdu – stresses the glory that is God’s] belongs to God, the Lord of the worlds [al-‘alameen], The Beneficent, the Merciful, The Master of the Day of Judgment [Yaumiddeen – Yaum, or ‘Day’, can mean ‘moment’ in its metaphysical sense; Deen means ‘the way of life’ according to the Will of God; here God is thus stated to be ‘the Master of the Moment of Judgment in the way of life and throughout the way of life of all beings’ – in short, He is the Absolute Judge, Final Authority in all aspects or matters of life.].’ It then goes on to confirm the believer’s faith in God’s Mastery: ‘Thee only we serve [na’badu – we do obey and worship in subjection and servitude – from ‘ibadah, root word ‘abd]; of Thee alone we seek help.

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Guide us in the Straight Way [Ihdina – also meaning ‘confirm’; thus: Confirm upon us the Straight Way], The Way of those whom Thou hast bestowed favours [a-n’mata, bounties, reward for services], Not of those against whom Thou art wrathful [al-maqzub – those inflicted with God’s anger], nor of those who are [or gone] astray [al-zalayoon].’ This beginning (or Opening), in its pointedness, is an astute political statement worthy of a party-political manifesto. It is, in its Arabic, elegant in language, precise in its aim, lucid in its demand, and positive in its claim. The importance of this surah is quite evident from its compulsory recitation in every prayer, without which no prayer is wholly perfect – hence it is referred to as ‘Ummu Qur’an, the Essence (or ‘Mother’) of the Recitations (or the Koran). It proclaims God as the Master; it does not invite one to believe in Him, it asserts faith in His Mastery. He is the Absolute Judge, the Absolute Law-maker; the one and only one who confirms and establishes the way of life to be followed; He is the only one who bestows favours and this upon those whom he chooses, who are thus blessed as his favoured ones. The surah, in other words, gives clear-cut direction, leadership. It thereby establishes at once the essence of the faith in God as based on the Master-servant relation of dependence. The relationship, moreover, is not passive; opposition to His sovereignty will meet His wrath, while to Him alone is due praise for guidance and help. One is left in no doubt from the start as to the fundamental purpose of the whole composition of the Koran. The opening sets the agenda that underline the structure of the whole composition. The surah-e-Fateha, being regarded as the ‘Essence’ of the Holy Book, is a fundamental declaration of the supremacy of God’s power and the assertion of mankind’s obedience and worship of His absolute authority – it is the assertion of mankind’s servitude within the Divine Order. The placing of this surah at the beginning of the Koran could have hardly been incidental or accidental. It was placed there by design, with definite political deliberation. It is at the connection between what is compiled (or composed) and what is (supposedly) revealed that the textual document, even if by implication, gives its own illustration of the political consideration behind the transformation of Mohammad’s revelations into the Koran. With Mohammad, revelations were in their ‘raw state’, as it were – they were divine communications impressed upon Mohammad’s small world in order to exercise his personal powers of intervention. But the revelations contained in the Koran (professed to be those of Mohammad’s), even if they are assumed to be the original ayahs, enter into new relations with each other by arrangement, ones more expressive of the purposive intervention of an earthly authority – an authority deeply engaged in the manoeuvres of the politics of faith. Thus, for example, compare the following surah, which is said to contain the first of Mohammad’s revelations (the five beginning ayahs), with the first surah of the Koran (the Opening). Here are the five verses of Mohammad’s first revelations: ‘In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Recite, in the name of thy Lord Who created. He created man from a clot. Recite, for thy Lord is Most Generous. Who taught by the Pen [Qalam refers to ‘pen’ only as an instrument to inscribe or write in the symbolic sense of the passing of ‘divine knowledge’ – see e.g. LXVIII:1] Taught man what he knew not …’(XCVI:1-5) Now, in the above verses we have a simple articulation of a personal instruction. Fundamentally, the purpose here is to name, or point out, the origin of revelations as a representation of divine ‘creation’. The propositional form is to do with ‘nomination’

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and ‘indication’, but not of ‘judgement’. The instruction to ‘Recite’ does not arouse, and is not intended to arouse, the sense of power; it is merely expressive of the relation between the Lord of Creation and the person of Mohammad, who is being told to recite that which the Lord teaches which man did not know. It is evident, from a comparison of these first-revealed ayahs and the Opening surah of the Koran, that the two sets of revelations have very distinct and different functions. With the first-revealed ayahs we have the nominative function which remains within the immediacy of the given personal role of Mohammad as the indicator and conveyor of the divine knowledge in the form of revelations; with the Opening surah we have the practical function which goes beyond the immediacy of the given to affirm that which has been already conveyed as the Truth, or divine knowledge, of the ‘phenomenal’ existence of the Divine Order of things, of God’s power and authority over man. It is understandable, therefore, why the compilers of the Koran accorded such theological and practical importance to the Opening surah by placing it at the head of the whole composition – and not accorded this to the supposedly actual first-revealed ayahs. The Opening surah is expressive of the absolute condition of faith in the Divine Order revealed and set forth in the Koran. And by this very method, it is effectively proclaiming the inextricable link between that Divine Order and the revelatory content of the composition being ‘opened’ as equal in sovereignty, as having the same force or authority – thus commanding absolute faith in the Koran as the Word of God. The point immediately before us, it should be stressed, is not to do with the ‘truth’ or the ‘theological’ value or otherwise of the Opening surah or for that matter of any other chapter or verse, rather it is to do with the reason and manner of its arrival as part of the affirmation of faith. Faith, from a socio-historical perspective, comes about as part of social consciousness which is determined by social being, the lived experience of individuals in relations to each other and to their material life conditions. Faith cannot reproduce itself independently of the lived experience of individuals as social beings. Yet it is precisely the opposite understanding that the Koran asserts as the foundation of faith. In the Koran, the Prophet’s revelations are set forth in order to elaborate or rather substantiate the assertion of faith as independent of the human world. It is as if the faith being substantiated comes out of the ‘raw material’ of the Prophet’s recited revelations. Living aside the very substantial problematic nature of Mohammad’s revelations, it is clear from the outset, as evident from the Opening surah, that this ‘raw material’ was and had to be worked upon before it could be made into a ‘product’ (the text) that could have any claim to substantiating its own specific authority. This working on the revelations and the subsequent making of their compilation into a textual composition took place within a social and historical context that determined the purpose and hence the form and structure of what was to become the Koran. In short, the Koran had to be made into the Word of God from the ‘raw material’ of the Prophet’s revelation. And it had to be made as such essentially for reasons of political expediency conditioned by the process of consolidation of Islam’s mode of domination in which faith in the authority of the emerging structure of power (and of those in command of it) was of fundamental importance. The earthly exercise of power needed sanctioning; substantiating faith as such by means of the Prophet’s revelations that affirmed God’s power or the omnipotence of the Divine Order was considered as essential to achieving this end. This was essentially a process of struggle; that is, fighting the politics of faith.

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In this process, the crucial principle was to ‘reverse’ the order of Mohammad’s message. Let us consider this matter a little more closely. In the beginning was not the ‘Word’ but the ‘person of the Prophet’ who had set himself the task of revealing the Divine Order. This ‘person’ as Mohammad was ‘chosen’ by God to deliver the divine message like other Prophets before him. Once chosen, he was then told to recite that which God was to reveal to him, which was subsequently to become the Word. In other words, Mohammad’s revealing of the Divine Order was both conditioned by and a condition of his personal authority as the Messenger of God. In political terms, he was making an attempt on power through the sanctioning of his authority as the Messenger of God, through, as it were, the clothes or shroud of prophethood. This is the idea implied in one of the earliest or, by some reckoning, the second set of ayahs delivered or recited by Mohammad at the very beginning of his mission at Mecca: ‘O thou clothed [shrouded] in thy mantle. Arise and Warn! And thy Lord do magnify! And thy raiment do purify!’(LXXIV:1-4) If in the first-revealed ayahs Mohammad is called on to recite that which God is revealing to him, here he is being put forward as the chosen person summoned by God to bring faith to his fellow Meccans as disbelievers by exalting God as his Lord. With this, then, the ayahs he recited were not sanctioning the Koran as the Word of God, but Mohammad’s role in God’s Order that was being revealed to him. During the initial phase of his mission, in other words, the revelations were fundamentally advocating faith in the One God as a way of confirming Mohammad’s divinely granted authority. For example, even when Mohammad is instructed to recite the Koran, the recitation commanded is not specifically concerned with faith in the authority of the Koran itself or as such but with that of the authorisation by God of Mohammad himself, as indicated in the following verses: ‘O thou wrapped up in thy mantle! Rise thou in the night to pray but a little. Half of it or curtail of it a little. Or add to it, and declaim the Qur’an in a distinct tone [as it ought to be recited]! Verily, soon will We cast upon thee a weighty Word. … And remember the Name of thy Lord, and devote thyself unto Him exclusively [with exclusive devotion]. The Lord of the East and the West: there is no god but He, so take Him as your Protector!’(LXXIII:1-5 and 9; my italics) The ‘Word’ was yet to be revealed; that is, the Koran in its completed form that came to be designated as the Word expressing God’s Will, or the totality of what is regarded as the Divine Order, was still to be ‘sent down’ to Mohammad. It should be noted that the reference made to the ‘Qur’an’ here is strictly speaking only to Mohammad’s Recitation and not to the much later ‘textual’ compilation or composition of his revelations (if indeed these verses are the authentic ones made up and voiced by Mohammad). For Mohammad, the true mode of manifesting and expressing God’s Order, His Will, was only through the process of recitation; it was by reciting his revelations that he not only disclosed God’s Will to the world of humanity (or rather, the people of Mecca and other regions of the Hijaz), but he himself engaged with the latter as a Prophet. If we assume that these revelations (the early so-called Meccan verses) are genuine, then what the term ‘Qur’an’ (from qara’a, ‘to recite’) denoted at the time was the Prophet’s process of recitation of his revelations. The term signified the mode of delivery of the divine message, rather than the form of the latter as the ‘Word’. The ‘Word’, moreover, has to be perceived on the basis of its representation of Divine Order, as the virtual element of God’s Will, prescribing the order of things, of all being. With the Word, the Koran no longer designates merely a process of recitation; it refers also to the formal elements of God’s Will, His directives and commands, grouped into a system establishing a way of life (Deen), which impose upon the world an organisation of life that is (ideally) that of the representation of the Divine Order itself. It is the Word in this latter sense that can then become the Guidance, the Truth,

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and hence the Holy Book. It is therefore not necessarily or always the case that the term ‘Qur’an’ is synonymous with either the ‘Word’ or indeed the ‘Book’. This point is actually implied, for example, in the following ayahs: ‘Verily, it is a noble Qur’an. In a hidden Book. None shall touch it save the purified. A revelation [tanzil] by the Lord of the Worlds [Rabb al-‘alameen]…’(LVI:77-80; my italics) ‘Kitabi maknun’ translated as ‘a hidden Book’ is a reference to the ‘heavenly’ or the divinely recorded totality of God’s Will as commandments, etc., from which the Qur’an is revealed in the generous and noble form of Mohammad’s recitation. What we have in terms of the representation of the Divine Order, therefore, is merely the recitation by Mohammad of what ‘the Lord of the Worlds’ is ‘sending down’ as a revelation, which is distinct from God’s Word. It is on the basis of this clear and manifest recitation, revealed from the ‘hidden’ but sovereign ‘Book’ of God, that the Word ‘emerges’, signifying a sort of assemblage that is a unit, a whole, formed by the union of the recited revelations now bound in upon themselves. Before this ‘assemblage’, power relations were predominantly characterised by the personal form of intervention – i.e. Mohammad vying for power. We see this reflected in many verses, of which this is one example: ‘Indeed, We sent Our Messenger with clear [irrefutable] evidences, and We sent down [revealed] with them the Book and the Scale [Balance] that men may constitute themselves with equity…’(LVII:25; my italics) Mohammad reveals the ‘irrefutable evidences’ upon which ‘the Book and the Scale’ is sent down; signs of the Divine Order are revealed by Mohammad to bring and substantiate faith in that Order, which thereby sanctions Mohammad’s interventionist role in the affairs and conduct of men. With this then comes the Book and the Scale of divine justice and equity. Reciting the revelations as ‘evidence’ of the Divine Order of all things was the primary factor in terms of the politics of faith or the ‘Machiavellian’ manoeuvring for power by Mohammad. It was to him personally that the signs, the evidences, were given and this alone warrants all who heard his recitations to believe in his God Who has revealed these signs to him: ‘And what is it with you that you believe not in God seeing that the Messenger calls on you to believe in your Lord, and has indeed made a bargain with you, if you are believers? He it is Who sent down [revealed] upon His Servant [i.e. Mohammad] signs manifest, so that He may bring you forth from the darkness into the light; and verily God unto you is Most Kind and Most Merciful!’(LVII:8-9; my italics) In view of the Messenger calling on his folk, his fellow tribesmen, to follow him in his vying for power, God has sent down manifest signs of His Will so that everyone should, by ‘seeing’ these evidences (thus coming out of the ‘darkness’ of ignorance into the ‘light’ of the knowledge of the Truth), believe, have faith, in Mohammad himself. The ‘signs’ are, of course, revelations being recited as distinct from their later formation as the Word. It is upon this conceptual distinction between the ‘recitation’ and the ‘Word’ that the order of Mohammad’s message presented in the Koran is reversed. Rather than beginning with revelations that gave greater prominence to the licensing or authorisation by God of the person of Mohammad to be His chosen Prophet, the completed composition as the Koran actually begins with revelations that give greater prominence to the Word of God. This ‘reversal’ was not the result of ‘divine intervention’ (chance) or simply brought on by religious considerations; it was a consequence of the changing political conditions in the process of the development of the Islamic movement.

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The Koran as the Word of God For Mohammad the politics of faith entailed a necessary struggle to establish his Islamic movement as divinely ordained, and himself as the true and the last of God’s prophets. But his theocracy, once established, had no formal jurisdiction; his ‘protopolitical’ organisation or community-state (the umma) had only an internal cohesive authority based purely on the acceptance of Mohammad as the divine messenger; the exercise of power and dealings with opponents depended solely upon the caprice of the Prophet – though proclaimed to be the Will of God revealed through him. For his successors, however, the politics of faith entailed a struggle to establish the external and internal sovereignty of the Islamic state. This engendered a new conception of the relation of the state to its subjects. The idea of the community of Muslims (the umma) had to be displaced by the idea of the state as an undisputed authority of the Caliphate government over all its subjects. But this had to be done in such a way as to maintain the appearance of the communality of subjects and that of the divinity of the authority of rulers. In short, the changes in the political realm had to be presented, justified and made to appear as simply the divinely sanctioned continuation of the Prophet’s established ways and form of leadership and governance. Given the historical circumstances, in other words, a formally constituted jurisdiction was necessary to establish the universal order of the state in order to combine the territories being conquered with the original community of Muslims so as to form a centralised social and political whole. The exercise of power, and thus the Caliphate’s dealings with its opponents, needed formal sanctioning. In the absence of the personal authority of the Prophet, Mohammad’s revelations were the only source that had such unchallengeable authority. Their compilation and subsequent composition in the form of the Koran, officially stamped as the exact and definitive text of the Prophet’s recitation, thus provided the Caliphate that necessary and indispensable formal jurisdiction. With this point in mind, it can be said that the arrangement and composition of Mohammad’s recitation of revelations were essentially an ideological response to the political development of the Islamic movement – a response conditioned by the politics of faith. This response would presuppose that faith must be seen as created by the Koran’s own mode of ‘reality’. The composition of revelations had to be made to appear not as something that merely establishes faith in Islam as a way of life, but as something that is actually perceived to be its true reality; it had to be regarded in itself as the ‘Ideal’, the ‘Perfection’ or the ‘Criterion’ (Furqan) of life’s conduct in which all potentialities of Islamic faith are realised and in which faith-as-such reaches its ultimate form. The goal of the Koranic arrangement and composition was, thus, herewith set. It consisted in putting forth faith in the Koran as the absolute truth of faith-as-such. The task of the compilers of the Koran (but more so of the later ulama who greatly influenced its actual composition) was to bring about such an understanding and perception and not merely to ‘assemble’ the Prophet’s revelations for the sake of spiritual guidance. In order to achieve this task the composition had to be arranged in its assemblage of verses and chapters (involving modifications of chronological order of verses both within and between chapters, as well as perhaps addition and omitting of verses) so as to present itself as the Word of God. After the opening statement of God’s Mastery in the first surah, therefore, the Koran immediately goes on in the second surah to establish itself as the Book which is the principal source and well-spring of faith in God par excellence. Thus the first two lines of this second chapter (called the Cow or Al-Baqarah) categorically asserts:

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‘Alif Lam Mim That is the Book, wherein is no doubt [zalika al-Kitaba la rayuba]’ In other words, here God Himself (given the presupposition of divine revelation) is giving notice to the world that the Koran is the Book of His commandments. Zalika al-Kitaba la rayuba connotes: that (zalika) sum total of the divine qualities of the revelations that are herein written and bound in a complete form (al-Kitab) in which there can be no doubt (la rayuba). The word ‘kitab’ denotes ‘to collect things together’ and ‘kitaba’ that of the act of ‘writing’, which has, of course, its various conjugated forms (as kataba, katabat, etc) – they are all from the root k-t-b originally denoting ‘to stitch’ pieces, perhaps of skins, together, which has from this come to denote ‘making’ or ‘inscribing’ or ‘writing’; for what is ‘written’ is the making of words and sentences by bringing (‘stitching’) together letters and words. In the Koran the connotation of kitab, however, is more significant than its denotation. For kitab (as also the words kataba or kutiba) connotes the specific quality of that which is written as wajib or obligatory and this because the thing written is divinely predetermined as directives, commands or prescriptions. We can see this, for example, in a whole number of ayahs, such as II:180, prescribing the making of a bequest, or II:183, prescribing fasting, as with many others, in all of which this idea of the thing ‘written’ is distinguished as a ‘divine decree’. The written has, in other words, a great significance; it establishes what is preordained – thus ‘Allah-a kataba’ signifies that which ‘God has written’ as the obligation which He has ordained (e.g. see VI:12 and also 54, ‘kataba Rabbukum’ or ‘the Lord has ordained’) For this very reason, as a concept, kitab has the representative value of all the elements of revelations that together form God’s commandments as the Divine Word. It is as such that the ‘Book’ of revelations assumes the eminence of a Guidance, a Book of divinely ordained rules and regulations of life. And indeed the confirmation of this is given in the ayah quoted above from the second chapter: ‘That is the Book, wherein is no doubt, a Guidance to the pious.’(II:2; my italics) The second surah thus actually begins with the promulgation of the fundamental principle of Islam: the Koran is the Word of God! The Word of God carries the absolute obligation of commandments as Divine Law, which by definition has an independent and a continual existence. It is therefore as such independent of the person of the Messenger who had been the medium of its revelatory process, while grounded on his God-given recited revelations, as indeed on what was revealed by prophets before him. As the Word of God, the compilation of Mohammad’s recited revelations is thus claimed to be a Guidance to those ‘who believe in that which has been sent down [i.e. as revelations] unto thee [i.e. Mohammad] and that which has been sent down before thee [i.e. to other prophets]…’(II:4) The composition of Mohammad’s revelations can now claim faith on its own ground. And thus we have here the reproduction of an ayah purporting to instruct Mohammad to inform specifically the Jews and Christians (having their own versions of the Word of God) that the Koran is the true Guidance, i.e. the last or final Word of God: ‘Say: Verily, the guidance from God is the Guidance.’(II:120; my italics) For Mohammad’s revelations, in their ‘true recitation’ (see II:121) must now, as the Koran, be regarded or believed in, as the Truth, that is, as the Word of God: ‘Verily, We have sent thee with the Truth…’(II:119) Indeed, it is recognised by those who composed the Koran that for a ‘messenger’ or an ‘apostle’ to have a just claim to the status of a Prophet (Nabee), he must have been given by God al-Kitab – that is, the Book of Divine Law or the Word of God. This is

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how it is put in the Koran with regards to Jesus: ‘He said: Verily, I am a servant of God; He has given me the Book and made me a Prophet!’(XIX:30) And the same goes for Moses: ‘And We gave Moses the Book and the Criterion that you might be guided.’(II:53; see also 87) Thus, in tackling this issue, the third surah begins with the following ayahs: ‘Alif Lam Mim God, there is no god but He, the Ever-living, the Self-subsistent. He has sent down unto thee the Book with the Truth [al-Kitaba b-al-Haq (or bilhaqa)] confirming what was before it; and He sent down the Torah and the Gospel aforetime, as guidance to mankind, and He sent down the Furqan [the Criterion – a title given to the Qur’an in its designation as ‘setting the distinctive standard of life’s conduct’].’(III:1-3) The notice given here is clear and emphatic: it is that the composition herewith set before the world is the Book of Divine Law (‘the Book with the Truth’ has this definite connotation), which confirms the prior Books of Divine Law as the form of divine guidance. Here, then simply by their association, the logical implication is that this composition is, like the others mentioned, therefore the Word of God. In fact the first ayah (of the third chapter) in declaring that ‘there is no god but God’ is meant precisely to substantiate the second ayah’s assertion; i.e. given the notion of the Oneness of God, it is self-evident that all the Books of Divine Law mentioned must have one single divine source (the One God), and it thus follows that since the Torah and the Gospel are regarded as the Word of God, then manifestly and unquestionably this composition, too, is the Word of God. But, interestingly, the ayah goes even further than this assertion: it states that this composition ‘sent down’ as ‘the Book with the Truth’ confirms the Books that preceded it. The unmistakable implication here is that the composition of Mohammad’s recited revelations (i.e. the Koran) supersedes all other Books sent down by God for it ‘confirms’ them. In short, not only is the Koran the Word of God, it is indeed the last and final Word of God! It replaces (or displaces) all other Books of Divine Law. In this, the Koran demands absolute faith in itself as the absolute Word of God on all matters of life. And if in connection with this demand there were those who questioned the arrangement and form of the composition and the manner of the communication of its revelatory message, and thus on that basis challenged its divinity as the Word of God, then the astute compilers had an ayah as God’s response for this bit of complication, too. Here is the relevant ayah: ‘And those who disbelieve say: Why was not the Qur’an sent down to him [i.e. Mohammad] all at once?’ That is, since Mohammad received the revelations piecemeal over some twenty-two years, and since the ‘Word of God’ signifies a completed Book of Divine Law sent down by God in its totality and hence all at once, then the composition as the Koran seems to be manmade. ‘It is thus,’ comes the response of God to this challenge, ‘so that We may strengthen your heart thereby, and We have arranged it well for distinctive recitation. They [i.e. disbelievers] bring not to thee any argument, but We have brought to thee the Truth, and the best in exposition.’(XXV:32-33; my italics) They had also responded to those who questioned the compilation’s authenticity as the Word of God on the basis that nothing of it had been written down at the time of its delivery to Mohammad: ‘And had we sent down to you [i.e. Mohammad] a writing [kitaban] on parchment, and they had touched it with their hands, surely those who disbelieve would have said: This is naught but obvious sorcery.’ And for this treachery: ‘…the matter would certainly have been decided [i.e. God would certainly punish them] and then they would be given no respite.’(VI:7-8) In reality, of course, what is being ‘confirmed’ is an emphatic declaration of faith in the Koran’s divine origins by the powers that be, by those who had commissioned and

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those who had composed it. It is a declaration which is, indeed, asserted, as if to emphasise the point or as a reminder, at various intervals throughout the Koran. The assertiveness of these statements concerning the composition’s status leaves no room for doubt. Yet, the very fact of giving and repeating such a firm notice of the composition’s divinity as the Word of God is indicative of uncertainty in the compilation’s status and implies the need for its certification. This is particularly the case as regards the beginning ayah of the second surah; and therefore although here the statement is categorical, it is not unproblematic; its positive component (‘That is the Book’) is qualified by ‘wherein is no doubt’, suggesting that there was at the time some measure of hesitancy in its acceptance as the book representing the Divine Word and also some measure of doubt even among believers with regards to its (officially sanctioned) form, its particular framework and arrangement. The wording here, therefore, indicates that the collection of revelations being presented to the world had an ideological fight on its hands, as it were, to establish itself as the foundation (‘begetter’) of faith. The authority of the Koran, even its divine status, during the early phases of the formation and consolidation of the Islamic state, was thus not a foregone conclusion. And the reason for this is twofold: on the one hand, Islam needed to establish itself as the new religion in opposition to other well-established religions, specifically Christianity and Judaism, which meant that it needed to put in place its own Book of Divine Law; on the other hand, the compilation had to be acknowledged and accepted within the Islamic movement itself as ‘authentic’ and true to the substance of the Prophet’s message – that is to say, its authority had to be asserted, as if by its own emphatic confirmation, as the Word which God Himself had revealed through Mohammad and which no faction, party or grouping within the Islamic movement could question and challenge. It was precisely this process of ideological struggle that lay at the heart of the politics of faith. The process involved opposing ideas and views on the form and character of the compilation of revelations being made into the Koran, reflecting the interests of different factions and groups – it was, indeed, within this process (involving violent and bloody social and political battles) that the ‘leaders’ and ‘decision makers’ made themselves into what can be categorised as a politically distinctive social layer, a ‘class-like’ formation, and that eventually the ‘elite’ victors became fully conscious of their specific values and interests (as for example with the ulama) as a ruling ‘state-aristocracy’. If politics at the time was about changing power relations within the mould of religion and if faith (as an ‘act of the mind’) was in that age an essential conditioning factor of ‘consciousness’ to accept authority as divinely given, then the politics of faith was engaged with an unrelenting ‘theological war’ fought out, in reality for state-power, but nominally for God and in the name of Mohammad as His Last Messenger, over the making and the establishment of the Koran as the last and final Word of God. For the determination of faith went hand in hand with that of power and the control of the state. This historical process involved the struggle for faith within the Islamic movement as well as that between the latter and other non-Islamic claimants to faith’s certainty of the Truth. The basic aspects of this theological war over faith in the composition (as being the Word of God) can be elucidated by looking at the way they are reflected in the Koran itself, and more manifestly in its beginning lengthier chapters. The ‘war’, as was mentioned, was over faith in what was written and composed; was it divine in source or was it made by the hand of man or had it been tampered with? Thus we have the following verses referring to the folk who had expressed doubt in the compilation as the Koran: ‘Among them are the unlettered folk [ummiyun, from ummi connoting ‘common’ or ‘ordinary’ people in contrast to the ‘learned’ – thus it is often translated

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as ‘illiterate’ – Mohammad was himself one of the ummi] who know not the Book, save from hearsay, and they do nothing but conjecture. So woe unto them who write the Book with their own hands, then say: this is from God, that they may sell it [i.e. ‘sell’ as in ‘to promote’ and ‘to delude’] for a small price [i.e. worthless self-interest]; therefore woe unto them for what their hands have written, and woe to them for what they earn thereby.’(II:78-79) Two points of import can be discerned from these verses: the first is historical, in that during the time of the compilation of Mohammad’s revelations into what is referred to as the Uthman Codex, or the officially sanctioned compilation, there were a number of other handwritten versions of Mohammad’s speeches, which were under the Caliph Uthman’s initiative destroyed (or presumed to have been destroyed). The above verses were therefore reproduced here in order to renounce and reject the ‘unofficial’ versions as ‘counterfeits’, and by this means thereby establishing, in God’s own words, faith in the official version as the true Word of God. ‘And who is more a transgressor,’ it is thus stated in relation to such ‘unofficially’ written-down versions, as well as with regards to anyone claiming divine inspiration, ‘than he who forges a lie against God, or says: I have received divine inspiration, when no such inspiration was given to him, or he who says: I can get down [produce a writing] the same as God’s revelations…’(VI:93; my italics) For only the official composition is the actual Book that God has blessed: ‘This Book, We have sent it down blessed, confirming that which has been before it…’(VI:92; my italics; and 155) The second point is based on the classical method of denigrating one’s opponents. The doubters are ‘unlettered’, have no knowledge, and deal in conjecture. For these doubters, it is implied, had in hand a written version of the Prophet’s recited revelations, and, it can be surmised, were challenging the official compilation as not being the veritable composition. Thus God here (the verses being revelations) is belittling their character and dismissing their version of the written revelations as false and their promotion, or the ‘selling’ of them, as simply for self-interest and the deluding of the people. In this way, God is confirming the official compilation (and hence the composition as the Koran) as rightly and properly His Own Word. ‘Should I seek a judge other than God,’ thus asks Mohammad, ‘when it is He Who has sent down unto you the detailed Book [al-Kitaba mufassalan, connotes a comprehensively clear book]?’ The response is unequivocal, ‘And those to whom We have given the Book know that it has been sent down by thy Lord with truth, therefore be you not of those who doubt.’(VI:114; my italics.) The seventh chapter, indeed, begins with yet another couple of revelations advising against any doubt in and reaffirming the official composition as the Word of God that everyone must follow: ‘A Book has been sent down to thee, so let there be no doubt [as impediment] in thy breast concerning it, that you may warn thereby, and as a reminder close to the believers. Follow what has been sent down to you from your Lord and follow you no guardians other than He [i.e. God]…’(VII:2-3) Dissention on this obviously highly significant and sensitive issue, it seems, was rife. The compilation had become a matter of major ideological and political in-fighting for the life and soul of the movement. Those in control of its making had to act fast and relentlessly if they were to have any chance of winning the battles engaged in the politics of faith. The extent of in-fighting is apparent from this ayah: ‘And verily there is a faction [firqah, can also mean ‘sect’, though it is sometimes translated as ‘party’] amongst them who distort the Book with their twisting tongues that you may think it to be of the [true] Book, and they say: It is from God, while it is not from God, and they tell a lie against God while they know.’(III:78) And in this connection, God ‘curses’ those attempting to ‘conceal’ the truth about that which He has sent down: ‘Verily, those who conceal what We have sent down as the evident signs and the

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Guidance, after We made it manifest in the Book for mankind, these are whom God shall curse…’(II:159; see also 174 on the same point) And God’s curse turns into a ‘painful chastisement’ for those who thus go on to continuously dispute the composition’s divine authority, as being His Word: ‘This is because God has sent down the Book with the Truth; verily, those who oppose [dispute] the Book are in a great schism [opposition, dissention].’(II:176; my italics) To affirm the compilation as the Word of God was to give it complete and absolute jurisdiction in all matters: ‘Verily, We have sent down to you the Book with the Truth so that you may judge between people by what God has shown you…’(IV:105; my italics) It is what decisions must be based on (see IV:127); it is Law and a ‘Way’ or a system of life’s conduct: ‘And We have sent down to you the Book with the Truth, confirming what is before it of the Book [i.e. of the earlier Scriptures] and a guardian over it, therefore judge between them by what God has sent down…For every one of you We appointed a Law and a Way…’(V:48) And in its completeness there must be no doubt: ‘…We have not neglected anything in the Book…’(VI:38) Thus to question it, challenge and oppose it, is a treacherous act, equivalent precisely to an act of treason, and punishable with equal severity. Even Mohammad is boldly told in a whole number of ayahs not to ‘plead’ for those involved in it – e.g. ‘…and be not you a pleader for the treacherous.’(IV:105); ‘And plead not on behalf of those who deceive their own selves; verily, God loves not anyone who is treacherous.’(IV:107). Those rejecting the composition, who were thus also rejecting what was revealed by Mohammad, had to be dealt with extremely harshly: ‘See you not those who dispute about the signs of God, how they are turned away? Those who reject [belie] the Book and what We sent Our Messenger with, they shall soon know, when the fetters and the chains shall be upon their necks, they shall be dragged into the boiling water, then in the Fire [Hell] shall they be burned.’(XL:69-72) The fundamental issue behind the problem of dissention and opposition with regards to the official compilation of revelations was the control over power and its ‘rightful’ exercise. Mohammad’s recited revelations were used as weapons (alongside the sword) in fighting this struggle for power. Included in its earlier surahs, for example, are ayahs that draw attention to the problem of dissention as distinct from that of disbelief. The recognition of this problem and the distinction between the two types of opponents is implied in the following verses: ‘As for the unbelievers, alike it is to them whether you have warned them or have not warned them, they do not believe….And there are some people who say: We believe in God and the Last Day; but they are not at all believers. They desire to deceive God and those who believe…’(II:6, 8-9) The problem of dissent was less important at the time of Mohammed and was actually more associated at his time with those who joined his movement for opportunistic reasons, as ‘impostors’, ‘deceivers’. It had gained greater political significance with the proper establishment of the Islamic state and its expansion under the Caliphate regimes (among the long list of ‘dissenters’, the most important and well-known were, for example, the Khawarij and the Shia). The verses that dealt with the issue of dissent, even if often implicitly, were invaluable revelations that could be used by Mohammad’s successors against internal opposition to their rule. We have thus the following: ‘And when it is said to them, do not make mischief [fitnah – sedition, rebellion, socio-political unrest] in the land, they say: we are but peace-makers. Now surely they themselves are the mischief makers, but they do not perceive [it].’(II:11-12) Mischief-makers (rebels or dissenters) will, of course, be punished: ‘God shall pay them back… and He shall lead them on blindly wandering [alone] in their insolence.’(II:15) Opposition and mischief-making are transgressions – they are ungodly deeds. The ayahs here clearly equate such transgressors as associated with

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Satan, as evildoers (see II:14). They are those, ‘Who break the covenant of God after its confirmation [solemn binding] and cut asunder what God has ordered to be joined, and make fitnah in the land; these it is that are the losers.’(II:27) Such transgressors are determined and prepared to deny not only the ways of God, but also question His viceroys on earth: ‘And when your Lord said to the angels, I am going to place in the earth a khalifa [Caliph], they said: What! Wilt Thou place in it such as shall make fitnah in it and shed blood, and we celebrate Thy praise and extol Thy holiness? He said: Surely I know what you do not know.’(II:30) God commands the acceptance of the Caliphs as rulers on earth and in His wisdom, being ‘All-wise’, here makes it be known that the Caliphs ‘shall’ not ‘make mischief’ because He (God) knows what noone else knows, He is after all ‘All-knowing’! An important point here implied is that antagonistic attitudes were of two kinds – that of the unbelievers (among them pagans as well as Jews and Christians) and that of the mischief-makers (the dissenters, among them the hypocrites and impostors). The former are ‘outsiders’, the latter are those from within the Islamic movement. The former refuse to accept the new Faith; the latter question and challenge the authority of the new regime (they have submitted but supposedly ‘deceitfully’, ‘mockingly’). The politics of faith concerned both these groups of opponents, and it involved the use of revelations reproduced in the Koran. They were intended to be used to fight (ideologically) against unbelievers and dissidents. The effectiveness of their ideological role, however, depended on the substantiation of faith in their compilation as the Word of God. For this purpose, changes and adjustments had to be made to give the collection set before the world the authority of an unchallengeable divine book. In other words, the Prophet’s own recitations in their composition as the Koran had to become more important than the person of the Prophet, his conducts, accomplishments and his deeds (which later were collected and became known as the Traditions). In order to impose his will, Mohammad had proclaimed and asserted his own recitations as those of God’s, as revelations; while for his successors, the imposition of their will necessitated the promotion of the composition of these recitations in their entirety as the Word of God. For, Mohammad’s revelations as they were actually communicated, being essentially geared towards the building of a new movement and hence aired in response to the specificity of the conditions of his own struggles and lacking a formal structure, were inadequate to the task of disciplining the forces of Islam for its consolidation and expansion under the Caliphs who succeeded him. The reformulation of these was thus meant to overcome this inadequacy by establishing the formal jurisdiction of the whole composition (the Koran) as the Word of God. Both parties – the Leader and his successors – were fighting the politics of faith, which, however, under their different social and political circumstances required a modification of the ideological means of justifying their political struggles. The modification of Mohammad’s recitations (speeches), involving their deliberate reformulation and arrangement, became the Koran. In this modification, the concept of ‘kitab’ was promoted as referring specifically to the collection itself as the Word of God, which was thus to become a powerful weapon in the struggle against discontent from within and the fight against external opposition to the growth of the Islamic movement. What Mohammad wanted to achieve was respect for and conviction in his divine message. Revelations were thus recited that were meant to convince by the force of their ‘reasoning’ that (supposedly) demonstrated the case for the divinity of the source of his message. As we know, in Mohammad’s life time (and for a good while after his death) neither a fully written text nor therefore a compilation of chapters of an Islamic holy book was in existence; thus, for Mohammad, the need to demonstrate or ‘prove’ the divinity of the text would not have even arisen: ‘And not before this [i.e. before his recitations] did thou recite any Book, or inscribe it with thy right hand…’(XXIX:48) What really concerned Mohammad was that his message was to be believed as

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divinely inspired. For the successors of Mohammad, however, what was of crucial importance was the substantiation of faith in the officially compiled and arranged composition as a whole. Verses (that is, Mohammad’s revelations) were thus reproduced which were now affected to argue and demonstrate the divine origins of the whole composition itself by stressing and giving prominence to the concept of ‘Kitab’ representing and expressing the ‘Koran’ (Qur’an) that originally could not have been used by the Prophet himself either to have the same connotation or as a direct and specific reference to the totality of his revelations (i.e. to the completed written composition as such), since obviously no such composition existed at the time. We can see how important this initiative of using the concept of kitab was in the fact that most of the more substantial and lengthier chapters (30 surahs) in the Koran begin directly by asserting the composition as undoubtedly and directly as God’s Kitab. And the way it is used is to give the appearance that the concept has insinuated itself into the framework of the composition as from Mohammad’s own recitations (speeches), as in this verse: ‘All praise belongs to God, Who sent down the Kitab to His Servant [i.e. Mohammad] and has not made in it any crookedness.’(XVIII:1) The ayahs directly concerned with this matter are categorical proclamations and are put forth as a ‘factual’ statement, like, for example, the following: ‘Alif Lam Ra. This is a Book We have sent down [revealed] to you that you may bring forth mankind, by the leave of their Lord, from the shadows to the light, to the way of the All-mighty, the Alllaudable God.’(XIV:1) The intention behind their reproduction, their order and arrangement and their repetition cannot be but to constantly emphasise and assert that what is being presented is ‘inspired’ by God, it is His Word, His Kitab, given to Mohammad, as in this verse: ‘And thus did We reveal to you an inspired Guidance by Our Command; you did not know [have ‘knowledge’ of] what the Book was, nor the faith, but We made it a light, guiding thereby whomsoever We will of Our servants; and verily [it] guides you unto the Straight Way [Sirat al-mustaqim – which in the Koran connotes the ‘Way’ according to the Divine Law].’(XLII:52) Again and again we have verses, moreover, rebuking those who express doubt in the divinity of the composition, like the following: ‘Do they not ponder [meditate, deliberate on] the Qur’an? If it [the Koran] had been from other than God surely they would have found in it much inconsistency [discrepancy].’(IV:82) Indeed, the entire composition is of God’s making: ‘And this Qur’an is not such as could have been devised by other than God, but it is a confirmation of that which went before it and the exposition of the Book [further explanation of Scriptures before it, all from the ‘hidden’ divine book], there is no doubt in it, [it being] from the Lord of the Worlds.’(X:37; my italics) With the same intention, verses are reproduced at the beginning of many chapters as if to show that the revelations compiled in the composition intrinsically belong to this Book sent down by God, that they are the Prophet’s own revelations and thus part and parcel of the Word of God sent to him. The following are some examples: ‘These are ayat [revelations] of the Judicious Book [al-Kitab al-Hakim-e – also translated as the Wise Book or the Book of Wisdom].’(X:1) And: ‘These are the ayat of the Book and manifest Qur’an [Qur’an-e Mubin].’(XV:I; also XII:1 and XIII:1) Even their arrangement is justified as God’s: ‘A Book whose ayat are firmly arranged and then distinguished from the All-Wise, the All-Aware.’(XI:1) And so that there can be no doubt whatsoever, there is this statement: ‘The revelation is from God, the AllMighty, the All-Wise.’(XXXIX:1; the same is repeated in XLV:2 and XLVI:2) Undoubtedly, this was an initiative conditioned by political-ideological considerations and was, firstly and primarily, essential to the strengthening of the authority of the Caliphate regime in its ruthless and merciless silencing of its opponents in the name of

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the Prophet, for Islam and for God. It was also of course essential to win over support within the Muslim community – to win, as it were, ‘the battle of ideas’ in the internal ‘theological war’ on the crucial issue of faith. The making of Mohammad’s recitations into the Word of God was an aspect of the internal struggle that had fully surfaced after the Prophet’s death; it was a means of justifying the mode of succession as part of the continuity of the Prophet’s sunna. It was, however, also and crucially a significant factor in the process of struggle for the propagation and promotion of Islam. But for this latter purpose, as part of what may be called an external ‘theological war’, the substantiation of faith in the composition as the Word of God required further exposition of the ‘proof’ of its universal divinity. Though proof is of course too strong a concept here, nonetheless, an essential consideration, in religious terms, was to establish a direct link between the Koran and other already accepted holy books as such a proof but only in order to raise it above the others – only to make it the Holy Book. Let us see how this aspect of the struggle over faith is reflected in the Koran itself. The Koran as The Holy Book In order to be able to promote the composition of Mohammad’s recitations as the universal true subject of faith it had to be shown (‘proved’), on the grounds of the revelations, that not only is it the Word of God, but in fact the last and final Word from God. This ‘proof’, in short, had to be arrived at as if it were revealed to Mohammad by God Himself. Within this process, moreover, verses revealed by God had to take on and contend with the most universally acclaimed and well-established monotheistic Faiths, Judaism and Christianity (though more specifically Judaism, acknowledged as the father of monotheism). For this the makers of the Koran picked up on Mohammad’s revelations (again assuming their authenticity) which he had recited in response to the opposition he had faced from among Jewish and Christian tribes. The verses were recited at various times, as and when appropriate to the specificity of the circumstances and conditions of Mohammad’s conflict with these ‘Peoples of the Book’. In religious terms, the revelations borrow heavily (though not always accurately) from Judaism and pick up Biblical topics and episodes and stories, which are, however, related as confrontational pieces in support of Mohammad’s message as divinely inspired (and thus his mission as divinely authorised). The discourses on this matter, needless to say, are from ‘the pulpit’, as it were, and thus the chain of reasoning of course does not stand up to that of what is now generally accepted as ‘scientific’ demonstration or ‘proof’. They are not only concerned with faith but actually demand faith as an indispensable premise; they do not need the support of empirically verifiable facts; they claim to be able to rest entirely on faith in divine signs as factual representations of God’s Will and Order; and thus they rest on themselves as the ground of their reasoning function to demonstrate the Koran’s place in the succession of Holy Books. This process of reasoning involves arguments based on accounts of narratives, allegories, and other various bits of information appertaining to, perhaps actually taken from, older scriptures, all of which are meant to confirm relations of resemblance, and of association, between Mohammad’s Faith and the others (Judaism in particular). Thus for example: ‘O Children of Israel! remember My favour which I bestowed upon you and that I preferred you above all in the world [as the ‘Chosen People’]…And when We delivered you from Pharaoh’s folk who afflicted you with grievous torment, slaying your sons…And when We parted for you the sea and saved you and drowned Pharaoh’s folk, while you were beholding. And when We appointed

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with Moses forty nights then you took the Calf [i.e. as a god] after him and you [thus] transgressed. But We pardoned you that you might be thankful.’(II:47-52) On the face of it, such verses as quoted above (and there are many like them) seem to have the one aim of simply demonstrating that it is the God of the ‘Children of Israel’ who is now speaking through Mohammad, and thus revealing His Word and His Command. To doubting Jews, God is saying forcefully: ‘believe in what I have revealed, confirming that which is with you, and be not the first to deny it…’(II:41) In other words, pointing out that Mohammad’s revelations adhere to, are grounded on and confirm, the Jewish Faith, and thus to deny the divinity of his message and the truth of his Faith is for Jews to deny their own God. However, a closer look at the manner of relating such accounts suggests a rather more subtle reasoning involved here. The manner of relating is clearly meant to give the impression that God and only God could have such knowledge of that which is here being accounted from ancient times, and, therefore, it is self-evident that God, the same God, is the source of these verses in the Koran. But over and above this, the fundamental aim behind the manner and the whole process of reasoning here is to make the Koran, as God’s ‘most recent’ Holy Book, appear as succeeding the Jewish scriptures. And the verse that immediately follows those quoted above suggests precisely this aim: ‘And We gave Moses the Book and the Criterion [the standard of conduct], that you may be guided.’(II:53; my italics) The series of revelations (simply as an example of many within the Koran) moves from asserting the Oneness, unity, and sameness of God for Jews as for Mohammad to the aforementioned statement on the Jewish scriptures as a claim of both an immediate resemblance between the two revelatory processes (God’s ‘sending down’ of the Book) and their continuity but as if to thereby establish a divinely ordained progress to perfection. The series of events described may be different, but the substance of its message holds upon the line of succession in time that is intended to signify progress and the elevation of the Koran to perfection as a Holy Book. In other words, God having ‘sent down’ the Koran after the Jewish scriptures makes the former more elevated in elegance and refinement of substance and form in God’s own view than the latter. And in answer to those who questioned why God would do such a thing, the Koran (or its makers) has this to say: ‘And indeed We did send Messengers before thee [Mohammad]…and it is not for any Messengers to bring a sign [revelation] but by God’s permission; for every age [term] there is a Book prescribed [or a written record of conduct].’(XIII:38; my italics) Thus, while the Torah and the Gospels were the divinely considered appropriate Holy Books of their ‘age’, the Koran is the Holy Book of its ‘age’, ‘And thus We have sent it down as an Arabic Judgment [Authority]…’(XIII:37) The verses that simply appear to reveal accounts from other Holy Books are not, therefore, merely concerned with proving the divine source of Mohammad’s revelations; they are not merely arguing the case for the Koran being the Word of the same God as the God of the Children of Israel or the People of the Book (i.e. also the God of Christians). They are at the same time intended to demonstrate that the Koran is the Holy Book revealed by God that now supersedes the other Holy Books. Indeed, the accounts taken from past scriptures are actually stated to be directly related by God in the Koran, attributing to the latter the form of a ‘Reminder’ from God of His other (past) ordinances and guidance. Thus, in connection with this matter, we have, for example, the following ayah: ‘Thus do We relate unto thee [i.e. Mohammad] of the accounts of what has gone before; and indeed have We given unto thee from Ourselves a Reminder.’(XX:99; ‘Reminder’ is considered as a title of the Koran) Nonetheless, given the long tradition of the People of the Book, the Prophet and his successors clearly had a fight on their hands to convince Jews and Christians of the

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divinity of the revelations and the finality of their own (Islam’s) Holy Book. We can see aspects of this confrontation in the way the Koran, especially in the lengthier, more intricate chapters, challenges and questions Jews and Christians. And the way the verses appear to engage with them suggests that Mohammad was amazed and dismayed by their continual disbelief in his divine message: ‘O People of the Book! Why do you disbelieve in the signs of God while you witness them. O People of the Book! Why do you confound the truth with falsehood and conceal the truth and that wittingly?’(III:70-71) If there is one God for the People of the Book as for Mohammad, then all must accept His signs, His message, being revealed through Mohammad. ‘Surely,’ it is thus asserted, ‘the true guidance is the Guidance of God – that one may be given by Him the like of what you were given…’(III:73) The true guidance being revealed by Mohammad, it is here argued, has to be believed by Jews and Christians because it is the same as (‘like’) what they were given by their own prophets and because God communicates only with those whom He chooses: ‘It belongs not to any mortal that God should give him the Book, the Judgment, the Prophethood…’(III:79) If true guidance is that of God’s, if it is only God who sends down signs, Wisdom and the Truth, and if it is God who is the source of these verses, then surely the People of the Book must believe in this Koran as the last of the Holy Books: ‘And when God made a covenant through the prophets: Certainly that I have given you of Book and Wisdom – then there shall come to you a Messenger confirming what is with you – you shall believe in him and you shall help him…’ And thus: ‘Whosoever therefore turns his back after this [i.e. rejects this Koran], they are the transgressors.’ (III:81; my italics) From Abraham to Mohammad, the principle of faith, so the revelations are meant to assert, has the ultimate authority of the One and Only God, and belief in this immediate given fact is itself the ultimate verification of the truth of the divinity of the composition as the Koran. To reiterate this point of the new Faith’s association and close affinity with that of the People of the Book, there is given for example in the second surah a series of ayahs, beginning with ayah 31 to 38 (referring to Adam and the parable of his fall from grace, his ‘misguidance’ by Satan) going on through to ayah 140, that touch on certain Jewish and Christian beliefs and parables. The verses are argumentative, and refer to God’s signs, communications, commandments and covenants that were sent down to the prophets that had come before Mohammad. The basic theme running through these verses is that the God of Abraham, Moses and Jesus is the God of Mohammad; the God who had made Adam, had blessed the Children of Israel, appointed all the previous prophets, and bestowed them with laws, is now calling on (commanding) all the Jews and Christians to accept Mohammad’s message as contained in this Koran. The ayahs are at once confronting and challenging these people and, by this very method, establishing Mohammad’s message as the successor form of the Divine Word given to all those other prophets: ‘And most certainly We gave Moses the Book and we sent apostles after him one after another; and We gave Jesus, the son of Mary, clear arguments and strengthened him with the holy spirit, What! whenever then a messenger came to you with that which your souls did not desire, you were insolent so you called some liars and some you slew.’(II:87) The basic point of the argument is quite clear: it is ‘insolent’ to call Mohammad a liar upon his claim of the divinity of his message, for the same God that gave Moses the Book and Jesus the holy spirit has now, by appointing him as His last Messenger, given him the Qur’an as His last Word, as the Holy Book! The confrontational aspect of these verses has real history behind them: Mohammad’s time in Medina, when he was instituting his new Faith and establishing his umma (community-state), was quite preoccupied with hostilities among certain Jewish tribes in Medina and beyond (as also some Christians in other parts of the Hijaz). The presence of Jews in Medina (the tribes of Banu’n-Nadir and Banu Qurayza) who

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refused to accept Islam, and backed by a body of what are referred to as ‘dissemblers’, ‘hypocrites’, ‘impostors’ (Munafiqeen), constituted a major obstacle to Mohammad’s governance of the city. With religious divide and tribal politics fused, the converting of these tribes had proved impossible; and with signs of open hostility towards Mohammad’s movement growing, eventually the decision was apparently taken to expel these people from Medina (see LIX:11-12). Mohammad’s arguments with Jews and Christians, put across through revelations, had had, it seems therefore, not the desired effect. In the eyes of the People of the Book, one of the most fundamental reasons for disputing his mission and his prophethood was the fact that his Islamic Faith lacked the authority of a corpus of divine laws as a book perceived and accepted as the Word of God. His faith could not be accepted, let alone believed to be superior to or superseding those of Judaism or Christianity, if God had not sent down to him a book of scriptures like those of these great religions. His recitation of God’s signs and communications, being entirely dependent on his personal intervention (mediation), lacked the apparent divinity (secured by a semblance of ‘objectivity’) associated with a Holy Book. This point of contention is apparent from the following verse: ‘But now when has come unto them the Truth [i.e. Divine Law] from Us, they say: Why is he [i.e. Mohammad] not given the like of what was given unto Moses?...’(XXVIII:48; my italics) Now, having no Holy Book as such, Mohammad counters this disputation (in the words of God, of course) in the following manner: ‘O People of the Book! Why do you dispute concerning Abraham? The Torah was not sent down, neither the Gospel [revealed], but after him. What, have you no reason [do you not then understand]?’ (III:65) In other words, Mohammad is like Abraham, a divine Messenger without a Holy Book, yet a Prophet nonetheless – and this is stated in God’s own words! In fact, the rebuttal goes further: ‘God knows and you do not…’ that ‘Abraham in truth was not a Jew, neither a Christian; but he was a Muslim pure of faith [musalman haniyfan, he was upright in faith who had submitted to the Will of the One God]; and certainly he was never of the idolaters.’(III:67) So here, then, Mohammad’s speeches arguing the case of his divine calling were reproduced as a series of verses, written down and compiled, only in order to move from their immediate given fact of personal recitations to a form seemingly independent of his direct personal role. The fundamental objective, in connection with the presentation in the various chapters of the Koran of Mohammad’s arguments with the People of the Book, seems to be one of justifying the composition of his revelations as that which is actual, existing apart from and not ‘created’ by Mohammad; it was, it seems, to make the personal basis of faith take on a universal form in order to convince such people. The form itself was, lest we forget, borrowed from Judaism (and Christianity): it was the form taken to make the Koran into the Holy Book: ‘Again, We gave Moses the Book, complete for him who does good, and explaining all things in details, and as a guidance and a mercy… And this [i.e. the Qur’an] is a Book We have sent down, blessed, so follow it...Lest you should say: The Book was sent down only upon two parties before us [i.e. Jews and Christians]…’(VI:155-157; my italics) The successors of Mohammad took great pains to stress the significance of these revelations but now for the purpose of affirming the divine status of the formulation and composition of the Prophet’s recitations in the form of Islam’s Holy Book, which was to be universally proclaimed as the Holy Book, succeeding and superseding all previous Holy Books. And to establish this fact the Koran gives the following divine revelation: ‘Say thou [i.e. say you, Mohammad]: Bring you then some other Book from God which is a better guidance than both these [i.e. the Qur’an and before it the Torah], that I may [then] follow it…Now We have brought them the Word that they may be mindful.’(XXVIII:49 and 51; my italics)

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Revelations that were meant to appeal to, or reason and argue with, Jews and Christians and convince them of the continuation of the same monotheistic faith, now were reproduced in an officially sanctioned and politically motivated arrangement to substantiate faith in the Koran itself. The politics of faith after the death of Mohammad and with the rise of the Caliphate necessitated asserting the composition as not merely the Holy Book of Islam, but as the Holy Book that all peoples must accept and follow. The universality of the Koran had to be asserted upon the ground of divine revelations in order that it could become an effective ideological force within the political reality of the entire world of humanity wherein Islamic faith must unfold itself. By this means could Islamic faith appear through the Koran as an objective force that rules over the actions of believers to ceaselessly expand its own dominion. Though for this purpose Islam’s main target was its chief monotheistic rivals (Judaism and Christianity), other dominant religious systems within the region also needed to be confronted. Thus, the force of the Koran’s revelations was intended to challenge, for example, the belief systems of Sabeans and Zoroastrians, too: ‘Verily, those who believe and those who are Jews and the Sabeans and the Christians and the Magians [Zoroastrians] and those who associate [others with God, ‘idolaters’], verily God shall decide between them on the Day of Judgement…’(XXII:17) A decisive ideological turn thus followed, after the death of Mohammad, upon a turn in the political development of the Islamic movement. The Koran was made and promoted to take on a central role in the movement’s growth and expansion. Through the Koran, faith was made part of the very content of politics. Religion itself thus made direct application to political thought and practice, not as to some external force but as to its own legitimised power. The proclamation of the Koran as the last Word of God and thus as the Holy Book was of crucial importance to this real historical process of placing religious (Islamic) faith at the heart of politics. The verses (as Godgiven revelations) of the Koran now provided the new rulers ideological-religious legitimacy, and an essential justification for their actions; these reproduced ayahs could be used against any opponent (external or internal) of the Caliphate regime. Upon the authority of these revelations, the new rulers could justify their struggle against dissenters and unbelievers alike as being a direct continuation of the Prophet’s own struggle by the command of God. With this Mohammad’s successors were instituting faith as a powerful force in the service of the state. The politics of faith at the time of the Caliphate meant a struggle to preserve and expand the Islamic state as a necessary condition of the rule and domination of Mohammad’s successors. The latter’s consolidation of power, pursued through the state’s reign of terror, was justified on the basis of the absolute authority of the Koran. Effectively, as a result of this process, the Koran became over time the fundamental basis and the condition of possibility of all aspects of the Islamic state’s mode of domination; it became (or was made to become) Allah’s Constitution. The Koran as Allah’s Constitution The Holy Book, the Koran, is the Word of God – a miracle which no one shall ever be able to reproduce or imitate (‘Walan Taf’alu’). The promulgation of this statement of faith makes the Holy Book nothing less than a divinely ordained constitution: ‘The Command of God has come…’(XVI:1) The Koran, so it is asserted, was sent down to Mohammad to lead mankind (or the people) into the light of the Divine Law: ‘A Book We have sent down to you [i.e. Mohammad] that you may lead mankind out of darkness into the light [of God’s Law], by their Lord’s permission – unto the Way of the All-mighty, the Alllaudable.’(XIV:1) Its function as a constitution, as the body of basic laws and fundamental principles of conduct, was to establish the particular interest of the group

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of devotee believers within the Islamic movement as the universal interest: ‘Say you [i.e. Mohammad]: The Holy Spirit has brought it down from your Lord with the Truth, that it may establish those who believe and as a Guidance and good tidings to those who submit.’(XVI:102; my italics) It provided the group’s politically dominant position legitimacy; though this appears in such a way as to seem that its status was conferred or established in accordance to God’s Will. The Koran, then, on this basis functions as a Guidance of social conduct for all those who submit to God’s Will, i.e. Muslims in general. The substantiality of the Koran as the constitution consists in the fact that the ‘absolute truth’ of God’s Will is presented in it in the form of the universal Divine Law. As constitution the Koran is the expression of God’s Will on earth, in fact the expression of His Will in and through a given subject which is directly concerned with power, its exercise and administration – hence Divine Law and the laws of the land become a unity, become fused in the Koran. In this way, once the Koran is established as the constitution, no-one except God in the Koran can say what is lawful or legally forbidden. This idea of the constitutional fixity of laws is clearly implied by the following ayah: ‘And utter you not what your tongues falsely describe [as saying that]: This is lawful and this is unlawful [forbidden]; so that to forge a lie against God…’(XVI:116) As the Holy Book, the Koran is the universal form through which the knowledge of the Truth appears as ‘objective truth’, as over and above or independent of the principle of subjectivity, and on that basis it lays claim to unrestricted and unconditional authority in its own right and on its own ground. God’s signs, His directives and commands, needing to be revealed, are dependent on the direct and immediate personal mediation of the Messenger; God’s Word as the Holy Book, however, containing what has already been revealed, involves no such mediation. The Holy Book now locates divine will and purpose, the Truth and its cognition, divine knowledge and jurisdiction, concretely within itself without the necessity of appealing to the person of the Prophet himself. Faith is transposed to the objectivity of the written Word in and for itself; it is given to the Holy Book, and that which truly is divine becomes the actuality that is present in the Book independently of the Prophet’s personal intervention. But by this token, the Book also comes to be seen as independent of human mediation as such. This semblance of independence transforms faith in the Prophet’s revelations into faith in the Koran; it also emancipates it from the rule of chronology. The principle of faith, that nature and the world of humanity depend on God’s Will, is now instituted as the basis for the absolute authority of the Book which is timeless, i.e. eternal. Thus appearing as timeless, the authority of its Truth and jurisdiction as the Word of God becomes unalterable, it manifest itself as the permanency of Divine Law: ‘And recite what has been revealed to you of the Book of your Lord; no-one can change His Word…’(XVIII:27; my italics) And the authority of God’s words as Law contained in the Koran is so complete and comprehensive in its compass and reach as to be inexhaustible: ‘Say you [i.e. Mohammad]: If the sea were ink for the Words of my Lord, the sea will certainly be exhausted [spent] before the Words of my Lord are exhausted…’(XVIII:109) Such timelessness, permanence and completeness of authority makes the Koran Allah’s Constitution. Upon such a condition, though essentially based on faith, the Koran appears as the foundation of and formal standard for ultimate decisions; it is the source to which, in principle, everything within the mode of life (under Islam) reverts and from which everything derives its sanctioning: ‘Verily We have sent down to you the Book with the Truth that you may judge between people by what God has shown you…’(IV:105; see also XVI:64) This absolute determination constitutes the distinctive principle of

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the formal sovereignty of God’s Will as expressed in the Koran. That is to say, the sovereignty of God’s Will depends on the fact that the Koran functions as His constitution because it is believed to be and promoted as ‘the Book with the Truth’, i.e. containing Divine Law: ‘He it is who has sent down to you the Book wherein are verses decisive [ayat muhkamatu] that are the Basis of the Book [Ummu al-Kitab – Mother or Essence of the Book] and others allegorical [ambiguous]…’(III:7) These decisive verses, as ‘clear statement for mankind’(III:138), referring to and dealing with essential social issues (in contrast to those that are ‘allegorical’ – i.e. verses concerned with stories and parables that are meant to establish Mohammad’s and Islam’s religious lineage), set down the fundamental and unalterable prescriptions, directives, and laws commanded by God. The ‘Mother of the Book’ is the representation therefore of the universality of God’s Will determining itself in the form of the Koran and so making the latter the absolute ground of all decisions and acts concerned with power and authority. The sovereignty of God’s Will thus comes into existence only with the Koran: ‘And We have sent down to you the Book with the Truth, confirming what is before it of the Book and [as] a guardian over it, therefore judge between them by what God has sent down, and follow…what has come to you of the Truth; for every one of you We appointed a Law and a Way…’(V:48; my italics) Accordingly, the Koran, as the Word of God Himself expressing His Will, is the ultimate and absolute condition of all Islamic laws (including Sharia laws), upon which alone depends the legitimacy and justification of all judgements in every sphere of social life (under Islam): ‘…and whosoever judges not by what God has sent down, those are they who are the infidels [kafareen].’(V:44) In this way, with the making of the Koran not only the abstract sovereignty of God’s Will comes to be expressed in and by the Koran, but the form of its representation changes. Before the composition of his recitations into the Koran, Mohammad, as the Messenger of God, was the personification of God’s Will on earth (or at least that is how he presented himself). The ‘spirit’ that engaged him, so it was claimed, was a favour bestowed upon him by God: ‘And they ask you about the Spirit, Say you: The Spirit is from the command of my Lord…’(XVII:85) That is to say, his speeches expressed the Will of God because they were inspired revelations from God, which were meant for Mohammad to convey in person the Truth as God’s Warner and Messenger: ‘And say you: The Truth has come and the falsehood has vanished…’(XVII:81) With Mohammad’s death, the Truth takes on an established form that is claimed to be in itself invested with the Spirit commanded by God, and hence as something that no-one except God could have inspired in its totality: ‘Say: if men and jinn [i.e. ghosts of the netherworld] united to bring forth the like of this Qur’an, they could not bring the like of it…’(XVII:88) Essentially, Mohammad’s recitation of revelations was the political manifesto for the building of the Islamic movement on the basis of the unification of Arab tribes. The advance of the Islamic movement, as much by the force of arms as by that of conviction, was to, however, change its form and function. In other words, behind the process of the making of Mohammad’s recited revelations into the Koran as Allah’s Constitution, a fundamental social change can be discerned, namely an historical process of the separation of the state from the ‘community of Muslims’. As the Islamic movement based on Mohammad’s umma (community-state or proto-political organisation) expanded and grew more and more powerful, the more it found itself caught up in conflict with the spirit and ideals of Arab tribal unity, reflected in the notion of the Ayyam al-Arab, which was a key component of Mohammad project or mission. Time had passed when his recited revelations could function merely as a manifesto. A process of political consolidation and governmental discipline had since Mohammad’s death borne fruit – the expansion of Islamic rule, achieving a good measure of the unification of Arab tribes, the conquest of territories well beyond

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Islam’s heart land, and so on. As a consequence, Islam’s political and military organisation had become the decisive element of a new order and, what is more, now necessitated its own authoritative backing or religious-ideological sanctioning. The collection of Mohammad’s revelations, composed, modified in crucial aspects, and published in its now officially sanctioned form as the Koran, universally proclaimed as the Holy Book of all Holy Books, became (was made and promoted to be) the essential source of that authority. From a manifesto these speeches as revelations in their newly composed format (i.e. the Koran) now took on the function of a constitution. The union of the principle of faith with the principle of power was thus consummated. The principle of faith, that everything in this world depends on God’s will, was now interpreted as the basis for the rule of the state. It was from within this historical process that faith in Mohammad’s divine revelations, which hitherto had authority merely as the Prophet’s proclamation, became transformed into faith in the Koran, which had now authority and jurisdiction existing for itself. Hence came about the process by means of which faith appeared to be raised above the plane of subjectivity to that of the socially engaging universal in the course of the Islamic state’s consolidation, through the medium of political power. This change in the focus of faith should not, however, be viewed as the result of an ‘external process’, impinging on the Islamic community from the outside; nor yet was it accomplished unconsciously. It had the determined socio-political interest and will of an emerging ‘ruling-class’ behind it: ‘Verily, this Qur’an guides unto that which is the most upright and announces glad tidings to the believers who do deeds of righteousness that they shall have a great reward.’(XVII:9; my italics) It was, in short, the outcome of a process of political struggles. Its consequences were profound; it was eventually to overwhelm social consciousness for centuries and spread its ideological hold wide and vast across continents. By way of summing up, it can be said that faith is undoubtedly the fundamental category of the Koranic revelatory mode, the only one by means of which it bounds itself to human subjectivity. With it the Koran is supposed to reveal the ultimate and absolute grounds of God’s Will. Under the notion of ‘God’s Will’ the Koran through faith conceives the idea of an authentic authority in which, through which, and by means of which all social (human) antagonisms are reconciled. In short, faith seems to be the essence of the existence of the authority conceived in the name of God. In this form what is given in the Koran in its justification of the divinely ordained authority is not ‘rational’, even though there is appeal to the demonstration of ‘proof’, ‘evidence’, in its revelatory mode. It needs to be clearly stated, and repeated, that in the Koran it is faith, and only faith, that underpins the argumentative form of ‘reasoning’. The ‘truth’ proclaimed by the Koran is inextricably linked to faith; it is in fact conceptually a form of existence of faith, and that, consequently, the justification of political power and authority and the truth of it according to the Koran are not based on objective social factors. Faith presupposes conditions that render the truth of the legitimacy of power possible, namely, divine mastery of the world. The revealed divine knowledge in the Koran (supposedly) verifies the truth of this conclusion. The illusion of religious dogma here is as necessary to the justification of earthly authority as the truth of the ‘proof’ revealed in the Koran. The fundamental proposition in the Koran is that God is Master, which does not mean that God simply ‘possess’ authority, but that authority (mastery) is His essential nature. In the justification of earthly authority, the religious leader (essentially the Islamic state) becomes the predicate of God’s mastery without at the same time becoming identical with it. And the locus of the truth of all this is faith. God’s mastery and earthly authority result from certain socio-political relationships, which are expressed in the Koran through a process of mystification. The process establishes faith not only in God as Master but in the ruler as God’s appointee. Effectively therefore the justification and legitimisation of political power

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as such are made possible only with faith: faith gives the reason for ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ the objective political power and authority as the truth of God’s power. Beneath the horizon of faith God’s power is thus not a ‘power-for-itself’, but is essentially dependent upon the power of the earthly ruler: the greater his power becomes, the greater is the illusion of God’s power. It is this illusion of God as the absolute Master that is therefore a necessary principle of the politics of faith as presented in the Koran. But this illusion can only befog the social reality of power if the politics of faith is effective in instituting Islam as the spirit of the age. In short, God’s Will must be made to appear as the general will. And the prerequisite condition for this is the act of submission. Chapter Two: The Act of Submission ‘Your God is One God! There is no god but He!’(II:163) ‘Shahada Allah – God bears witness La ilaha illahu – there is no god but He’ (III:18) The act of submission begins with the attestation: ‘There is no god but God!’ It is recited in Arabic – ‘La ilaha illa Allah!’ – as a testimony of faith, a testament, a solemn declaration of the surrender of one’s will, and is commonly referred to as Shahada. For all Muslims the reciting of this statement is the most basic affirmation of faith and the first manifest sign of adherence to the Faith. To submit is to serve: ‘And We did not send the Messenger before you without revealing to him that there is no god but I; so serve Me.’(XXI:25) But the attestation of faith in the One God and serving Him includes accepting His Messenger; i.e. acknowledging the Prophethood of Mohammad: ‘Say: O people [mankind], verily I am the Messenger of God unto you all, of Him to whom belongs the kingdom of the heavens and of the earth. There is no god but He. He gives life, and makes to die. Believe then in God, and in His Messenger, the Prophet, the ‘Ummi’ [of the common folk, of the unlettered people], who believes in God and His Words, and follow him, so you may be guided aright.’(VII:158) The shahada, thus, consists of a second part (accepted by the vast majority of Muslims, Sunnis and Shiites, but rejected as being incorrect by a small minority) which proclaims the affirmation of Mohammad as the Messenger of God. The generally accepted shahada testament in full is therefore as follows: ‘I bear witness that there is no god but God and I bear witness that Mohammad is the Messenger of God!’ Or in Arabic shortened to: La ilaha illa Allah, Mohammad an Rasul-allah! The testament is more than an oath of allegiance; more than a testimony of an individual’s belief; it is, in its attestation of faith and adherence to the Faith, an essential undertaking and a binding commitment. The testament involves the obligation of obedience and worship in servitude, that is, ‘ibadah. Thus we have verse upon verse in the Koran that emphatically state and reiterate this essential obligation: ‘Verily, I am God [Allah]; there is no god [ilah] but I; therefore serve [worship] Me [give your ‘ibadah to Me], and establish prayer for My remembrance!’ (XX:14; see also II:172; V:60; VI:102; IX:31; XVI:36;etc.) The word ‘ilah,’ generally translated as ‘god,’ actually means ‘one to be served, worshiped and obeyed, one who has power, one who is in control and should be served, one who protects and supports and nourishes one’s needs.’ Hence it refers to any object of worship to which mankind submits as a superior and sovereign being (‘Allah’ is a compound word, shortened, with the definite article ‘Al’ and ‘Ilah’); and the word ‘ibadah (from root word ‘abd meaning ‘servant/devotee’, with its various derivatives such as na’budu, ‘ubadiyah,

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‘ubidun, etc.) which is usually translated as either ‘to worship’ or ‘to serve’, actually means ‘giving oneself in servitude, acknowledging the supremacy and lordship of another, abdicating one’s freedom, surrendering one’s self and will totally to another’s authority’ – but since in the context of Arab tribal relationship of dependency, ‘servitude’ presupposed the promise of protection and support on the part of the superior or chief, the word thus also carries the sense of ‘worship’. The Estrangement of Power The testimony ‘La ilaha illa Allah’ in its conceptual content comprises the dialectics of servitude and lordship: no-one is worthy of worship and obedience, of being served 1. – La ilaha; no-one and nothing has the power of Lordship and thus the attributes of divinity except the One God – illa Allah. Therefore serve, worship and obey only God alone. The denial of divine lordship with regards to all being except the One God makes God alone into the absolute subject of life’s process of worship and obedience. The negativity of the testimony is at once the demonstrated affirmation of the absoluteness of God. In this form, the Shahada, formulated from different verses of the Koran, confers (as it confirms) an independent existence to God by detaching Him from the real social ties and relationships among all beings. In reciting the Shahada, in the act of submission, an individual declares himself/herself dependent upon an absolute subject that can have no other existence except as an abstraction. It is only as an abstraction, i.e. as something detached, separated (or, more precisely, ‘abstracted’), that God-the-Idea can become a comprehensive and comprehending absolute subject of faith. This is the mode of being of God that the Koran refers to (proclaims and promotes) as ‘Oneness’: ‘Verily, your God is One’ – ‘inna Ilaha kum la Wahid’ (XXXVII:4) It is a conception that relates the ideas of singularity and uniqueness to the abstractedness of the absolute power of God who as such is not something behind or beyond the objective world, but is its absolute truth (in Islam this idea of the allembracing Oneness and Unity of God is conveyed by the all-important religiousphilosophical concept of Tawhid – from the root w-h-d). This understanding of the Oneness (unity) of God is accepted as the ‘Greatest Truth’ revealed in the Koran and sent upon the tongue of His Messenger, Mohammad: ‘Say: God is the Creator of all things, and He is the One, the Omnipotent.’(XIII:16) And: ‘God is He beside Whom there is no god, the Ever-living, the Self-subsisting by Whom all subsist…’{II:255; see III:2; VI:102, 106; etc. there are at least 30 ayahs in the Koran that in one form or other assert this ‘truth’.) The conception is so essential that upon it rests the entire edifice of the Islamic faith. The very being of God appears as other than something finite; God exists as a being which is the predicate of every thing, every being. In other words, every thing, every being, in existence is, but God’s being is not a something. God is neither something in nor something above the world, but rather the truth of all being; this truth of all being is the Oneness, the unity of the subject which is not a determinate but a determining being. All determination (‘creation’) is thus posited by God and consequently stands under His determining power. There is no determining power other than or above God; if human beings are to find their ‘true’ being, realise and attain their spiritual and temporal well-being, they must find it in embracing the oneness (unity) of God by submitting to His Will. The message of the Koran (of God’s Word as given through His Messenger) is thus quite clear and categorical: it is through the act of submission and through it alone, by stating the Shahada (with niyat or ‘good intention’ or complete and absolute conviction), that human beings can find their true Self. For, God is the causa sui.

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Affirming the Oneness of God, submitting to God’s Will, is the acceptance and acknowledgment of not only a determined state of existence but of one as a ‘being-forother’. A Muslim is a being for God. But here the specific conception of ‘being’ has a deeper signification than the notion of ‘being’ asserted by for example Christianity (more particularly by Protestantism) as ‘God’s creation’; in this aspect, as with many others, Islam and Judaism are rather closely related – though the latter, with its identity of faith and ethnicity (i.e. ‘Jewishness’), is far more inclusive than the former. At any rate, in submitting, i.e. becoming a Muslim, the individual is a being-for-other; he/she exists not merely because of God; his/her very existence consists in his/her being for God as his/her Master, so that his/her being a Muslim determines his/her whole existence as fundamentally a servant, a slave of God: ‘The believers are only those who believe in God and His Messenger [it is] then that they doubt not and fight with their wealth [possessions] and their lives [selves] in the way of God; those – they are the truthful ones.’(XLIX:15) A Muslim (strictly in its Koranic sense) is not simply a human being who happens to have embraced a religion called Islam, but is essentially a person who has surrendered his/her will to God as the ‘Other’ – his/her faith is the essence of his/her being. It is precisely in this state of ‘being-for-other’ that the concept of submission expresses something negative; in submitting, an individual passes into a new mode of being by yielding his/her Self. It is the loss of his/her self or of that which makes him/her a ‘being-for-self’; for in the act of submission faith so entangles consciousness that it seems as if he/she has found his/her ‘true’ being, his/her ‘true’ Self only as a being-for-another (for God). Submission (truly so, or with niyat) is thus accepting a mode of existence (in accordance with the Koran) that affirms the Will of God, of existence as a being-for-other, which is (or is meant to be, according to the Koran) not a mode of existence of human beings for themselves. In becoming a Muslim, individuals acknowledge that they do not have the power, therefore, to fulfil their potentialities through their own free, conscious acts. For, submission starts when the truth of God’s Oneness as the determining power is accepted as ‘the given state of things’, when it is recognised that that state has the final truth in itself. Submission so shackles the believer to the Faith that his/her consciousness itself appears determined by God’s Will. The being of the Muslim thus is a ‘being-for-another’. Submission is in the first place, therefore, the immediate surrendering of the believer’s potentiality of freedom to exercise power; but it is also, indeed, the renunciation of the self and the abdication of inherently human powers; i.e. it is self-estrangement. The act of submission, in other words, constitutes the estrangement of the believer in both the personal and the social aspects at once. This does not, however, entail, at least within the context of the Koran and its time, the surrendering of power and will (of the ‘self’) by the submitted as a ‘private’ individual, but as an individual who belongs to, is tied to, a historically specific social entity. Estrangement through the act of submission in fact initially meant (in strictly Koranic terms) the supersession of the individual’s particular societal identity (whether this is in the form of tribalcommunal, ethnic, or national identity). For it is essential to recognise that the Koran addresses not an individual as such, but individuals (often as ‘people’, ‘mankind’, ‘they’, ‘those’ who believe or disbelieve, etc.) as parts of communities (originally, tribal/clan communities, in later times interpreted as ‘peoples’ or ‘nations’) conditioned by ties of consanguinity: ‘O you mankind! Verily We have created you of a male and a female, and made you in tribes and families [‘households’] that you may know each other…’(XLIX:13) At the time of Mohammad, it is important to restate here, the tribe or clan was the principal social entity that defined and expressed an individual’s social identity. Within each different tribe or clan there was a correspondence between the will of the individual and that of the particular community – between subjective will and

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objective will; the clan-tribal community towers over the individual and subordinates his/her will as if in the individual’s eyes it is a ‘natural’ force. Arab consciousness at the time was tribal-clan consciousness – there was the tribe (e.g. the Quraysh – the tribe of Mohammad) made up of clans (e.g. Banu-Taym, Banu-‘Adi – the clans of the first two Caliphs, Abu-Bakr and ‘Umar, respectively) which were in turn made up of households or ‘extended families’ (e.g. the Houses of Hashim – to which Mohammad belonged – and Umayya – from which came the ‘Umayyad Caliphate). Submission to the Will of the One God (Allah) was meant to generate a movement to establish a political ‘association’ (the umma) that would transcend (sublate) the multiplicity as well as the particularity of Arab tribal system, its divisive ‘tribalism,’ as it were. However, the movement based on submission (Islam) did not ‘free’ the individual – indeed, the conception of ‘free individuality’ or ‘freedom’ in the sense of subjective freedom is completely alien to it; what the movement based on submission to the Will of the One God (Allah), rather, initiated was the superseding of the specifically tribal and clannish consciousness by one determined by belonging to a seemingly universalistic divine order. With God (Allah) as the Universal and the Absolute, Mohammad intended to transcend the particularity of Arab tribalism by calling upon the individual members of all the various tribes to surrender themselves to this ‘higher order’. For this, he freed one god (Allah) from among all others as objects of worship by separating ‘Him’ from the particular communities and their gods. The abstracted ‘god’ was then proclaimed, in His Oneness and Unity, as Absolute. The individuals belonging to particularistic communities were thus ‘called’ upon to submit to Him alone; and in so doing, they freed themselves from their particular tribal-clan form of dependency and obligation only to become subsumed under a more all-embracing, universalistic form of dependency and obligation. As a result of this universalising of societal identity, in the act of submission, the determinate character of the believer’s will as subjective now seems to take on an independent externality. The truth of this independent externality is the consciousness not of ‘individual’ or ‘subjective’ freedom, but, rather, of universal servitude – every individual, no matter from what tribe or clan (or nation, etc.) is first and foremost a Muslim; i.e. the individual as a social being is a servant of God (Allah), and thus dependent on an external and independent will, a power that appears to be independent of all particular communities. Thus, from the organic social-communal tie with its particularistic state of subservience, the Koranic project demanded the establishment of a state of universal bondage. This total and universal subservience is clearly expressed in the Koran, which can be seen from the following verses, as examples: ‘And remember you the bounties [favours] of God on you, and His covenant He has firmly bound you with, when you said: we have heard [Your Command] and we obey; and fear you God; surely God knows whatever is in the breasts.’(V:7) Also: ‘And He is [the Alldominant] the Omnipotent over His servants, and He sends custodians [keepers] over you till when death comes to any of you…Then they are returned to God, their Master [Protector – Maula], the True One; now surely His is the Judgment…Say: He has the Power to send forth upon you a chastisement [a calamity] from above you or from under your feet… Behold how repeatedly We display the signs that they may understand!’ (VI:61-62 and 65) Thus everything in life points to one direction, that of the Lordship of God: ‘That then is God, your Lord; there is no god but He, the Creator of all things, so serve Him, He holds sway over all things. (VI:102/103) And to submit to His Will is therefore to acknowledge His Mastery: ‘…then know that God is your Master [Protector]; the most excellent Master and the most excellent Helper.’ (VIII:40)

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Submission is thus fundamentally the estrangement of social power – in the beginnings of the rise of Islam it was the loss of power that was based and rooted in particular communities. The concept of ‘estrangement’ (‘alienation’) is, of course, central to all religions, but which in its ‘crude’ realism is more prominently expressed in the practical principle of Judaism to which Islam has a very close affinity. Judaism reflects with greater immediacy (than for example Christianity) the practical questions of life, and hence also of power and domination, particularly as regards ‘strangers’ or ‘outsiders’ (e.g. the power granted to Judah over ‘aliens’ – those who are not part of the ‘chosen people’ – see Isaiah LXI:5); while Christianity places a far greater emphasis on the ‘universal brotherhood of man’, at least formally. Islam incorporates this Judaic ‘practical principle’ within the Christian conception of ‘universal brotherhood’ (‘The believers are but brethren, so make peace among the brethren and fear God that you may be blessed with mercy.’ XLIX:10) and takes it further in its concrete earthly political institution; in the Koran, the principles concerning thisworldly affairs, particularly as regards power and domination, are meant to have universal application and have wide-ranging significance. It is, at any rate, from within this incorporation of the Judaically influenced ‘practical principle’ with Christian ‘universality’ that the understanding of the estrangement of power can be comprehended as fundamental to the conception of the political in the Koran. The point of central importance here is the problematic of domination and dependency in the formulation and presentation of the conception of divine power in the Koran – the manifestation of social, human, political power in the form of divine power of the One God (Allah) through estrangement. This estrangement of power is conditioned firstly upon the externalisation of power; that is, power is detached from its social ground by transferring it to a divine entity; this necessitates the determinate negation of all other sources of (potential) absolute power (gods), which is contingent upon the abstraction of divine power in the form of the Oneness of God (borrowed chiefly from Judaism): ‘And yet of people [mankind] there are some who take for themselves objects of worship beside [as equals to] Allah, and love them as the love of Allah…O if these transgressors [evildoers or the unjust] might see, when they see the chastisement, that the Power belongs wholly to Allah, and that Allah is severe in requiting (evil).’(II:165) And it is in this form of the Oneness of God, with this abstraction – the singling out of Allah from among other gods as the true Divine One – that power is posited as something that seems to have an external existence. The One God thus appears as an independent source of power – independent, that is, from its social human conditions of its determination and actual creation; and He is, as affirmed in the Koran, as the determining power, a power that as such presents itself to human consciousness as Absolute: ‘He is the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Hidden [ the Outward and the Inward]…’(LVII:3) Thus: ‘Say: O God, Master of the Kingdom! Thou givest the kingdom to whomsoever Thou wilt [pleasest], and seizest [takes away] the kingdom from whomsoever Thou wilt, and Thou exaltest whom Thou wilt and abasest whom Thou wilt; in Thy hand is the good; verily, Thou hast power over all things.’(III:26) But for divine power to be a power, a force, it must express and present itself in real life. Thus externalised divine power must be realised. The efficacious ‘thisworldliness’ of divine power, in other words, presupposes a movement from the ‘beyond’ to the ‘here and now’. The externalisation of power, then, can only be realised when as an abstraction it is passed into the condition of permanence in the form of its objectification (the Koran). With this, the power of God (Allah) then appears to become the power in the here and now (i.e. actually universal); and with its embodiment in the Koran, God’s power becomes ‘the Authority’ (His Word); the Koran is thus perceived to be the substantiation of divine power (of God’s Will, in His

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own Word). This realisation of externalised power thus appears as the ‘objectivity’ of God’s power, His ‘objective’ sway, God as the Absolute Subject: ‘He is God; there is no god but He, the King, the All-holy, the All-peaceable, the All-faithful [granter of Faith], the Guardian, the Ever-Prevalent, the Supreme, the Great Absolute!...He is God, the Creator, the Maker, the Shaper…the All-mighty, the All-wise.’ (LIX:23-24) The estrangement of power is conditioned secondly, therefore, upon this objectification of divine power. The power of God (His Will) as embodied in the Koran is the most unequivocal expression of the estrangement of power; a power that seems to confront human beings from a ‘heavenly’ abode (as alien power): ‘So high exalted be God, the True King; there is no god but He, the Lord of noble Throne [of ‘al-Arsh’ – i.e. the throne of supreme divine authority over the whole universe; the seat of absolute divine dominion].’(XXIII:116) And: ‘Exalter of ranks is He, Possessor of the Throne of Power [of ‘al-Arsh’], casting the Spirit of His bidding upon whomever He will of His servants, that he may warn of the Day of Encounter. To whom belongs the Kingdom this day? To God, the One, the [Absolute, Omnipotent] Subduer.’(XL:15-16) Now, the Koran, as such, is only the expression of the estrangement of power, since it is only the objectified form in which God’s Will has become realised. In other words, with the Koran, only formally does the will of God stand for the expression of the estrangement of power; what is missing is the social human context. The act of submission (truly so, with niyat) starts with an imaginary subject; in the mind this then appears as an independent being; with this, power is being perceived as an independent authority, objectified. The reality of power (of social power, of political power itself) is thus transferred from the social plane to the realm of the mind. Here the power of God is held to be true insofar as it is affirmed in the Koran – that is, in its abstracted form, objectified. This perception of the unreal as something real in the here and now gives Koranic authority (God’s power, His Will, His Word) its universality. The substance of this authority, however, can only be understood as force. As a force, God’s power (Koranic authority) transcends the realm of perception (since ‘force’ is not a quality or a something that can be perceived; what can be perceived is only its effect). Understood and conceived as a force, divine power manifests its essence, that which lies behind its curtain of appearance; in other words, divine power manifesting itself not as ‘the possible’ but as ‘the given’; as something that passes into existence, i.e. God’s power (His Will) materialised in the concrete conditions and circumstances of Islamic society, where the essential potentialities of His power realise themselves in the form of Koranic authority as the actuality of His Will. The reality of this power then becomes actual because in the form of Koranic authority it is posited as Law, the truth of its force. As Law, however, Koranic authority necessitates the activity of mediation of actual living subjects – the mediation of human agency. Personal Dependence and its Sublation Now we can come to the second part of the Shahada that is meant to complete the act of submission: i.e. ‘I bear witness that Mohammad is the Messenger of God.’ Mohammad, in other words, is the first and primary actual living subject who stands in direct relationship with the submitted (the Muslims). He is the real, actual Other to whom the submitted surrender their will; the submission of the Muslim to God’s Will and the acceptance of the authority of the Koran as divine law are only a consequence of the believers’ relationship with Mohammad as the Other. The Koran itself, in fact, clearly establishes this ‘actualising’ mediation: God’s power takes on earthly form; it is given ‘flesh and blood’: ‘He it is Who raised among the

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unlettered [the ummi] a Messenger from among themselves, reciting unto them His signs [ayat] and purifying them and teaching them the Book and the Wisdom…’(LXII:2) Thus: ‘Mohammad is the Messenger of God, and those who are with him are vehement [firm of heart] against the unbelievers [infidels]…’(XLVIII:29) Mohammad is the divine Messenger and it is divinely decreed that all must obey him as such a divinely ordained personage – or put another way, to obey him is to obey God; in obeying God the submitted must obey Mohammad: ‘Whoever obeys the Messenger, he indeed obeys God…’(IV:80) And: ‘Say: Obey God and the Messenger…’(III:32, 132) Thus: ‘…whoever obeys God and His Messenger, He will cause him to enter gardens beneath which rivers flow [enter Paradise]… (IV:13; also XLVIII:17) Further still, disobeying Mohammad therefore is an act of transgression in the eyes of God, and thus punishable with severe chastisement: ‘And whoever disobeys God and His Messenger…He will cause him to enter the fire [of Hell]…’(IV:14; see also 59, 64, 69; VIII:1,20, and 46; the number of verses decreeing such obedience are too many to list here.) Submission is therefore the surrendering of power by the believers within and through the mediation of a definite form of social relations, whose essence consists in personal relations of dependence, even if the believers perceive this in its mystified form. Submission to God’s Will, as given in the revelations recited by Mohammad (later set forth in the Koran), is a ‘covenant’ establishing a direct relationship of subjection, a socio-political relation in which the reality of personal dependence in its very transparency (every Muslim was fully conscious of Mohammad’s earthly role and status, of his unquestionable, and unquestioning, personal authority as the leader, commander, the chief of the umma) appears to be conditioned by the fantastic, mystified form of a relationship between both the Messenger and his God and the believers (the submitted) and God through His Messenger: ‘The believers are only those who believe in God and His Messenger…They think [imagine] that they put [lay] you [i.e. put Mohammad] under an obligation by submitting [becoming a Muslim]. Say: Put me not under obligation by your submission; rather God puts you under an obligation by guiding you to the Faith, if it be that you are truthful.’(XLIX:15 and 17) This form of socio-religious relationship, however, was in no way ‘created’ (as if by trickery and skilful manipulation) by Mohammad; on the contrary, it already had its basis in actual history, in the concrete mode of life of the time (tribal and pagan modes on the one hand, and monotheism and empires on the other). Thus also, the relationship of Mohammad with the community of believers had its basis in the reality of tribal social relations; i.e. had its basis in the custom, tradition, the cultural heritage of Arab tribal chieftainship. Since, however, in the actual socio-historically formed Arab mode of life no individual (including, of course, Mohammad himself) could or did make a distinction between the ‘externalised’ form of power and its ‘estranged’ manifestation, Mohammad’s authority expressed itself (and was presented and seen to be by Mohammad himself) as derived from his prophethood, as granted by the Divine One, Allah: ‘The Messenger believes in what has been revealed to him from his Lord…’(II:285; my italics) Socio-politically, therefore, in the character of the Messenger, the personal and the divine became fused: Mohammad’s personal authority cannot be divorced from his authority as the Messenger of God. But, more than this, ‘cause and effect’ appear to be reversed: it seems as if it is only as a Messenger of God that he has any personal authority at all – the very human qualities that made him into a leader, at the particular historical time of imperial domination (Byzantium and Sasanid), tribal divisions and confrontations, and thus growing inter-communal social contradictions within the Arab tribal system, seem to be a consequence of his ‘inspirational’ time spent at Mount Hira upon which time he received his ‘mandate from Heaven’!

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Mohammad is thus presented in the Koran as the Prophet authorised by God and endowed with the power to fulfil the destiny of mankind through the act of submission; i.e. to bring about a oneness of spirit among the whole of humanity – this in fact is the formula that expressed the actual fulfilment of Arab unification within the historical form of a universalistic Faith. In the abstract role of the Prophet lies the quality of a task expressing the historical need of the time. Mohammad, regarded as the ‘seal of the Prophets’, was in fact the ‘soul’ of the Ayyam al-Arab, in whom the universal task of the time was believed to be embodied. The task was the unification of tribes (‘mankind’) to be achieved in the new form of a faith-based ‘commonwealth’ of Arabs (a community-state of the submitted) that stood for the ‘practical principle’ of the Kingdom of God on earth – this was for Mohammad a social order built on his personal mediation, his personal proclamation of the authority of his God’s signs and communications (the revelations) that were later to be composed and textually codified in the form of the Koran. At the time of his mission, therefore, Mohammad established his own power-base, and his sovereignty, upon the ‘externalised’ power of God. He was the leader, the commander, the ruler and the Prophet. Within the umma, first established by him in Medina, and even later with its expansion into the One Community of Muslims unified (al-ummatun wahid), public power directly coincided for the first time with the umma organising itself as a proto-political force under the personal leadership of Mohammad, while previously it rested with the different tribal assemblies and leadership. Thus, submission to the One God and His Messenger, which signified the form of the estrangement of power, was, within the context of the time, a religious-oriented means (in Koranic terms, the ‘right’ godly ‘way of life’ or deen) to constitute public power in the form of the community-state. But with the Prophet’s death differences and rivalries among the unified clans and tribes, based on particularistic interests that Mohammad’s intervention had only managed to resolve temporarily, resurfaced. This conflict of interests manifested itself in feuds and bitter struggles over the issue of succession, which threatened the undoing of the Prophet’s project and hence the disintegration of the newly formed proto-political community structure. The historical task after Mohammad’s death was, thus, to consolidate and preserve the power-base he had established in the form of the community of Muslims or the umma as the community-state by instituting the power of God as the truth of this new order’s internal sovereignty, of its undisputed power of domination over its subjects. This engendered, as mentioned previously, the transformation of the existing proto-political relations – the relationship established between Mohammad himself and his ‘flock’. The notion of personal authority, in other words, had to be raised to a higher level of objectivity and hence universality. The authority of Mohammad as the Messenger of God was superseded thus by that of the revelations he had recited that were made into an objective whole (compiled and composed) as the Koran – in other words, while his personal status (as rasul-allah) was preserved for and in the act of submission, in the exercise of power, in the actuality of political relations after his death, it was the Koran that, as the Word of God, was made and affirmed to be the highest and the ultimate Universal Authority or Allah’s Constitution. The Uthman-authorised Koran was thus imposed on the collectivity of believers as the Holy Book in the attempt to resolve the resurfaced and growing conflict of particularistic interests exemplified through the issue of politico-religious succession (which in actual history had resulted in quite widespread upheavals and conflicts to the point of civil war – a period of fitnah). The change in the form of authority was meant to safeguard the political essence of Mohammad’s mission within the new and developing power structure. Promoting the absolute authority of the Koran (i.e. in textual, book form, rather than as the Prophet’s

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recitation of revelations) did not, however, straightaway amount to a new sociopolitical order. Koranic authority was simply imposed on the prevailing system of personal relations of dependency and domination. Thus we have the attestation of Mohammad as the Messenger of God in the act of submission (which of course became in the course of Islam’s imperial development and expansion a crucial but merely nominal and formal aspect of the Shahada testament). The competing and conflicting political interests after Mohammad’s death were not only incapable of generating a stable governing system, but were a real threat to the continuance of the Prophet’s political project, hence an incontrovertible authority had to be imposed that would guarantee unquestioning obedience. No individual from among his companions had or could have had such a commonly acknowledged and accepted authority (though for the Shiites, the person of Ali, the fourth Caliph, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, comes somewhat close to having such an authority, but not, however, by any means remotely equalling the authority of the person of the Prophet himself; nonetheless, Ali has a specially high and reverential status among Shiites, and particularly among certain Sufist sects, who, rather blasphemously, regard him as almost a ‘god’). The Koran, as mentioned in the previous chapter, thus became that authority, and as such it was held to sanction the exercise of power in (more or less) its original substantial unity of the personal and the politico-religious form of domination. In other words, all the needs of the newly developing Islamised social formation (the ‘House of Islam’) had to pass through the Will of God as articulated in the Koran in order to secure general validity in the form of laws. Submission now, therefore, consisted in the Word of God (the Koran) having complete and independently supreme authority over the collectivity (community) of believers. This was brought about by instilling into the Koran a modified end than that which Mohammad’s recitations primarily had. Mohammad’s goal, to repeat, was to unify the tribes under his personal leadership based upon his recitations that were meant to justify his right to be the supreme head of all the tribal chiefs or as their ‘Vali’ (Guardian); the revelations sanctioned his conduct as the ‘commander-in-chief’; they called upon all the members of the tribes and clans to join him in submission to the One God to form a single community under one law and one faith; the revelations were, if not in exact form, certainly in essence, the manifesto of his ‘Party of the Divine One’ (his Hizeb-Allah): ‘Whoso takes as their Guardian [Vali] God and His Messenger, and those who believe [thus are] verily the Party of God that shall be triumphant.’(V:56) But when the ‘Party of God’ became the governing party of the state, Mohammad’s revelations took on a different political signification. As and in the form of the Holy Book, Koranic revelations became at once the legitimising source of the power of the state and the force of law that had general validity in territorial rather than in tribal (kinship-communal) terms. The Party of God as the ruling party, in constituting its power in the form of the Caliphate State, had to make its will, which was determined by the social conditions of the time, appear as the expression of God’s Will. Or, what is the reified form of the same, God’s Will was, in the act of submission, made to appear as the general will. Social power estranged from ‘mankind’ with submission becomes actual and real in the Islamic State based on the Koran. God’s power preserves itself in the Koran, departs from itself as the authority of the Koran, and returns to itself as Law. Under the changed socio-political circumstances, to comprehend God’s power could only mean to see it under the form of an actual force conditioned and mediated, on the one hand, under the form of the authority of the Koran itself and, on the other, upon the personal role of the Caliph as the Guardian (Vali) and hence the enforcer of that authority as the law of God now sanctioned, protected and defended by the Islamic state.

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The Law of God (His Will as the general will) is an abstraction which, however, translates itself into reality in the Sharia, the law of Dar al-Islam (Land of Islam), principally and fundamentally derived and based on the Koran. Koranic authority is thus the living law that unifies the diversity of the given modes of life (the historically conditioned diversity of the tribal-clan social mode, and beyond, i.e. unifies the diversity of life under Islamic imperial expansion). Koranic law is an ideologically determined means of social domination; and beginning with the Caliphate, it became essential to the institutionalisation of the power of forcible coercion. The Sharia belongs to the realm of the politics of administration of social control; that realm that defines the maintenance of state power. It is part and parcel of the conditions of subjection, which is based on the act of submission. It therefore depends on ideological consensus over and above the state’s power of physical, forcible coercion. The functioning and dominance of Koranic law depends on both the availability of special agencies of coercion and on submission as ‘willing compliance’, or ‘passive acquiescence’, or ‘ingrained dependence’. Islam: the Deen of Submission This ingrained dependence is, in every sense, the key to the understanding of the ideological significance of the Koranic conception of submission: submission to God’s Will means political subjection that involves the ideological engagement of the subject in the acceptance of the force of Koranic authority as law, which necessitates obeying and following God’s decreed ‘way of life’. Thus in the Koran, ‘submission’ (i.e. Islam) is always referred to as a ‘deen’ meaning a comprehensive way of life, that includes within its meaning the connotation of divine subjugation, of supremacy and dominion of God’s order, and, as a result of this latter, the sense of obedience of and allegiance to God’s law and His realm of power. The concept of deen, which is translated as ‘religion’, is, in other words, inextricably linked to that of submission; it signifies a subjugated way of life involving the sacrifice of one’s will (self) to the authority of God in life and for life: ‘Verily, the deen [the way of life] with God is Islam [total submission to God’s Will]…’(III:19) And: ‘This day have I perfected for you your deen and completed My favour on you and chosen for you Islam as a deen…’(V:3) Also: ‘Say: Verily, my prayer and my sacrifice and my life and my death are (all) for God, the Lord of the worlds.’ (VI:162) The concept is far richer in meaning than that of ‘religion’ or mazhab (the common term used for religion). While mazhab (religion) denotes a system of spiritual guidance and belief in and worship of God as distinct from a non-religious, secular system of social conduct – thus implying the necessary existence of secular ‘ways of life’ – the concept of deen is all-inclusive; it rules out such a distinction; it allows of no such understanding of the existence of a secular ‘way of life’. In the specifically Koranic understanding, submission or Islam is not a mazhab, it is a way of life that in its very notion denies, refutes, forbids, any other ways of life (secular or other religious ‘ways’) but its own. In the Koran ‘Islam’ is never referred to as a ‘mazhab’ – though unfortunately, perhaps for want of a better term, the word ‘religion’ is used in reference to ‘Islam’, which tends to blur the specifically socio-political nature of Islam, particularly in terms of its essential function of domination. Thus, it is stated in the Koran: ‘He it is Who has sent His Messenger with the Guidance and the True Deen, that He may make it triumph over all the deens, though averse may be the polytheists.’(LXI:9; here, as else where, deen is translated as ‘religion’) There is also, with almost exactly the same wording, the following: ‘He it is Who has sent His Messenger with the Guidance and the True Deen that He may make it prevail over all the deens; and God is enough for a witness.’ (XLVIII:28; see also IX:33 and LXI:9 for repeat of the same)

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Now, in socio-political terms, there is a fundamental difference between stating that ‘a religion prevails or triumphs over all (other) religions’ and saying, ‘a way of life (deen) prevails over all (other) ways of life.’ The latter stresses the ‘triumph’ of Islam over the general conditions of life, that is, every aspect of the believers’ mode of existence, from the personal, familial, and cultural, to the social, political, economic and juridical, relations as well as the belief system and spiritual aspects. The former, by contrast, stresses the ‘triumph’ of Islam’s belief system and spiritual aspects only. In other words, the understanding of Islam as merely a religion implies that it could in principle have a separate mode of existence from any particular socio-political relations; its understanding as deen absolutely excludes even the possibility of such a separation in principle. Understanding Islam in its Koranic, thus fundamental, conception as deen (the concept appears in 79 verses) encapsulates the true essence of the act and concept of submission: ‘This day have those who disbelieve despaired of your deen, so fear them not but fear Me. ...’(V:3) And: ‘And whosoever seeks [desires] any deen other than Islam, never shall it be accepted from him, and in the hereafter he shall be among the losers.’(III:85) Submitting to God’s Will (i.e. to the Koran’s authority) is a way of life that is (or is meant to be) objectively and subjectively a mode of total subsumption; it is living in total obedience of the authority of the Word of God, His Law, privately and publicly. And what is more, this deen is not something optional; to submit is to live in the way of life chosen or given by God Himself. As a way of life (or deen), Islam is, as it were, the ‘natural aliment’ of a Muslim (if he/she has truly submitted, i.e. with niyat). Islam, according to this fundamental (Koranic) understanding, is thus a way of life both in accordance with the Oneness (unity) of God (referred to as ‘Deen al-Tawhid’) and in accordance with human nature (‘Deen al-Fitrah’). Deen (as distinct from mazhab) does not, in principle and as a concept, depend on individual and personal perception; for the truly submitted, it is, as conditioned by the Koran, absolute, total, and invariable; there is no room in it for variations of ways of life. The comprehensive, all-embracing aspect of the Koranic concept of deen is thus overwhelming. Moreover, the concept is important with regards to the understanding of the notion of ‘compulsion’ in the Koran. The often quoted verse referring to this matter is the following: ‘No compulsion is there in deen [translated as ‘religion’]; the right way [rectitude] has become clear [manifestly distinct] from error; therefore whosoever disbelieves in idols [taqoot or symbols of evil or Satan] and believes in God, he indeed has laid hold of the most firm unbreakable handle; verily, God is Allhearing, All-knowing.’ (II:256) This is the verse produced by Islamic apologists as textual ‘evidence’ refuting the charge that Mohammad (and his successors) used compulsion, indeed, physical and armed force, to convert the ‘people’ to the Faith (we shall come to this point in the last chapter of this essay). The ‘refutation’ argument, however, is quite untenable, certainly on historical grounds, but also on the basis of Koranic textual evidence (as we shall see later). Historically, Mohammad himself led many armed expeditions (ghazwah) which were intended to subdue and thus convert those tribes and clans (Meccans, Bedouins, Jews, etc.) who had refused to accept his apostolical claims. In the Koran, besides numerous references to the fight (physical and armed struggle) against non-believers, submission (i.e. actually becoming a Muslim) does not need to be, always or necessarily, a voluntary or willing act: ‘Seek they another deen than God’s [Allah’s] when to Him has submitted whoso is in the heavens and the earth, willingly or unwillingly, and to Him they shall be returned.’(III:83; my italics)

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At any rate, aside from such concrete considerations, the verse referring to ‘no compulsion’ in ‘religion’ is certainly not a very good ‘evidence’ of such a refutation. Firstly, the verse is not imperative; it does not prohibit the use of force or compulsion; it is rather like a factual statement – i.e. in Islam as a ‘way of life’ there is no compulsion. Secondly, the verse is indicative, in that it is pointing to the given state of affairs – ‘the right way has become clear from error’ – thus Islam as deen is the given ‘way of life’ based on an antecedent condition, that of submission. In other words, what is stated in the verse is that once the people have submitted to the Will of God (irrespective of it occurring willingly or unwillingly or with sincerity or hypocritically) there is no compulsion in the ‘way of life’ brought about as a result of this act of submission. The verse, therefore, does not point to the method of conversion used – that is, whether the act of submission was wilful or otherwise as a result of coercion or compulsion. But what is more important to the understanding of deen, which is our main concern here, is that the act of submission, obviously and axiomatically, is a condition precedent in fact; it is a question of ‘I submit’ therefore ‘my way of life, my deen, is Islam’. Islam as deen is a consequence of the act of submission. The Koranic concept of deen points to the life (attributes and conduct) of a submitted person; deen is distinguished from all other modes or ways of life by its unique relation to its divine determination. For, Islam as deen designates the way of life of a Muslim whose different aspects of being are integrated into a ‘perfect’ state of complete subjection to the Will of the One God (Allah). It, thus, signifies the elevation of the realm of divine power to the position of the sole domain of life conditioned by subjugation, the absolute obedience of God’s law as set out in the Koran. This is not the case with ‘religion’ or mazhab; for this latter merely signifies the belief and spiritual aspects of the life of the believer. The translation of ‘deen’ as ‘religion’ affects the signification of the idea of ‘Islam’ in the interpretation of Koranic text; deen, undoubtedly, includes and involves mazhab (religion), but it is something more: it is the totality of attributes and conduct according to the ‘codex’ of God (the Koran). The essence of deen is the submission to a divinely ordained code of rigid and inflexible rules that the believers as subjugated beings must give their unquestioning obedience in ‘body and soul’, in ‘word and deed’ – or in terms of the Koranic language, in qawl (the saying, promise, of the ‘heart’ as the attribute of being a Muslim) and ‘amal (actions based on the practice of Koranic principles as the conduct of being a Muslim, in its strict meaning). But such conduct and attribute are not left to the whim of the believers; they are not conditioned by the believers’ personal perception of the criterion of behaviour – they are subject to a divine test: ‘Do the people [mankind] think that they will be left to say, “We believe”, and not be tried [without being put to the test]?’ (XXIX:2) The test of conduct – conduct that is essential to Islam (total submission to God’s Will) as a way of life (deen) – becomes for the believers actual through the realisation in practice of God’s Will; that is, the process by virtue of which His Will as embodied in the Koran becomes general will or ‘the truth of life’. Again, ‘the truth of life’ is not based on personal perception, and it is not, as with mazhab, simply a ‘transcendental’ concern; it is, indeed, a very earthly matter, i.e. a social affair, and therefore fundamentally political. Neither is it essentially concerned with the conduct of an individual believer as such. The test of conduct is societal. That is to say, it concerns how the believer (the submitted, the Muslim) has socially conducted himself/herself in advancing the Will of God in the here and now – thus, for example, ‘going to paradise’ is a reward for conduct that advances the cause of the Islamic way of life (deen), as the realisation of God’s Will in this world; its aspect of personal ‘spiritual salvation’ presupposes its societal test. And the opposite, i.e. the ‘fire of hell’, or ‘spiritual damnation’ in personal terms, befalls those who through their social conduct go against the advancement of God’s Will and His deen: ‘And God’s is the Kingdom

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of the heavens and the earth; and on the day when the Hour [of Reckoning] shall come, on that day shall perish the believers who say false things. And you shall see every people [community or ‘nation’] kneeling down; every people shall be called [summoned] unto its Book: Today you shall be rewarded for what you did. This is Our Book, that speaks against you with justice; verily, We have been recording [registering; writing] whatever you were doing.’ (XLV: 27-29) And this conduct, which has been ‘recorded’, is defined pre-eminently and principally by the conduct of the kind that promotes the advancement of deen: ‘O believers! if you help [in the way of] God, He will help you and will set firm your feet.’(XLVII:7) And if such conduct is in the service of Islam, that is, in the way of God, then: ‘He will guide them and improve their condition.’ (XLVII:5) And if as a result of this conduct death occurs, then: ‘He will admit them to enter the garden which He has made known to them [Paradise].’ (XLVII:6) The Koranic conception of deen makes no hard and fast distinction between, say, private as against public virtue. The concept involves a consciousness that transposes the transcendental into the terrestrial; the believers (the submitted) as God’s servants are obliged (must be committed) to institute and establish His Will here on earth, and in so doing (or at least attempting to do) will they achieve spiritual salvation. The realisation of deen (the comprehensive way of life) is ideological (noting here the obvious that there can be nothing ‘ideological’ without at the same time being social). For it to become the truth of life, God’s way of life (deen) as embodied in the Koran must not only be perceived to be but must be in actuality the conditioning principle of social relations in their entirety. The attribute and conduct of the believer (the submitted, or the Muslim), his/her qawl and ‘amal, are not at all a purely private or personal consideration for his/her ‘salvation’ in the hereafter; they are meant to bring about the universal subjection of humanity in this world in accordance with Koranic directives (and are ‘tested’ on that basis). The individual as a believer is ‘asked’ to examine and judge everything given, revealed, in the Koran, by such a criterion. Deen thus becomes a decisive part of the social reality of political domination. The very notion, act and fact of submission (i.e. of being a Muslim, of Islam as a deen) makes for only one truth, the eternal authority of the Koran as the Word of God, His Will, His Law, which thus makes the Koran Allah’s Constitution or the codex of Divine Law upon which is based the Islamic way of life, and hence, the entire socio-political conduct of the community of Muslims. Chapter Three: Koranic Divine Law The attempt to establish the Koran as the Truth of faith par excellence had within its ideological compass the instituting of belief in its ayat (verses) as more than merely divine signs but, rather, as directly revealed divine statements of principles for the governing of the conduct of life; and thus, of the instituting of these statements of principles as immutable commandments that constitute in their totality God’s Revealed Law. The establishing of the Koran as the Truth of faith meant, therefore, its acceptance as the Book of Divine Law. It is as such that the Koran can be designated as Allah’s Constitution. By definition Divine Law, being God’s Revealed Law, rests on the presupposition of power which is ‘divine’ or rests on the force of authority of God’s Will. It is from God’s Will that Divine Law gets its certainty of authority. In the Koran, therefore, the basic statement on Divine Law is put precisely within the affirmation of the absolute authority of God. It is in the first surah, ‘The Opening’, that the fundamental element of Koranic Divine Law is stated after asserting God’s Mastery. The sixth verse of this ‘Ummu’ (Mother or Essence of) Al-Qur’an, sets forth this element in the following formula, which is applied throughout the Koran as

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signifying Divine Law stipulation: ‘Ihdina al-sirat al-mustaqim’ or ‘Guide us in the Straight Way’. (I:6; my italics) However, since ‘Ihdina’ also means ‘confirm upon us’, the ayah can be translated as: ‘Confirm upon us the Straight Way’ – that is, establish firmly for us the Straight Way. In any case, whether ‘Ihdina’ is translated as ‘guide us’ or ‘confirm upon us’, the essential significance of this ayah is simply in its reference to and registering of the specifically Koranic expression of al-sirat al-mustaqim (‘the Straight Way’; also translated as ‘the Right Path’). This is the expression that designates the divinely established way or custom for the conduct of life. Al-sirat almustaqim, sometimes shortened to al-sirat or the Way (or the Path), has the fundamental signification of the way of ‘living’ in accordance with God’s Will as expressed in the Koran. The placing of this verse in the ‘Opening’ chapter of the Koran is of considerable significance. The deliberation behind this decision (as with the entire surah) could not have been anything but political. If God is the Master, as the surah asserts, then the ‘guiding’ of those who have submitted (or, indeed, of humanity as such) ‘on the Straight Way’ is indicative of the power of the Master over the ‘way’ of life of the submitted. The ayah, therefore, attaches ‘the Straight Way’ to the determining Will of God in the conduct of life. But this determining Will can only express itself as a force guiding the submitted in the form of Law – as Divine Law. Now, as argued in the first chapter of this essay, the ‘Opening’ surah is concerned with the affirmation of the power, the omnipotence, of the One God (Allah), Whose Will is the Authority dominating life in the here and now – in short, it is concerned with the appearance of the mode of domination. The setting down of the expression ‘the Straight Way’ in its sixth ayah makes this sirat or ‘way’ a fundamental condition of the appearance of the mode of domination affirmed in the surah. Indeed, Koranic Divine Law is ‘the Straight Way’ that secures the continuous appearance of power relations as God’s (Allah’s) mode of domination. Koranic Divine Law is, strictly speaking, concerned with the ‘phenomenal form’ of the mode of domination under Islam – it is the form that justifies and gives the divine appearance to the real relations of power that determine the specifically Islamic mode of domination. Interestingly, in the same ‘Opening’ surah we are given a hint of the real relation that lies behind the ‘veil of appearance’ of God’s power of domination based on the indication of what is meant by the expression ‘the Straight Way.’ Here are the two relevant verses (one already quoted): ‘Guide us on the Straight Way. The Way of [sirata] those upon whom Thou hast bestowed Thy favours, not [the Way] of those inflicted with Thy wrath [al-maqzub], nor [of those] who are [gone] astray.’ (I:1-2; my italics) God, then, guides the submitted onto the established Way of conduct of certain specifically favoured, ‘chosen’, group of individuals; ‘the Straight Way’ is their ‘way’ or custom of social conduct; it is they who through their actions and conduct of life set the definition of what ‘the Straight Way’ entails; and hence it is these favoured individuals who possess the real authority in the Islamic mode of domination. We shall in a later chapter come to the Koran’s identification of the ‘favoured’ or ‘chosen’ group of individuals, suffice it to say here that the supreme example of such individuals is, of course, Mohammad himself. But in the matter of Divine Law under consideration, what is important about these quoted verses of the ‘Opening’ surah is the determination of Divine Law, given in its basic formula, as the fundamental ideological constituent of the Islamic mode of domination. What this signifies is that Koranic Divine Law does not constitute the legal system under Islam. It is not a means of social control, which is the most basic and essential function of a legal system; its function is the justification and legitimisation of the form and structure of power and the exercise of power, which define themselves on the basis of Koranic Divine Law as

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the specifically Islamic mode of domination. Thus it is that we have throughout the Koran verses that refer to the ‘right’ or ‘the Straight’ Way, or to the Truth and to the Guidance, given by God, which are all concerned with the conduct of life as the mode of existence as such or of ‘living’ as the universality of conduct rather than the particularity of behaviour and attitude. The latter is the concern of the Islamic legal system known as the Sharia, which is based on God’s Revealed or Divine Law set down in the Koran. This distinction between Divine Law and Sharia law is important in terms of the understanding of the practice of social control and of the role and function of the Koran in sustaining and securing the form of power relations that determine Islam’s mode of domination. Firstly, then, let us look at the relation between Divine Law and domination as expressed in the Koran. Divine Law and the Form of Domination The Koran contains a catalogue of basic revelation on rules, decisions, judgement in terms of guidance and truth, absolutely immunised against modification, amendment or alteration, which has commanding force. But such revelations, in combination or individually, have commanding force only insofar as they are taken as part of and understood in conjunction with the ideology of divine authority. We have already seen the categorical affirmation of divine authority in the Opening surah. And we have also seen in various surahs thereafter verses that assert the Koran as the Word of God, as the Book expressive of God’s Will (i.e. of divine authority). The Book and the revelations serve the purpose of ‘guidance’: ‘The month of Ramadan is that in which the Qur’an was sent down, a Guidance for mankind and a Clear Evidence of guidance and the Criterion…’(II:185) But the prerequisite of this guiding role is the recognition of divine authority, so that the function of the Koran’s guidance not only depends entirely on God’s Will, but at the same time substantiates it. The Koran is, therefore, that which through its revelations gives clear instructions that ‘you [i.e. the submitted] should glorify the Greatness of God for His guiding you and that you [should] be thankful.’(II:185; my italics) Koran’s guidance, upon which believers are brought to the ‘light’ of God’s Way, actually establishes divine authority over those who have submitted: ‘God is the Guardian of those who believe; He takes them out of darkness into light…’(II:257; my italics) This ‘light’ is the ‘knowing’ or ‘knowledge’ of Divine Law, which is set forth in order to substantiate or establish the authority of God in the here and now: ‘Whosoever holds fast unto God is already guided to the Straight Way [sirat mustaqim].’(III:101; my italics) The revelations that make clear and manifest the affairs and conduct of believers (see e.g. XV:1) are the Divine Law protected by God: ‘Verily, We have sent down the Reminder [i.e. the Koran], and verily, We unto it will certainly be the Guardian.’(XV:9) The Divine Law set forth in the Koran is the way which establishes the form of authority or the form of domination as divine, as in appearance that of God’s: ‘He [i.e. God] said: This is the Straight Way unto Me.’(XV:41; my italics) This divine form of domination, however, entails the commitment of the submitted to follow ‘the Straight Way’ or their adherence to Koranic Divine Law. In the Koran this is made into a formal agreement: ‘And when My servants question you concerning Me, then [say] verily I am near; I answer the prayer of the suppliant when he calls unto Me, so let them hearken unto Me and believe in Me that they may be led aright.’(II:186) Koranic commandments are the Divine Law of the Deen of Islam, and thus as such form a ‘holy covenant’; they are essentially affirmed and regarded as divine bonds (‘Uqud’): ‘O you who believe! Fulfil your bonds.’(V:1) To submit is to

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enter into a binding agreement as firm as a treaty – a pledge of honour, which clearly echoes that which was common within tribal societies (uqud has this definite connotation of a ‘treaty’ and a ‘pledge’). The bond, as with any divine covenant, entails commitments and the obligation of obeying God’s commandments as laws in the here and now. These are directives that must not be violated: ‘O you who believe! Do not violate the ayat appointed by God…and fear God; verily, God is terrible in retribution.’(V:2) The pledge, implied by the very act of submission, is intended to secure and ensure the preservation and perpetuation of the divine form of domination. It is, moreover, binding and has to be fulfilled: ‘And fulfil you the covenant of God when you have made a covenant, and break you not the oaths after [they have been] confirmed, [for] you have indeed made [appointed] God [as] surety; verily God knows what you do.’(XVI:91) This fulfilment of ‘oaths’ is essential to the substantiation and maintenance of the appearance of divine authority, of the functioning of Koranic Divine Law as the apparent application of God’s Will. God’s Will is at the core of the Divine Law that governs everything in life. All that which He has willed is the Law that cannot be questioned or violated. His Will is embedded in the Koran, and, as noted previously, it is upon the latter’s authority, as the ‘direct and literal’ Word of God, that His Will is transposed into the here and now as Divine Law, making it present, actual and determinate. In its strict understanding, Koranic Divine Law cannot be conceived as being external to or apart from the appearance of power as God’s power. On the basis of the Koran, Divine Law is the determinate substance of political domination and social regulation. For a true, faithful Muslim, in principle, God’s Will is the prime and general cause of all aspects of life in Islam; but then the principle is (and must be) applied in practice as the actual law of the ‘community of Muslims’, which directly controls (guides) the particular behaviour and attitudes of both the individual and the community as a whole. In practical terms, therefore, the Koranic notion of Divine Law means this: it is not only that God’s Will prevails as the one and only ‘ideal’ governing power; but that, in addition, His Will has as its essence that which is actually a real force as Divine Law. The consequence that derives from this is crucial. The ‘Will’ by which mankind is governed is represented by the Koran as if it is an objective statute, the administration of which is carried out in the here and now in order to realise the ‘truth’ of God’s Will. God’s Will, in short, is simply that which must become universally enforced by human actions conditioned by the authority of the Koran and this as a consequence of its very essence as a force of law. Divine Law is, thus, the affirmative constitution of God’s Will, that which it truly is in the here and now; it is, then, not based on the ideality of God’s Will which is outside the world of humanity, but it is His Will operating within the latter, His Will as it is active in the mode of domination, upon which it thus also, and necessarily so, becomes the basis of legislation of social regulation. Divine Law in the Koran, then, has a definite legitimising function over and above its fundamental legislative application: ‘Verily, this Qur’an guides unto that [Way or conduct] which is the most upright and announces glad tidings unto the believers who do good [i.e. do good in the Way of God] that they shall have a great reward.’(XVII:9; my italics) It is, as such, directly linked to the mode of domination. The essence of Koranic Divine Law is political-ideological; the aim is not simply the laying down of ethical or legal precepts, but to justify power and its exercise as if conditioned by God’s Will: ‘…But God, He is the Guardian…and He is, over all things powerful. And in whatever things you differ, the judgement thereof is [with] God; that is your God my Lord, on Him rely I, and unto [only] Him do I turn.’(XLII:910) Koranic Divine Law is essentially meant to justify the judgement and decisions of those holding power as if these are expressive of God’s Will; it gives their power of

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domination the appearance of divine authority: ‘He [God] has prescribed for you the deen [the Way of life]; what He ordained unto Noah and that which We revealed [Divine Law] unto Abraham and Moses and Jesus, that: Establish you the deen and be you not divided therein…’(XLII:13; my italics) Divine Law serves the interest of those in power. Moreover, what is allowed or forbidden by divine decree is intended as enforceable in this world by those whom, according to Mohammad’s recitation of his revelations, God has authorised. Mohammad himself is, of course, God’s number one choice. But in the Koran we also have directives that ‘instruct’ or prompt the formation of a body (or an authorised group) whose function is the calling of mankind to follow God’s commandments and to exercise authority in their enforcement: ‘And that there should be among you a body [a group or a party] who call unto virtue and to impose [to enjoin or order] what is right and forbid wrong [nahya anil munkar]; and these are they who shall be successful.’(III:104) And also: ‘Those who, if We establish them [give them power] in the land [on earth], will keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate [zakat] and impose [enjoin] good and forbid wrong…’(XXII:41) The foundations of the mode of domination seem thus ordained by God and are sanctioned by His commandments in the Koran, i.e. by Divine Law: ‘Verily, God commands you to render back your trusts to their owners, and when you judge between people [mankind], to judge with justice [bil-‘adl]…’(IV:58) In the Koran the conception of ‘judgement’ implies the possession both of superior knowledge and wisdom, and the power to determine ‘the Truth’ granted by and according to God’s Will. Those who hold the power of judgment therefore dominate and control the institutions of power, even though they appear to do so only by the grace of God; it is commanded that they must be obeyed, according to, for example, this verse: ‘O you who believe! Obey God and obey the Messenger and those vested with authority from among you...’ Yet, as the rest of this same verse makes clear, their power appears dependent on the authority of God and His Messenger: ‘…and then,’ the verse goes on to state, ‘if you quarrel about anything refer it to God and the Messenger if you believe in God and the Last Day; this is the best and the fairest way [taweelan connoting ‘interpretation’ or ‘clarification’ – that is, the best way for the clarification of the issue] in the end.’(IV:59) In connection with the above statement, that in any dispute the matter concerned should be referred ‘to God and the Messenger’; there are some crucial points that need closer attention. For this statement raises the problematic of the method of ‘referring’ to God and the Messenger; that is, it raises the question of: How is a matter in dispute referred ‘to God’ or ‘to the Messenger’? Judgement in cases of ‘quarrel’ or dispute necessitates a practical method of decision-making, and a source and agency. Thus referring a matter of dispute ‘to God’ requires some practical method, a procedure which concretely delivers an appropriate result – prayer or supplication does not, and cannot, concretely resolve a dispute. The procedure must therefore be, and can only be, a method and process of deciding or judging according to God’s Word, the Koran, and hence on the basis of Koranic Divine Law. There can be no other meaning or interpretation of the above statement; for God’s Word (the Koran) expresses His Will, His Authority, as the Divine Law upon which all judgement must be based. Now, with regards to referring a matter in dispute ‘to the Messenger’, the question of how judgement is arrived at is quite simple and obvious; for in concrete terms, Mohammad as the Messenger of God would execute judgement, expressing in person the Will of God as revealed to him. But this could take place only while Mohammad was alive. In other words, while still alive, Mohammad in his personal capacity as the Leader (as the Prophet) was the authority, he had the power to decide, he was the ‘arbiter’. However, since the Koran, as the Holy Book, was formed well after Mohammad’s death, the answer to our question becomes more intricate, more

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involved. For, clearly, with the Koran fully formed as the Holy Book, referring a matter in dispute to the Messenger could obviously not involve the person of Mohammad. The statement made in the above ayah with regards to referring a matter in dispute ‘to the Messenger’ must therefore have other signification. In the absence of Mohammad, the statement ‘refer it to the Messenger’ can only mean, therefore, the making of the appropriate decision on the basis of Mohammad’s sunna or his conduct and personal sayings during his, as it were, term of office, as Leader of the Islamic movement and the ‘ruler’ of the umma. In other words, referring a matter ‘to the Messenger’ signifies taking account of the Traditions (in recorded form known as the Hadith) in the decision making process. We have therefore here the bringing together of the authority of Koranic Divine Law and that of the Traditions, reflecting, in fact, a historic compromise in terms of power relations; a compromise of ‘power-sharing’ (of Caliphs and the ulama) that took some three hundred years after Mohammad’s death to shape the actual theocratic form of domination under Islam and which, concomitantly, established the Islamic legal system known as the Sharia. Koranic Commandments and the Sharia Divine Law as constituted in the Koran necessarily signifies that God’s commandments have a correlative connection with the political relations of domination under Islam. The translation of these commandments into the fundamentals of law is the consequence of the actual operation and practice of the Islamic mode of domination. This translation is expressed in the metamorphosis of Koranic commandments into the form of the Sharia law. In order to understand this transformation, however, we need to first look at the basic connection between the two forms of laws. According to the Koran, to God alone belongs the sovereignty of judgment in any dispute: ‘And in whatever thing you disagree, the Judgment thereof belongs to God. That then is God, my Lord; on Him do I rely, and unto Him do I return.’(XLII:10) Also: ‘You serve not beside Him but names which you have named, you and your fathers, God has not sent down for them any authority; there is no judgment but God’s; He has bidden that you serve only Him; this is the right deen…’(XII:40; see also verse 67: ‘judgment is only God’s’) And: ‘There is none to be a guardian for them besides Him, and He does not make any one His associate in His Judgment.’(XVIII:26) God’s judgment is of course a juridical illusion. The reference to God’s judgment, as was argued above, can be nothing more than juridically binding decisions based on Koranic Divine Law. This body of laws is, as we have seen, regarded and believed to be immutable; for it is believed and accepted to be directly from God Himself and in His own words that as such cannot be changed: ‘And recite thou what hast been revealed unto thee of the Book of thy Lord; none shall [can] change His Word…’(XVIII:27) God’s words are His commands that no mortal can interfere with or alter: ‘…none can alter the words of God [kalamat-e Allah].’ (VI:34) Here kalamat-e Allah infers a deeper meaning than simply the ‘letters’, as it were, of God’s ‘words’; it signifies God’s Will expressed in words as ‘Commands’. Thus, consequently, that which God has commanded, His Law, is, in its conception unchangeable. Commandments are divinely ordained, established, and eternally fixed; but as such, they only maintain themselves as elements of Divine Law by the force of faith alone, even though the belief in them has no power over them. In practice, however, commandments are meant to have the proper function of governing social conduct. What is clear from the text of Koran’s revelations concerned with directives is that they are not meant as mere ‘recommendations’; there is no ambiguity in these being intended as hard and fast rules for the regulation of the conduct of believers (the submitted). Thus verses that reveal God’s commandments are in the imperative mode;

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as for example the following verses demonstrate with regards to the issue of the eating of meat/animals: ‘Lawful are made for you quadrupeds [‘grass eating’ animals like cattle]…’(V:1) And: ‘Forbidden unto you is the dead [flesh of that which dies of itself], and blood, and flesh of swine…’(V:3) It is quite clear here that such commandments are intended as inviolable laws that believers must follow to the letter – within the fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) they are categorised as ‘Obligatory’ (wajib). As with all religious rules, they combine ‘moral’ and ‘legal’ constraints and obligations; such is for example the case as regards infanticide: ‘And kill you not your children for fear of want; We sustain them and yourselves. Verily, killing them is a great sin.’ (XVII:31; see also VI:152) Similarly with adultery: ‘And approach you not adultery. Verily, it is a shameful act, and an evil way.’ (XVII:32) God’s commandments, therefore, must be taken literally and applied as actual operative laws in the here and now. Thus surah An-Noor (The Light), revealed at Medina, at the time of Mohammad’s establishment of his proto-state, the umma, a section of which deals with adultery, begins with this unequivocal statement: ‘This surah We have sent down and made obligatory [We have ordained] and We have revealed therein clear ayat [revelations] that you must take heed.’ (XXIV:1) What is prescribed, as in the case of the sexual ‘offence’ of adultery (zina), for example, has the force of Divine Law; zina is not only a sin in terms of religious moral code of conduct, which would thus be punishable in the ‘hereafter’ or the ‘next-world’, or on the ‘Day of Judgment’; but it is an offence, a crime, punishable in this world: ‘The adulteress and adulterer flog each of them a hundred lashes, and let not pity for them keep you from enforcing the sentence of God, if you believe in God and the Last Day; and let their chastisement be witnessed by a party of believers.’ (XXIV:2) In terms of Islamic faith, God’s Will is revealed in these Koranic commandments, which would then need to be realised by the incorporation of them into the legal system. But this realisation can only take place if and when Koranic Divine Law as such materialises itself as the legitimising force in the political realm, in the state – i.e. only with the Koran as Allah’s Constitution. With this latter, commandments are institutionalised; they find the real agency through which they are transformed into the instruments of actual domination through their functioning as means of social control. But what this also signifies is that in appearance the authority of the state is ideologically subordinate to the authority of the Koran and to the jurisdiction of the Divine Law set forth in it. Consequently, the state appears as the manifestation of God’s Will, and, therefore, actual laws appear to operate as if they are God’s commandments. The process of implementation of Koranic commandments assumes, therefore, the religious form of the Sharia, as do the institutions of the legal system (e.g. Sharia Courts). In appearance the political relations of social control are, then, simply matters of religious jurisprudence because the Koranic commandments (prescriptions and directives) are regarded as, in form and substance, divinely ordained legislation, and hence as such, they are imposed in order to establish God’s ‘Straight Way’ – though, they are actually the real, active driving force of social control. The matter of the reality of the politics of domination and that of the Sharia as a means of social control is thereby mystified; it is clouded by the ‘holy ghost’ of the conception of the eternal commandments of God. Moreover, the Sharia thus appears as a divine legal system, the regulator of social affairs arising from and enforcing God’s Will; consequently it is regarded as the specific foundation of the juridical relations of Islam as deen, as the way of life in its entirety. In this form, all intermediate political aspects of social control are abstracted, and the reified feature of the domination of God’s Will becomes complete: ‘And you will not, except as God wills …’(LXXXVI:30; my italics)

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The Sharia as Islam’s Legal System Now, it is quite obvious that no form of domination can exist without some form of legal and administrative rules and regulations. In Islam, the rules which facilitate the regulation of public order and that of the state’s needs of administration (to ensure continuous reproduction and the stability of its form of domination) could not have been constructed, as an operating legal system, abstractly by simply taking on Koranic commandments. To begin with, Koranic commandments are, for the most part, ‘nonce-rules’, that is, prescriptions intended by the Prophet to deal with certain circumstance or incident at the time of his ‘mission. That these came to be made into universal laws, and thus appear as the fundamental directives and edicts incorporated into the Sharia, was the result of a fairly long process of political, ideological and cultural adjustment (involving major contentions and in-fighting within the Muslim community). Moreover, many of the rules needed for the regulation of public order were actually only constructed in the light of the historical development of specific administrative domains within the Islamic empire and conditioned by the prevailing socio-political context of wars of conquest and those over succession. Thus, historically within the Muslim world, we have Kanuns and Farmans, or decrees as laws issued by particular rulers (Caliphs or Sultans) that were, in their strictly technical legislative function of social control, independent of both the Sharia and Koranic divine law (though never contravening the latter), but which could only gain hegemony and achieve consensual legitimacy by their fiqh-based formulation and Islamic jurists’ (or ulama’s) endorsement. Such laws, though technically outside of the Sharia, and generally categorised as mere ‘administrative’ rules (e.g. the Siyasa of the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt or the Kanun-nameh of the Ottoman Sultans, etc.), would therefore become part of the legal system as a result of the combination of coercive power (of the ruler and the state) and ideological justification (by the ulama, the Mujtahidun, etc., or the ‘learned’ judges, jurists, and theologians). The fact is that the Islamic juridical system was founded and developed on the welltrodden ground of pre- and non-Islamic legal structures and procedures and practices, incorporating and accommodating customary rules and conventions from a variety of sources as a result of the expansion of the Islamic empire. Such incorporation and accommodation necessarily involved a process of Islamisation of laws in conquered lands; in other words, the politics of domination and social control had not only to take account of local customs, but required the development of laws to meet the challenges of changing conditions and circumstances. In practice, the Islamic juridical system, therefore, contains laws that are not derived from the Koran – they are ‘rationally’ developed acts issued specifically for the purpose of social, public regulation in response to state and local administrative problems or needs (e.g. issues of taxation, concerns over particular local issues, regulation of certain social groups or classes of people, etc.). Nonetheless, we need to again emphasise that, firstly, it would be wrong to regard these laws as (nominally) ‘independent’ of the Sharia. Strictly speaking, no law operative within the Dar al-Islam could be regarded as independent of the Sharia in this sense that every single law must always appear to conform to the Sharia and appear to be discharged and executed within the scope of the Sharia. And, secondly, that whatever were the actual legal requirements of state administration and however manipulative were the rulers and their theologically ‘learned’ partners, the ulama, the ultimate, final and absolute ideological justification for all legally enforceable acts was (and always remains) the Koran. Therefore, the complex of legal codes of conduct known as the Sharia, despite its many variant interpretations (given the practicalities of local administration of social

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control within the vast territories of the Muslim world), could become (at least in principle) the legal canon of Islamic political systems – from the Caliphate of the Umayyad period, when the office of qadi (Islamic judge) was first introduced in the urban centres of conquered territories, and the subsequent formal institutionalisation of the Sharia under the Abbasids, to the Sultanate states and well beyond to the present day Islamic regimes and those of the ‘nominally’ Muslim countries – only because it was perceived and claimed to be derived directly from God’s ‘Revealed Law’ as set forth in the Koran: ‘…For each of you We have appointed a sharia and a right way [of life]…’(V:48; see also 49) The development of the Sharia was effectively the result of a most ingenious process of theological ‘invention’. Koranic Divine Law, as noted above, is by definition immutable. To govern a country let alone an empire is impossible on the basis of a body of rules that are ‘eternally’ fixed. The development of the Sharia was necessary precisely in order that such unchangeable body of rules could be made, in a modified form, to operate as actual law. With the ‘invention’ of the Sharia, the active and conscious practice of God’s commandments became part of the earthly process of social control insofar as they were taken into the believer’s will and influenced his/her acts. Divine Law could operate as actual law only if the believers (Muslims) comprehend and act on it. The Sharia enabled this by the codification of rules and regulations (Koranic and customary) developed on the basis of juridical and religious practice, and in accordance with the principles established by Islamic jurists (Mujtahidun). Its reality, it should be noted here, lies at all times in actions, tendencies and institutions that embody the interests of the divinely sanctioned authority (the ‘class-state’). The Sharia cannot exist separate from such an authority, and acts through the latter’s agents and agencies; while Divine Law, which such authority represents, operates in the form of an irresistible force, as it were, behind the Sharia. For, the Koranic conception of Divine Law emphasises that in nature, history and society mankind is subject to God’s Will – humanity is not the self-conscious master of its own existence. Thus, however it is interpreted, Koranic Divine Law is the conceptual force behind the Sharia as the ideological force that governs the actions of believers. And in its juridical authority it is an ineluctable force; for believers there is no choice in the matter: ‘And it is not for a believer, man or woman, to have any choice in their affair when God and His Messenger have decided a matter…’(XXXIII:36) The sovereignty of God’s Will, as the Koran portrays it through the very content of its Divine Law, exhibits the dark traits of a political system of total domination of social and personal life; while the Sharia is the device that keeps the believers in line and keeps them acting and behaving in the service of the ruling authority’s superior power and superior interest within that system. In the Koran, one could therefore say, the dominative and the directive dimensions of ahkam (commandments) are closely bound together; with the development of the Sharia as a legal system, Koranic Divine Law became the ideological support and justification used to produce and mobilise assent to the implementation of the Sharia, which in turn, in its effecting role of social control, sustained the theocratic form of domination. Faith in the Koran and the conviction of the ‘justice’ (‘adl, ‘idalat) of Allah’s commandments (ahkam) are essentially, therefore, what the Islamic form of domination requires to function; and what the Sharia attempts is to regulate the ‘way of life’ of the faithful so that the practice of social control reinforces this theocratic form of domination. Sharia, interestingly enough, actually means ‘the clear way to a waterhole’; this meaning is highly pertinent to its Koranic juridical usage. To be guided (directed) by a clear path to God’s ordained way of life (deen) is, or should be, as natural, as it is as vital, as that of being guided to a waterhole, particularly in the

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Arabian landscape! In the Koran, therefore, ‘Sharia’ is stipulated as a path, a way, a course, based on God’s commandments that is set for the Prophet to follow, and hence for the rest of mankind to follow, too. The Koranic conception of the Sharia (from which the Islamic legal notion of it is derived) is thus the clear way to (perform) God’s Commandments: ‘Then have We set thee a sharia [a clear way to the commandments], therefore follow it, and follow not the caprices of those who know not.’(XLV:18) The Sharia, therefore, is not identical to or interchangeable with Koranic Divine Law, with God’s commandments; it is a path to the latter’s fulfilment which is ‘clear’ in the sense that God has already ‘revealed’ (in the Koran) the direction or path of reaching the Truth (al-haq) in accordance with ‘the Straight Way’ (al-sirat al-mustaqim: ‘He may guide you onto the Straight Way.’ XLVIII:20) or with ‘the way that God initiated’ (fitrata-Allah) or His ‘custom’ or ‘course’ (of setting the ‘precedent’) (sunnata-Allah) – i.e. in accordance with His commandments, the Divine Law, set forth in the Koran (‘Verily, We have revealed to you the Book with the Truth that you may judge between people by what God shows [has taught] you…’ IV:105; see also V:48, 49 and 50) One consequence of this conceptual distinction is the intervention of human agency (Islamic jurists, judges, etc.) in the ‘expounding’ (rendering, interpretation, or ijtihad, more specifically within the Sunni sect) of the Sharia on the basis not only of the Koran, but other sources. It is otherwise, of course, as regards God’s Revealed Law, which axiomatically rules out such human intervention. Thus while with the Sharia certain legalistic and administrative changes might be possible (and has been so historically), the same cannot be said of the Koranic Divine Law. There can be no change in God’s ‘custom’ that has set the divine ‘precedent’ (i.e. His Law): ‘The custom [tradition] of God [sunnata-Allah] that has passed into effect [that has run] since times gone by; never shall you find a change in the custom of God.’(XLVIII:23) And: ‘Then set thou thy face in the right direction for the deen, the way that God initiated [fitrata-Allah], that deen which is innately a natural custom for people to follow [fitra al-nasa]. No change can there be in what God has set forth. That is the established deen; but most among mankind know not [al-nase layaolamuna].’(XXX:30) However, in spite of it being considered as a ‘divine law’, the Sharia is in actual fact a kind of ‘mutation,’ in that it carries, or at least purports to carry, the ‘genes’ of God’s commandments as set forth in the Koran, but, for historical and practical reasons, these have been ‘transmuted’ by temporal inputs from sources other than the Koran. Though the sources vary somewhat for Sunni and Shia sects, in general for both sects they are as follows: the Hadith (i.e. the written Sunnah or Traditions as the compilation of all that Mohammad said, did and approved of), Ijma (i.e. the ‘unanimity’ or ‘consensus’ – specifically among the ‘learned’, the ulama, etc.), Qiyas (i.e. drawing analogy from the essence of divine principles in the Koran); and, in addition to the latter, sources for Shiite jurisprudence includes: Aql (i.e. using ‘reasoning’ or ‘intellect’ – again by the so-called ‘learned’ jurists, ulama, etc.), and alUrf (i.e. local customs – though decisions on what is applicable or not depends on ‘authoritative’ justification/validation by the ‘learned’ jurists, ulama, etc.). But, not withstanding the differences between the Sunni and Shiite legal traditions, it is crucial to reiterate here that, in principle (i.e. according to the strict Muslim theological dogma), the primary and fundamental source of the Sharia is always the Koran! And it is only because the legal system of Sharia includes Koranic commandments and has to be justified on the basis of the Koran that it is considered and referred to as ‘divine law’ – though perhaps ‘sacred law’ would be a more accurate term to describe its form.

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All the above mentioned sources, including the Hadith, are, then, subject to theological justification on the basis of the Koran; and no issue, arrived at from any of these sources, can be considered as law (as legislation proper) if it goes against or contradicts Koranic principles (the Will of God). Thus, for example, the justification (or validation) of a certain issue on the grounds of the Hadith, or the Prophet’s attributes and conduct, is permissible only because, as His Messenger, God had authorised his guiding (or rather ‘steering’) role: ‘And whatever the Messenger gives, hold it fast. And from whatever he forbids you, keep you away; and fear God; verily, God is severe in retribution.’(LIX:7) The same holds for the so-called ‘scholarly consensus’ as a source of Sharia, which is justified by, for example, the following ayah that has been interpreted (though there is disagreement on this) as allowing to settle legal issues by consultation: ’And those who answer their Lord, and perform [keep up] prayer, and their affairs are by counsel [‘consultation’ or ‘shura’] between them [or among themselves]…’(XLII:38) Hence whatever the practical requirements of legislation or those of the implementation of laws throughout the Dar al-Islam, the Koran as the Word of God is always the indisputable and final authority: ‘And We did not send any Messenger but that he should be obeyed by God’s permission…’(IV:64, my italics) The Koran (i.e. God) permits no-one, not even Mohammad, to ‘create/invent’ rules of conduct as Divine Law; Mohammad is simply and only a Messenger, a ‘deliverer’ (a ‘warner’) of God’s commandments: ‘Say: I am not the first of the Messengers, I know not what will be done unto me, nor unto you; I follow only what has been revealed unto me, and I am nothing but a plain warner.’ (XLVI:9);‘…say: If God had willed, we would not have served anything besides Him, neither we nor our fathers, nor would we have prohibited anything without [a command from] Him. Thus did those before them; is then anything incumbent upon Messengers save the plain delivery [of the divine message]?’(XVI:35); ‘…nothing is incumbent upon the Messenger but the plain delivering [of the divine message].’(XXIX:18; see also V:99) In principle, jurisprudence, in other words, has to not only appear to reflect but also be seen to express Koranic Divine Law as the Will of God as if without any distortion affected by human intervention. The Koran is after all (believed to be) the Constitution of God’s Kingdom on earth; and because it is for all Muslims Allah’s Constitution it cannot be amended in any shape or form. But, of course, a ‘legal system’ is much more than a ‘constitution’. The Sharia as a legal system depends on the Koran as the constitution, but the two do in reality diverge. Indeed, from very early on during the development of the Islamic state, there appeared a divergence between the theory and practice of Koranic directives. To begin with, it should be noted, the Sharia, as a proper legal system, was completely absent during Mohammad’s life time – his establishment of the umma in Medina did not as yet involve what could strictly speaking be regarded as a legal system. The community of Muslims at Medina, and for the whole period during Mohammad’s rule, relied on his role as the ‘arbitrator’ of disputes and his decisions or judgments were for the most part, if not exclusively, limited to and based upon the customary rules of ancient Arab tribal communities – rules which were themselves (as with any formative legal system) based upon the principle of ‘precedent’ or the tradition of ‘normative regulations’ known, even then, as sunna. It should also be noted here, as a reminder, that during this period (and well after), the Koran as such (in its compiled written book form) was obviously not yet in existence. Mohammad’s proto-state had no ‘constitution’, divine or otherwise. Basically, the definition and implementation of all of what could be called ‘legalistic’ matters were more or less wholly subject to the personal authority of Mohammad, who had only just begun, as the Prophet-Ruler, to combine the function of the ancient Arab tribal custom of the arbitrator with that of an

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emerging political-religious ‘lawmaker’ or rather, in religious terms, as God’s ‘lawfixer’. With his recitation of divine revelations he was transposing customary rules, as and when appropriate, to suit the umma’s changing conditions and to deal with problems and disputes arising thereof. He was, therefore, at the same time transforming the ancient arbitrator’s function and authority into a ‘proto-legal’ one (though it was a long time after his death that the change of function and office of ‘arbitration’ into that of juridical administration became fully accomplished and completed). It was, thus, on the basis of his recitation of divine revelations that Mohammad, by transforming his personal authority from that of an ‘arbitrator’ to that of a (nascent) ‘judge’, set down the fundamental principle for what later became the defining axiom of the proper Islamic legal system (the Sharia). The verse that sets down this fundamental principle is the following: ‘But no, by thy Lord! they will not believe till they make thee the judge [yuhakimu] in all that is in dispute among them, and then find in themselves no impediment against what thou decides [qadiuta (pronounced, qaziuta)] and submit with [absolute] submission.’(IV:65) Here Yuhakimu specifies Mohammad’s arbitrating role, which, however, in conjunction with the verb qadiuta, strictly meaning ‘to decide authoritatively and juridically’ (qidavat – pronounced qizavat – meaning ‘legal judgement’ and the Islamic legal term for ‘judge’, qadi is derived from this verb), signifies the inception of Mohammad’s authoritative role and function as judge in all matters (temporal and spiritual, public and private, personal and social) without restriction – the term used in the verse that coveys this all-embracing juridical authority is, ‘fima shajara bainahum’ (‘in whatever matter they may disagree among themselves’). On the basis of such revelations was, after many years of theological wrangling over the expounding of ‘fundamentals’ by various schools of Islamic thought, gradually forged the Sharia legal system, which in time incorporated into itself administrative rules and regulations which were originally founded in the conquered territories (e.g. Sasanid administrative regulations, taxation rules, etc.; Roman and Byzantine law; the canon law of the Eastern Churches; Talmudic and Rabbinic law; etc.). The Sharia was certainly to a great extent the result of the need for the ‘elucidation’ (actually involving major philosophical undertakings influenced by and derived from nonIslamic sources, e.g. Greek/Hellenic tradition, and particularly Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism) of Koranic fundamentals and the elaboration of God’s commandments and directives. As ‘sacred law’ it grew out of this need that had given expression to the emergence of a number of ‘schools of thought’ – the most influential being, for the majority Sunnis: the Hanafi (abu Hanifa 700-767 AD), the Maliki (Malik ibn Anas 710-795), the Shafi’i (Mohammad al-Shafi’I 767-820) and the Hanbali (Ahmad ibn Hanbal 780-855); and for the Shiites: Imamiya, Zaydiya and Ismailya Shia. With the expansion of Islamic rule, then, there appears a divergence between the Koranic Divine Law and the Sharia. This divergence signifies a conceptual distinction between the role and function of the Sharia and that of Koranic Divine Law. The latter can be said to function as the ideological legitimisation of the mode of domination; the former, the legal function of social control. Stated simply, Divine Law is ‘eternal’; it is not conditioned by social practice, by historical circumstances and particular situations or by changing social relations. Objectively, it is the necessary foundation of the Islamic legal system – but it is not in itself the Islamic legal system. Koranic Divine Law draws all the juridically formed specificities of social control around a single central core – its principle of submission, denoting the ‘spirit’ of universal theocratic domination, is meant to and intended to operate upon economic structures, social institutions and customs, the phenomena of mental attitudes, political behaviour and practice, subjecting them all to a timeless, transhistorical, eternal, divine form. As the necessary foundation of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), Koranic Divine Law, in

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conditioning the discourse and practice of social control, makes theocracy the telos of mankind, and links the whole legal system to the politics or practice of domination. It is in the space of the interplay of the politics of domination and the practice of social control that the relation of Islamic ideology to the norms of social conduct established. The hold of Islamic ideology over juridical relations is articulated in that space, even though the technical use of the Sharia rules in society is essentially practical. The divergence between the Sharia and Koranic Divine Law is thus historically conditioned; it is not, however, in principle, theologically constituted. In other words, there is no separation in terms of their ‘metaphysical’ substantiation; the Sharia is not, in other words, a legal system that could have a de facto privilege as independent of Koranic Divine Law. And although it has, in its technical use, a ‘civil’ field of operation and function, Sharia legislation bears the mark of its origins. Koranic Divine Law is not, in short, an ideological site that disappears in the legal technicalities of the Sharia as if it is superseded by earthly, temporal legislation; all ‘schools of thought’ acknowledge the Sharia’s basis (asl) as belonging to God (Allah) alone; and anyone who even presumes that any other than God (i.e. the Koran) is the source of such legislation is committing the sin of shirk. The Sharia and Social Control The principle of an established Divine Law (i.e. as set forth in the Koran) implies that with the implementation of that law there must thus come into existence a ‘perfect and complete divine order’. Such a divine order can realize itself only through the striving of mankind in accordance with the spirit and letter of Koranic Divine Law – its realisation is mankind’s destiny. The deen of Islam is meant to be the vehicle of this process of realisation; and it achieves this result insofar as every particular life condition is governed (directed, controlled) by the force of faith inherent in it, which is translated into practice through the politics of domination. Individual believers become conscious of this destiny through ‘Tasleem’ (meaning ‘to surrender’) – i.e. surrendering themselves wholly to the Divine Law. But what is inherent in the concept of tasleem is the interactive role of belief in and awareness of the supremacy of God’s ‘Unseen Power’ (Al-Ghayb – power that stands beyond human knowledge) and that of surrendering to its force, the ways of its laws, in total servitude and worship (‘ibadah) in daily life, and in the organising and conduct of the social affairs of the community as a whole. Effectively, then, tasleem is essential to the striving of mankind for establishing an earthly order in accordance with God’s established Revealed Law. Koranic Divine Law, conceived as the positive exposition of the absolute Will of God, is thus drawn into the process of the politics of domination as the ideological force of the practice of tasleem. Surrendering to Koranic Divine Law (tasleem) is acknowledging the this-worldly force of God’s power as expressed by and through the divinely sanctioned authority of the Prophet and that of his successors. Consequently, the only possible form of authority is the theocratic form. The establishment of the divine order is thus predicated upon the discipline of ‘human will’ through tasleem universally (socially) effectuated by this form of authority. It is here, in the practicalities of the discipline of human will, that the Sharia has a decisive role and function. With the Sharia, the subjectivity of human will becomes an object of social control, and the discipline of it (of conscious subjectivity, and of individuality) the condition for an undisturbed functioning of the force of Koranic Divine Law by the given theocratic authority. We have, therefore, rules within the Sharia dealing with ‘acts of worshipful serving of Allah’ or dealing with Al-ibadat: the rituals of purification, of prayers, of charitable acts, of fasting, and of pilgrimage to Mecca. And also regulations dealing with ‘human intercourse and interactions’ or dealing with Almu’amalat (concerned with individual and collective conduct, personal and social behaviour): mercantile and financial matters, endowments, inheritance; as well as sexual practice, marriage, divorce and child care; ritual of slaughtering (and hunting);

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laws regarding food and drinks; regulations concerned with warfare and peace, treaties, oaths and pledges; judicial affairs, forms of evidence and witnesses; crime and penal punishment. And there are various categories of obligation and compulsion for the different rules and regulations; and even sub-categories of more technically specific rules, as in the case of crime, which is itself divided into three major categories – i.e. Hadd, dealing with serious crimes; Tazir, dealing with least serious crimes; and Qisas, concerned with revenge crimes, retaliation and restitution. The kind of social control envisaged by the implementation of the rules of the Sharia is, at least in principle, all-embracing; the degree of the imposition of these rules is set within five categories: obligatory, recommended, permissible, reprehensible and forbidden. There are rewards and punishments; there are responsibilities, entitlements and obligations laid down; there are boundaries and limits (huddud – pl. of hadd) to cover social and personal conduct, and more specifically for crimes (hadd crimes are, as noted, the most serious – such as murder, apostasy, war upon God, His Messenger, and upon Islam, as well as theft, adultery, etc.) In all aspects, no matter in what way the rules and regulations are technically divided and categorised, the essential purpose, over and above the general requirements of the administration of human interaction, is the instituting, functioning and operating of a legal system that enables the (near)total control of human conduct possible. What distinguishes the Sharia from other legal systems, however, is not this aim and the attempt at engineering and fulfilling the highest measure of control (since essentially that is the fundamental objective of every legal system in any class-divided society); its especial characteristics is quintessentially the reinforcement of the specifically theocratic form of domination – its principle function is to repress human conscious subjectivity by controlling acts and attitudes, social affairs and conduct, in the service of Allah and in accordance with His Will as set forth in the Koran, and represented on earth by His chosen appointees. It goes without saying that the Sharia’s introduction into the social relations of the actual Muslim world involved a more extensive problem than its theological justification on the basis of the Koran and its simple implantation; a problem whose solution and application required a historical process of political-ideological and cultural transformation. Its application to relations of social control, the discipline of ‘human will’, and the more or less thorough moulding of hitherto existing customs and laws by it, involved a process of development of specifically Islamic (or ‘Islamised’) network of institutions established to render the conquered population obedient to the authority of the Messenger of God and, subsequently, that of his successors. Mohammad’s conquest of Mecca and its surrounding pagan tribal communities, among them the ‘desert Arabs’, marked the first successful attempt to introduce the principle of tasleem in accordance with God’s Revealed Law into changing social and political relations: ‘Say the desert Arabs: “We believe.” Say thou [i.e. say you Mohammad to them]: “You believed not, but say you, we submit, for faith has not yet entered your hearts; and if you obey God and His Messenger, He will lessen not aught of your deeds…’(XLIX:14, my italics) This successful conquest, and the subsequent ‘conversion’ or submission based on tasleem, placed God’s Revealed Law (later to take the enduring written form of Koranic Divine Law) at the core of the politics of domination and placed Mohammad’s exercise of power, his socio-political and military actions and deeds, as the divinely sanctioned conduct to be emulated. Mohammad set the stage for the transformation of ‘custom’ into law and that of Revealed Law into actual law based on organised force and state power – thus the importance of the Hadith in the ideological justification and validation of Islamic jurisprudence. With the Hadith we have the interpretation of the Prophet’s conduct by which Muslim authority glorified its politics of domination as the legitimisation of the

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reality of the legal practice of social control based upon theocratic rule as sanctioned by the Koran. Chapter Four: Divine Power and Mohammad’s Apostleship The transition from the dogma of Divine Law to the domain of theocratic rule is an intrinsic part of the Koran. From its very opening chapter the issues of authority, of judgement, of law, and thus of obedience and servitude, are proclaimed and asserted as the fundamentals of faith. And from its very beginning, the Koran is concerned with the question of Divine Power and God’s bestowment of that power to whomsoever He wills. Therefore, just as we have in the first surah (Al-Fateha or The Opening) the divine stipulation of legislation and enactment, so, too, we have here in the same surah, the divine stipulation of empowerment and delegation of authority in the form of apostleship. And the two are, of course, inextricably connected. The sixth ayah, as was pointed out above, sets forth the divine stipulation of any enactment by the following statement: ‘Guide us in the Straight Way’ or ‘Confirm upon us the Straight Way’ [‘Ihdina al-sirat al-mustaqim’]. Al-sirat al-mustaqim, as we saw in the previous chapter, refers to the specific uniform and unbroken direction and manner of conduct without ambiguity or deviation which is the most sincere and shortest course, in time and space, to achieving the proper order of God’s Kingdom on earth – in other words, what we have is a reference to the divine stipulation of rules of conduct in life or the guidance and confirmation of Divine Law. And as it was also shown in the above chapter, the seventh ayah then goes on to assert the concrete earthly agency whose divinely approved conduct is the ‘Straight Way’ that all believers must emulate and follow – i.e. that form and manner of conduct, which is: ‘The way of those upon whom Thou has bestowed favours [bounties]…’(I:7, my italics) Here, a-n’amat, translated as ‘favours’ or even ‘blessings’(sic), is actually closer in meaning to ‘bounties’; its connotation is a ‘generous reward’ in acknowledgement of services rendered; these are persons singled out as being favoured by God (and as such rewarded). And here, in the above sentence, we thus have the divine stipulation of empowerment of apostles – that is, those persons whom God has favoured, and whose conduct in life is accordingly fully approved by Him, are the ones who set the standard of conduct for all the submitted (indeed, for the rest of mankind); and therefore, as such, are distinguished as ‘leaders’. The ayah is not a general statement regarding ‘all’ persons who are godfearing, who therefore are ‘rewarded’ for being morally upright; it is in fact quite explicit in proclaiming a specific category of righteous persons, the rewarded favoured ones. And in this it is setting forth the primary stipulation of earthly ‘leadership’ – i.e. only those persons upon whom God has bestowed bounties or favours are the custodians of Divine Law, of al-sirat al-mustaqim. Thus, ‘the Straight Way’ (the Divine Law) is followed in accordance with the direction and manner of life’s conduct decreed by God and observed by God’s favoured servants. The ‘Ideal’ Form of Divine Power The Opening surah (supposed to have been ‘communicated’ by the Angel Gabriel) is addressing all of mankind. It is, as mentioned earlier in the essay, a firm statement on sovereignty, promulgating the essential elements of Divine Power: firstly, God is the Lord of the Worlds (rabb al-alameen); secondly, He is the Master of the Moment (Day) of Judgment (malik-a yaumiddeen); thirdly, His is the confirmation (ihdina) of Divine Law (al-sirat al-mustaqim); and fourthly, His is the choice of ‘leaders’ (His favoured ones). The surah, therefore, gives in a very concise manner the fundamental stipulation of power that is then subsequently confirmed in the rest of the Koran. It is for this reason, as mentioned before, that the surah is regarded as the Mother or Essence of the Koran (Ummu al-Qur’an). For it establishes not only the locus of

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power but also its political form. From the Opening surah it is thus abundantly clear who is meant (supposed) to hold Absolute Sovereignty – God. He is the Rabb, that is, the Lord in its widest and deepest meaning – the One who gives nourishment, sustains and nurtures, protects and regulates life, and as such possesses everything; thus the One who consequently has absolute authority over all beings, over the worlds of heaven and earth. The point is reasserted at numerous places in the Koran, as, for example, in the following verses: ‘Verily, your Lord [rabb] is God who created the heavens and earth in six days, then established Himself upon the Arsh [i.e. the Throne of Absolute Power, of Supreme Authority]…Be it known! His is the creation and the Command; blessed [tabraka] is God, the Lord of the worlds.’(VII:54) And: ‘Then the most exalted is God, the True Master [Ruler]; no God is there but He, the Lord of graceful Arsh [al-arsh al-karim].’(XXIII:116) Thus: ‘This is God your Lord! His is the Kingdom; and those whom you call upon besides Him, own [master] not a straw.’(XXXV:13) For: ‘…Whose is the Kingdom this moment [yaum, day]? God’s, the One, the Subduer!’(XL:16) The title of Rabb belongs only to God. No-one, be he Mohammad, the Messenger of God, or any of his successors, the Caliphs (or the Sultans, etc., or the Imams), is entitled to be called or referred to as Rabb. Indeed, the Hadith forbids a servant (or a slave) to call his/her master Rabb (as in: ‘my Lord’). But here, then, if we have the locus of power (God as the Absolute Sovereign), we also have, as made abundantly clear, the political form of power: Divine Power that is granted by God to a select few, to those upon whom He has bestowed His bounties. For it is the path or the way of these righteous ones, these favoured ones, that all the submitted must follow; they are, therefore, the divinely chosen ones who represent, act and stand for, God’s power – these are, of course, first and foremost, the apostles, the messengers, the prophets: ‘Our Lord! Raise up a Messenger from amongst them, who shall recite to them Thy ayat [signs, revelations] and teach them the Book and the Wisdom…And who turns away from the creed of Abraham, he debases his soul. For indeed We have chosen him [Abraham, but by implication Mohammad, too] in this world; and verily, in the hereafter he is of the righteous ones.’(II: 129-30, my italic) The first condition of having the authority of a ‘leader’ is, therefore, to be ‘favoured’ by God. The instituting of Divine Power is thus directly connected to the authority of the righteous ones, the favoured ones, which then defines the actual political form of Divine Power. God’s (Allah’s) is the unifying power, which when transmitted to the life of mankind assumes the delegated form of theocracy. Divine Power is transmitted into a ‘subjective’ world, whose faith and self-certainty confronts an ‘objective’ world of uncertainty and necessity. The unifying force that is meant to remedy or resolve this contradiction is God’s ‘Straight Way’, al-sirat al-mustaqim, which is the way or path of the righteous, favoured ones. The righteous ones are distinguished from all other beings, including the believers in general (all the submitted, the Muslims), by their unique relation to God and to the world of mankind as a whole. God determines who is to be ‘inspired’ with authority, He chooses to instil the ‘spirit’ of Divine Power upon whomsoever He wills, which, of course, happens to be the person claiming prophethood, like Mohammad: ‘The Exalter of the ranks, the Lord of Arsh; He causes forth [instils] the spirit at His own behest upon whomsoever He wills of His servants, that he may warn of the moment [day] of meeting.’(XL:15) These ‘inspired-ones’ differ from the rest of believers in this respect, that they are chosen by God to communicate and express the unifying power which is God’s by mastering the manifold of determinate conditions they find, and by bringing all that is opposed to God’s ‘Straight Way’ (or to the Divine Law) into harmony with it: ‘…Verily, the most Honoured of you with God is the one of you who guards the most [God’s Straight Way, the Divine Law]…’(XLIX:13) Since this is not an immediate

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and ‘natural’ process, but the result of a constant active striving (struggling, fighting, or jihad) against ‘those inflicted with Thy [God’s] wrath’(I:7), the ‘harmony’ to be achieved prevails only as the result of the mediation of the righteous ones. Leaving aside all manner of theological apologia, the need for such a mediation can actually only be explained by the fact of the reality of political expediency. To rule in the name of God has been historically the most powerful and efficacious mode of political domination (until the rise of capital). Mohammad declared himself (or according to Koranic dogma, was proclaimed by God) as one of the righteous, favoured and chosen ones; divine mediation was his assumed function, which at the same time was perceived to have made him into an actual Leader. He followed in the footsteps of Abraham and the other prophets (or rather justified his apostleship in such manner), and used his function of divine mediation as a means for the exercise of power. In the history of the world’s three major monotheistic religions, Mohammad’s apostleship is the most unequivocally and unapologetically political; in and through it, the reality of Divine Power is conceived and instituted as immediately and directly political and is thus often perceived as the embodiment in actual practice of the ‘ideals’ of theocracy. It is, at any rate, proclaimed as the first model of the specifically Islamic ‘ideal’ theocracy. The Personification of Divine Power In the Koran Divine Power has a basic function in the world of mankind, that of giving an absolute centre of authority, of sovereignty. Mohammad established this through and in the form of his own apostleship: ‘Whoever obeys the Messenger [i.e. Mohammad], he indeed obeys God…’(IV:80; see also 59, 64, 69) And: ‘Say: Obey God and obey the Messenger…if you obey him [i.e. Mohammad], you are guided aright [you are on the right path]…’(XXIV:54) He had also set down his claim to ‘lead’ as a ‘proto-political ruler’ (by the authority of God) upon the precedence of past apostles: ‘And certainly We did write in the Psalms [al-Zabur – David’s book of Psalms] after the Reminder [here the ‘Reminder’ refers to Moses’ Torah] that the Land [the earth], My righteous servants [ibadaya al-Salaheen] shall inherit it.’(XXI:105) And he made the acknowledgement of or the belief in his apostleship a defining condition of faith, of belief in God, of being a Muslim: ‘Only those are believers who believe in God and His Messenger, and when they are with him [i.e. with Mohammad] on a collective social act [amr-jami’a], they go not away until they seek his permission; indeed, those who seek your permission are those who believe in God and His Messenger, so when they seek your permission for some affairs of theirs, give permission to whomsoever you please from among them, and seek pardon for them from God…’(XXIV:62) Indeed, to disobey Mohammad was made a kufr and severely punishable – the negative (and fear of divine retribution) in this case establishing Mohammad’s unquestioning authority: ‘…those who disbelieve and disobey the Prophet shall wish that the earth were levelled with them…’(IV:42) Mohammad’s first reflections on the political problem of power, thus, strike the pervasive note that the gaining of obedience is the general mark of authority. He had found the world around him adverse to his unifying ideals; this was patent in the numerous conflicts that he faced. How, then, was this world to be won over? His answer was in confirming himself the person chosen and favoured by God to be the exponent and executer of Divine Power: ‘…We have sent thee unto mankind as Messenger; and God is sufficient as witness.’ (IV:79) Apostleship was the key to the gaining of obedience, enduing the person of Mohammad with the ‘clothing’ of divine power (something that ‘rightly’ only belongs to God): ‘O you who believe! Be you not forward [insolent] in the presence of God and His Messenger…’(XLIX:1) In this instituted form of authority, the ‘Messenger’ and the ‘person’ became fused as the Prophet whose voice carried the full authority of his God and articulated the Truth of

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his God’s power: ‘O you who believe! Do not raise your voice above the voice of the Prophet, and do not speak loud to him as you speak aloud to others…’(XLIX:2) The verse is not merely commanding respect for the Prophet, but total obedience by way of acknowledging Mohammad’s ‘voice of authority’; metaphorically it is asserting his status: the statement that ‘no voice can be above that of Mohammad’s’ points to the high command of his word, for he speaks for God! But the apostleship of Mohammad was not (even after the formation of the umma) as yet a theocracy in the strict sense of the concept. Obedience was and had to be made to him in his personal capacity as the Messenger of God; obedience belonged to him as a man favoured by God. And it was as such that God would ‘protect’ him and his apostleship: ‘And they say: Obedience. But when they go out from your [Mohammad’s] presence, a party [group, sect] of them decides [plans] by night [i.e. secretly] upon doing otherwise than what you say; and verily God writes down what they decide by night [i.e. also secretly], therefore turn aside from them and trust in God and sufficient is God as a Protector [as advocator or defender of that trust – wakayulan].’(IV:81) Both historically and from the analysis of the Koran, it is clear that Mohammad’s apostleship only set the tone and, with the umma, the ‘ideal type’ for the political form of Divine Power. The tone changed, however, within a short period after the Prophet’s death, and reflections of this can be seen in the Koran. The ‘revealed truth’ of Mohammad’s recitation could not fit in with the expanding social and political realities of the Islamic movement, for it was concerned essentially with Mohammad’s apostleship attached to the tribal social nexus; its essential aim was the instituting of Divine Power as a unifying force under the personal leadership of Mohammad. And although even during his lifetime divisions within and among the community of believers had surfaced, the situation worsened considerably after Mohammad’s death. There were certain socio-political positions of power emerging from the internal crises of the early Islamic movement. The revealed truth of the Koran as Allah’s Constitution (i.e. the official version of the Holy Book in contrast to Mohammad’s personal intervention and recitation of revelations) then became the primary and the fundamental source (the other principal one being the Hadith) of the justification and legitimisation of such positions of power – taken up by the Prophet’s companions (and those nominated by them, particularly from among the Quraysh) and later on by the ‘learned’, the ‘knowledgeable’, the scholars of the Koran and of the Divine Law, the ulama (the theologians, jurists, the Imams of Faith and fiqh). It is as a result of this emergence of social distinctions that theocratic rule became the political form of Divine Power. Towards Theocratic Rule Historically, Mohammad’s personification of Divine Power that was behind the setting up of the umma as an ‘ideal’ model of Islamic rule lasted for no more than about ten years. And the model came to be ‘dissolved’, in any case, quite soon after the Prophet’s death (certainly quite irrevocably by 661 AD). Expansion, successful wars, increasing wealth, and a growing appreciation of power and the luxuries of life produced a ‘state-aristocracy’ dependent on the extraction and appropriation of surplus as tribute, and on gains from war, trade and commerce for the augmentation of power and wealth. In other words, state power fell into the hands of certain ‘privileged’ individuals and groups. In pre-Islamic times ‘privilege’ was a notion that arose and was defined from within tribal relations (it was, one could say, an organic aspect of the tribal social relations); with Mohammad’s Islamic movement, there came about a modification: the tribal aspect still continued to play an essential part in defining ‘privilege’ – to be a member of the Quraysh, or better still of Mohammad’s own clan

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or household, was and remained a crucial defining factor – but there came, in addition, another vital aspect: that of loyalty, devotion, unswerving commitment and dedication to the Prophet and his cause. Thus Mohammad’s companions or Sahaba – that is, those who not merely submitted to the Will of the One God but were closest to him and fought alongside him and distinguished themselves in practice – became a privileged group of individuals: ‘And whoever obeys God and the Messenger, these shall be with those God has bestowed bounties [favours] upon as from among the Prophets [al-Nabiyun – al-Nabee, the Prophet], and the Truthful [al-Sadiqeen, the ‘Sincere’], and the Martyrs [al-Shuhada, the Witnesses, as, in connotation, those who witness God’s ‘light’ and also ‘paradise’] and the Righteous ones [al-Salaheen]; and excellent are these as comrades [rafiqa – this is generally wrongly translated as ‘companions’ which is Sahaba]!’ (IV:69, my italic) Thus here, as it is clear from the above ayah, we have a ‘classification’ of persons who are considered in the Koran as privileged individuals for their obedience to God and Mohammad. But, as can be seen, the ayah clearly sets apart Mohammad (as the Messenger) as the highest earthly authority even in considering the other prophets; it seems also to distinguish the privileged persons from the prophets – for, as is stated, ‘these shall be with those’ whom God has favoured. They are, in other words, elevated individuals for being ‘privileged’ in the eyes of God, but they are ‘with’ and not equal to Mohammad. It is true that there is ambiguity in the language, but the notion of a ‘classification’ of ‘rank’ is certainly implicit in the overall gist of the verse. While Mohammad was alive, privilege of rank depended entirely on his personal ‘judgement’ as the Leader of the umma and because he was the Messenger of God. It was on the basis of this personal relation of dependence that individuals within the Islamic movement could, at their Prophet’s leave, achieve high rank. With the Prophet’s death the religiously modified tribal determination of privilege and rank was thrown into disarray. In the absence of the supreme Leader, the social contradictions inherent in the umma as the marriage of ‘communality of individuals’ (derived from pre-Islamic tribal relations) with a uniformed ‘proto-political organisation’ (derived from the ideologically structured monotheistic religious systems) surfaced. As a result, the political process that was pushed into the open manifested itself as a crisis of leadership or of succession. The need for a theocratic state proper, thus, arose when the contradictions of social and political life of the Islamic community could no longer be contained – when social contradictions had lost their living mediator, when the Islamic movement had lost its unifying authority with the death of Mohammad, its Prophet and Leader. With this loss, the movement became overwhelmed by pervasive conflicts that could no longer be controlled merely by the appeals and leadership of the Prophet’s companions within the existing proto-political structure of the umma. The historical conditions, in short, offered no adequate fulfilment of unification and communality; the ‘ideals’ of the umma acting in the name of God’s ‘unifying power’ were not actualised. It was under these conditions that Mohammad’s recitations became vital to establishing the ‘common interest’ of all Muslims, and were thus collected and compiled (and composed, edited and modified) into the Holy Book as Allah’s Constitution. Socio-political conditions demanded the transformation of the umma into a state structure that could function as the executive power of God’s Will. If divine will is the basic assumption behind the idea that the world is the ‘creature’ of God, divine power is the conception that expresses the means of fulfilment and imposition of divine will in the world. The theocratic state was the political form that best expressed and imposed God’s Will in the here and now. This state needed ideological legitimacy. The Koran was now charged with a historical mission – to give authority and

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legitimacy for theocratic rule as a means of possible unification. The conception of the unifying power of God became intimately connected with the reality of a state form that was independent of the community of Muslims. This was, in actual fact, the elevation of the realm of state power to the position of the sole domain of Divine Power conditioned by servitude and bondage. The Islamic state that evolved from and replaced the umma was thus in actuality as parasitic as it was despotic as all of the other past state structures throughout the Near East. But the myth of the early Caliphate as the continuation of the umma and hence as the ‘ideal’ model of an Islamic theocratic order prevails to this day. The basic ideas of authority and sovereignty taken from the Koran fulfilled themselves in the specific historical form that Divine Power assumed in this Islamic theocratic state, and the latter became central to the advance of specific class interests. Chapter Five: The Koranic Concept of ‘Faith’ and the Right to Rule ‘Say: O God, Master of the Kingdom! Thou givest the Kingdom to whomsoever Thou wills and takes away the Kingdom from whomsoever Thou wills, and Thou exalts whom Thou wills and Thou abases whom Thou wills; in Thine hand is the good; Thou has Power over all things.’ (III:25) According to the Koran, as we have seen, absolute power belongs to God alone. His is the Kingdom: ‘And God’s is the Kingdom of the heavens and the earth…’ (III:189) He is the Lord Sovereign of all beings: ‘Say: Who is the Lord of the heavens and earth? Say: God…He is One, All-Dominant, All-Mighty.’ (XIII:16) As the Ruler of the Lands (Malik-ul-Mulk, also translated as ‘Master of the Kingdom’) all beings are His servants: ‘There is not a single being in the heavens and earth but will come to God, the Beneficent, as a servant.’ (XIX:93) As the supreme Lord, it is God who grants power to whomsoever he wishes of His servants. But on what criteria, according to the Koran, is such divine authorisation of power based? And how does such an authorisation establishes the ideological (religious) justification of the Islamic theocratic political order and its agents? In other words, put simply, who among Allah’s servants has, according to the Koran, the right to rule? Before we look at this issue, it is important to note and stress the point here that what we are examining is not the question of the social formation of the dominant class. That issue is a historical problematic, requiring an empirical examination of the development of social relations within the regions (Middle East and Near East, etc.) in which the Islamic movement gained dominance. The problem considered here is to do specifically with the Koranic justification of the right to rule, the religious (ideological) grounds of the entitlement to earthly power. This is significant as more than a mere illustration of the abstract idea of ‘divine right’. It has definite practical significance in terms of the legitimacy of the theocratic political form of domination. The role of Koranic ideological legitimization, moreover, does not diminish in the actual historical development of the dominant class. The ideological functioning of the Koran, however, does make the class form of domination appear ‘arbitrary’, since it relates the order and form of domination to God’s Will. The Concept of Iman In the Koran, to reiterate, the Will of God is regarded as the basis of power. Power, divinely inspired and granted, is regarded as actual only owing to the ruling will of God and humanity’s task is to live in its actuality of total submission. The recognition of the ruling will of God, His power, is the function of faith; the assignment of that power in this world is the function of the practice of faith, of being and acting fully and sincerely in obedience to God’s Will. Upon this understanding of faith, in Koranic

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terms, God’s is the power that exists as cognition and life. As cognition and life, the ‘truth’ of His power is iman. Iman (generally translated as ‘belief’) designates the general form of total, unquestioning faith in God’s Will, and, at the same time, the true being of subjection which adequately represents this divine will. It represents the mode of existence that a subject, through the conscious negation of all other wills, has made its own life of servitude to the will of God. In its Koranic sense, iman is knowingly (i.e. with consciousness based on ‘understanding’ by means of ‘reasoning’) surrendering one’s will to God’s, submitting fully and totally to His Commands, to His Word (i.e. to the Koran) in obedience derived from the cognition of its truth; it is the highest degree or level of faith, intense and earnest conviction in the realisation of being a servant of God. Thus, in its Koranic sense, iman is ‘faith’ not only in the existence of One God and the absolute supremacy of His Will; it is that of the relation of the submitted person to the Will of God constituting a being which appears for God – it is the apprehension of a univocal relation of servitude. Iman is the foundation of all relation between God and the human world. On this basis, it can be said that iman is the ‘ideal’ form of faith expected of all who have submitted (all Muslims). This presupposition, however, entails two important consequences: Firstly, in the general (traditional) reading of the Koran, the principle of this ‘ideal’ form of faith is taken as the self-consciousness of submission to the One and Only God; it is the ‘ideal’ that in submitting all individuals must aspire to as a universal principle. Secondly, it is a notion that in its very ideality presupposes a given element of separation and distinction; for it involves a deeper mindset than that of ‘belief’ and presupposes full assent of the mind and thus certitude as well as trust in the ‘truth’ of God’s absolute supremacy. The ‘ideal’ notion is that iman is ‘faith’ that is derived from knowing the truth of divine power – knowledge of this truth brings forth the obedience of the individual as a faithful servant. This ideal form of faith (iman) is the necessary condition of being a true Muslim as distinguished from among the ‘multitudes’ who, for example, had (historically) submitted as a result of the victory of Islam: ‘When comes the help of God and the Victory. You see people entering the deen of God in multitudes.’ (CX: 1-2) The submission of the multitude is, of course, welcomed – ‘Celebrate then the praise of thy Lord and seek thou His protection…’ (CX:3) But the submitted in this case are not regarded as equal to the truly committed, the ones with iman. (see XLIX:14) Historically, of course, iman was a necessary condition demanded of those who first joined Mohammad in his struggles to establish Islam; the formation of the Islamic movement required a body of individuals with total commitment to Mohammad’s cause, it required a political/religious ‘vanguard’ – it was to these early recruits that the ideal form of faith as iman applied. With the expansion of Islam and the conversion of a mass of people, the notion of iman became in ordinary usage watered down, and thereby assumed to be applicable to all who have submitted. Thus all individuals adopting the Only True Faith were and are thereby referred to as ‘believers’, mu’mineen – a generalisation that conveniently masks the inequalities of rank, status, and eventually of class, which arose with the establishment and consolidation of the Islamic state. For this reason iman is generally (and superficially) taken as simply meaning ‘religious belief’ in its general conception – with this superficial understanding of iman, the relation of mankind and God thus appears as ‘reciprocal’. However, a closer scrutiny of the Koran reveals a more precise understanding of the meaning and conception of iman as that ideal form of faith which, though all Muslims must aim for, not all who have submitted actually possess. It is this ideal form of faith (iman) which defines the relation of individuals to divine power in its political form, and, through the reality of this political form, to its adequate mode of practice. From

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this reading the relationship is not only not reciprocal, but also something, obviously, more than a univocal relation between God and the submitted population (the Muslim community). Those who, according to the Koran, possess this ideal form of faith are considered from among all of Allah’s servants as being more distinguished: ‘Is then he who knows that what has been revealed [sent down] unto thee [i.e. unto Mohammad] from thy Lord is the Truth like him who is blind? Only those possessed of understanding will bear [this] in mind.’ (XIII:19) If God’s Will is conceived as the actual creator of the world, it has to prove its power by releasing itself into the social world, that is, into life. Actual power, of course, does not reside beyond this world, but exists only in the social process that perpetuates it in its mystified form. No ‘absolute power’ exists outside this process. But as the Koran depicts it, divine power is absolute and contains the truth of all worldly powers. Power in this absolute sense is God’s alone: ‘He [God] shares not in His Power [Sovereignty of rule and judgment] anyone.’ (XVIII:26) The task of iman is to translate this idea of divine power into the actual worldly power by being the fundamental condition and necessary attribute of having authority to institute the power of God. The Koran gives the prerequisite for worldly power in the very make-up of individuals, their commitment and conviction to serving the One and Only God and His Messenger based on the highest level of faith, on their iman: ‘Say thou: Everyone acts according to his own disposition [character or bent of mind]; thus your Lord best knows who is the best guided in the Right Way.’ (XVII:84, my italics) Of its very nature, iman has no autonomous reality apart from the individual subject; it has in itself no external objectivity. The individuals have iman only when they are recognised by God (i.e. as stated in the Koran) as being true to their act of submission and fulfilling the conditions vowed upon that act: ‘Verily, thy Lord, He best knows who goes astray from His Way, and He best knows those who follow the Right Way.’ (VI:117) It is as such that only ‘those who follow the Right Way’ (i.e. ‘God’s Way’ according to the Koran) are regarded as having iman. But from this general sense of ‘belief’ the Koran actually specifies a distinguished category of individuals: ‘And of those whom We have created are a community who guide with the Truth and do justly adhere to it.’(VII:181; my italics) The individuals collectively categorised as ‘ummat yahoudun’ – generally translated as ‘a people’ or ‘a nation’ who guide – is actually a ‘distinguished’ community or grouping within a larger entity, as is clear from a reference to such a community identified from among Moses’ people: ‘And of Moses’ people [qum-e Musa] is a community who guide [ummat yahoudun] with the Truth…’(VII:159; my italics) At any event, such a distinguishing feature of a community who guide others is, of course, something divinely ordained – it is God’s decision: ‘Whomsoever God guides, he is the one who follows the Right Way…’(VII:178) The distinction between the submitted (Muslims) in general and those who are guided (by God) to guide others is certainly considered as highly significant in terms of status and rank; Mohammad himself was thus guided to guide others: ‘Say: Verily my Lord has guided me to the Right Way, the established Deen [i.e. the way of life based on the ‘Right Way’ or God’s Way], the faith of Abraham, the upright one [hanifa]…’(VI:161) And this was important enough for Mohammad to take into account in his relations with his close companions: ‘Indeed, a Messenger has come to you from among yourselves; grievous to him is your falling into distress, solicitous regarding your welfare; towards the believers [i.e. towards the mu’mineen Mohammad is] compassionate, merciful.’ (IX:128; my italics) He was a leader divinely chosen from among those who were fully committed to his cause, of whose faith (iman) there could be no doubt, who were thus regarded as true believers, mu’mineen, for whom, as his erstwhile companions-in-arms, he had special regard. For, such total commitment

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to Mohammad’s apostleship, being regarded, ipso facto, as unswerving commitment and an oath of allegiance to God, would be looked at with favour by God as a mark of distinction: ‘Verily, those who swear allegiance to thee [i.e. to Mohammad], indeed, swear allegiance to God. The hand of God is over their hands…’(XLVIII:10; my italics) What the above verse (and others like it) is actually conveying is the divine endorsement of these committed followers of Mohammad, these companions who as such had formed themselves into a ‘company’, a community (or group) of believers, mu’mineen, as a specially distinguished body of individuals: ‘Indeed, God was well pleased with the believers [al-mu’mineen] when they swore allegiance [pledged their loyalty] to you [i.e. to Mohammad] under the tree, as He did know what was in their hearts, so He sent down tranquillity on them and rewarded them with near victory.’(XLVIII:18) We have, therefore, the nomination of a distinguished group or community of individuals who are, for their iman in the apostleship of Mohammad, singled out as the believers, al-mu’mineen, within the entire Islamic movement from among the whole of the submitted who are, by contrast, regarded as ‘a people who believe’ or ‘a believing people’, qum yuminun (qum meaning ‘folk’ or ‘people’ – sometimes misleadingly translated as ‘a nation’ – stressing a socio-cultural rather than a national entity; and yuminun, from iman, ‘believing,’ as distinct from al-mu’mineen, also from iman, meaning ‘the believers’). This difference in understanding, also clearly a translation issue, could, of course be regarded as merely a matter of ‘interpretation’. But however it is looked at, there is no doubt in the fact that there is a distinction made in the Koran between mu’mineen and all those who have submitted (i.e. the Muslims in general). The Mu’mineen as a ‘Distinguished’ Group Mohammad’s apostleship and his recitation of divine revelations (and the Koran itself as the written/composed collection of the recitations, of course) are certainly an authority and a guidance for all the submitted; but it is only the mu’mineen as a cadre or a contingent and corps made up of Mohammad’s companions who are guided to guide others. And this is because of their iman in Mohammad and the cause of God (thus they are the mu’mineen): ‘Mohammad is the Messenger of God, and those who are with him are vehement [i.e. committed with heart and soul, their lives] against the unbelievers [al-kufar-e, pl. of kafar, also al-kafareen – generally translated as either ‘unbelievers’ or ‘disbelievers’; kafar, from kufr, has the connotation of ‘concealing’ or ‘covering’ what is or should be regarded as the truth and thus resulting in showing a lack of belief in Mohammad’s recited revelations and rejecting the guidance which is so patently provided by the Divine One for one’s benefit; it is thus that it also denotes being ‘ungrateful’ and so ‘sinful,’ too], compassionate among themselves…’(XLVIII:29; my italic) The core meaning or signification of being ‘compassionate among themselves’ is in the existence of a bond based on having iman in the cause: ‘…God has endeared the faith [al-iman] unto you, and made it attractive in your hearts, and made abhorrent unto you unbelief [Kufr] and transgression [fusuq – fasiq – denoting going beyond the limits of the Law]; these are they who are the Right Guided.’(XLIX:7; my italics) We have here, therefore, a body of men (though there were a few exceptional women among them) considered by God (in the Koran) as an ‘elite’ community or group within the Islamic movement. That the group is distinguished from the rest of the Muslim community is quite clear from the following verses: Firstly, we have the Muslim community as a whole placed above the rest of mankind: ‘You are the best [leading, outstanding] community [umma] raised for [the benefit and guidance of] mankind; you enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong [amr bil

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ma’roof wa nahya anil munkar – this phrase is a Koranic legalist convenance, meaning a fixed form of conduct; i.e. strictly in accordance with Divine Law] and believe in God…’(III:110) And therefore as such: ‘Hold fast by the cord [covenant] of God all together and be not disunited, [as] when you were enemies [i.e. as belonging to different clans/tribes hostile to each other], and remember the bounty [favour] of God bestowed upon you when He united your hearts and by His favour you became brethren…’(III:103) But then, secondly, following on, we have a group from among the entire Muslim community singled out as the ‘elite’, the ‘vanguard’ and the ‘torchbearers’: ‘And from among you [i.e. among all the Muslims] there should be a community [a group, a party] who call [you] unto virtue and enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong; and these are they who shall be successful.’(III:104; my italic) Thus, the relation of the submitted to God – as His servants, as being for God – is established only through a distinct body of individuals from among the submitted themselves; in actual fact therefore the Muslim’s very existence as a Muslim consists in his/her ‘being’ for another Muslim, that is, for the person of Mohammad, initially and primarily (though later for the person nominated and selected to succeed him): ‘But no! By thy Lord! They will not be true [real] believers until they make thee [i.e. Mohammad] Judge in all that is in dispute between them and thereafter find not in their hearts any reservation concerning that which thou decides and submit in full surrender [tasleem, surrender].’ (IV:65) The concept of iman plays a central role in this: in its hold on consciousness, it transforms concrete political power into the living embodiment of God’s Will, so that in obeying and serving God, the submitted is actually obeying and serving Mohammad (at least initially), and later his successors: ‘And if they intend to act unfaithfully towards you [i.e. towards Mohammad], so indeed they acted unfaithfully towards God before, but He gave you Mastery [Power] over them; and verily, God is the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.’(VIII:71) The mastery of Mohammad and the bondage of the submitted (Muslims) result from a political relationship rooted in a definite social mode of life which is expressed in the Koran, with the aid of the concept of iman, in a ‘reified’ relationship as the Lordship of Allah and the bondage of Muslims (including Mohammad and all his successors). The Koran actually presupposes iman as the ‘experience’ (cognition and life) in which the ‘consciousness’ of God’s Will must prove itself in the servitude of the submitted that determines his/her whole existence (‘being’), and that upon which alone actual power is held (possessed). The body of ‘devotees’, with Mohammad at its head, is not made up of individual Muslims who merely happen to believe in God, in His Will, etc., but are essentially the mu’mineen; their iman is their being: ‘Say: I am commanded that I should serve God, being devoted [mukhlasa] to His deen [Way of life].’(XXXIX:11) And: ‘Verily, believers are only those whose hearts become full of fear when God is mentioned, and when unto them are recited His revelations their iman is heightened [intensified], and in their Lord do they trust. Those who establish [i.e. as in to serve a definite purpose] prayer and of what We have given them spend [in the Way or cause of God]. Those, and they alone, are the believers in truth; for them are exalted rank [darajat – high degree or grade of status or darajah] with their Lord, and forgiveness and bountiful [karim, beneficent] sustenance.’(VIII:2-4) There is no question that the Koran recognises that not every individual who submits is necessarily (or automatically) one of the mu’mineen: ‘And [even] if We had prescribed [decreed] for them: Lay down your lives or go forth from your homes, they would not have [all] done it except a few of them; and if they had done what they were exhorted [directed, instructed to do], it would have certainly been better for them and

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best in strengthening [them as a group]. And then We would certainly have given them of Our own accord a great reward. And We would certainly have guided them upon the Straight Way [al-sirat al-mustaqim, i.e. Divine Law].’(IV:66-68) The condition laid down here is quite clear: to become one of the mu’mineen – and thus to be rewarded by God and guided upon the Divine Law – a submitted individual would need to be so committed as to lay down his/her life for the cause! Such commitment comes only from iman; and in recognition of this, the individual who demonstrates his/her iman, in showing the preparedness of acting on it, becomes in the eyes of God (and according to His Will) one of the distinguished group of mu’mineen similarly favoured as the Prophets: ‘And whoever obeys God and His Messenger [Mohammad], these are with those upon whom God has bestowed favours; of the Prophets, and the Truthful Ones [al-Sadiqun or al-Sadiqeen, from sadiq ‘to be truthful’] and the Witnesses [al-Shohada – ‘Martyrs’] and the Righteous Ones [al-Salaheen]; and excellent are these as comrades [rafiq].’(IV:69) The historico-political distinction between Mohammad’s comrades (companions) and the rest of the Muslims, which was later transformed into a Koranic justification of proper social (class) distinction, is voiced in the Koran effectively to establish it as an example to illustrate the general rule (though it could have possibly been placed there as a result of a much later political deliberation, intentionally and designedly). Thus we have the following verse: ‘Verily, those who believed and migrated and fought with their possessions and their lives in the Way of God, and those who gave shelter and helped – these are the guardians [vali] of one another; and those who believed and they did not migrate – not yours is their guardianship until they migrate…’(VIII:72; my italics) The historical act of ‘migration’ (emigration or hijrah, when Mohammad had found it politically necessary to leave Mecca for Medina), being a sign of the iman and devotion to Mohammad and his cause, is here a symbolic expression of political distinction. Thus, among all the submitted, those who had iman in the Prophethood of Mohammad and ‘…migrated and fought with you [i.e. with Mohammad], they are of you; and the relationship [as like blood relations] are nearer to each other in the Written [Book of] Ordinance of God; verily, God knows all things.’(VIII:75; my italics] Now, these are regarded as the mu’mineen – the distinguished community or group among all the Muslims whose members are as close as blood relations of Mohammad (some indeed were, like his cousin and son-in-law Ali ibn Abu-Talib, the fourth Caliph). It is, indeed, to this group that Mohammad relates himself, which God then bestows His favour on and blesses them with His ‘Divine Tranquillity’: ‘Then did send down God His Tranquillity upon His Messenger and upon the mu’mineen…’(IX:26) And not only does Mohammad belong to this distinguished community, but he was chosen by God from among its devotional members. This alone, if nothing else, makes the mu’mineen a politically distinguished and socially privileged group. For, what could be more estimable, more honorific, than having the Prophet himself chosen from among this group and thus considered as a Mu’min (mu’min, from iman, pl. mu’mineen):‘Indeed, God has conferred His favour upon the mu’mineen when He raised up among them a Messenger [i.e. Mohammad] from themselves, to recite unto them His revelations [ayat] and to sanctify [purify] them, to teach them the Book and the Wisdom, though before this they were in manifest error.’ (III:164; my italics) The ideological significance of Mohammad as a mu’min and raised from among the mu’mineen to the status of a Messenger of God is that it justifies (in religious terms) the privileged political status of mu’mineen within the early Islamic movement and hence at later stages also that of the politically dominant class.

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Iman: the Illusion of Certitude The conscious practice of iman is part of the very content of God’s (i.e. the Koran’s) ‘Right Way’, so that the latter operates as authority based on God’s Will only insofar as it is taken into the subject’s will and influences his/her acts. The roles of Mohammad and the Koran are, of course, crucial in this; it is with Mohammad’s recitation of God’s revelations and the making of the Koran as the Islamic state’s codex that the submitted ‘see’ the errors of their past ‘way of life’ and among these some actually become distinguished as the mu’mineen. For this there are, initially, two interlinked conditions: the requisite of ‘affirmation’ and that of ‘comprehension’. With affirmation, the submitted not only profess their obedience to the One God and His Messenger verbally – known as iqrar bil-lisan – but need also to obey with heartfelt conviction – known as tasdiq bil-qalb. There is then also the condition of comprehension of the Right Way as set out in the Koran, which involves not merely an ‘understanding’ of the basic message of the Koran as practical guidance – an understanding based on what is known as tazakkur – but the comprehension of the Truth and Wisdom of God’s Word and the proper cognition of the Right Way – based on what is known as tadabbur. But these conditions do not yet make the submitted into a mu’min. What is, finally, in addition, required is the acting upon the above conditions. Iman becomes an ideologically substantive force, therefore, only if the subject, being fully cognizant of the absolute supremacy of God’s Will, submits to His Right Way as set forth in the Koran (as revealed by Mohammad) and acts on it with consciousness of its Truth. A Mu’min, in its strict Koranic conception, is not, in other words, a person who has simply submitted to the ‘right deen’, but one who affirms and comprehends the truth of the divinity of the Koran and discharges God’s Law and promotes and propagates His Right Way – he/she is an unwaveringly committed person, with conviction in and knowledge of the Book and of God’s Wisdom who institutes divine power and acts to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. The distinguishing feature of being a Mu’min (or Mu’mineen as a privileged group) depends on the individual’s ability to, on the one hand, grasp the Truth of God’s Word and thus grasp the particular interest of the ‘right deen’ (Islam) and, on the other, on the will, conscious practice and vigour in making the particular interest of the Islamic way of life the universal interest of mankind. True, that as a general principle, this is, ideally, the duty of all Muslims. But the Koran recognises the influence of what are called ‘low desires’ or following one’s caprice and self-interest – regarded as a consequence of the negative forces of Shaitan, or Satan, inherent in life – so that not all who have submitted fully grasp and act upon God’s Will and execute His Right Way: ‘…And who is more erring [astray] than he who follows his own low desires [caprices] without any guidance from God?’(XXVIII:50) As servants of God, the submitted or Muslims are merely agents of His Will. As social individuals they, naturally, have particular wants and interests that influence their actions. It is when personal interest coincides or becomes identical with the interest of serving God (or rather, with the universal interest of Islam), of being an agent of His Will, that consciousness becomes conditioned by iman. Individuals who, as servants of God, achieve such a level of conviction, and who demonstrate their commitment to the cause of Islam in actions and deeds, are distinguished as Mu’mineen: ‘The mu’mineen are only those who believe in God and His Messenger then not doubting their [conviction] thereafter and [who] fight [struggle] with their possessions [i.e. putting to use their wealth or possessions] and their lives [i.e. laying down their lives] in the Way of God; they are the Truthful Ones.’ (XLIX:15) In fact, what is interesting is that God, apparently, makes His signs (revelations) manifest only to those with such irresistible certitude of the Truth of His power, grace and glory – i.e. to those whose iman has brought on a mental state that involves the illusion of certainty in the Truth of the Koran, that involves the illusion of knowledge and reasoning in the conviction

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of the Truth (or objectivity) of God’s Right Way. These are persons for whom the divine signs are made clear: ‘And those who know not [have no cognition of the Truth of divine power] say: Why does not God speak to us or why no signs [ayat, revelations] come to us?...We have indeed made clear [manifest] the signs [ayat] to persons [people] who are with certitude.’ (II:118) Such individuals among the servants of God (among all Muslims) are ‘inspired’ to have authority and are regarded above others: ‘And lose you not heart and grieve you not, for you shall gain the upper hand, if you are mu’mineen.’ (III:139) Iman and the Right to Rule However, this ‘inspiration’ is not granted to all the submitted: ‘Had We willed, certainly We would have given every soul its guidance…’ (XXXII:13) Rather, as we are repeatedly told: ‘…but God guides whom He wills, and He knows best the followers of the Right Way.’(XXVIII:56) And: ‘Indeed, We have sent down [revealed] clear [explanatory] signs; and God guides whom He wills unto the Right Way.’(XXIV:46) It is only those who have iman, those whom God recognises as the true followers of His Word (the Koran) and His Messenger, that is, the mu’mineen, who are thus inspired to lead: ‘And indeed, We made the Word come unto them so that they may be mindful. And those whom We gave the Book before it, they are believers in it. And when it is recited unto them, they say: We believe in it; verily, it is the Truth from our Lord…’(XXVIII:51-53) Upon this basis comes worshipful active obedience (servitude or ibadah), which thus results in the granting of success, authority and leadership: ‘The response of the mu’mineen, when they are summoned unto God and His Messenger that He may judge between them, needs only be to say: We hear and we obey; and these it is that are the successful. And he who [thus] obeys God and His Messenger, and fears God, and keeps his duty [to] Him; these it is that are the achievers.’(XXIV:51-52) It is now that the promise of power is made: ‘God has promised to those of you who believe [have iman] and do the right deeds [‘amalual-salaha – often translated as ‘good deeds’ actually connotes actions or deeds that are ‘good’ or right for the cause] that He will certainly appoint them rulers [successors] in the earth as He appointed rulers [successors] those before them, and that He will most certainly establish for them their deen [their ‘way of life’ or Islam as a system of life] which He has chosen for them, and that He will most certainly, after their fear, give them security in exchange; they shall worshipfully serve Me, and not associating anything with Me; and whoever is ungrateful [kufr, disbelieves] after this, these are the transgressors.’(XXIV:55) In terms of the Koran’s presupposition of the All-powerful sovereignty and supremacy of God’s Will, the denial of divine guidance to ‘every soul’ seems quite mysterious. Why, if God is so powerful in all things, does He not guide all mankind equally? Why, with His supremacy of power in all fields and aspects of human affairs, does He allow there to be ‘ungratefulness’, ‘disbelief’, and ‘sinfulness’, among His servants and does not enforce His Will upon the ‘transgressors’ before their act of transgression? More strange seems the fact that God, the Almighty, is unable to maintain His guidance to check the already submitted from going ‘astray’, of becoming a kafar, as is evident from the following verse: ‘How shall God guide a people who become ungrateful after their having iman [kufrowoa ba’da imanahim] and after they had borne witness that the Messenger [Mohammad] was true, and clear evidence [‘arguments’] had come to them [i.e. having witnessed clear evidence of Mohammad’s apostleship]…?’(III:86) Indeed, there are verses in the Koran that state, categorically and emphatically, the ‘unwillingness’ of God in aiding, guiding, or pardoning a once ‘believer’ who has gone ‘astray’ due to his/her kufr: ‘Verily, those who believed then disbelieved, again believe and again disbelieve, then intensified [their] disbelief, God will not pardon them, nor will He guide them in the Way [i.e. in the Right Way].’(IV:137; my italics)

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Whatever the theological response to such questions, within the actual historical context of Mohammad’s apostleship, and even more particularly that of the making of the Koran after his death, what is undeniable is the political motive and agenda behind this issue of the denial of divine guidance to every soul. In other words, there was politics behind this issue which the verses reflect in mystified, religious form; the matter is directly connected to a struggle within the Islamic movement itself, a struggle against those whom Mohammad, but particularly after his death, the dominant class, the controllers of the Islamic state, regarded as dissenters, nonconformists, and apostates. Such verses as the above express the ideological aspect of the ongoing political infighting that engulfed Islam from its birth to the present. In fact, the struggle against dissenters – whom the Koran generally labels as the ‘hypocrites’, munafiqun or munafiqeen, and regards as the most damnable – was (and is) an ardent duty considered as in someway more intense and hateful than fighting the so-called ‘infidel’ non-believers (for example, as regards Jews and Christians) – the dissenters, hypocrites, are on a par with idolaters and unbelievers or kafareen. Thus, following the above quoted verse, we have this statement: ‘Announce to the hypocrites [munafiqeen] that for them there shall be a painful torment [chastisement]: Those who take the kafareen for guardians [vali] rather than the mu’mineen; do they seek honour from them?...surely, then you would be like them! Verily, God will gather the munafiqeen and the kafareen in Hell all together.’(IV:138-140) At any event, these questions are raised here not as an ‘atheistic’ challenge, but simply to make a point that has political relevance. The basic Koranic ‘answer’ to such questions, notwithstanding the centuries of Islamic scholarly debates and discussions, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties, comes simply down to and is based on the dogma of divine will – it is God’s decision and He wills as He pleases! To question the dogma is in fact to lack iman in the Koran as the Word of God – upon the latter, it is as clear as noon-day, that God, by His Will, creates life in such a way as He pleases and gives guidance and the right to rule to whomsoever He pleases. The enigmatic aspect of this issue, therefore, appears to have no solution outside of the orbit of faith; the mystery proceeds from the nature of the determining ‘will’, that is, God’s Will – what the imagination seizes as Divine must be the Truth. Yet, for all that, the Koranic concept of iman, understood and looked at politically, does offer an answer. For, however varied the metaphysical and theological arguments (or reasoning), in reality and in the actuality of the social and political life, it is, of course, not God’s Will, but the will of those who have power (from Mohammad himself to those of his companions and later successors) that assumes universality; to be sure, its universality appears to be a function of iman, so that it is the will of the mu’mineen that becomes the determining will. Substitute, therefore, for ‘God’s Will’ Mohammad’s and, after his death, his successors’ will and later that of the dominant class’s will and interest, as expressed through the form of the state, and the issue becomes far clearer. Now, with regards to the force of this will as law: it is an objective fact, that the force of this will as law is a function of a political order that legitimises its existence essentially on the basis of iman in the Koran as the Word of God, which as such appears as derived from the Will of God and seems something transcendent. In political terms, therefore, one can see a kind of rationale behind God’s (i.e. the Koran’s) exclusion of ‘every soul’ from receiving divine guidance. The denial of divine guidance to all, besides reflecting an aspect of the political struggle within the Islamic movement, at the same time, allows the justification of the existence of rank within the movement, and after Mohammad’s death, the legitimisation of political stratification of officialdom within the consolidating and expanding Islamic state; an individual’s high rank and position is thus ‘perceived’ as a consequence of God’s

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willingness to give him/her His guidance! Divine guidance is thereby reserved only for those individuals who have the form of faith as iman, which thus makes them ‘special’, a distinguished, privileged social layer: ‘Verily, of mankind the nearest [in status] to Abraham, are surely those who followed him and this Prophet [i.e. Mohammad] and those who believe [i.e. in Mohammad’s cause]; and verily, God is the Guardian [vali] of the mu’mineen.’(III:68) There is thus a political objective hidden in the mystery of God’s unwillingness to grant guidance to ‘every soul’ – cunningly, it is the Koran’s way of sanctioning the right to rule, as it is the religious construction that endorses rank, status and class divisions. With the Koranic notion of faith or iman, those dominating the movement, and at a later stage dominated the state, justified their position and status, and made this ideological ploy appear as the work of the Divine One; the recognition in the Koran of a distinction between those who submit and those among the submitted who have iman conveys this message: ‘Say the desert Arabs [i.e. the Bedouins]: We believe. Say thou [unto them]: You do not believe; so say you: We submit; for iman has not yet entered your hearts…’ (XLIX:14) To submit – i.e. to become a Muslim – is not yet to have iman. The latter qualifies a Muslim as a mu’min – i.e. a member of the mu’mineen as a distinguished and privileged group: ‘The mu’mineen are those who have iman in God and His Messenger and attain the status of having no doubt whatsoever and fight with their possessions [wealth] and their lives in the Way of God…’(XLIX:15) And thus: ‘These shall be granted their reward twice, because they are steadfast and they counter evil [deeds, acts] with good [deeds]…’(XXVIII:54; my italics) The mu’mineen, in short, are, as a socio-political group, the hypostatic subject of the Islamic theocratic state; divine power is a metaphysical substitute for this real organ of power. Ideologically, the Koran justifies the right of the mu’mineen to rule and, in constitutional terms, it provides the authorisation of their political power. In terms of the specifically Islamic religious ideology, with the exaltation of divine will (Allah’s or God’s Will), the Koranic notion of iman provides the principle for distinguishing individuals as agents of divine power from among all of God’s servants. It is true at the same time that the abstract religious equality of Muslims (all the submitted) before the One God is a fundamental principle set forth in the Koran; it is a principle based on the presupposition of the absolute supremacy of God’s Will, His power – thus all individuals are His servants, including the Prophet himself. However, this abstract equality of individuals before God as His servants does not eliminate the inequalities of the level or degree of conviction and cognition (of knowledge, understanding and comprehension) of God’s Way, His Law, of the Right Way, of the Right Deen chosen by Him, as set out in the Koran, among the submitted, as well as the inequalities of action, deeds, and practice consequent upon the latter. The abstraction of the equality of all Muslims as servants of God, moreover, in no sense removes the specific selection of certain individuals as ‘more equal’ before God in status than other Muslims. The Koran proclaims the selection of such individuals as a ‘divine favour’ that their iman confirms; individuals who are favoured by God with insight or knowledge or cognition of the Truth, in other words, corroborate their selection by the ‘proof’ of their iman. Thus, according to the Koran, God grants knowledge or cognition of the Truth contained in the Koran not to all Muslims, but only to a selected few, so that upon such an understanding they would have iman in it: ‘And that those who have been given knowledge [‘ilm] may know that it is the Truth from your Lord, so they may believe in it…and verily, God is the Guide of those who believe in the Straight Way [al-sirat al-mustaqim, divine law].’(XXII:54; my italics) What we have here, therefore, is a justification of rank, status, of those who occupy positions of authority within the movement and subsequently within the established Islamic state.

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Iman and ‘Ilm are, in Koranic terms, two sides of the same coin; they are together the principal factors in the justification of ‘authority-status’, of the right to rule. They are categories that appear in the Koran as both conditions of authority and the reason given for inequalities of status and for socio-political differentiation within the ‘House of Islam’. Those who ‘know’ are not, as far as the Koran is concerned, equal to those who ‘do not know’: ‘…Are those who know and those who do not know alike?’(XXXIX:9); and the same goes for a person who is considered a mu’min and one who is a transgressor: ‘Is he then who has iman like him who is a transgressor?’(XXXII:18; a ‘transgressor’, it should be noted, is not necessarily an ‘unbeliever’, but a submitted, a Muslim, who goes against the limits prescribed in the Koran). The mu’mineen, and among them those who possess knowledge of God’s Truth – or as they are referred to in the Koran, the ‘well-rooted in Knowledge’ (alrasikhuna fil ‘ilm; see III:7) – are guided by God to be the guardians of His Way of life, and of all the submitted (of the entire community of Muslims), and as such are regarded as a distinguished group, favoured by God to lead/rule and triumph on earth: ‘Verily, only God is your Guardian [Vali] and His Messenger and those who believe [posses iman]…Whoever takes God and His Messenger and those who believe for a guardian [a Vali], verily, [they are] the Party of God [Hizeb-al-Allah or ‘Hezbollah’]; they are those that shall be triumphant.’(V:55-56; my italics) The Koran’s abstract universality of equality is an ideological construct. In proclaiming its principle of fundamental equality of all the submitted, the Koran creates the illusion of the communality of interests, and as the constitutional basis of the Islamic order, it generates the perception of being the only source for the rectification of social inequalities and injustices without upsetting the socio-political order based on it that, by its very nature, demands the continuance of inequalities and injustices as a constitutive element of its existence as a theocracy. In all this the concept of iman is crucial. Mohammad’s companions, and his later successors, used the concept of iman as a means to substantiate the Koran as the ultimate and final Word of God so that upon which their right to rule could be justified as divinely preordained. In the making of the Koran, they were placed as the ‘inheritors’ of it: ‘Then We made the inheritors of the Book those whom We chose from among Our servants…’(XXXV:32) The beauty of the concept of iman is, indeed, in its abstractedness; it allows a general application, so that within its subjective understanding it promotes the illusion of universal equality with its promise of ‘divine inspiration’ – in effect iman appears as a necessary condition of submission as such, of becoming a Muslim. However, firmly based upon its original understanding, which was a condition applied to Mohammad’s hardcore followers and differentiated these from not only those who opposed him but also from the nominal converts to his cause (Islam) and the ‘hypocrites’, it became an integral element in the justification of command and control of the Islamic state and hence of the despotic form of domination of Muslim society. Chapter Six: The Divine Gift of ‘Knowledge’ as a Source of Power ‘…God will exalt in rank [darajah] those who believe and those who have been granted knowledge. And God is aware of all you do.’(LVIII:11) As we have seen, with iman the grounds for the right to rule appears firmly theological: Koranic dogma justifying the political motive by exalting faith to a form that involves conviction, active commitment and spirited certitude based on the cognisance of the Truth of God’s Word. The socio-political mechanism of domination seizes, as it were, onto iman and ‘nurtures’ it to assert itself as a divine force; with this, the subjective aspect becomes distorted so that in consciousness God’s Will as

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revealed in the Koran appears as the fateful power ruling over mankind. Essential to the preponderating influence of this reified form of consciousness is the divine gift of knowledge or ‘ilm. Thus, in the general opinion of the so-called ‘favoured’ Muslims, the righteous, the mu’mineen, from Mohammad himself to all his subsequent successors, there was a clear recognition of the fundamental significance of the cognition of the Truth of divine revelations through and by means of ‘ilm. Though there are variations and differences in the presentation of the argument on this point, the gist of the idea set down in the Koran, as I see it, is as follows: The Will of God and His laws have to be ‘realised’ as the Truth; yet they cannot be realised as such without the demonstration of the proof of their Truth; but the proof cannot be demonstrated and known unless the demonstration first has the guidance of knowledge or ‘ilm; which in turn depends on the Will of God Himself, upon whose guidance and benefaction ‘ilm is gained, by means of which the cognition of the Truth is arrived at. Thus, as if on a divine merry-go-round, in attempting to demonstrate the issue on the basis of the Koran, we can go on in circles, ad infinitum. In considering the concept of ‘ilm, the logic of the Koran takes us nowhere except to God and His Will; its ‘rationality’ in expounding, through ‘argumentation’ and reasoning, evidences or proof of the Truth realised through knowledge is of the kind that begins with the most irrational phenomenon, God’s Will, in order to return to it as an instrument of its own proof. The kind of knowledge exemplified as ‘ideal’ is given in the Koran as ‘Ilm alyaqeen or knowledge that is grounded on and engages certitude (see CII:5). In its completeness, such kind of knowledge belongs, of course, only to God: ‘Verily, your God is only Allah; there is no god but He; He comprehends all things in His Knowledge!’(XX:98; my italics) Notwithstanding the problematic logic of the Koran or the association of knowledge with certitude, ‘ilm is, without a doubt, one of the key Koranic concepts that, very much like iman and associated with it, has a decidedly important underlying political impulse. It is this latter which, of course, concerns us here; to explain it, however, we need here to, first, look at the concept of ‘ilm in connection with yet another highly significant Koranic concept, ‘aql; for the two concepts as presented in the Koran are indeed complementary. The Concepts of ‘Ilm and ‘Aql If divine signs are indications of God’s Will, the revelations contained in the Koran, being regarded as God’s actual words, are expressive proclamations of His Will; it is for this reason that they have absolute commanding authority and considered to demonstrate and confirm, if truly understood, the Truth of God’s omnipotence. But revelations of themselves demonstrate nothing beyond what is asserted; they only proclaim conceptual propositions as divine communications. The Truth of these requires the application of ‘intellect’ as a process of bringing together ideas to make ‘sense’ of them by the use of reasoning or ‘thinking’ powers, which is denoted in the Koran by the concept of ‘aql, generally in the form of the verb ‘aqala and its derivatives. To come to the Truth it is not enough for the submitted to profess that they maintain a simply receptive attitude to what has been revealed in the Koran – the passive reception of divine communications cannot bring the submitted to have iman in the Truth of these signs of God. What is required is the exercise of thinking powers, of reflection, of reasoning that leads to ‘understanding’. Thus only those who exercise their thinking powers, rather than the submitted who are passively receptive, are potentially able to arrive at the Truth. And these are the people whom God has favoured with His guidance and endowed with knowledge: ‘Nay, it [i.e. Mohammad’s recitation] is signs, clear signs in the breast of those who have been granted knowledge [al-‘ilm]…’(XXIX:49) Indeed, it is for these people that divine signs (revelations) are made manifestly distinct: ‘Thus We make distinct Our signs [ayat,

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revelations] for a people who understand [qum ya’aqalun, i.e. ‘a reasoning people’ – ya’aqalun, from ‘aqala, is actually closer in meaning to ‘pondering’, thus denoting ‘understanding’ that comes from using one’s powers of ‘reflection’ and ‘reasoning’.].’(XXX:28) What is significant here is the identification of ‘a people’ as a distinguished group on the grounds of their intellect or reasoning capacity. For Mohammad (i.e. in the Koran) everything in life, as in nature, is evidence (a proof) of God’s omnipotence: ‘And of His signs [ayat] is that the heaven and earth stand firm [subsist] by His Command…’(XXX:25) The fundamental Koranic tenet (as with all scriptures) is that nothing in life (including of course all natural phenomena) exists independently of God’s Will: ‘And His is whosoever is in the heavens and earth; all obey His Will.’(XXX:26) Upon this the statement is made, by means of ‘similitude’, comparing the objective existence of a phenomenon as a divine sign: ‘And He it is Who originates creation…His is the most exalted similitude in the heaven and earth; He is the All-mighty, the All-wise.’(XXX:27) And from this, then, the connection is made between the divine determination of all things and the consciousness of the truth of such determination through the powers of intellect, reasoning and understanding. Thus God presents similitudes to all mankind, but which only the learned or the knowledgeable can grasp: ‘And these similitudes, We do set forth unto mankind, but none understand them save the learned.’(XXIX:43) He, therefore, makes ‘distinct’ His signs only for a certain group or community of ‘understanding’ and ‘learned’ persons. All phenomena is a sign of the operation of God’s Will, of the hand of the purposeful Creator. But such signs are discernable as divine only by those who apply their reasoning powers; there is a sign in all such phenomena ‘for a people who ponder [understand]’ (XVI:67); these are signs ‘for a people who reflect [tafakurun].’ (XVI:69) And thus the Koran, in verse after verse, refers to the significance of such signs to ‘a people’ who are, for their capability of reasoning, distinguishable from others being addressed, as, for example, in the following: ‘And of His signs is that He shows you the lightening causing awe and hope, and sends down from the heavens water and gives life with it to the earth after its death; verily, in this are signs [ayat] for a people who understand.’(XXX:24; my italics) Also: ‘And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the variety of your languages [tongues] and your complexions [colours]; verily, in this are signs for the learned.’(XXX:22; my italics; see also, XXIX:35, etc.) The point that is interesting here is not the ‘demonstration’, with the use of such evidences, of the omnipotence of the One God; it is, rather, the suggestion that (a) the grasping of such evidences as manifestations of God’s Will requires ‘insight’, understanding by the exercise of reasoning powers (‘aql) and that (b) such reasoning powers are possessed only by a certain group of people – those who are divinely gifted (like Mohammad himself). In other words, by pointing to these natural phenomena, etc., as divine signs made distinct by God for the reasoning persons (‘uqala, sing. ‘aqil, a ‘reasoning’ individual), the Koran not merely raises the ‘rationality’ of its message, its doctrine, its revelations (debatable though it may be), but, at the same time, elevates the status of the reasoning persons. Within the strict terms of the Koranic concept of ‘ilm, the gaining of knowledge by means of the application of reasoning powers (‘aql) takes place entirely according to the Will of God. Not only is the process of gaining knowledge – ‘aqala or to reason and connect ideas together with intellectual argumentation – but the result and fruit of that process, ‘ilm, is due to God’s Will: ‘They said: Glory be to Thee, we have no knowledge save what Thou hast taught us; verily, Thou art the All-knowing, the Allwise.’(II:32) Under its strict rules, the divine message of the Koran, the revelations,

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seem to determine the nature and end of human intellectual activity, of the gaining of knowledge and of knowledge itself. In other words, the reasoning powers as a process and knowledge as its product that should serve human life appear rather to serve the Will of God that rules over life’s content and goal, and the consciousness of individuals is completely made its victim. The Koranic proposition thus states, first, a prophetic ‘fact’, exposing the divinely generated character of all phenomena in life, which are taken as signs of an uncontrollable will that legislates over all human relations. It is then stating, secondly, that such phenomena are signs for the reasoning persons so that they may come to the knowledge of the divine order. It begins with a ‘fact’ – e.g. rain or wind or lightening, the sun and the moon, night and day, etc. – recognised by all those being addressed, even by idolaters or polytheists, as ‘supernatural’ in origin. At the same time, the proposition takes a critical turn, stating that the prevailing relation between the knowledge and the actuality of such ‘facts’ is a false one that must be overcome in order that the truth can come to light. This requires the kind of understanding of the ‘facts’ that, with powers of reasoning, leads to the knowledge of the Oneness of the supernatural source of all such ‘facts’ as that which, although already recognised by, for example, Jews and Christians, was in its ‘best’ form revealed only to Mohammad and set forth only in the Koran: ‘Recite thou [i.e. Mohammad] that which has been revealed to thee of the Book…And dispute not with the People of the Book [i.e. Jews and Christians] save of what is best [i.e. of such unrivalled revelations Mohammad has received as compared with those already given in the Scriptures]…and say: Believe we in that which has been sent down to us and sent down to you, and our God and your God is One, and to Him do we submit.’(XXIX:45-46) The Political basis of ‘Ilm The critically essential point as regards both form and content of the Koranic mode of argumentation is the substantiation of Mohammad’s recitation (his proclamation) as if in origin divine, and thus, axiomatically, the Koran as the Word of God. All the reasoning leading to ‘ilm, and the latter itself, is to, in the first place, establish this as the Truth; for only then could there be the propagation and strengthening of faith as iman in, firstly and initially, the person of Mohammad as the Messenger of God and, consequently and subsequently, in the Koran as Allah’s Constitution. It is in this objective that ‘ilm and ‘aql come together with iman. For what is at stake (or at least what was at stake historically) is decidedly political – that is, the establishment and determination of Mohammad’s and the Koran’s authority and its justification and legitimisation as necessary to the formation and consolidation of the Islamic movement. Mohammad’s formation of his movement and his leadership of it needed, like all political movements, an ideological foundation, a programme and a tradition, which were actually shaped in the process of clashes between the different tribal communities and particularly the friction between the different layers within the Quraysh and the Meccans. Mohammad’s revelations were necessary in order to form and mobilise a ‘vanguard’; the distinguishing of this vanguard by its iman postulated upon its members’ understanding and knowledge of the Truth of his message was to provide the vanguard with the authority to rally and mobilise members of tribes and clans to the cause of Islam. At bottom, therefore, ‘ilm is arriving at the truth of Koranic revelations as God’s command expressing His Will as to how power is in the here and now translated into practice and who is guided to exercise that power as a force of law in the determination of the Islamic ‘way of life’. It is thus that the understanding of the Koranic revelations and the knowledge of the truth of these (i.e. with ‘ilm) is a divine gift granted by God only to some and not to all the submitted: ‘And those to whom the knowledge has been given see that what has been sent down to thee from thy Lord,

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that is the Truth, and it guides to the Way of the Mighty [sirat al-aziz]…’(XXXIV:6) And: ‘Nay! These are clear signs [revelations] in the breast of those who have been granted knowledge…’(XXIX:49) Mohammad’s vanguard, his companions, had to be included among such a privileged group of individuals and seen to have revelatory authorisation; they were thus proclaimed by the Messenger of God (Mohammad) – and, later when the core of this group went on to succeed him, proclaimed in the Book of God (the Koran) – to be ‘a people of understanding’ and ‘a people who know’ (XXVII:52); and acknowledged as among ‘the learned’(XXX:22) and as being of ‘those who have been granted knowledge’(XXVIII:80). Historically, the understanding and knowledge of the truth of Mohammad’s recitations as God’s message could be fulfilled with the negation of the consciousness condition of ‘ignorance’ or the negation of what the Koran refers to as Jahiliyah. Pagans are regarded as a people without (Revealed) knowledge – they are qum la (‘without’) y’almuna.(seeIX:6); they are jahileen, the ‘ignorant’ (see for example XI:46 and VII:138) Thus, for example, here in the following verses, Mohammad is reminded (by God) to mention: ‘…the brother of ‘Ad when he warned his people of the Sandhills [qum al-Ahqaf]…’ to serve Allah and to turn away from the worship of many gods. For they, as with Mohammad’s own people (the Quraysh and the Meccans), were considered to be in a state of ignorance: ‘He said: The knowledge is only with God, and I proclaim to you the message which I am sent with, but I see that you are a people in ignorance.’(XLVI:21-23) Jahiliyah or the state of ‘ignorance’ springs from the nature of the prevailing mode of consciousness which was rooted in the very essence of Arab tribal social conditions at the time of Mohammad. In religious terms, the Koran expresses this idolatry principally as the non-recognition of the single source of creation. The process of its negation may not be treated, however, simply as accepting the singularity of the divine source of ‘phenomena’ as ‘fact’. Mohammad was, obviously, fully aware that Jews and Christians, being monotheistic, clearly understood and accepted this notion, as it is clear, for example, from the following: ‘…While a party of them [the Jews of Medina] used to hear the Word of God and then [knowingly] altered it after they had understood it…’(II:75; my italics) The process can only be treated, therefore, as making up a form of consciousness that is complete with certitude with regards to Mohammad’s claim on divine revelations stated in the Koran. It was the recognition and acceptance of Mohammad’s claim and role that were crucial socio-politically and therefore ideologically (religiously). Freed from the state of ‘ignorance’ after Mohammad’s revelations, the form of consciousness now demanded is far from being one based on mere ‘conjectural’ or ‘theoretical’ understanding. The ‘new’ consciousness will evaluate all ‘facts’, natural and social reality, with a view to what the Divine One, Allah, has made of these as signs (ayat) as revealed to Mohammad: ‘Exalted above all is God, the King, the Truth; and hasten not with the Qur’an ere its revelation is completed unto thee, and say thou: O my Lord, increase me in knowledge.’(XX:114) Knowledge is gained within the framework of this consummated consciousness; it is fundamentally concerned with Mohammad’s Revealed Truth in the Koran and is based on the Koranic principle that the whole of life (reality) is determined by the Will of the Divine One (Allah) as proclaimed by His last Messenger. The critical idea, in other words, is not to simply substantiate, by means of ‘aql and the gaining of ‘ilm, the omnipotence of the Will of the One God – Judaism and Christianity had already presented such an idea – it is, rather, to confirm, secure and install the message and hence the authority of Mohammad and the Koran as ‘superior’ to all other forms of authority known and in existence. The process of making up this ‘new’ form of consciousness mentioned

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above, in which the Koranic concept of ‘ilm plays a critical role, is thus essentially and deeply a political struggle, involving intense ideological battles. ‘Ilm as ‘Revealed’ Knowledge Thus, ‘ilm, in its strict Koranic conception, is Revealed knowledge; that is, knowledge revealed by God to His Messenger, Mohammad. It should not, therefore, be confused with the later developed and far broader conception of ‘knowledge’ often referred to as ‘the Islamic concept of knowledge’. The latter was developed during the expansionist and imperialist periods of Islam and embraced philosophy, mathematics, physical and natural sciences, and other disciplines of empirical nature, required and called for by the socio-economic and political needs of the time. Conquest brought with it the need for practical knowledge for administration and the material construction of an empire; it also brought with it the challenge of different cultures, advanced, sophisticated and more often than not belligerent, that demanded swift and intelligent response on the part of the particular Muslim imperial state; and in its encompassing different peoples with diverse faiths and beliefs, it also brought with it problems of conversion, requiring ideological and theological adjustments and modifications. All such issues, not to mention many other more specifically related to production and technological needs, necessitated the development of knowledge. But given the nature of Islam as a ‘way of life’, in which the Koran’s content has absolute and irrevocable commanding authority, this broader concept needed at all times to be presented as if in the service of and subject to God’s Will. Knowledge, whether philosophical, empirical, scientific or technical, had to always be under the shadow of ‘ilm. Therefore, if in the world of the empire Muslim intellectuals (most of whom were converts and not Arab proper) borrowed and developed new disciplines such as logic, mathematical geography, medicine and biology, physics, chemistry and astronomy, and so on, they were forced to do so always with an eye on the Koran. In short, Mohammad’s Arab cosmos continued to overshadow the advance of knowledge under all the Muslim empires – and ‘ilm, narrow and strict in its meaning, reactionary and irrational in its instructive force, yet brilliantly synthesising in its ideological role within the restive but unequal debate between iman (faith) and ‘aql (reason), was and is a key concept in that order. In the Koran, ‘ilm is the heavenly divine source from which the light of earthly power blazes forth. Moreover, the reading of the Koranic concept of ‘ilm as knowledge in the nonreligious sense results in the misapprehension of its significance in the actual historical context of a political-ideological struggle within the Islamic movement itself (it also causes confusion of ‘ilm with science proper). Furthermore, its reading as simply ‘religious knowledge,’ also, translates itself into the misunderstanding that the concept is purely ‘spiritual’ and devoid of social and political substance. True, that it is undeniably conceptualised in terms of understanding the Koran, seeing the Truth of its message, knowing the right path it is confirming: ‘And follow not that of which you have no knowledge [‘ilm]; verily, the hearing and the sight and the heart, all of these shall be questioned of.’ (XVII:36) But ‘ilm, as used in the Koran, is not esoteric spiritual knowledge (gnosis or mystical knowledge); it is essentially constitutional knowledge; knowledge concerning the complex of social and political, legal and jurisdictional, conditions which, as a body of fundamental principles, collectively determine the state and powers of Islam as a system or ‘way of life.’ It is, fundamentally and primarily, knowledge that is conditioned by understanding what is revealed in the Koran as making up Allah’s Constitution. This is what Revealed knowledge means – i.e. knowledge of the commandments, the Divine Law, the Way of God, as revealed to Mohammad and set down in the Koran! This is, for example,

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how this notion of ‘ilm is put (stated in relation to Abraham): ‘O my father! Truly has come unto me knowledge which came not to you, so follow me, I will guide you on the Right Path.’(XIX:43; my italics) In the Koran, the realm of the ‘spiritual’ is but a part of the realm of God’s Will which controls, directs, sustains, with its guidance, all human affairs. ‘Ilm does not, in short, deal with the so-called spiritual enlightenment of the ‘self’ as separate or divorced from the system of life determined by God’s Will, which embodies the ultimate truth. The abstract and metaphysical aspect of ‘ilm are conditioned by and subject to the unfolding of God’s ‘way of life’ as commanded in the Koran. The thinking subject is not a free being; knowledge is not an attribute of his/her will. It is the Will of God that determines his/her being and knowledge. As far as the Koran is concerned, the thinking subject is a servile being – he/she is (or should be as a submitted, a Muslim) a being for God, a servant of God irrespective of how much knowledge he/she has (e.g. as with the Prophet of God himself who considered himself to be a servant of God). And even those who have been granted knowledge before Mohammad’s recitation show this state of servility when the Koran is recited to them: ‘Say: Believe in it or believe not; verily those who are given the knowledge from before it [i.e. before Mohammad’s recitation and hence the Koran], when it is recited unto them fall down on their faces prostrating in obeisance.’(XVII:107; my italics) ‘Ilm is a unity of two different aspects or moments: first, the ability to use reason (intellect, thinking powers, etc.) to understand every phenomena as divine in origin and, by this means, to come to the absolute certainty (certitude) of the dominance of God’s Will; secondly, the action of translating such a certainty into reality, consciously and actively affirming the supremacy of God’s Will as universal. ‘Ilm is directed, in other words, to satisfying the Will of God. This satisfaction means that the person possessing ‘ilm has made his/her own will the object of God’s Will; this person has not only submitted to God’s Will, but has done so fully with cognition of the truth of it and of the conduct of life based on that truth – i.e. with iman. The ‘Will to Power’ and the Divine Gift of ‘Knowledge’ The process of cognition here appears as a relation of ‘subject’ and ‘object’ which is fixed for all time. The moments of knowledge (as ‘ilm) thus do not change as social conditions change historically. The knowing consciousness is a form of ‘inspiration’ which only as such is grasped as social consciousness. It is therefore viewed in isolation from social human history. Both the sensuous and the rational functions of human consciousness appear as aspects of the divinely ordained spirit, as divine inspiration, which is then unfolded in the course of life and of which ordinary mortals have little knowledge: ‘They ask thee [i.e. Mohammad] about the Spirit [al-Rooh]. Say: the Spirit is by the command of my Lord, and you are not given of the knowledge but a little.’(XVII:85) The given spirit is not from a social mode of ‘knowing consciousness’, but rather the reverse; and ‘ilm as the ‘knowing’ part of it exist only formally. Knowledge as ‘ilm, not being subject to change, then, implies that consciousness itself is something springing from God. Thus, according to the Koran, for example, Mohammad’s own consciousness of the social conditions of his time, of his role and function, etc. and of the truth of what was revealed to him was not in accordance with experience and effort on his own part but due to being ‘inspired’: ‘And thus did We reveal to thee a Spirit of Our Command [i.e. inspired him with the Koranic revelations]; thou did not know [had no ‘knowing consciousness’ of] what the Book [i.e. the Koran] was, nor the faith [al-iman]; but We made it a light [noor] wherewith We guide whomsoever We will of Our servants. And verily, thou guides the way to the Straight Way [al-sirat al-mustaqim – i.e. to the Divine Law].’(XLII:52; my italics)

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For Mohammad (and for the Koran), the problem of ‘religious’ consciousness and, therefore, of overcoming the prevailing consciousness of Jahiliyah, coincides in essence with the development and the reformulation of Judaic (and to a far, far lesser extent, Christian) canon, specifically as of divine authority. Judaism is for him the very essence of monotheistic faith – thus he claims to be a descendant of Abraham; because to be a descendant of Abraham was for him the essential link to the very foundations of monotheistic apostleship: ‘Say: Verily my Lord has guided me unto the Straight Way [al-sirat al-mustaqim or the Divine Law]; the established deen [‘Way of life’], the faith of Abraham, the upright one…’(VI:161) For he saw in this faith the negation of all that was particular as this or that source of authority: ‘And when Abraham said to his father, Azar: Takest though idols for gods? Verily, I see thee and thy people in manifest error. And thus did We show Abraham the Kingdom of the heavens and earth, that he may be of those who are sure [al-muqanyeen denotes persons who have attained total certitude of the authority of the One God].’(VI:74-75) Mohammad was clearly aware of the substance of the Judaic God as being one authority. The chief attraction for Mohammad was precisely in this that God is conceived as the Substance of authority and not merely as Spirit (the Spirit is by the command of God!). God is not, as in Christianity, ‘the Three in One’. God as the one absolute substance of authority, by contrast to God as Spirit of ‘Three in One’, was for Mohammad the truth. However, in order to be this truth, insofar as Mohammad was concerned, the one absolute substance of authority (God) must also be affirmed as in itself active in life, and by that very means it must determine itself as ‘knowing consciousness’. Thus, God, being affirmed as the substance of the entire process of life, presents itself as the substance of ‘inspiration’ (wahy) of which ‘ilm and iman are themselves merely forms. The ‘knowing consciousness’ has no meaning without these forms of which it is composed. And it is this ‘inspirational’ presupposition of ‘consciousness’ that brings about the transformation of God into the Subject. Absolute authority is then complete, at least ideally. Its actual realisation is based on the presupposition in reality of the coming together of ‘ilm and iman on the political ground of the ‘will to power’. Historically, insofar as the reality of the situation was concerned, God as the Subject was to be established on the basis of an actual subject – Mohammad himself – and to be established also (after Mohammad’s death) on the basis of its objectification in the form of the Koran. The ‘will to power’ is, indeed, the essential and elementary underlying condition of ‘ilm as the intellectual activity gifted by God. Those thus gifted with ‘ilm are in a position to exercise their ‘will to power’ for they are able to know the truth of God’s absolute Authority in the light of understanding His Word (the Koran), which results in reinforcing iman in the deen or the ‘way of life’ commanded and revealed as Law in the Koran. Such gifted chosen servants of God ‘know’ the Divine Law in the Koran is their Lord’s right path: ‘And this the Straight Way of your Lord; indeed have We made manifest the signs for the people who take heed.’(VI:126) Those, then, who have been divinely gifted with ‘ilm are God’s chosen servants; they have been ‘given’ the right to rule. This has been so with regards to all the past Apostles, Prophets, and their authorised successors, and hence, by the same token, also of Mohammad and his successors. Thus it is said in the Koran as to the chiefs of the Children of Israel: ‘And their Prophet said to them: Verily, God has raised up for you Saul [Talut] as Master [King] over you. They said: How can he be Master over us when we have greater right than he to exercise authority, and he is not [even] gifted with wealth in abundance? He said: Verily, God has chosen him above you, and has gifted him abundantly with knowledge… God grants His Kingdom to whom He

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pleases…’(II:247; my italics) And it was the same, as the Koran puts it, with David and Solomon and Lot: ‘And Lot, We gave him Judgment and Knowledge…’(XXI:74) And: ‘To Solomon We inspired the understanding of the matter; and unto each [i.e. David and Solomon] We gave Judgement and Knowledge…’(XXI:79) The issue of ‘inspiration’, the matter of the divine gift of ‘ilm, is first and foremost a question of power – not of the ‘spiritual’ form but of the political form and content of government, the exercise and control of power as authority. Those whom God has favoured by granting them with knowledge have been chosen to have authority – they are given Judgement – for they are the ones who fully comprehend the truth of Mohammad’s recited revelations (the Koran) as the constitution that determines the way of life: ‘…No-one knows its [i.e. the Koran’s] true meaning [interpretation] except God and those who are firmly grounded [rooted] in ‘ilm…’(III:7; my italics) And having iman in its divine authority – ‘say they [i.e. those firmly grounded with ‘ilm]: We believe in it [the Koran], all is from our Lord…’(III:7) – these ‘alimyeen or ulama are thus chosen to institute that constitution as fundamental for the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth. Subjective Synthesis of ‘Ilm and Iman and the Justification of Authority The concept of ‘ilm, in other words, cannot be separated from that of iman. Indeed, in real life, one could say that it is really the ‘believing’ that comes before the ‘knowing’, as it were. In other words, though iman is supposed to be conditioned by ‘ilm, in actuality it is the logic of iman that comes before the logic of ‘ilm. The truth of the Koranic concept of knowledge is based on iman taking shape in the ‘life-process’ of serving God. The social and political practice of serving God unifies ‘ilm and iman; it is what mediates the connection of the two and brings about their subjective synthesis. Knowledge is achieved in the form prescribed by the Koran; in their practice, individuals act at once as servants of God and as subjective beings (‘creatures’ of God). They act as servants because they have iman; they act as subjective beings because they subject ‘ilm to their purpose which is meant to be that of achieving and instituting the Divine Truth in the here and now. Iman not only reflects their condition of servitude; it also reflects their subjecting of ‘ilm to their purpose. A cursory consideration of these concepts seems, however, to make ‘Ilm appear as a condition of iman; the latter as a result and not a starting-point, even though it is iman which is the real starting-point. This transposal affects perception and imagination that brings about the illusion that the Truth is the result of ‘ilm, that is, the result of ‘knowing’ the Koran and its revelations. This is an illusion that the theologians, the ulama, had been found of propagating in their struggle for political ascendancy during the early periods of the expansion and consolidation of the Islamic imperial state. Upon this illusion, knowledge of the Divine Truth is then said to bring about iman; and yet, according to the Koran itself, it is only those who possess iman who are able to have or are granted such knowledge: ‘…We have indeed made clear the signs [ayat] to people with certitude [al-qum yuqanuna – people who are firm, certain in faith].’(II:118) It is through iman that God’s favour, mercy, knowledge and guidance comes: ‘Then as for those who believe in God and hold fast unto Him [i.e. have iman in its strict sense], He will admit them to His Mercy and Grace and Guide them to Himself by the Straight Way [al-sirat al-mustaqim].’(IV:175) Knowledge of Divine Law is by God’s grace, granted to those who have iman in Him. The conception of knowledge as ‘ilm is, in other words, based only on the assumption of having iman in God’s gracefulness which includes divine inspiration (wahy) – iman is the unshakable foundation of all aspects of the Deen of God.

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In the Koran iman and ‘ilm are two modes of wahy; and there seems to be a reciprocal relationship between them. Yet in spite of this appearance, their relation to one another is actually in such a way that the existence of ‘ilm presupposes the foundation of iman. ‘Ilm is Revealed knowledge only through iman. And iman, as having faith in what is revealed as in itself divine, makes the Revealed knowledge appear in itself as the truth. The power of the conditions of ‘ilm over life – that is, the commandments of God as His Constitution – is dependent on the role of iman in the transformation of social consciousness, with its presupposition of domination and servitude as modes of existence by divine design. The concept of ‘ilm has meaning only when related and joined to iman, which as such is then oriented to the interest of Islamic ideology. Neither a ‘spiritual’ nor a ‘rational’ but rather a political concept, it considers a doctrine in relation not to the social conditions of its determination but rather from an ‘absolute truth’ to the interest of the exercise of power. Notwithstanding the circularity of their Koranic understanding and usage, both ‘ilm and iman, if critically examined, are, in other words, notions expressing with actual validity the legitimising condition of holding and exercising power. If ‘ilm means knowledge of the truth of the Koran as the authority shaping life according to God’s Will on the basis of iman in the Koran, and the demand for the practice of iman means the establishment of a political organisation, a state, by means of which the life of individuals is regulated in accordance with the Constitution of God (the Koran), then it is the task of the ‘learned’ (‘alimyeen or the ulama) to demonstrate this possibility and lay the theological foundations for the consolidation of such a state. By so doing, they thus, and inevitably, provide the theological justification of the power and authority of the stratum which, by virtue of its historical situation, is in control of the state. With this, the interest of Islam as a ‘way of life’ merges with the interest of the political organisation of Allah’s chosen servants as a theocratic state; religion (or rather deen) and the political (siyasat) become thus fused. There is no earthly authority alongside and outside this power base. The ‘ideals’ of the divine world and the truth of God’s Will are incorporated into the practical exercise of power, in and through which they take on a socio-political form. In sum, therefore, the essence of the Koranic conception of knowledge consists in the fact that divine inspiration is anchored in conditions of power-relations. The concept of ‘ilm expresses the Koran’s truth as the Constitution of God’s Kingdom on earth. With this iman incorporates into itself practical and metaphysical knowledge as ‘ilm. This then becomes superstructurally dominant, transforming the practice of ‘ilm as a means of the verification of the Koran’s truth into a discursive justification of authority, of the exercise of power, in the here and now, and hence of the right of the chosen servants of God to rule. Chapter Seven: Allah’s Chosen Servants: Successors as Rulers ‘And indeed We did write in the Psalms [Zabur], after the Reminder, that the Land [al-ard or al-arz, often translated as ‘the earth’] shall be inherited by My righteous servants [‘ibadahya al-Salaheen]. Verily, in this is a Message conveyed to a servient people [qum ‘abdayeen].’(XXI:105-106) The Koranic notions of iman and ‘ilm not only reflect the political condition of power, but they also define and sanction it. It is in the coming together of these notions that the Koran recognises the fulfilment of the potentialities of God’s chosen servants. It is with such fulfilment that the truth of divine power can be realised. This truth is not only attached to divine propositions and judgments – i.e. it is not only an attribute of divine revelations – but of the reality of the Koran as a constitution. Divine power is true, in other words, if it is what it can be in the here and now, fulfilling all its ‘this-

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worldly’ (objective) possibilities. The truth of divine power can thus be realised only in the establishment and implementation of the Deen or the way of life (of Islam) in accordance with the Koran as its Constitution. And this, necessarily and axiomatically, requires human mediation, or more specifically, mediation in the form of God’s chosen servants. The realisation of the truth of divine power is therefore not a fact but a task – in short, it requires actual political practice by the ‘righteous’ or God’s chosen servants to fulfil it. This predetermined political role of the righteous is the substance of the divine message conveyed to all God’s servants, all the submitted, with regards to the idea of the ‘divine right’ of inheritance of the Land or the earth. The Conception of the ‘Inheritance of the Land’ It is to be noted, before we proceed, that what is being considered here is not the Koranic principles of inheritance in the sense of bequeath (wasiyat) of personal goods and realty, as, for example, in the following verse: ‘Prescribed for you, when death approaches one of you, if he leaves behind any goods, that he makes a bequest [wasiyat, will, testament] for parents and kinsmen, according to usage [bilm’aruf, or long-standing custom]…’(II:180; see also II:240, IV:11-12 for more detailed directives on this issue) The Koran prescribes such principles of bequeath (as with other directives on specifically personal conduct, upon which the far more complex historically developed laws of the Sharia on personal conduct is based) as a separate category to its message and commandment on the conditions of the transference of authority which lies at the core of the idea of ‘inheritance of the Land or the earth’. It is with this latter, in connection to political power and authority, that we are here concerned. The Koranic idea of the inheritance of the Land or the earth expresses the dual aspects of divine power as juridical and political. The ‘Land’ (al-ard) here is God’s ‘Kingdom’; that is, both as His domain and as His realm, with the former as a condition of life and the latter as a sphere of the exercise of power over the condition of life (the translation of al-ard as ‘the earth’ adds a more abstractedly universal and transcendental amplitude to this conception of the Land as God’s Kingdom). God is the ‘Master of the Kingdom’, Malik-ul-Mulk (III:26). Inherent in the concept of ‘Kingdom’ is the notion of ‘power’: to have power over the Land (the earth) as the condition of life constitutes possession of it. Upon this possession, the Land is God’s property, it is His domain; for the possession is secured upon the authority of His Will. The Land (or the earth) as divine property being a condition of life subject to God’s Will is thus a sphere of His authority, i.e. a sphere of the exercise of divine power – it is as such thereby the embodiment of God’s Will. In this sense, the inheritance of the Land (the earth) by God’s chosen servants means the passing to them of it as the embodiment of God’s Will – that is, the passing to them not of the ‘Land’ (the earth) as such, but of the jurisdiction and control over His Kingdom: ‘…But indeed We have given to Abraham’s children the Book and the Wisdom [alhakmata, Judgement, Authority], and We gave them a Great Kingdom.’(IV:54) It is not the Land or the earth as ‘landed property’ which is as such inherited, but the juridical-political authority over it. The Land or the earth remains divine property and subject to divine power the exercise of which as authority over the Land is passed on, given, granted to whom God wills: ‘Say: O God, Master of the Kingdom, Thou givest the Kingdom [al-Mulk] to whom Thou wilt and takest away the Kingdom from whom Thou wilt, Thou exaltest whom Thou wilt, and Thou abasest whom Thou wilt; in Thy hand is the good [al-khyr – that which is right, advantageous, in the way or cause of God]; verily, Thou hast power over all things.’(III:26) In this ayah God exalts whom He wills by giving the chosen person the Kingdom; the person is honoured by the grant of authority and thus exalted in rank; it is a question of power and authority,

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with ‘property’ (domain) as a condition of power – as the ayah goes on, God has ‘power over all things.’ Indeed, the conception of inheritance of the Land (the earth) in the Koran is never the passing or the inheritance of the Land as landed property in the personal or private sense. The earth is the condition of life and therefore as such belongs to God (the justification of the notion of ‘state property’ within Islam is in fact based on this Koranic understanding; though the actuality of this form of property has a very long history in the Near East well before the rise of Islam). What the chosen servants inherit is the authority over the Land or the right to exercise power over it (the notion of usufruct of land is connected to and justified by such a right; likewise the notion of qat’ia during the Umayyad period and other historically developed forms of distribution and ‘leasing’ of productive, tribute and rent paying, agrarian land; technically, juridically, what was granted or ‘leased’ was the right of surplus appropriation, denoted by the Arabic term ‘iqta, and not the right of alienation of the land itself; it was this right of exploitation that could then be passed on). Thus, for example, when it is said ‘God’ made the Children of Israel the ‘inheritors’ of the ‘eastern and western’ Land, it is in reference to their heritage of the right as a people to exercise power over such land – thus establishing authority over it: ‘And We made the people that were abased inheritors [a-warathuna – waratha ‘inherit’] of the eastern and the western land We had blessed; and [thus] was fulfilled the good word of your Lord upon the Children of Israel for what they endured patiently; and We destroyed utterly what Pharaoh and his people had wrought and what they had built.’(VII:137) In the above verse what is stated as regards the Children of Israel is that the authority over such land was the magnitude of their heritage; for the Land (or the earth) belongs – that is, strictly as property – to God alone: ‘Moses said to his people: Seek you help from God and be patient; verily, the Land [al-ard, the earth] is God’s, He wills whomsoever of His servants to inherit it [yu-warathuha]…’(VII:128) It would clearly be incorrect to interpret this verse as implying that the Land or the earth, though God’s, is passed on or granted by Him to His chosen servants as landed property, that is, as if these chosen servants were to inherit it in their personal capacity as ‘private owners’. The ayah is categorical: ‘the Land is God’s’! And the verse following it demonstrates this point quite clearly: ‘Said they [i.e. Moses’ people]: We have been persecuted before you came to us and after you came to us [i.e. as Prophet]. Said he [i.e. Moses]: Perchance your Lord will destroy your enemy and make you a successor in the Land [wa-yastakhalifakum fee al-ard] so that He may see how you act.’(VII:129; my italics) Moses’ people, in other words, succeed, take the place of, their ‘enemy’ in order to ‘now’ have authority upon God’s Land. The ‘ownership’ of the Land, in short, has not changed – ‘the Land is God’s’; the right to exercise power over it, the control or usufruct of it, has been granted by God to Moses’ people in place of their enemy. In reference to the inheritance of the Land (the earth), therefore, the Koran establishes the right of succession in the exercise of power over it – what is thus the object of ‘inheritance’ is not the Land or the earth, but authority. God’s chosen servants are the inheritors of authority over the Land; they are authorised (licensed) to rule. This authority, rather than the Land itself as ‘landed property’, is their heritage. From this then comes the notion of the chosen servants as successors or Caliphs by becoming, under divine license, heirs not to God’s power (which in its absoluteness solely belongs to God Himself), but heirs only to the exercise of that power – i.e. they are granted, as by Koranic commandment or Allah’s Constitution, the constitutional entitlement of Authority over the Land or the earth. Thus the question of inheritance as also of succession in the Koran is to do not with taking the place of God either as the ‘proprietor’ of the Land (the earth) or as the absolute holder of power (which

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would be a theologically absurd proposition); it has to do with the succession of the right to rule and the inheritance of authority on earth or in the Land as God’s Kingdom. It is this juridical and political conception which lies at the heart of the Koranic notion of the Khalifa. The Concept of Khalifa The word khalifa (used in the above quoted verse as in yastakhalifatum) expresses precisely what is meant by the Koranic notion of the ‘inheritance’ of the Land (the earth). Khalifa (pl. khulafa), its derivatives and conjugated forms, is from the root khl-f, meaning ‘take the place of’ (as verb, meaning to ‘succeed’, ‘become heir to’). It has been variously translated as ‘inheritor’, ‘successor’, ‘heir’, ‘ruler’, ‘viceroy’, ‘vice-regent or regent’, and ‘vicegerent’; its literal meaning is ‘one who replaces someone else who has left or died’, implying an order by which someone comes after another or takes the place of another; its nearest literal equivalent is thus perhaps best rendered by the word ‘successor’. However, as distinguished from ‘inheritor’ as in the use of waratha or ‘inherit/inheritance’ in relation to God’s Kingdom, khalifa, in its usage, beginning with the Koran, certainly has a more expressive political connotation; the former inclines more towards the juridical than the latter. The notion of succession in the Koran, denoted by the word khalifa (stressing more the political than the juridical aspect of the transference of authority), refers back to the essential relation between iman and ‘ilm set forth as the condition of the right to rule. The root of that relation is now laid bare in the political structure and exercise of power, and with it the connection is revealed between God’s Will and the principle of inheritance of the Land (the earth), denoted by the word waratha (stressing more the juridical than the political aspect of having the right to rule). The Will of God is, at any event, the substantive and primary basis of authority in the Land (the earth). Of its very nature (i.e. being divine), God’s Will can only realise itself by appropriating all conditions of life as ‘Its’ property, thus, in essence, making the latter part of its own being (embodiment). This is a prerequisite for ‘perfect’ (divine) dominion. But objectively the conditions of life offer a definite limit to such abstract, divine, appropriation. Essentially, they are, of course, independent of God’s Will, and their divine appropriation is hence necessarily illusory. Nothing objective is appropriated; nothing objective can become divine property in actuality. The illusion that such an appropriation ‘takes place’ is only based on the full assent of the mind, on faith, which has, however, a definite and specific socio-political foundation; what is essential to this is the socio-political character of the dominant class as God’s chosen servants. But the illusion is necessary to the notion of succession. To be a chosen servant of God is at bottom only to manifest the majesty of His Will towards all conditions of life (social and personal) through the attribute and conduct (derived from and grounded upon iman and ‘ilm) of being a chosen servant (e.g. as with Mohammad himself). When that individual is thus chosen (favoured), in other words, notwithstanding its illusory nature, God’s Will comes into existence through the will of this favoured or chosen servant. This is the necessary illusion that conditions the idea of succession and the inheritance of the right to rule. The political manifestation of this illusion is captured by the Koranic conception of the Khalifa; that is, when the chosen servant asserts his will (I say, his rather than ‘his/her’, because women are prohibited from gaining such a position of supreme authority) as the expression, by divine appointment, of God’s Will on earth. This is the initiation of God’s Kingdom based upon a political structure defined by the role and function of the Khalifa, in his capacity as God’s vicegerent, to establish the Koran as Allah’s Constitution governing all conditions of life in the Land or on earth (in the mythology of Islamic militancy, particularly among Sunnis, this first phase of instituting God’s Kingdom, following

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and modelling itself upon the Prophet’s umma, is customarily referred to as the Khilafat or by its anglicised form of the Caliphate). To be so acknowledged as the Khalifa, therefore, involves the issue of legitimation – that is, the ground for obedience based on the Koran (the Traditions, the Hadith, were to become a crucially important source ‘in addition’ to the Koran in defining the legitimacy of this system of domination as a consequence of a historical process of struggle within the dominant class, and were increasingly used as such with the imperial expansion of Islam by the growing ranks of the ulama in their own factional political interests). We find this in the Koran initially beginning with Adam: ‘And when We said to the angels: Prostrate [sajdah] yourself to Adam; they all prostrated, save Iblis…’(II:34) Here the ‘angels’ are meant to be representing the ‘highest creatures’ of God who are commanded to obey Adam as God’s first created human appointee on earth. The message, then, is quite clear: Adam manifests God’s authority, and it is for this reason that all the angels must obey him by showing their mark of respect in their act of sajdah as a gesture of their deference. Moreover, as God’s ‘first mortal creation,’ it is only when Adam is made complete, infused with divine spirit, that the angels are commanded to bow to his authority: ‘So when I complete him [i.e. the first mortal or Adam] and breath into him My spirit [rooh], fall you [i.e. the angels] down before him in obeisance [prostrating].’ (XV:29) The symbolic significant of this act of prostrating should not be taken lightly: sajdah is preformed in the act of prayer as a sign of submission, symbolic of one’s yielding to God’s Will. The fact that here the Koran (i.e. God) commands such an act in respect of Adam, clearly signifies the supreme authority of the latter and is thus reflecting the legitimising ground of Adam’s authority. And this legitimacy is not merely symbolic: ‘And when thy Lord said to the angels: I am placing in the Land a vicegerent [inni ja’alu fee al-ard khalifat]. They said: What! wilt thou place therein one who will cause corruption and shed blood, while we celebrate [proclaim] Thy praise and extol Thy holiness? He said: Verily, I know what you know not.’(II:30) The sajdah, then, is in lieu of the fact that Adam is God’s appointed Khalifa in the Land (on earth). Personality (fictional though it is) has here risen out of the Will of God and gained juridical-political substance, in that it is given an institutional role in the form of God’s vicegerent. This is the ground for obedience set down in the Koran; it is the legitimation condition of the independence of God’s chosen servant’s authority upon which it can then assume actual concrete validity. What in the notion of God’s chosen servants was implicit merely in an abstract way is now an explicit concrete law. The right of the chosen servants of God to rule conforms strictly to God’s Constitution, and its substantiality is confirmed by reference to past apostleship: ‘O David! Verily We have appointed thee vicegerent in the Land [khalifat fee al-ard], so judge between humans with justice and follow not caprice, lest it should lead thee astray from the Way of God …’(XXXVIII:26) And it is clear from the verses that come before this, that such an appointment is not merely confined to ‘spiritual authority’ (religious guidance, and such like); it has to do with actual juridical-political authority – i.e. the right to rule over a kingdom: ‘Bear patiently what they say [i.e. those who dispute the apostleship of Mohammad], and remember Our servant David, the possessor of power…We strengthened his kingdom, and gave him judgement [wisdom] and speech decisive [fasla al-khitab – ‘khitab’ meaning ‘speech’ – denotes here the ‘pronouncement’ of decisive judgment of a ruler, a King].’ (XXXVIII: 17 and 20; my italics) Thus far, it seems that the institution of the Khalifa is founded in the chosen servant’s function. God’s Word has been invoked to ordain and justify it – no socio-political need is cited as responsible for bringing about such an institution. The Khalifa exists

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solely by virtue of the Will of God. His authority is derived from divine power. The rationale of the Khalifa, however, does not consist in its satisfaction of specific social or political needs but rather in the fact that the institution overcomes the mere subjectivity of domination, of the person in authority, and, at the same time, fulfils the determination of that authority’s objectivity. In other words, the question of authority had to be made to appear as a ‘right’ in which ‘personality’ and ‘subjectivity’ appear as ‘objectively’ determined preconditions. The notion of ‘right to rule’ in the Koran is concerned with such determined preconditions, and it had to be established as a principle. The Right of Succession The principle of the right to rule was, of course, initiated by Mohammad: through his recitation of revelations, through the claim of revealing divine signs and the force of his argumentation or reasoning, he had to justify his prophethood and thereby establish his authority. Thus, for example: ‘And when Our [i.e. God’s] clear signs [ayat, revelations] are recited unto them, those who hope not for Our meeting say: Bring a Qur’an [Recitation] other than this or change it. Say: It is not for me [i.e. Mohammad] to change it of my own accord. I follow nothing but what is revealed to me. Verily, I fear, if I disobey my Lord, the chastisement of a dreadful day.’(X:15) Upon the basis of such revelations, Mohammad thus claimed to have the right to authority – but this only by God’s Command [amr] and because he was chosen by God and infused with divine spirit: ‘He [i.e. God] sends down the angels with the spirit by His own command on whomsoever He wills of His servants saying: Warn you that there is no god but I, therefore obey Me.’ (XVI:2) The right granted to Mohammad is thus based on the divine inspiration which, as the necessary subjective and personal qualities of apostleship and prophethood, gives him the highest degree of iman and ‘ilm among all humans (as among all believers past and present). Mohammad, accordingly, has that most excellent personal quality of conduct which God could confer upon any of His servants; he is, in this, the best example of all God’s favoured servants: ‘Indeed, you have in the Messenger of God an excellent exemplar for whomsoever hopes for God and the Last Day, and remembers God oft.’(XXXIII:21) Thus, in God’s word: ‘Whoso obeys the Messenger, he indeed obeys God…’(IV:80) And hence the authority granted to him is decisive: ‘And it is not for a believing man and a believing woman to have any choice in their affairs when God and His Messenger have decided a matter; and whoever disobeys God and His Messenger, indeed he has strayed off a manifest straying.’ (XXXIII:36) And having been thus chosen, the Koran (God) confirms his conviction and devotion: ‘Say: Verily my prayer and my sacrifice and my life and my death are for God, the Lord of the worlds. No associate has He; and this I am commanded, I am the first of the submitted [ana awalu al-muslimeen – the first of the Muslims].’(VI:162-163) But it needs to be emphasised here that the granting to Mohammad of such decisive authority is not considered in the Koran as ‘succeeding’ or ‘taking the place’ of God as the Lord or ‘replacing’ the power of God: ‘Say: Shall I seek a Lord [rabb] other than God? And [while] He is the Lord of all things…’ (VI:164) God’s is the Power; He is the Lord! The principle that Mohammad initiated was, thus, not to give himself the right of Lordship (which belongs only to God – Allah alone is rabb), but the right of Khilafat, of succession, in the sense of the transmission of authority: ‘And He [i.e. God] it is Who has made you Khalifa in the Land…’(VI:165) But after Mohammad, this principle had to be firmly and objectively established as if independently of the specifically personal preconditions of Mohammad’s prophethood. The most crucial factor in this was, of course, to tie the principle to the

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Koran and to bind the chosen servants to it, in constitutional terms, as inheritors of the Book: ‘And that which We have revealed to you [i.e. Mohammad] of the Book, it is the Truth, verifying [confirming] that which has come before it…Then We gave the inheritance of the Book [awarathuna al-kitaba] to those whom We chose from among our servants…’ (XXXV:31-32) The inheritance of the Koran here announced is not meant merely as an honorific gesture; it is, in fact, a commanding confirmation of the principle of the chosen servants’ right to rule as inheritors themselves of law, judgement and jurisdiction laid down in God’s Book of Commandments. In its establishment as such, then, the principle metamorphosed into not only a constitutional matter concerning the institution of authority, but as something that was applicable to those who could have no claim to prophethood. This can be seen with reference to, for example, Moses and the Children of Israel, by way of setting precedence: ‘And indeed We gave Moses the Book…and We made it a Guidance for the Children of Israel. And from among them [i.e. the Children of Israel] We made Leaders [Imams] to guide in accordance to Our Command…’ (XXXII:23-24) The right, thus, became the right to inherit authority without having the personal preconditions of prophethood; or as it was subsequently declared and established, the right to inherit Mohammad’s mantle of God-given authority; the right to be the successor to Mohammad in his capacity as the Head of the umma. The notion of succession becomes, then, expressed in the generalised historical sense of the understanding of the term khalifa – as in, for example, the following: ‘Then We made you successors in the Land [khalifa fee al-ard] after them, that We might see how you act.’(X:14; see also XXXV:39) And: ‘God has promised unto those of you who believe [who have acquired iman]and do good deeds [righteous deeds in the cause of God] that He will certainly appoint them successors in the Land [layastakhlifanahum fee al-ard ] as He appointed successors [istakhlafa] those before them…’(XXIV:55) Here the conception of succession takes on a broader application than merely referring to the appointment by God of an apostle or a prophet as a successor (like David or Mohammad, and so on). The reference in such verses to the concept of the khalifa (as in the use of its conjugated or compound forms), in other words, seems to be to that of succession of the chosen servant (or servants) as a political entity (as a ‘class’ category – i.e. he who succeeds is selected from among those who have command and control over the means and conditions of domination). Certainly, in the overall theological discourse during the early periods of Islam’s expansion, there appears a modification of the conceptual understanding of succession (matching the change in the actual historical conditions of state-power) in which the notions of the khalifa and prophethood became divorced one from the other – i.e. the servant chosen (upon Koranic justification, supported by the Hadith) to become the Khalifa need not have (indeed, could not have) the divinely ordained qualities of prophethood. This generalised understanding is often put through an elaborate argumentation which establishes the authority of the chosen servant but naturally still within the limits of the fundamental Koranic dogma of the Unity of God and His absolute sovereignty. The discourse, argumentation, nonetheless, is essentially reflecting the problematic of the institution of the khalifa within an order assumed (affirmed) to be fully under God’s Will. And a hint (actually, more than a hint) of this can be seen in the Koran itself. Thus, for example, we have the following: ‘Believe you in God and His Messenger! And spend [disburse, expend] of what He has made you the successors thereof [mustakhlafeen]…’(LVII:7) There are two noteworthy points implied in the above verse: firstly, the use of mustakhlafeen (from khalifa) clearly denotes that reference here to the successors as ‘heirs’ or ‘trustees’ is in the sense of these being politically in charge of what God has granted them; secondly, the ayah refers to the successors in the plural and as distinct

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from Mohammad – in calling on the successors to believe in God’s Messenger, the ayah is thereby distinguishing the latter from those who are the subject of succession. The implication here is that such a divine appointment is not (or is no longer) solely the prerogative of the person of the Prophet. That the trusteeship is meant in the political sense, and that the successors are a political entity, can be discerned from the following verse: ‘And what reason have you that you spend not in the Way of God [Sabila-Allah – also ‘cause’ of God]? And God’s is the heritage [meerath] of the heavens and the earth; alike [equal] are not among you those who spent and fought before the victory [i.e. before the victory of God’s way of life (in the abstract sense) or before the victory of Mohammad’s Muslims forces at Mecca (in the concrete historical sense)]; they are more exalted [mightier] in rank than those who spent and fought afterwards; and on to each God has promised righteousness; and verily, God is aware of whatever you do.’ (LVII:10; my italics) It is this committed group of individuals, who fought with Mohammad to capture Mecca (and abstractly, fought for the victory of God’s way of life), that are referred to as the successors in the ayah (LVII:7) quoted above; and as reward for their commitment and deeds, they are thus exalted in rank. The basic idea here is of the succession of the chosen servants as a political entity. This can also be inferred from the following: ‘Say: All praise belongs to God and peace be on His servants whom He has chosen…’(XXVII:59; my italics) And: ‘Is not He Who answers the distressed one, when he calls unto him and removes the distress [the evil causing the distress] and makes you the successor in the Land [khilafa alard]…’(XXVII:62; my italics) What appears here as regards the conception of succession is, in short, a shift from the divine order of prophethood to the ‘class’ order of the state. The latter, however, does not displace the former, but simply keeps it alive and moving, as it were, guarding its ‘interests’ as its own interests. For without the necessary illusion of the sovereignty of that divine order of prophethood, the ‘class’ order of the state loses its legitimacy. Thus, for example, we have the following statements on prophethood and the authority of past Apostles: ‘…and We did choose them, and We guided them unto the Straight Way [al-sirat al-mustaqim – i.e. the Divine Law] This is God’s Guidance, He guides with it whom He wills of His servants…These are they to whom We gave the Book and the Judgement [Wisdom] and the Prophethood…These are they whom God guided, therefore follow their guidance…’(VI:87-90) The essential aspect of prophethood, as God’s guidance upon which to guide others, is then transferred, in connection with the shift mentioned, from the person of Mohammad to the Koran. And it is essentially and fundamentally only the Koran, in hypostatising the divine order as a domain in itself, situated above any chosen servant’s right of succession and authority, that by sanctioning the role and function and position of the khalifa, and thus confirming the institution of the Khilafat as divinely ordained, legitimises such a form of authority as a delegated (by the Word of God) right to rule. In other words, succession becomes a firmly constitutional matter (at least nominally and theoretically or ‘theologically’); no chosen servant of God, whether favoured with revelations (i.e. a prophet), or merely with iman and ‘ilm (i.e. as mu’mineen and ulama), can rise in authority above the Word of God (i.e. the Koran). Consequently, no successor (Caliph, Sultan, Imam, etc.) can demand the kind of servile and slavish obedience due to only God as alone the Lord: ‘It is not [fit, suitable] for a mortal that God should give him the Book and the Judgement [al-hukma, Wisdom, Authority] and the Prophethood, then he should say to mankind: Be you servants to me besides God’s. Rather: Be you exemplary in obedience to the Book, and in studying and in that which you teach [instruct of it]. And never would he order [enjoin] you that you should take the angels and the Prophets as Lords…’(III:79-80)

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But then, as a constitutional matter, succession or khilafat becomes a notion attached to the reality of a class-state. Political structure then conforms to this pattern and model of succession and state action thereby conforms to the interests of Allah’s chosen servants; their interests play an essential role in the socio-political imposition of God’s Will that guides social and personal conduct. The chosen servants put themselves in the place of the Prophet (historically it is the mu’mineen as Mohammad’s companions that initially – as during the period of the so-called ‘Right Guided Caliphs’ – take on such a role; but they do so within a form still bearing the stamp of the old tribal relations whereby the council (shura) of elders and of the ‘wise men’, on the basis of consensus (ijma) elect one from among themselves as ‘chief’ based upon that individual’s outstanding personal qualities); they are compelled to represent their collective interest as the universal interest of all the submitted (Muslims) in servile obedience to God’s Will as expressed through the Prophet’s recited revelations which they as successors inherit and mould into the Koran as the Constitution and as the fundamental ideological means not only of the legitimacy of their right to rule but also to sustain the whole social structure based on the Deen of Islam as a way of life. In thus imposing God’s Will on earth (in the Land), the chosen servants as a collectivity, therefore, act as the controllers of the Land as ‘divine property’; as such, they are collectively, in short, the controllers of the material and mental conditions of life – they are, and act, therefore, in every sense, as a ruling class in the making. The Making of a ‘Ruling Class’ Authority which is strictly and exclusively based on the notion of God’s chosen servants is, however, not in practice functionally sufficient to maintain the status quo in an ever expanding system of social subjection; a system characterised by such form of total domination will not last for long unless the ‘class-rule’ of the chosen servants widens to incorporate individuals and groups who are in strict terms outside the limited inner circle of the collectivity of the mu’mineen as the original companions (Sahaba) of the Prophet. The actual exercise of power, the practice of domination, sooner than later, necessitates a reformulation of the juridical-political definition of authority itself. The reformulation, inevitably, carries with it the dead weight of ‘tradition’; and crucially rests ultimately, and as inevitably, for its justification on the Koran. In fact, we know that in the course of the three centuries after Mohammad’s death, a host of officials and, crucially, constitutional experts or in theological terms, Koran scholars – Mujtahidun, canonist or faqih, Koran debaters/interpreters of the various schools of Kalam or al-‘ilm al-ilahyee (Muslim Scholastic Theology), the ahlal-hadith (‘fellows of the Traditions’), and so on, collectively referred to as the Ulama – gained social and political ascendancy and became engaged in the actual regulation of authority. By the 10th century AD, these Koran scholars were integrated into the political structure, and were effectively one of the most influential (and at times the most influential) faction within the dominant class. An indication of the ulama’s ascendancy is, indeed, reflected theologically by what is customarily known as the closing of ‘the gate of ijtihad’ (bab al-ijtihad) – a reference to an informal consensus reached among scholars of all schools that, upon the range of solutions and explanations provided by them, basically all fundamental Koranic/theological issues have been thoroughly debated and finally settled; there was thus no longer any room for ‘independent reasoning’ in Koranic/theological dogma, and all that remained from this point on was to explain/interpret the application of the doctrine already established. In plain, political language: the determination of what is constitutional and lawful within the Land was henceforth to become properly the function of the ulama; and with this, the latter had made itself a part (an essential part) of the very fabric of the system of domination.

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Perhaps the most ingenious aspect of the socio-political rise of the ulama is the cunning way they had grafted themselves on to the body of the original agents of divine power (the chosen servants of God) by making ‘ilm appear as the most decisive condition of iman (rather than, in fact, the reverse, as discussed before) – the truest of all the submitted was he who had ‘ilm, which thus made the possessor not only a proper bona fide mu’min but one, indeed, higher in rank before God than any others among the mu’mineen. Thus: ‘He [God] it is Who has revealed the Book to thee [Mohammad]; some of its verses are decisive [ayat muhkamat – i.e. verses concerning the cardinal doctrines of the faith], these are the Essence of the Book [Ummu-al-Kitab or Mother of the Book], and others are allegorical [mutashabihat, figurative, ambiguous]…none knows its interpretation except God and those firmly grounded in Knowledge…’(III:7; my italics) The possessors of ‘ilm (knowledge), that is, the ulama, transpose themselves on to the political field as in fact an indispensable force; Koranic verses are related as confirmation of their key position and their indisputable function: ‘God bears witness that there is no god but He, as do the angels and those possessed of knowledge…’(III:18; my italics) There can be no higher privilege for ‘mortals’ than bearing ‘witness’ (along with God himself and the angels) to the Oneness and Unity of God, as here in this verse affirmed as a duty and function of ‘those possessed of knowledge’ – i.e. the ulama. On the basis of the Koran (and the collection and promotion of the ‘sunna of the Prophet’ – i.e. the Hadith) the ulama as a loose group of knowledgeable individuals eventually made themselves a force to be reckoned with. By manoeuvring themselves into the essential mediatory role of the interpreters of the Word of God, of the Divine Law, of Allah’s Constitution, they placed themselves at the core of the social system of Islam. They transported and raised themselves to become the ‘true’ mediators, taking the mantel of the guardianship of the Truth of divine revelations and the way of life based upon that truth: ‘And those to whom knowledge has been granted see that that which has been sent down [tanzil, divinely revealed or revelation] to you [Mohammad] from your Lord is the Truth, and that it guides to the Way of the Exalted, the Praised [sirat al-aziz al-hameed ].’ (XXXIV:6; my italics) And: ‘…those of His servants only who are possessed of knowledge [‘ibadah al-ulama] fear God…’ (XXXV:28; my italics) From subordinates of successors as rulers or of the Caliphs, conjoined with the mu’mineen, the ulama, as those claiming to possess the gift of knowledge, promoted themselves in rank – and the justification for this was, of course, based upon the Koran: ‘O you who believe! When it is said unto you: Make you room in the Assembly [al-Majles]! Then make room…And when it is said unto you: Rise up! Then rise up. God will exalt in rank [darajah] those of you who believe [those with iman, or are mu’mineen], and those who have been granted knowledge …’(LVIII:11; my italics) For the most part these were men of a different stamp from the ‘old vanguard’ and their ascendancy involved conflicts between them. Historically, it was during the early Abbasid Caliphate that the ulama’s struggle for ascendancy peaked. As always, this political struggle was reflected in theological terms, and superficially revolved upon the question of whether the Koran was ‘created’ (a Mu’tazilite doctrine, championed by Caliph al-Ma’mun, 831-33 AD) or ‘uncreated’ (a so-called ‘Traditionalists’ doctrine, supported by various schools, including that of the celebrated Ibn Hanbal and Abu Hanifa). The theological issue was not, of course, the questioning of the Koran as the Word of God (an unpardonable blasphemy); it was rather simply a debate over whether the Koran was the created Word of God, or the uncreated Word of God. What lay behind this quite absurd and hypothetical issue was essentially a political struggle over the power of decision-making, of who has jurisdiction in all matters concerning the

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interpretation and hence the application and implementation of the Koran’s commandments and directives. The essence of the argument, very briefly, is as follows: if the Koran is the ‘created’ Word of God, then the interpretation of its directives becomes almost forbiddingly restrictive and subject only to God’s chosen servant who is divinely-inspired, and thus entitled to make policy decisions in the implementation of the directives – the chosen servant in this case being the Caliph. However, if the Koran was the ‘uncreated’ Word of God, then its directives are subject to interpretation by those in possession of the knowledge not only of the Koran itself (i.e. ‘ilm), but of the sunna of the Prophet (the Hadith), who are thus entitled to make decisions regarding their application and implementation – in this case, the ulama would have the authority to make policy decisions that were binding and enforceable. But this was a factional conflict and not one of a struggle between two different or separate ‘classes’. The character of the conflict and the conduct of the conflict were determined by the issue of the control of the state power under the guise of the guardianship of the faith. The outcome of the conflict was a historic compromise based on a symbiotic relationship involving a reformulation of the juridical-political definition of authority: the successors as rulers were transformed into ‘Heads of State’ (a kind of ‘Higher Unity’) whose fundamental function was to enforce the Divine Law and the ulama-developed doctrine of the sharia (i.e. enforce the guardianship of the faith) in accordance with the authorised rulings of the ulama. In other words, the compromise situation (which was hardly ever firmly and completely stable) was that while the latter won the right of jurisdiction, the determination of Koranic (including sharia) orthodoxy and legal interpretation and application, the former (the Caliphs, Sultans, etc.) kept the right of defending and expanding the faith. The symbolic reflection of this reformulation is expressed in the formalistic change of the title of the successors as rulers from Khalifat-Allah to Khalifat-Rasul-Allah – that is, from being called ‘God’s vicegerent’ to being called ‘the vicegerent of the Messenger of God’. The latter title was not, however, ever merely symbolic: the Rulers (the Caliphs, Sultans, etc.) were in actual fact (historically) despotically powerful political agents; they were not merely regarded, formally and nominally, as ‘figureheads’, but judged and deemed as sovereigns with real power – that is, in short, as the ‘higher unity’ at the summit of the state-class pyramid. This high (or highest) position and rank is, indeed, sanctioned by the Koran: ‘…We raise in rank [darajah] whomsoever We will; and above all [kulla, whole, everyone] endued with knowledge is the One with Universal Knowledge [‘ilm-a alameen].’ (XII:76; my italics) The reference here, in this ayah, to ‘the One with Universal Knowledge’ is, of course, to God; but the connotation is that above all those possessed of knowledge (i.e. the ulama), there is ‘one’ in this world whom God has raised in rank higher, who then ultimately depends himself upon the One whose very essence is ‘ilm-a alameen, that is, ‘knowing all there is in the universe’ – i.e. God. The Caliph’s right to rule and the ulama’s right to endorse his rule were, thus, the outcome of a compromise condition of ‘political reciprocity’ imposed upon the dominant class by the dynamics of the historical circumstances, which, in pursuance of mutual advantage and class interests, had to be ideologically (theologically) justified and sanctioned. In all this, the ‘spirit’ of the Prophet’s conduct and the composed collection of his recitations were called on to serve the purpose of the glorification of class rule thus reformulated. The message on both counts is quite categorical: the successors or the inheritors are not all the submitted (all Muslims), but only Allah’s chosen servants who are inspired with iman and ‘ilm – with the khalifa standing as the ‘higher unity’ at the summit of a ‘state aristocracy’ and the ulama providing an essential collaborating role at its core. This is a constitutional right to rule as a class by divine commandment;

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it is binding on all the rest of the submitted (Muslims) as an obligation to support; it is the ‘Way’ or mode of class-rule that the latter must follow, for it is sanctioned by the Word of God and the Way of the Prophet himself: ‘Say: This is my Way: I call to God, clear-sightedly [i.e. being fully cognizant]; I and those who follow me…’ (XII:108) Finally, a few concluding remarks. Domination as Social Subjection and the Role of Allah’s Chosen Servants Mohammad’s recitations were an attempt to convey a divine message, which was supposed to realise itself in and through iman, under the notion of ‘ilm. The submitted appear as tied to the realisation of this message in their drives, thoughts, and interests, as a precondition of their subservience to the Will of God. This subservience is meant to overcome not only the previous state of ignorance but to surpass all other forms of subordination. Operating among disunited groups of people with divergent belief systems and following their particular interests, the message conveying the laws of God is intended to succeed in bringing about a single all-embracing community. The universal validity of this community and certain general maxims of conduct, however, can be securely established only by means of the subjection of concrete particularity (and individuality) through the institutionalisation of divine authority. Insofar as individuals or groups (tribes, clans, etc.) submit to God’s Will as revealed in Mohammad’s message, this implies the sacrifice of their particular interest. Indeed, the submitted must sacrifice themselves for the sake of God. Divine authority thus acting as the universal follows its course in disregard of individual or particular interests. Total dependence on such an omnipotent authority becomes the basis of a theocratic political order. Obedient, worshipful submission thus becomes the cement of an all-embracing form of social subjection of which the submitted are not conscious because that which they believe to be God’s Will is realised in the effective organisation of their social and individual life – i.e. because their subjection is believed to be based upon Allah’s Constitution and because the political order is made up of and headed by those who administer to the Word of God and act in the capacity of God’s chosen servants (at least this fiction is the alleged and professed principle). This form of domination as social subjection presupposes a definite socio-political relation of God’s chosen servants to the submitted; an actual relation which is presupposed to be conditioned by an imaginary one – that is, the chosen servants’ relationship with God. The presupposition is essential. The relationship between God and His chosen servants establishes the form of domination; divine authority, an abstraction, translates itself into reality in the chosen servants’ authority. This is an inevitable quid pro quo which rules the objective mechanism of domination under Islam. Power, of course, is the very essence of the relationship; to be God’s chosen servant is the form taken by this essence in its realisation as authority in the here and now. The power represented in the domination of the submitted brings about a universal social subjection only in that it is perceived to be divine since it is objectified in God’s revelations, in His Word, in the Koran. The Koran sets forth the form of the socio-political relations of domination as divine, but as if this were the essence of social subjection as such. What then emerges is the mystification that the mode of domination of society seems to have nothing to do with its political reality: no group or individual has power but by the grace of God! The Koranic notion of God’s chosen servants characterises the expression of this total reversal and inversion, which functions objectively as if it does, indeed, represent something real. Thus it is that the organic unity of the political and the social lies in the ideological-religious conception of God’s chosen servants. This notion, then, has a

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double significance: firstly as an objective social condition of power; and secondly as the political agency in control of a specific form of state. The notion, though ideological and religious, is, however, by no means simply reducible to a ‘religious’ definition or determination. Rather, it denotes the power relation between subjects who are objective social entities, despite being ‘subjects’ of God’s Will. In other words, the relationship between God’s chosen servants and the other servants of God is, as set forth and fixed in the Koran, a constitutionally determined juridico-political relationship, which clearly signifies the dominance of the former over the latter under the illusory religious umbrella of the ‘equality’ of all before God (‘egalitarian servitude’). This Koranic idea expresses social historical conditions: the proto-political dominance of Mohammad and his companions followed on by the rule of the ‘RightGuided’ Caliphs and the despots that succeeded them at the head of a ‘statearistocracy,’ formed of the mu’mineen and later reinforced by the ‘ulama. The notion of God’s chosen servants is thus the Koranic expression for a ‘class’ or a class-like formation that is the binding force of political power. Political power is the actual presupposition of the ideological-religious sanction. But it achieves an independent existence in the form of the specifically Islamic State, so that God’s chosen servants find their role and function predestined, their position and their status and rank assigned to them as if by God, i.e. by Koranic sanction. Here also the chosen servants come into connection with one another only in determined ways. The religious determination becomes a ‘class’ determination, however, since the qualification of being God’s chosen servants is defined as an aspect of the universal property of the Islamic State. The appearance of the subsumption of ‘class’ under ‘religion’ is the same phenomenon as the subjection of political power to the Will of God. For, as already mentioned, the Koran rests its fundamental principles on the assumption that God’s Will determines the totality of human existence. God’s Will is the form in which the ‘class interest’ of the chosen servants, as the constituent property of the Islamic State, asserts itself as the ‘common interest’. This ‘class interest’, though it manifests itself in religious form, originates in the process of political-power relations and assumes the force of a divine law. Only as such, and even from the point of view of individual members of God’s chosen servants (rulers and agents of the state), does ‘class interest’ exert its influence as divine law in the here and now. God’s chosen servants as a social ‘class’ entity then seem to be themselves ruled by the abstraction which is God’s Will. This manifests itself in the individual acts of the chosen servants which actualises their function on the basis of their ‘class interest’; the real objectification of their action individually lies in the common objectification of their interest as serving God’s Will. The possibility of divine knowledge, of ‘ilm, and of understanding the divine content of the Koran, and therewith also the competence to judge and administer Koranic rules of conduct is given here only by the Will of God. The chosen servant (Mohammad as the Messenger, or any other mu’min as ‘alim, the knowledgeable), though essentially a political creature, is a creature whose being is determined by his participation in a divine project. The divine element in all this is an illusion, but it is a necessary illusion – it gives its form to the ‘class’ of God’s chosen servants so that the unity of the ‘class’ overrides (though not eliminating) the differences within it. It was under this necessary illusion that Mohammad attempted to forge his followers and companions into a ‘community’ of mu’mineen – a group of God’s chosen servants whose unity was to be the basis of the communality of all the submitted. In its ‘ideal’ form, such was Mohammad’s conception and establishment of the umma. But, the failure of the umma (its failure as the communality of the submitted, the Muslims) brought about the condition that demanded the need for the institutionalisation of the authority of God’s Will as the Higher Unity.

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Moreover, with the crises and infighting among the mu’mineen – among the ‘vanguard’ of the movement – and the fitnah (‘sedition’ and eventually ‘civil war’) that followed Mohammad’s death, the authority of the Higher Unity became essential as the guarantor of the unity of the dominant class. The unity of God’s chosen servants thus came to be based on the necessary illusion of this Higher Unity. The realisation of the unity of God’s chosen servants as a ‘class’ could only, therefore, have come about in the institutionalisation of God’s Will as the Higher Unity, which materialised itself not as the umma but as the Caliphate State; with this the ‘class’ of God’s chosen servants became the subject – i.e. a ‘class’ welded to the state (for want of a better term, a ‘state aristocracy’). As an institution the Higher Unity appears as the lord and master, and not the ‘class’ of the chosen servants, whose individual members define themselves by their fundamental relation with the Higher Unity, as servants and not as ‘rulers’. Since, however, the unity of God’s chosen servants as a ‘class’ is only based on the necessary illusion of God’s Will as the Higher Unity, a personification of the Higher Unity becomes necessary as the focal point of class unity. Thus, the Caliph becomes the Higher Unity incarnate – i.e. the class-state incarnate; he becomes the ‘vicegerent’ of God and, with the rise of the ulama, he becomes the ‘vicegerent’ of the Messenger of God. The sovereignty of the Higher Unity is understood, in other words, not only as God’s Will personified, but as the abstract unity that unifies the divinely chosen servants – a unity which is socio-politically and ideologically (religiously) the precondition for the fulfilment and completion of each layer or faction of the group as a ‘class’. The theological notion of this is given in the Koranic concept of Tawhid or the Oneness, Unity of God, which was originally instituted and used by Mohammad to bring about, in fact, a quite definite unification within the Arab tribal world. And though not an entirely new or original idea, it was, nonetheless, an idea that incorporated a ‘new’ system of dependency and socio-political domination (‘new’ at least insofar as the Arabs proper were concerned). As the most fundamental Koranic concept, Tawhid catered just as well for the class-political transformation that had come about after Mohammad’s death. In Islamic theology, however, the notion is ‘idealised’: the oneness/unity that Islamic theology presents is not the unity of ‘one class’ that unifies by its political domination; but rather the proclamation and affirmation of the Oneness of God as a Unity that unifies all mankind. Ideologically, it enabled the sanctioning of the Caliphate State (as also the later and alternative Shiite political model of Imamate) as the establishment of a real community of Muslims, after the model of the Prophet’s own umma, which elevates itself above the interests and conflicts of particular status groups and classes within the framework of a (growing and conquering) Islamic empire. The universalism of the Higher Unity (sanctioned by the concept of Tawhid) cannot, of course, eliminate these conflicts, for it does not and cannot eliminate their fundamental social source and condition. But what it does is to clear the path, so to speak, for a continuous justification of the form of political domination of God’s chosen servants by presenting the structure of their power as divinely willed and thus as above and beyond the reach of any human power or influence – as outside the domain of human history, unaffected by historical and social processes. The idea of God’s chosen servants as the inheritors of authority on earth has two sources: the Koran as its fundamental source and Mohammad’s umma as its mythical one. The umma myth apotheosises the political – the concrete historical thus becomes ‘eternal’. The Koran legitimises the political – the class-state as Caliphate thus becomes a divinely ordained institution. Thus we have an engaging mystification whereby the chosen servants seem subject only to Allah’s Constitution, their authority seems derived from God’s, upon which authority they appear to furnish the earth with the indestructible force and permanence of God’s Law, and for this purpose they are united by the characteristics of divine servitude within a structure of power that has or

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rather claims to have tradition (the sunna of the Prophet) behind it and, as its support, the original form of Mohammad’s umma as the ideal of Muslim Community, the preservation of whose mythical ‘purity’ is taken as the condition of Islam’s health and in whose mythical glorification rests the appeal orthodoxy. In themselves, however, the two sources mentioned are no more divinely or apostolically inspired than are they the real means of power and authority. They want transforming into universal ideals in order to appear as such. But this transformation can only take place under certain circumstances that centre in the expansion of the Islamic way of life – i.e. the expansion of the Deen of submission to the Will of Allah. Hence, the historical movement of jihad initiated by Mohammad which changed the ideals of Arab unification into that of a World Empire. Chapter Eight: Jihad: A Divine Obligation In the Koran, there are fundamental concepts whose metaphysical character makes them seem quite independent of their socio-historical roots. With these, it appears that their content remains the same in the most diverse historical circumstances. The concept of jihad belongs to these fundamental concepts. Indeed, jihad is central to the political understanding of the essential notion of the Oneness of God or Tawhid; it is that which completes the sovereignty of this idea, that which brings everything together to make ‘God the One’ appear as an objective force that rules over the actions of humans. It is with jihad that the idea of the Oneness of God is worked out and made into the ‘subject’ of Islam’s history. Jihad is the key to the triumph in real life of the idea of God in Oneness and Unity. It is the vehicle of the process of bringing this fundamental idea into the social world of humanity and thus essential to making the establishment and expansion of divine power the pivot of the Islamic movement’s activities. By way of defining and understanding the Koranic concept of jihad, we need therefore firstly consider briefly the relation between jihad and the notion of the Oneness of God. Jihad and Tawhid In Mohammad’s recited revelations, where, it has to be assumed, the specifically Koranic concept of jihad was first set out, it was an outcome of the quest for unification under the banner of the universality of the Oneness or Unity of God, or Tawhid (‘tawhid’ – from the root a-h-d – literally ‘to make one’, in Arabic usage it does actually mean ‘unification’, bringing about unity, or unifying). The divided tribal world of Mohammad’s Arabia was to be subsumed under a political movement initiated and developed on the basis of this idea of Tawhid (see the four-verse ‘Ikhlas’ surah, CXII, presumed to have been revealed at Mecca) which expressed, in religious terms, the subsumption of the multiplicity of deities and the negation of what is referred to by the concept of shirk (literally meaning ‘division’, though in the Koran standing for idolatry or the association of anything or anyone with God), by the superimposition of the One God (the Divine One, or Allah) as the Higher Unity. Conceptually, the notion of the universality of the One God is free of limitations of space or time, though this is merely in ‘belief’ or ‘faith’ and ‘assertion’. Politically, this universality needs to be realised in permanence as socially and historically universal. This necessitates, in the social reality of life, of the world of humanity, submission and obedience to the Divine One, or Allah. Mohammad saw this as his divinely ordained mission. For him to achieve this mission, and thus secure and insure the universality and permanence of the Divine One, or Allah, required a way or a means of the advancement of the idea of the Oneness of God. The means taken up was jihad, which in social terms had its roots in the pre-Islamic Arab tribal life, in the

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effort and striving to sustain the traditions concerned with such matters as, for example, water and territorial rights, bonds and commitments of honour, and so on; and in its militant combative sense, jihad had its roots in the traditions of tribal/clan feuds and raids. With Mohammad basically the same tribal traditions continued to define the practice of jihad, but with one essential difference: the practice was co-ordinated by his Islamic movement to set itself up as the unifying force. From this beginning, but more specifically with the formation of the umma, the practice and understanding of jihad was modified and adapted in accordance with the circumstances and exigencies of the propagation of Mohammad’s divine message of tawhid by means of the expansion of the umma. The strictly Koranic concept of jihad (as distinct from the later formulated Islamic doctrine of jihad) reflects this historical adaptation, signifying that the totality of every sphere of social life, as well as the historical world, was to be considered as a realm of jihad. Indeed, as a concept, jihad lies at the core of Mohammad’s or the Koran’s divine message itself. It was for this very reason that it became a force within the mode of life governed (or guided) by the divine message and thus became the means of diffusion and propagation of the fundamental idea of the Oneness of God. Essentially, however, jihad was a concerted and systematic struggle to preserve and spread the socio-political movement initiated by Mohammad under the idea of the revealed truth of the Oneness of God. It was action that was, moreover, vital to the realisation of Mohammad’s preliminary goal of Arab unification as the first social expression of his divinely inspired mission. The realisation of this mission leading from the conception of jihad (as the means) to action is historical; in other words, the activity essential to the functioning of jihad is determined in the context of particular historical situations – that is to say, what jihad entails in a given historical situation is determinable with regard to certain internal and external socio-political factors. In operational terms, with jihad the orientation towards the absolute certainty of the universality of the Oneness of God (Tawhid) is transformed into the orientation towards the practice of instituting and validating that certainty, which thus means that the concept of Tawhid ceases to be one of ‘pure’ theology. Jihad makes the concept of Tawhid decidedly political. This does not mean that this fundamental Koranic concept gives up its claim to being the absolute truth or to the universality of its truth, but that, rather, only its verification occurs by means of and within the activity of jihad. To the concept of Tawhid thus belongs the concept of jihad – i.e. in functional terms, one is meaningless without the other. In the realm of jihad, the concept and politics of the universality of One God come together and become fused; that is, the idea of the Oneness of God is asserted politically as being bound to Mohammad as the last Prophet divinely authorised, by the last Word of God, to bring it to the whole of humanity. This idea of Tawhid (i.e. the truth of the Oneness of God affirmed by the Koran as the last Word of God) must be realised in order for Islam (as a socio-political and ideological-religious system) to exist as a way of life (as a Deen) – or rather, to put it more strictly, Tawhid must realise itself, since it is the essence of the divine message revealed to Mohammad. It can only realise itself, however, through Mohammad’s action as the Messenger of God, or through the process of him acting upon the revelations – this is what God has commanded: ‘And follow you [i.e. Mohammad] what is revealed unto you from your Lord; verily, God is aware of what you do.’(XXXIII:2) It is upon his activity as the Messenger that the abstract idea of the Oneness of God finds its form in Islam as the self-totalising unity – he is charged to raise the torch of knowledge of the One God: ‘O Prophet! Verily, We have sent you as a Witness, and as a Bearer of good tidings and as a Warner. And as the Summoner

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unto God by His command, and as an illuminating torch.’(XXXIII:45-46) Tawhid the abstract idea becomes a power that shapes Mohammad’s Islam and its future only through Mohammad’s motive idea of practice as jihad: ‘But the Messenger and those who believe with him struggle [jahadu] hard with their possessions and their lives [selves]; and these, for them are the good things; and these, they are the successful ones.’(IX:88) Here the essential difference of the historical function of jihad from that of its ‘mystical’ conception (i.e. jihad as the spiritual ‘inner’ struggle of the ‘self’ or the division of the concept into the so-called ‘lesser’ jihad or ‘Jihad Asqar’ and ‘greater’ jihad or ‘Jihad Akbar’) actually confirms the Koranic concept – in terms of the Koran, there is no such notion of the ‘lesser and the greater’ jihad! Just as it was with Mohammad, so it was with all his successors: the concept of jihad was oriented towards social (societal) practice, which axiomatically includes ideological and political activity within a particular historical situation. Its significance and what it entails are, in other words, determined by historical and practical presuppositions. Jihad is not a notion referring to contemplative ‘inner’ struggle, nor is it a striving of the ‘self’ in achieving some form or measure of ‘transcendence’. Rather, it is determined within the framework set by the historical goal with which Mohammad’s movement and the Koran are linked. Not only do the interests resulting from this goal play a crucial role in establishing what is essential to the activity of jihad, they enter into the substance of the concept of jihad. With jihad ‘particular’ or rather ‘class’ interests are to be fulfilled in a process of realising the universality of Tawhid as the general interest. It is this that defines the ‘personal’ requirements of a struggle or striving for ‘good’ and against ‘evil’ as an aspect of the perpetual struggle in the ‘Way of God’. Jihad in the Way of God In contrast to all subsequent reformulations of the notion of jihad, Mohammad’s and the Koranic concept, precisely by virtue of its political guiding interest, is defined as the struggle or striving in the ‘Way of God’ to advance the historical goal of establishing (of making real) the universality of Tawhid as the general interest, which is a manifestation of Islam’s form of domination as social subjection, in order to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. It is on condition of this struggle that God will provide His guidance: ‘And those who struggle [jahadu] for Us, certainly will We guide them in Our ways; and verily, God is with the Upright [al-muhsineen; the righteous or the ‘good-doers’].’(XXIX:69) It is only from this standpoint that jihad becomes a fundamental element of the social process of life under Islam; it is as such an element that it has to be understood as an established and irrevocable part of the divine message. The concept is comprehensible only through the Koranic definition of the ‘Way of God’ as the determinant of the social process of life, presupposing Mohammad’s and the Koran’s postulation of domination and servitude as modes of ‘being a Muslim’ and of the role of submission to the Will of the One God (Allah) in the totality of the areas of life. And the Way of God is that which was revealed to Mohammad as the Guidance to the Divine Law: ‘Thus did We reveal to you [i.e. Mohammad] an inspired Guidance by Our command; you did not know what the Book was nor faith [iman], but We made it a light, guiding thereby whomsoever We will of Our servants; and verily guiding you to the Straight Way [al-Sirat al-Mustaqim – i.e. the Divine Law]; the Way of God , Whose is whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth; Be it known! Unto God shall be referred all affairs.’(XLII:52-53) Now, the original idea of jihad is a conceptualisation derived from the form of human ‘effort’, of power and ability, used in contending with the immediate problems of existence within the particular historical situation at the time of Mohammad. The connection of the concept with that of the ‘struggle’ for existence is as old as Arab

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tribal life itself; it received its first explicit political interpretation in Mohammad’s notion of Tawhid, the postulate of the Oneness of God. From this, the ‘effort’, the exercise of power and ability, used in the struggle for existence in the specifically tribal mode of life became identified with the notions of force, striving, and fighting or the struggle in the Way or cause of the One God (Jihad fee Sabila Allah). The concept derives its definition from the antagonistic character of the social life process facing Mohammad; it becomes defined as the struggle to and the force used in overcoming this antagonism by means of the identity of the processes of propagation of Mohammad’s idea of the Oneness of God and the realisation of this through submission to God’s Will and Mohammad himself as God’s Messenger: ‘You shall believe in God and His Messenger, and struggle in the Way of God [tujahaduna fee Sabila Allah] with your possessions and your lives…’(LXI:11) Thus, the resolution of ‘any’ form of discord, antagonism (fitna) in life is, in accordance with the Word of God, possible only in and through the activity of jihad. From this basis, the concept of jihad became a divine obligation, fully integrated into the eternal message of the Koran and thus into the general politico-ideological principles of the Islamic state – it became one of the fundamental principles of Allah’s Constitution. The essence of jihad is a social and political struggle, whose appearance is historically conditioned as a religious struggle – its religious appearance is, of course, neither false or fictitious, nor fabricated; it is real and crucial to its understanding. As a divine obligation, the idea of jihad permeates all areas of the Islamic way of life; and as the practice of this obligation, it is an alienating form of activity, which actually begins with the very act of submission. It is as a divinely ordained practical idea that jihad thus becomes an essential element of Muslim social consciousness, and as such it becomes integral to the mode of preservation and expansion of Islam as a way or system of life (its transplantation to the inner sanctum of the ‘self’ or the ‘soul’ – introduced by ‘Irfan or Sufism – is, indeed, an historically reformulated and conditioned aspect of this mode). The word jihad (from the root j-h-d) is the infinitive noun of jahada meaning ‘to struggle’, ‘to strive,’ and is derived from juhd meaning effort, power or exertion. In its general sense, the term signifies the effort, power or exertion used in striving (or in the struggle) to surmount obstacles generated by the power of resisting forces (i.e. those one faces in life, in the whole complex of social processes of living) in order to achieve an end. It therefore implies the consciousness of striving and struggling and suggests persistent exertion in the use or exercise of power or ability. The Koranic concept of jihad is the historical application of this general understanding, which, as already mentioned, originated in the struggle of Mohammad to overcome the obstacles he faced in the particular conditions of his time for the establishment (realisation through submission) of the sovereignty of the Will of God – this being the locus of Tawhid; that is, being the path traced out by Mohammad in accordance with the divine message revealed to him which was to be the source of the process by which the very objectivity of social life was to become subject only to God’s Will as Divine Law. Jihad, in its specifically Koranic sense, then, is a conscious and persistent struggle (striving) in the Way of God traced out by Mohammad in his recited revelations to subject social life to God’s Will through which there appears a cementing of ‘collective will’ among the believers: ‘O you who believe! Bow you down and prostrate yourselves, and serve your Lord, and do good; haply so you shall succeed. And struggle for God [wa-jahadu fee Allah], a true behoving struggle as is His due. He has chosen you and has laid on you no impediment for your Deen [fee al-deen], the faith of your father Abraham; He [i.e. God] named you Muslims aforetime and in this, that the Messenger may be a witness over you, and you may be a witness over the

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people. So establish you prayer and pay you the alms, and hold fast by God; He is your Master: How excellent the Master and how excellent the Helper!’(XXII:77-78) The above verses command the believers to serve God and struggle for Him; here jahada fee Allah, or the struggle for God, is conjoined with ibadah, or serving God as Lord and Master. In other words, the two acts – one of ‘serving’, the other of ‘struggling’ – though conceptually distinct, are not separate or independent of each other: to serve God is to struggle for God. The kind of struggle commanded, moreover, is that which has to be true and sincere as is due to God; that is, it is a struggle necessary to the realisation of the Will of the One God, the Divine One, or Allah through the implementation of divine directives revealed to Mohammad. It is, in short, not an optional matter based on ‘free will’ or ‘individual choice’ – to serve God, the believer has to struggle for God. The above revelation, which is a directive to which the Messenger (Mohammad) is a witness, is a general commandment which is, however, addressed to the ‘believers’ as distinct from the ‘people’ as a whole: the command ‘to struggle for God’ is incumbent upon those who have, in their devotion to Mohammad as the Messenger of God, not simply acknowledged the Lordship of God, not merely accepted God as their Master, but who have as a result of their activity in following and supporting Mohammad, gained the certainty that comes only with iman, who are then directed to become witnesses over the ‘people’. The ‘believers’ here are the mu’mineen – it is they, as a distinct group of devotees, and not the people as a whole (or mankind), who are chosen and are named Muslims in this (as in the past). This sets the revelation in its historical context – that is, Mohammad (accepting the related history of his life and mission) here was addressing his devoted followers, the companions. But what is also significant is that it implies that to become part of this group, to become one of the chosen or a mu’min, it is necessary to struggle for God! Thus, those are blessed with God’s favour and mercy who struggle for God or in the Way of God: ‘Verily, those who believe, and those who migrate [i.e. those who followed Mohammad from Mecca to Medina as his companions to establish the umma] and struggle in the Way of God [wa jahadu fee Sabila Allah] – those have hope of God’s Mercy…’(II:218) The conception of jihad, thus, had initially (and fundamentally) the signification of a struggle in the building of a movement; it asserted action that would cement the germs of a ‘collective will’ being generated by the act of submission, upon which ‘will’ social life could then be changed and subjected to the Islamic way. It is in struggle that ‘individual wills’ are forged and cemented into a ‘collective will’ and thereby obedience and subjection to that ‘will’ become so strengthened as to seem automatic. The action of jihad discloses the agent, realises the agency that puts into effect Mohammad’s revelatory ideals. It is true that without the idea of the Oneness of God, Mohammad’s movement would not exist, but it is also true that his movement would not exist only upon this notion. This principal cohesive element was rendered effective and powerful – it was, indeed, substantiated and actualised – through jihad. This conscious, incessant and persistent effort, or the action of jihad, formed the movement into a disciplined organised force (a ‘party’, if you like), and was also instrumental in establishing the believers (essentially Mohammad’s companions) as its leaders: ‘The believers are those who believe in God and His Messenger, they have not doubted thereafter, and struggle with their possession and their lives in the Way of God; they are the truthful ones.’(XLIX:15) In the various verses quoted above, the command to struggle does not specify the form and type of striving or struggling deemed necessary by God, as due to Him. All that is clear here is that jahada fee Allah, or jahadu fee Sabila Allah, and hence the notion of jihad as such, is an action ordained by God: what is implied is simply that jihad is a divine obligation. Conceived as a divine obligation, jihad therefore becomes a

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condition of being a Muslim. Owing to its intrinsic relation to Mohammad’s propagation of his message and the making of his movement under the banner of Tawhid (the Oneness or Unity of God), its conception as a divine obligation was therefore necessarily, and inevitably, political. This is intimated by the following verse: ‘O you who believe! Take you not My foe and your foe for guardians [vali, often translated as ‘friend’, is more accurately a ‘guardian’ or someone who is ‘a guide and a protector’], offering them love, though they have denied [disbelieved in] the Truth that has come to you, driving out the Messenger and yourselves [i.e. from Mecca] for believing in God, your Lord. If you go forth to struggle in My Way and seek My pleasure [while] secretly loving them, I know very well what you conceal and what you declare; and whosoever of you does that, has gone astray from the Right Way [the Straight Way – i.e. gone against the Divine Law].’(LX:1) The struggle in the way of God mentioned here is not a ‘spiritual striving’; jihad here is a fight against God’s enemies in the political arena, including the battlefield. The same political intent is also indicated in this verse, which concerns the Prophet himself: ‘O Prophet! Struggle thou against the disbelievers and the hypocrites, and be thou harsh with them; for their abode is hell [jahanam]…’(LXVI:9) Jihad : A Test of Faith and a Determiner of Status For Mohammad, who knew of no realm of ‘truth’ independent of the religious, to struggle in the Way of God was the true essence of being for God; that is, it is in this act that those who have submitted truly affirm their total subjection to the Will of God actually and concretely. God’s Will, however, is but a mystified expression of Mohammad’s will (and, after his death, of the ‘collective will’ of leaders and rulers who succeeded him) that became itself the basis of a ‘statute law’, posited in the Koran; thus struggling for God, jihad, is actually a political struggle to impose the will of Mohammad reified as the directives of the Koran. The concept of jihad as set forth in the Koran is, in other words, the endeavour to fashion the reality of existence in accordance with the ideal of being a Muslim as defined by Mohammad. It was at the time, indeed, a fundamental test of faith or iman in and demonstration of commitment to his project and apostleship: ‘And those who believe, and have emigrated and struggled in the Way of God, and those who gave refuge and help [i.e. the Ansar, the residents of Medina who helped Mohammad and his followers], these are the true believers rightfully [al-mu’mineen haqqan] … And those who believed afterwards [later] and emigrated, and struggled along with you, they are of you; and kindred by blood are nearer to one another in the Book of God …’(VIII:74-75) Jihad is one aspect, certainly the most crucial one, of God’s general test of faith which is consistently declared in various ayahs in the Koran, as, for example, in the following: ‘What! Do the people reckon [imagine] that they will be left [merely] to say: “We believe!” and will not be tried? And certainly We did try those before them; God assuredly knows those who are truthful and He assuredly knows the liars.’ (XXIX:2-3) And thus more specifically concerning jihad as a test: ‘And We shall certainly try you until We know those of you who struggle [al-Mujahideen] and are steadfast, and make your [i.e. Mohammad’s] tidings known.’(XLVII:31) In the act of jihad, moreover, the Koran distinguishes those not only true to the faith, but those to be distinguished in rank: ‘Not equal are such believers who sit [hold back from the struggle] – other than those hurt [having an injury] – with those who struggle in the Way of God with their possessions and their lives [selves or persons]; God has raised in rank those who struggle [the strugglers or fighters, al- Mujahideen] with their possessions and their lives above those who sit [hold back]; unto each God has promised good [their just reward]; but those who struggle [al-Mujahideen] God distinguishes above those who sit [hold back] as higher with greater reward [recompense or bounty].’(IV:95)

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Here then we have an understanding of jihad as a means of establishing the Islamic movement as a disciplined organised force, whose core membership (the mu’mineen) would display commitment of a devotional type to Mohammad as the Messenger of God, and who are consequently recognised as higher in social and political status than the submitted in general. But since the submitted as a whole – that is, all able-bodied Muslims – need also to be enticed to struggle for God (i.e. for Islam), as jihad clearly requires their participation, the divine obligation is set forth in a general format, as a universally applicable decree, carrying the vague reward or favour of the attainment of ‘success’. Thus: ‘O you who believe! Do your duty to God, and seek the means [waseela] unto Him, and struggle in His Way, that you may be successful.’(V:35) Advancing the same general applicability and encouragement, the obligation also carries the promise for the participant of receiving God’s guidance: ‘And those who struggle for Us [in Our cause], certainly We shall guide them in Our Ways…’(XXIX:69) And indeed it is made to appear for every participant an individually fulfilling activity: ‘And whosoever struggles [jahada], struggles only for his own self; verily, God is All-sufficient of all the worlds.’(XXIX:6) Jihad is thus perceived to be an activity that is carried on for God or in the Way of God, but this only in order to improve the life-situation of each individual participant in accordance with God’s Guidance and Will. For, theologically, it is self-evident that God is ‘Allsufficient’ – i.e. not in need of ‘salvation’ or of ‘material’ or ‘spiritual’ fulfilment. In struggling for God, Muslims are, in other words, struggling for themselves to achieve the success in life which is meant to (believed to) come as a result of the establishment and spread of Islam as a way of life ordained by God and revealed to Mohammad (as in the Koran). This is precisely what jihad signifies as an essential aspect of the Islamic hegemonic ideology; that is, the ideological motivation to struggle for God or in His cause (for Islam) needs to be so internalised as to appear as if self-willed and thus self-fulfilling. From this, the idea of jihad is made to become an essential element of the general Islamic ideology that affects (or at least tends to affect) Muslim ‘mass consciousness’. As such, it helps to bring about the display of generic loyalty to those at the core of the movement (the leaders or the rulers); and it helps to justify every type of political action, sacrifice of possessions and of life, in the religious guise of serving God. In the Koran, then, the notion of jihad is not abstract and transcendental; in rewarding those who struggle with high rank and great recompense, this divine obligation is affirmed as an active principle in the actual practice of the Islamic way of life (as the active principle of the Deen of Islam) in a socio-political setting. Jihad appears in the process of Islamic life as a result of the necessity or need imposed by objective sociopolitical conditions; it already presupposes the socio-political conditions of the rise of the Islamic movement of which it is only an aspect, or determination – e.g. in Mohammad’s time, we have the conditions of Jahiliyah; with his successors, we have the conditions of internal strife and external opposition and obstructions. The notion of the ‘struggle’ referred to in the above quoted verses, has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘inner’ or ‘spiritual’ questions; it is immediately and concretely a matter of the political requirements of the advancement and promotion of the Islamic movement. It is through the movement of Islam that the notion of jihad is drawn out as a concrete activity, which is then represented in the Koran as a divine obligation in instituting a universal socio-political form of servitude. The serving of God and Mohammad as His Messenger, which is fundamental to Islamic ideology, should thus be considered not as something ‘spiritually’ superimposed, but as something historically developed through incessant struggle or jihad. The Koran, thus, attributes to jihad a permanent relation to serving God and His Messenger. If submission to the Will of God carries the ineluctable act of ibadah, of servitude, then jihad is the ultimate proof of the latter. To struggle for God, or in the

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Way of God, is the action that is intended to confirm and realise the Will of God. Jihad, then, is precisely the inner dynamic of the process of realisation of God’s Will, comprehended in its political meaning. And since this process of realisation concerns, by the very definition of the universality of the Oneness of God, all of mankind and is one that has, by the same definition of Tawhid, no limitation of time or space, jihad is a continual and permanent struggle of an all-embracing and worldwide dimension; it is, in short, a permanent expansionist struggle: ‘He it is Who has sent His Messenger with the Guidance and the True Deen [Deen al-Haq – the true way of life, i.e. Islam; standard translations give this as ‘the religion of truth’], that he may make it triumph over every deen [every way of life]…O you who believe! Shall I direct you to a commerce [tejarat – generally meaning ‘trade’ or the interchange of goods – has here the connotation of ‘commerce’ in its sense of ‘intercourse’ as an activity that involves the ‘trafficking’ of ideas and influences] that shall deliver you from a painful chastisement? You shall believe in God and His Messenger, and struggle in the Way of God with your possession and your lives; that is better for you, did you but know.’(LXI:9-11) Jihad here is a social and personal struggle that God directs the believers to engage in for the spreading of His Word revealed to Mohammad; it is a struggle for the propagation and promotion of a way of life as an ‘intercourse’ (a ‘commerce’) that is divinely ‘liberating’. The ‘deliverance’ associated with it is conditioned by the triumph of God’s sanctioned way of life (the True Deen) over all other ways of life. It is, as such, a struggle that is universalistic in scope and permanent in character – its purpose is the triumph of Islam as a way of life; its mode is expansionist; its objective is the whole of human life; its target is the entire humanity. Jihad: A Sure Way to Paradise In jihad, as in all aspects of serving God (ibadah), the obeying of Mohammad as God’s Messenger, whose divine message is the Guidance that is ordained to be the condition of the true way of life, is the prime requisite for all participants. The initial lure of participation in the jihad for God depended, to a large extent, no doubt, on Mohammad’s personality, his qualities of political, ideological and military leadership (claimed and perceived to be due to divine favour). Soon this lure was bolstered by what was proclaimed to be divine recompense and favour: God’s promise of pardon and paradise. Participation in jihad, it was thus revealed by Mohammad, brings about not only the forgiveness of sins but admittance into paradise: ‘He will forgive you your sins and admit you into gardens beneath which rivers flow, and abodes in the Gardens of Eden [wa maskana tayebat fee janata ‘iduna]; that is a supreme achievement.’(LXI:12) The idea of paradise plays an important part as recompense. But the paradise of Mohammad and the Koran is far from being merely limited to some abstract image of a ‘heavenly’ place with angels and the rest; it is, on the contrary, an image of a very ‘earthly’ place, heavily influenced by a ‘desert-dwelling’ mentality. It is, moreover, an idea that has objective resonance – the Koran’s paradise involves and includes affairs and things that are feasible in the here and now, in this world. Paradise, as Mohammad (supposedly) envisaged it in his recited revelations, concerns material and relational joys and the rupture that comes as a result of the materiality rather than the pure spirituality of a ‘good life’. His paradise is a picture of a state of being similar to the best of the concrete life imaginable by him; it is in this sense that the Koran refers to it as a ‘similitude’ promised to those who struggle to the death for God: ‘He shall guide them and improve their state. And admit them to the garden which He has made known to them…This is the similitude [mathalu – similar or like; mathal ‘example’] of Paradise promised to the pious: therein are rivers of water unpolluted, and rivers of milk unchanging in taste, and rivers of wine – delicious to the drinkers, and rivers of

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honey pure and clear; and therein for them are every fruit and forgiveness from their Lord…’(XLVII:5-6 and 15) The reward for participating in jihad, then, is this material enjoyment of a ‘good life’ which is always the opposite of hellish, painful chastisement.(see XIII:34 and 45) Thus, we have the following description: ‘Verily, you shall taste the painful chastisement. And you shall not be recompensed, but for what you were doing. Except for the devotee servants of God. For them is a known provision; fruits, and they shall be highly honoured: In the Gardens bountiful [delightful]; upon couches, face to face; a cup from a spring passing round among them, white, delicious, a delight to those who drink. Nothing there to oppress, nor exhaust the senses. And with them shall be wide-eyed maidens, with modest glances, with beautiful eyes, as if they were hidden pearls [eggs].’ (XXXVII:38-49) The conception of the paradise promised in the Koran for the mujahideen is, thus, more akin to that of ‘Utopia’ than to some ‘supernatural’ proposition. Yes, it is an imaginary place; but one that is in aspiration realisable; it is an ‘ideal’ that has the potentiality of existence, which as such makes it worth fighting for. It is, in fact, the very earthliness of this Koranic idea of paradise that makes it more convincing, persuasive, and thus a potent ideological inducement. The proposition, moreover, has a practical aspect: the actual achievement of paradise through the struggle in the Way of God; the achievement of the Kingdom of God on earth: ‘Verily, for the pious ones is a realisation [achievement]. Gardens secure and vineyards. And maidens beautiful [with swelling breasts], equal of age. And a cup full…’(LXXVIII:31-34; see also LXXXIII:22-28) This is the paradise that the believers involved in jihad can actually believe to achieve with the triumph of Islam; and should they sacrifice their lives in the process, as martyrs (Shohada, pl. of shaheed, martyr), they are promised the same in the ‘hereafter’. It is, moreover, the ‘promised land’ for ‘the foremost in deeds’ of God’s ‘chosen’ servants, (see XXXV:32), that is, the ‘elite’ strugglers for God, who are promised untold wealth (symbolically expressed as ‘gold bracelets’, ‘pearls’ and ‘silk’): ‘Garden of Eden [jantu ‘idunin] they shall enter; therein they shall wear bracelets of gold and with pearls, and their apparel therein shall be silk.’(XXXV:33) The promise of paradise in the ‘hereafter’ is, indeed, matched by the promise of help and victory in the ‘here and now’ to achieve the triumph of Islam as the real paradise: ‘And another [blessing, boon or favour] you love: help from God and a victory at hand. Give thou [i.e. Mohammad] good tidings to the believers [al-mu’mineen]!’ (LXI:13) In other words, jihad is an activity that has the promise of socio-political victory of the Islamic movement on earth and the promise of a ‘good life’ and a state of bliss for the believers in the here and now. The ‘good tidings’ that Mohammad is to convey is precisely that God’s promise is not some ‘abstract’, merely ‘spiritual’ or even some ‘supernatural’ prospect, but a favour which is, in fact, quite tangible, objective and actual. To emphasise the divinity of this promise and to demonstrate its plausibility, Mohammad (i.e. the Koran) thus refers to the victory of Jesus in spreading Christianity and the triumph of his disciples: ‘O you who believe! Be you God’s helpers, as Jesus, son of Mary, said to the disciples: Who will be my helpers unto God? The disciples said: We will be helpers of God! So a party of the Children of Israel believed, and a party disbelieved. Then We aided those who believed against their enemy, and they became triumphant.’(LXI:14) Paradise, as mentioned, is a reward, a favour, for those engaged in a common struggle in the cause or way of God. Jihad includes this favour as part of a divine covenant: ‘…a promise binding on Him [God] in the Torah and the Bible and the Qur’an. And who is more faithful to his covenant than God? Therefore rejoice you [i.e. those struggling in the Way of God – the Mujahideen] in the bargain that you have transacted; and that, it is the great achievement.’ (IX:111) Jihad involves a ‘contract’, an agreement: struggle for God in return for His favour – a favour which is both a

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‘this-worldly’ and a ‘heavenly’ reward: ‘And God gave them the reward in this world and an excellent reward of the hereafter…’(III:148) Mohammad and his successors had every interest in encouraging jihad and maintaining its impetus, its uninterrupted propagating and expansionist drive, and therefore the rewarding of participation in such a struggle needed to have intrinsic dignity by being incorporated into the universalistic divine message of the Koran as God’s favour, as His promise of paradise. Historically, of course, they tended to reward those who struggled for God with concrete material remuneration, with actual privileges and honours, like the distribution of ‘booty,’ of tribute, and status recognition, high rank and positions of authority. The Koranic promise of paradise for jihad sanctioned and glorified such historical remuneration; it was part of the strategy for mobilisation in all the phases of the development and expansion of Islam. Jihad and Islam’s Hegemony The Koran glorifies jihad; it promotes and praises the struggle of believers to fashion reality in accordance with its body of revelations. This is a Muslim’s highest privilege and the sole way set forth in the Koran to materialise the Divine Truth. Ever since Mohammad’s death, it was claimed that ‘ilm (knowledge of divine revelations) could set the standard of the truth and that iman (absolute certainty of faith) could set the standard of human conduct, and that these could through jihad alone become universally diffused as the standard of human life. The spread of the Faith and that of the message of the revelations were from the very beginnings of the Islamic movement central to the notion of jihad. It is further evident from the Koran that Islam, as a way of life striving towards universality, would have to bring about the permeation throughout all spheres of social life the Koran’s entire system of guidance, of values, directives, teachings, etc. Jihad constituted the means to bring about this form and extent of social control and domination; it was the means to bring about the adequate socio-political conditions for the establishment, or rather, the realisation of the universalised hegemony of Islam. The concrete aim of jihad as understood within the context of the Koran, then, is its role in raising the Islamic way of life to world dominance; to bring to dominance over the Land or the earth, as the Koran puts it, the True Deen based on the Divine Law given to Mohammad, and inherited by his successors – that is, to bring to world dominance Allah’s Constitution. For the accomplishment of this aim, the Koran’s conception of jihad asserts the role of ‘consciousness’ over compulsion (‘consciousness’, that is, of being a struggling activist for God – i.e. an alienated form of consciousness), and that of the passionate element over detachment, and the obedient element over the self-willed. The conception of jihad embodies the action of believers (mu’mineen) whose function is to create an Islamic leadership made up of an organising ‘elite’ providing guidance and inspiration to forge a sense of communality as the hegemonic condition of domination as social subjection. Jihad embraces vigorous actions, efforts and struggles on all fronts to secure, in the name of God, Islam’s way of life (the Deen of Islam) based on the highest degree of permanent consent possible (through conversion and submission) for this leadership as the governing ‘men of God,’ universally, and hence a comprehensive struggle for the founding and consolidation of an inherently, constitutionally, imperious and expansionist Islamic state as a means of achieving the Kingdom of God on earth – the paradise or Utopia promised in the Koran. At bottom, considering its actual historical role and function, jihad, thus, signified the epochal struggle for the socio-political and ideological supremacy of a ‘class’ which claimed to have the divine right to stand for and upon the Word of God, a ‘class’ that gave the theocratic form of the Caliphate to the reality of its state power. This ‘class’

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function of jihad is, however, masked by the apparent divinity of its goal – the struggle being perceived and presented as a struggle for God. This, indeed, is precisely the fundamental attribute of jihad that conditions all its multi-faceted dimensions and moulds these into the understanding of it, mentioned above, as an all-embracing struggle in life for the cause of God and Islam. In other words, insofar as the Koran is concerned, absolutely no sphere of life is out of reach of or excluded from the focus of jihad. To the extent, therefore, that the ‘class’ function of jihad is to promote and expand Islamic theocratic domination over all aspects of human life, it follows that its modus operandi is inevitably multidimensional and total in scope. And to the extent that jihad is conceptually held to have the universal goal of instituting, perpetuating and expanding God’s cause under Islam, it follows that its ‘class’ function must appear to be sanctioned by God, i.e. justified by the revelations contained in the Koran. Jihad should thus be considered as the totalising struggle for the hegemony of the dominant ‘theocratic class’ as a divine obligation. It is therefore not difficult to recognise in it all manner of manoeuvring that involves a wide range of activities, institutional practices and state actions expressive of the particular interest of that ‘class’ justified by the Koranic conception of ‘the struggle in the Way of God’ or ‘Jihad fee Sabila Allah’. Jihad should not therefore be considered as simply ‘religious war’ or ‘holy war’. Jihad and the Notion of ‘Holy War’ From the above discussion, the characterisation of jihad as ‘holy war’ – a characterisation widely prevalent today, and particularly in the West – gives far too narrow a picture of the role and function of jihad, thus tending to limit and circumscribe its signification; in strict linguistic terms, the term ‘holy war’ is, at any rate, an inaccurate rendering of the meaning of jihad. Such a characterisation is, presumably, intended to stress (negatively) the role of force in the historical spread of Islam (though its use by some Islamic militants is to justify the positive role of force and violence). Yet this depiction of jihad, by its narrow, limited focus on the notion of ‘war,’ which signifies armed state conflict or military/armed conflict of the ‘crusade’ type, tends actually to underrate the scope and depth of the role of force in the history of Islam. Force is basic to and deeply embedded in the Koranic concept of jihad – let us not forget, however, that force can take many forms over and above the military or the use of arms, involving different degrees of intensity and including different methods. Owing to the Koran’s proposed, or rather its divinely ordained, stipulation of the necessity of the subordination of everyday life to Islam as a system of life, jihad as the means of achieving such a subordination could not but involve the use of force in order both to subdue and to secure and insure conformity. The use of force necessarily, however, always includes the concrete interplay of various direct and indirect measures, techniques and methods, ranging from armed actions and physical coercion to institutional and ideological procedures. At any rate, the term Holy War or Al-Harb al-Muqaddas is in fact not a Koranic term. It is, rather, as with the term ‘Jihad bil-sayf’ or ‘Jihad by the Sword,’ and some other designations concerning or related to jihad, an expression derived from the descriptive accounts of the practice of jihad offered by certain authors of the ‘Traditions,’ the Hadith (the most notable among them being perhaps al-Bukhari, who died in 870 AD, with his The Book of Jihad, vol.4 of his authoritative collection of a-hadith entitled Sahih al-Bukhari). Harb, with its connotation of ‘aggression,’ is the word commonly used for ‘war’ – that is, it is closest in translation to the concept of war; harb is also a designation for the state or condition of life outside and at variance with the rule of the Koran’s Divine Law, as in the expression ‘Dar-al-Harb’ in contrast to ‘Dar-al-Islam’, both of which are, again, not Koranic terms. The bracketing together of these terms

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with the notion of jihad was the consequence of the historical process of the territorial expansion of the early Islamic state, known as the Futuhat (from the word ‘fateha’ meaning the ‘opening’ – thus signifying the ‘opening’ of lands to the Faith; futuhat, pl. of fat’h, denoting ‘conquests’), beginning with the ‘Right Guarded Caliphs’ and continued under the ‘Umayyads and subsequent Caliphate regimes. It was during the Futuhat wars that, indeed, the specifically Islamic doctrine of jihad and the legal concepts and principles on war were developed in line with the practical considerations for state policy. The doctrine was developed on the basis of the reinterpretation of the Koranic conception of jihad, heavily influenced by the so-called ‘sunna of the Prophet’ (the Traditions), to meet the requirements of the Caliphate regimes. Consequently, the doctrine as a reinterpretation is effectively but an ‘adaptation’ (much more detailed and intricate) of the Koranic conception of jihad. Thus we have the introduction of terms that are not strictly Koranic; also the inclusion of such problematic issues as the so-called ‘defensive’ or ‘offensive’ characterisation of jihad (see section below) and matters such as the later ideas regarding the ‘lesser or greater’ jihad, and so on. The legitimacy of this adaptation, though primarily based on the cultivation and use of the Traditions, was actually to a large extent due to the ulama’s ingenuity and resourcefulness in conceiving (devising) certain scholastic or exegetical tools to facilitate reasoned justification for the ‘modifications’ that came to be introduced – perhaps the most important of these tools being the development of the idea of ‘abrogation’ or ‘naskh’. Naskh (from root n-s-kh, meaning repeal, revoke or withdraw) is the rule that enables the revoking of certain verses of the Koran or modifying their universal validity. The basic idea is that the command or ruling (hukm) of one divine revelation (ayah) is cancelled by another later revelation on the same topic. The abrogated verses, known as mansukh, may then either be disregarded or considered only in terms of specific application. It is maintained that the commandment revealed at a later date means that God Himself has ‘clearly’ revoked the previous one. The question of abrogation becomes more complicated, however, in consideration of the collective content of the ayahs dealing with the same subject matter – and even more so as regards another ulama devised rule concerning the so-called ‘conditional’ or ‘unconditional’ integrity of revelations. There are cases, for example, that, due to compatibility of their content, abrogation cannot be justified. In truth, however, whether assuming the divinity of Koranic revelations or taking them as composed rules as ‘statute law’, given the deep-seated problematic of the chronological uncertainty regarding the revelations (not to mention, the controversy over the actual mode of the composition of the Koran itself), the issue of abrogation is vacuous and the notion clearly no more than a convenient device: it allowed the ulama to repeal a particular Koranic directive for political expediency or to take up, justify and implement one ayah in favour of another for partisan factional reasons. As with all aspects of Islamic dogma, this is a blend of the political and the exegetical – though the political is commonly understated. However, it needs to be emphasised again and again that, whatever the exegetical rules and tools invented by the ulama over the decades of their ‘class’ ascendancy and the centuries of their ‘class’ hegemony, ultimately the Koran remains, as in all matters, the fundamental irrefutable source of all Caliphate/ulama rulings, duties and obligations. Indeed, even insofar as ‘abrogation’ is concerned, the justification of such a rule is based on this Koranic revelation: ‘Whatever sign [revelation] We abrogate [ma naskh meno ayah] or We cause to be forgotten [or bypass], We bring one better than it or like it. Do you not know that God has power over all things?’ (II:106) In this case, as in many others, it is not unreasonable, given the lack of hard historical evidence regarding the making of the Koran, to suggest the possibility that this verse,

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as perhaps with others, might have been the subject of ‘modification’ or ‘manipulation’ at the hand of the ulama. For, it should be noted that the principle of ‘abrogation’ is crucial to the ulama’s practical role in the elucidation for the purpose of application of all commanded matters and issues, with jihad being simply one such topic. Notwithstanding the problems raised above, on the basis of the Koran, it can be said that jihad, as I have tried to show, is a much more complete and involved undertaking than the concept of harb or ‘war’ implies. Harb is an essential element of jihad; it does not, even qualified as ‘holy war’, define the concept of jihad, at least not in terms of the Koran. The understanding of the word harb in the Koran is specific to an act of aggression; it signifies direct hostility of the openly violent kind. We can see this, for example, in the following verses: ‘O you who believe! Have piety towards God [‘taqwa’ is broadly ‘piety’, specifically denoting strict adherence to divine obligations and faithful observation of duties in God’s Way] and give up what remains from usury [here the reference is to the practice of riba generally translated as ‘usury’; strictly it means ‘increase’, and thus applicable to the increase in amount, in kind or money, gained by one party and owed by another as a debtor in a transaction of a generally, though not exclusively, private nature], if you are believers. But if you do not, then take notice that God and His Messenger shall war with you…’(II:278-9; my italics) Here the notice of ‘war’ is a warning to those benefiting from ‘usury’ clearly because this is a sin so abhorrent as to have apparently required on the part of Mohammad specifically targeted aggressive and openly violent response as a tactical measure within his overall struggle or jihad in the way of God. Harb, then, as action of a direct and violent kind or war, is here intended to heighten the seriousness of the sin in question that should be confronted by jihad; it is a state of open hostility, an aggressive act specifically focused as part of jihad. This understanding of harb becomes more clearly spelled out in a verse that refers to the response demanded in the case of war against God and Mohammad: ‘The recompense of those who war [yuharbuna] against God and His Messenger, and attempt to do corruption in the Land [wa yas’iuna fee al-ard fasada] is only that they should be slain, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall be cut off alternatively, or they should be ostracised from the Land…’(V:33) Here the proposition on the scope and intensity of aggressive (violent) response to any party waging war against God and Mohammad suggests the converse of such aggressiveness in the war waged by Muslims in the way of God. The term harb, it could be said, is used in the Koran to denote the type of combative action which, as an element of jihad, is necessitated when there is a need for a concerted action against disobedience of a divine directive (as with usury, for example) and/or when the hegemonic objectives of the mu’mineen (the believers) prove to be unsuccessful, for example, as in the case of antagonistic rejection of the call to submit on the part of a ‘whole people’ or their rulers, or an instigation against the propagating activities of the believers, or contentious obstruction to the spreading of the divine message, or the protection and defence of Islam and the umma, and so on. In its signification, then, harb is no more than a sharp, harsh concentrated, condensed and focused use of force in the overall struggle for the cause of God – harb, in short, could be characterised as the epitome of jihad. Jihad as a Means of Social Control The conceptual scheme of jihad in the Koran exhibits a dynamic process of struggle grounded on force or the exercise of power, whether in the form of war (harb) or that of other less violent measures, in order to impose, in life and on humanity, God’s Will as revealed in (or rather, as defined by) the Koran, and to defend and protect God’s

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(the umma’s) sovereignty. As a strategy, jihad derives its defining function from the antagonistic character of the social life process. This means that jihad has in its focus and as its aim both the securing of social control, in its reified form, and the dynamics of power and domination in the spreading, the maintaining and the defending of the Koran’s divine message. The securing of social control, including attaining conformity and consent as well as the direct policing of the Divine Law, is considered as part of jihad in order to promote and endorse the principle of God-fearing righteousness in the social sphere of life (‘civil society’). The general Koranic principle that encapsulates the force of this struggle conceptually is Amr bil-Ma’roof wa Nahya ‘anil-Munkar, which is variously translated as ‘Command to Right and Forbid the Wrong’ or ‘Enjoin the Good and Forbid the Wrong’. It is a formula that necessitates the authority of judgement in practice and the action of the God-fearing in enforcement. The principle is a universal directive, it has universal validity and commanding force; it is, thus, more than the self-imposing of the ‘ideal’ of moral conduct, more than a mandate pertaining to self-governing righteous conduct; it is a command that requires an agency of enforcement and policing over and above the individual’s ‘inner’ struggle or self-striving to fulfil the principle’s abstract and universal ‘ethos’. The role of this agency of enforcement is signified in the following verse: ‘Those, if We establish them in the Land, will establish prayer and pay the alms and enjoin the good and forbid the wrong…’(XXII:41; my italics; see also XXXI:17) The Koran, as can be seen, makes clear that individual ‘self-striving’ is not enough, that the general population of the submitted need controlling in their social and personal conduct as part of a wide-ranging and, indeed, forcefully intrusive struggle carried out by a community or group (‘class’) of mu’mineen as an officiated body or agency. Thus: ‘And from among you there should be a community [ummat – an outstanding, distinguished, leading group or body] calling to good, and enjoining [commanding] what is right [good] and forbidding the wrong, and these are the successful ones.’ (III:104) The reference to ‘ummat’ is to a select body of believers united in their ‘hearts’ as ‘brethren’ by God’s ‘favour’ (see III:102); in other words, an officiated collective (a ‘class’ or class-like formation) to enforce the principle of ‘what is right’ and police ‘the wrong’ that is forbidden; that is, to man and manage the jihad to secure and ensure conformity to the moral regime, the right or good conduct, set out in the Koran as Divine Law. And just to reemphasis the significant role of this special inclusive collective entity (community) in the overall struggle to ensure social control, we have the following verse: ‘You are the best community [khaira ummat ] that has been brought forth [raised] for mankind; you enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong, and believe in God…’ (III:110) The struggle to implement this principle implies, in practice, the annulment of the rights of the individual as an individual; under this principle, the person who has submitted may have rights as a Muslim, but not as a private or particular individual. The attainment of ‘what is good’ requires that the individual subjects his/her strictly personal interest to the umma’s interest. The ‘wrong’ forbidden is ‘civil’ wrong strictly defined in terms of the Koran’s Divine Law (and the Sharia) policed by the endeavour and the struggle (jihad) of an ‘outstanding’ group of believers which has been charged to order ‘what is right’ and ‘forbid the wrong’. Individual personal ‘will’ is thus overshadowed by the authority vested in the ‘ummat’ of the divinely favoured believers. The general aim of this social-control aspect of jihad is to submerge the concrete individual in the religious abstraction of ‘being a good Muslim’. This aspect of jihad is mainly and essentially an ideological endeavour, a struggle to exhort the individual to act and behave in social and personal relations in an ideal (Islamic) way.

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The Expansion of the Umma: Compulsion v. Conversion The policing of social control, it should be stressed, is a necessary component of the practice of jihad to expand the dominion of Islam as a way of life; the integrating factor here is the universality of the Truth of the Koran’s divine message. Conformity and the right conduct of ‘being a good Muslim’, as a requirement – indeed, as an ‘honour’ and a ‘privilege’ – of belonging to the Islamic community, is simply a necessary step in the process of struggle or jihad to spread God’s Word as the universal Truth, which as such has no geographical limits. But this universality is the abstract (theological) expression of Mohammad’s umma as a proto-political community of believers, or the proto-state of the mu’mineen, in which all particular interests appear unified into the whole as a social community of Muslims. The spreading of the sway of the universal Truth is, therefore, dependent on the expansion of this emergent state formation under the guise of the Islamic community. The expansion of the Islamic community – expanding the territorial compass of Islam in a propensity to make proselytes and the overthrowing of the systems of idolatry and of disbelievers (of kafareen) – appears (is presented and believed to be), thus, the prime requisite of ‘being a good Muslim’; for it is with that concrete expansion that the ‘good’ Muslims are spreading the sway of the universal Truth of the Koran. The idea of spreading this Truth (or the faith and certainty in it) is indispensable, of course, to establishing in life (on earth) that which God has willed; it is necessitated, as already mentioned, by the very essence of the Koran’s divine message (the principle of Tawhid). The putting into practice of this idea is central to the Koranic concept of jihad. In other words, the crucial factor is that the directives and principles of the Koran guide the activities of the submitted, so that the essential element of ‘being a good Muslim’ is to struggle for God or in the way of God to expand by whatever means possible the system of life based on the Koran as Allah’s Constitution. The decisive historical and conceptual role and function of jihad were, then, the extension of the jurisdiction of the Koran by the expansion of the compass of the umma (as also that of its later transformed replacement, the theocratic state structure under the Caliphate regimes). Jihad, however, was not essentially action and activity of a ‘missionary’ kind, in the sense of the activities, the effort and endeavour, to convert through the preaching of the Faith; it was the struggle postulated upon the exercise of power to establish the umma as a world-historic system of life. Historically, of course, jihad did involve the widespread process of conversion. But the process of conversion is the demonstrative consequence of jihad, it does not define it. In any case, to talk of conversion means to talk of an extended umma, of an extended sociopolitical structure obliging as well as nurturing the appearance of the identity of the particular and the universal – since, insofar as the Koran is concerned, to convert means accepting the Deen of Islam as a way of life in its totality, ‘life’ as defined by, conditioned by, the notion of submission, of being a Muslim, which, in principle, overrides all other social, ethnic, tribal, cultural, etc. identity and cancels all allegiances and loyalties except the allegiance of belonging to the Islamic community. Conversion therefore was simply joining and affiliating with the Muslim community by the turning of an individual, a group, or a people from a life of ‘disbelief’ to one guided by the Word of God, the Koran; it was, in short, the enlargement of the community covered by the Koran’s authority or, what is the same, the extension of the jurisdiction of the socio-political structure (the umma) based on the Koran as Allah’s Constitution. Hence, the policy of conversion can be said to have been part of the basic strategic decision to extend the power structure of the Islamic authority – jihad denotes the process of struggle necessary to initiate and fulfil that strategy. Initially, as the process of struggle against the social condition of Jahiliyah or ‘ignorance’ began, the spatial setting of jihad was rather small, and the level of the

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struggle limited to the summoning of fellow Meccans to accept the One God (Allah) and Mohammad as His Messenger. What was crucial even at this stage, contrary to the myth of the absence of compulsion in Islam, was the intrusion of force into the revelations summoning the Meccans to submit. In as much as Mohammad tempted the Meccan disbelievers with the divine promise of Paradise, he attempted equally to intimidate them by introducing the element of fear, by putting the fear of God’s chastisement into their hearts and minds. The examples of such intimidating ayahs (revealed at Mecca) are too many to give here in full; thus a few samples would have to suffice: Upon the disbelievers God ‘shall invoke destruction’ and they ‘shall be committed to the flaming fire’; and for not prostrating in obeisance upon Mohammad’s recitation of the revelations, the Messenger is told to ‘announce…unto them the news of a painful chastisement!’(LXXXIV:11-12 and 21-24) The disbelievers are warned of: ‘Entering into the fire blazing. Made to drink from a spring of boiling water. For them there shall not be food but the bitter-thorny fruit “Zaree” [cactus]…whosoever turns back and disbelieves. Then God will chastise him with the severest chastisement.’(LXXXVIII:4-6 and 23-24); and: ‘Those who disbelieve in Our signs [ayat, revelations]…On them shall be the fire closed over.’(XC:19-20) And as directly addressing one who openly rejected Mohammad’s claim of apostleship (a relative, we are told, by the name of Abdul-Uzza, referred here to as ‘Abu-Lahab’, who became the Prophet’s enemy), we have the following: ‘May perish the hands of Abu-Lahab, and may perish he! Shall avail him not his wealth, neither what he earns. Soon shall he burn in the blazing fire. And his wife, [shall be] the carrier of the firewood. Upon her neck shall be a noose of rope [of twisted palm-fibre].’(CXI:1-5; this is, by-the-by, the entire surah!) Could there be any more intimidation than the threat of hanging a member of someone’s family? The significance of this surah is, in fact, in it being a warning to all those who reject or even contemplate rejecting or opposing Mohammad. The myth of the absence of compulsion in Islam (‘compulsion’ in the sense of the application of either physical force or of moral pressure as part of the exercise of power and the action of jihad in order to make individuals or peoples submit to God’s Will, to become Muslims), grew on the back of (and still is justified by) the now wellknown and widely quoted sentence of an ayah given in the second surah of the Koran, which is translated as: ‘There is no compulsion in religion…’ or as: ‘No compulsion is there in religion…’ (II:256) The Arabic original is: ‘La ikrah fee al-Deen…’ The more or less accepted and standard English translation of this sentence is, however, rather problematic. To begin with, there is a problem as regards the rendering of ‘ikrah’ as ‘compulsion’; ‘ikrah’ (from root k-r-h, or karh, to dislike, averse/hate, vb. Kariha) is actually more precisely denoted by the words ‘aversion’ and ‘reluctance’, with the connotation of ‘compulsion’ only suggested or implied indirectly. The far more appropriate word to convey the idea of ‘force’ or ‘compulsion’ is ‘ijbar’ from ‘jabr’ (from root j-b-r). In theology, ‘jabr’ denotes the force of fate, that which determines or causes determination in life and universe; thus ‘fatalism’ or ‘predestination’ (the mathematical term ‘algebra’, ‘al-jabra’, is derived from this word). Moreover, there is also a problem in the rendering of the concept of Deen as ‘religion’ in its commonly held connotation of a particular system of belief and worship of God (we have already touched on this matter in an earlier chapter). Deen in the Koran signifies a ‘way of life’ in accordance with the Truth, the rightness of principle and practice, the rectitude, as determined by the Koran. A further point that should be noted is that here ‘deen’ (whether translated as ‘religion’ or ‘way of life’) is solely a reference to Islam and not to ‘deen’ (‘religion’) in general.

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Both these terms are essential to the meaning of the sentence; the use of the concept of Deen rather than ‘religion’ and that of the word ‘reluctance’ or ‘aversion’ rather ‘compulsion’ completely changes its common acceptation. Now, by applying these suggested amendments, we can give an alternative rendering of the famous sentence as follows: ‘No reluctance [aversion] in the way of life [of Islam]…’ In other words, not that ‘there is no compulsion’, but that there is no unwillingness (or disinclination) to entertain Islam as the way of life. In fact, this latter understanding, rather than that ‘compulsion’ or ‘force’ has no role or place in ‘religion’, is germane to the subject of the full verse. Put in context, it is quite evident that the word ikrah rather than ijbar is apposite and applicable – and that is precisely why the compilers of the Koran (or, if you like, ‘God speaking through Mohammad’) had not used ijbar, as in ‘La ijbar fee al-deen’. What is also noteworthy is that the ayah is in the indicative rather than imperative, in subject and in tone. If ‘compulsion’ or the use of force, in ‘religion’ or in al-deen, was considered as a forbidden practice by Mohammad or by the compilers of the Koran, then the sentence and the full verse would (or should) have been in the imperative, commanding the prohibition of ‘compulsion’. In any case, in order to demonstrate this point, let us here give the full verse, with the alternative translation: ‘No reluctance [aversion] in the way of life; verily, rectitude [the right way or the Truth] has become clearly distinct from error; therefore, whosoever disbelieves in idols [taqoot – false deities; also Satan or those associated with Satan; and also tyranny or oppressive authority] and believes in God, has indeed laid hold of the most firm handle, which is unbreakable; and verily, God is All-Hearing, All-Knowing.’(II:256) Hence, what the verse points out is that manifesting neither the will nor the desire to have anything to do with Islam is simply unreasonable given that ‘rectitude’ or the rightness of conduct (according to God’s way) is now shown to be (presumably by Mohammad) clearly distinct from the ‘error’ of believing in and following false deities (taqoot). In other words, how could any reasonable person be unwilling to submit when God (or Mohammad) has clarified the right way from the wrong conduct? There is nothing implied in this verse regarding ‘compulsion’ or that ‘force’ either is not used or should not be used. Indeed, insofar as the sense, purpose and substance of this verse is concerned, the notion of force is quite irrelevant; the misinterpretation and mistranslation merely perpetuates the myth of the absence of force in the spread and expansion of Islam (helpful, perhaps, to those among Muslim scholars and leaders, particularly in modern times, who wish to spread the idea of ‘peaceful’ Islam for their own particular political agenda). But there are yet other verses that are frequently produced to support this myth; these are claimed to confirm the notion of ‘choice’, of ‘freely’ converting to Islam by choice, and hence by implication asserting the rejection of ‘compulsion’ – as if to be in denial of the essential role of jihad in the expansion of the umma and hence of Islam! Here we shall give the two most pertinent of these verses. The first of these, generally quoted only in part, goes as follows: ‘And say: The Truth is from your Lord; so let whosoever will [pleases] believe, and let whosoever will [pleases] disbelieve…’ (XVIII:29) And the second is as follows: ‘Verily, We have guided [hadaynuh] him [man] upon the right way [al-Sabila] be he thankful [shakiran] or ungrateful [kufuran].’ (LXXVI:3) It is suggested that these verses (including the following dealing with the same theme: LXXIII:19; LXXIV:37; LXXVI:29) allows mankind ‘freedom of choice’ in accepting Islam or rejecting it – and therefore being ‘free’ to choose means the absence of compulsion in Islam. The assumption of the right or privilege to choose freely, in the first quote given here, is based on simple disingenuousness by citing only the supposedly apposite sentences and leaving out those that follow which actually spell out the meaning of the full verse. The full verse is as follows: ‘And say: The Truth is from your Lord, and let

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whosoever will [pleases] believe, and let whosoever will [pleases] disbelieve; verily We have prepared for the unrighteous [i.e. disbelievers] a fire, encompassing them in its enclosure; and if they cry for water, they shall be given water like molten brass which will scald their faces – how evil will be the drink, and how evil will be the resting-place!’ (my italics) As it can be seen, the verse in full makes it clear that should any individual or people ‘choose’ to disbelieve, then God will burn them in hell – the message, in short, is: ‘believe or die a hellish death,’ that is your choice! Indeed, it is no more than stating the obvious that the idea of ‘free choice’ simply does not sit well with the emphatic message of the Koran, which absolutely condemns, damns, disbelievers or whosoever rejects the Will of the One God, the Divine One or Allah. The second verse cited above bases the assumption of ‘free choice’ on the inference of ‘thankfulness’ or ‘ungratefulness’ as ‘acceptance’ or ‘rejection’ respectively. Yet even if one were to accept this inference, this does not mean that the Koran (or Mohammad) acknowledges the right or privilege for mankind to reject God’s way (i.e. to be ‘ungrateful’), since that means ‘disbelief’ or kufr (kufr has actually the connotation of ‘ungratefulness’ as also of ‘rejection’), which is punishable in the here and now by severe penalties, including death by beheading, as well as in the ‘hereafter’ by the fire of hell. Thus, if to be ‘ungrateful’ (i.e. to reject God’s guidance) is fundamentally unacceptable (which it is), then where is the choice, the right to choose freely? Indeed, the very next verse in this surah gives the deathblow to this fiction of ‘choice’ in Islam, and thus also to the myth of the absence of compulsion. Here is the next verse: ‘Verily, We have prepared for the disbelievers chains and shackles and a blazing fire.’(LXXVI:4) Basically, then, mankind has the nonsensical ‘choice’ of either being ‘thankful’, i.e. submitting and being a believer, or of being ‘ungrateful’, i.e. rejecting Islam and being a disbeliever, and thus burning in hell. This is (should one be superstitious and religious) one hell of a terrifying choice! The two verses given above are, in fact, good examples of coercion by intimidation, of compulsion in the form of ‘mental’ pressure as aspects of the practice of jihad. They are representative of the intrusion of force into the revelations summoning mankind to submit. Given the predominance, in Mohammad’s Arabia, of the belief in supernatural phenomena, of the powers of deities, and the superstitious belief in the extraordinary and awesome effect of such powers, such revelations were particularly useful means in the early phase of Mohammad’s jihad in the process of founding his movement – they were meant to put, literally, the fear of God into his fellow Meccans! In fact, given the nascent nature of Mohammad’s movement, during the Mecca period his struggle or jihad was constraint by, among other factors, structural and organisation deficiencies. Jihad under such conditions involved measures and manoeuvres (schemes) other than open and direct combative action. The pagan forces were far stronger than Mohammad’s and since Mohammad would not consider a compromise with these unbelievers of Mecca, yet recognising the weaknesses of his movement, in his jihad against them tactical considerations would have dictated a face-saving stand-off positioning. This precisely is the meaning of the following verses: ‘Verily, they are devising a scheme [guile]. And I am devising a scheme. So respite the disbelievers; let them alone for a while.’(LXXXVI:15-17) What is implied by these verses is that tactically Mohammad would have had to allow the disbelievers to continue in their idolatry ways on a temporary basis (‘for a while’). This approach on the part of Mohammad applies to the following surah, which is also often produced in support of the ‘no compulsion’ myth: ‘Say: O you disbelievers! I serve not what you serve. And nor do you serve Whom I serve. Nor shall I serve what you serve. Neither shall you serve what I serve. Unto you be your deen, and unto me my deen.’(CIX:1-6) In other words, granting the disbelievers ‘respite,’ or allowing them to ‘serve’ and worship their idols, or to maintain their deen, was not a general

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endorsement or approval of their ways, nor the granting to them of the ‘freedom of choice’ in their beliefs and deen. Mohammad, in short, was at that particular time simply forced to a take a provisional stance. The element of force during this period was, thus, most notably indirect because it had to be; it was part of the ploy, a ‘scheme’ devised by Mohammad, to play on the superstition of his fellow tribesmen and clansmen by producing revelations picturing a vision of the wrathful and hellish punishment that would be meted out by God. Thus, if during the very beginning of Mohammad’s building of his movement in Mecca (around 610-622 AD), jihad involved more the threat of violence (by God) than the use of violent means, this was, merely, a manoeuvre dictated by the disconcerting and difficult circumstances which Mohammad and his small band of followers faced, rather than being a restriction placed upon the practice of jihad by any divine directive. Indeed, it is worth stressing this fact that there is not a single ayah in the Koran that forbids outright the use of force in pursuit of the cause or way of God, of establishing the supremacy of His Will according to His Word. And, furthermore, it is also important to note here (though we have touched on this earlier) that once an individual or a people has submitted, the matter of ‘freedom of choice’, as the following ayah affirms, is completely put to rest once and for all: ‘And it is not for a male believer [mu’min] or a female believer [mu’minat], when God and His Messenger have decreed a matter, to have any choice in the affair; and whosoever disobeys God and His Messenger, he verily has strayed off, a manifest straying.’(XXXIII:36; my italics) At any rate, the (presumed) absence of actual physical force or violence during the Mecca period of Mohammad’s jihad does not lessen the intrusive power of creating an atmosphere of fear, which can, indeed, be quite an effective policy – coercion by threat or intimidation can be rather efficacious! Perhaps an additional consideration regarding this issue, to be noted here, is the role of tribal traditions, of kinship and blood ties, that, in all likelihood, may have acted as constraints on the use of violence – i.e. the constraints imposed on all affiliates, including Mohammad, by the customary rules of conduct in conflict situations, or those governing authority and jurisdiction, as well as those on honouring agreements and promises, and so on. All of these constraints, of course, ran counter to the universalistic mission of Mohammad. And what is clear from the Koran (and from the historical evidence available, even the biased historical accounts) is that after the pilgrimage or hajj (hijrah, ‘emigration’, or basically the forcing out of Mohammad from Mecca) and the formation of the umma in Medina, armed struggle as the principle feature of jihad became the prominent instrument of Mohammad’s policy to expand the umma, increase its social base, and extend its sphere of influence and power. The reflection of this can be seen in Koranic revelations proclaiming armed struggle, physical fighting, and the killing of disbelievers, as well as hypocrites or munafiqeen (as enemies of God), as integral to the divine obligation of jihad. This armed-struggle aspect of jihad is denoted by the term qital. The Concept of Qital Qital (from root q-t-l) and the verb qatala refer to ‘killing’, ‘slaying’, ‘murder’, ‘slaughter’; the word qital (and its derivatives) also has the clear connotation of ‘combat’, ‘fighting’, in the physical, violent sense of these terms. And although it has some other connotations as, for example, ‘to know and master something’, or ‘to be worldly wise and have life-long experience’, the general translation of it as ‘fighting’ or ‘slaying’, depending on the context, denotes its most common usage in the Koran.

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The term qital refers to combative action inseparable from jihad. Thus, as a concept, it signifies armed struggle in the way of God. Armed struggle was, no doubt, a move expressing the historical need of the time. It is, however, evident from the Koran that as a measure adopted by Mohammad against the enemies of his God, it transfigured into a move that in practice shaped the dominant strategy of jihad. Qital, it seems, had become within the last ten years or so of the life of the Prophet ‘the driving spirit’ of jihad, and remained so for a long, long time after his death. In the concept of jihad was embodied the universal task of the building of the new Islamic order as the dominant way of life for humanity. That task was to be achieved, consolidated and preserved by means of armed struggle or qital. Accordingly, the essential potentialities of jihad were to realise themselves in the same comprehensive process that was driven forward by the force of armed struggle. Historically, indeed, the broader, more all-embracing struggle or jihad became so overshadowed by its armed-struggle moment that the concepts of jihad and qital came to be seen as almost synonymous. In the Koran, therefore, the formulated obligation of jihad unfolds through the directive or command to fight and to kill in the cause of God. In other words, the divine obligation of jihad is meaningless without the fact of fighting or armed struggle as an essential condition for the constellation of actions and activities involved in the process of spreading Islam. Here, for example, is the ayah that commands qital, fighting or armed struggle, which is then followed by an ayah that upholds jihad as being of the same obligation: ‘Fighting is prescribed for you [kutaba ‘alayukumu aluqitalu], but though you be averse to it; and you may dislike a thing while it is good [khayr] for you; [just as] it may be that you love a thing while it is bad for you; and verily God knows and you know not.’(II:216) And: ‘Verily, those who believed and those who emigrated and struggled in the way of God [wa jihadu fee Sabila Allah] – these have hope of God’s mercy…’(II:218) The duty of all Muslims is to struggle (jihad) for God. But, in the above verse, it is further stated that this struggle is ordained to be one of armed struggle or fighting (qital). What is more, fighting is prescribed even if there is aversion towards the use of violence or killing. The reference in this verse to the requirement or order to fight even ‘though you be averse to it’ makes the ayah unconditionally imperative. The obligation to fight is therefore extremely forceful and demanding; the verse is not a ‘guidance’ that a Muslim can appeal against, avoid or ignore (at least strictly speaking and in principle). In this, as in jihad of course, the will of the individual Muslim, or that of Muslims generally, is effectively overruled and subdued – for ‘God knows’ what is best for Muslims, as they ‘know not’! The mention of ‘aversion’ and its dismissal, when looked at from the historical perspective, can perhaps be said to be related to the disinclination on the part of some of Mohammad’s followers to fight their (tribal) kinfolk. But the decree is also concerned with the attempt to divest the fear of fighting among the ordinary rank and file: ‘Hast thou not seen those whom it was said: Withhold your hands, and establish prayer and pay the alms? But when fighting is prescribed for them, a party of them fear men [i.e. those opposing them] as they would fear God, or with greater fear, and they say: Our Lord! Why hast thou ordained fighting for us? Why not grant us respite to a near end? Say [i.e. Mohammad]: The provisions of this world is but scant; and the world [al-donya] to come is better for him who fears God; you shall not be wronged a single date-stone.’(IV:77) Within the umma, among the larger community of Muslims, fighting and perhaps even mobilisation for armed action must have been a problematic political issue and, as evident from the Koran, this was recognised by Mohammad and his successors: ‘And verily, among you there are those that hang back!...’(IV:72) For practical and operational purposes, therefore, this reluctance to fight, whether out of fear or dislike of killing fellow tribesmen, had to be reversed. The prescription on

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qital, it can thus be said, reflects the existence of this problem and was intended to counter and eliminate it by making qital as one with the divine obligation of jihad. Moreover, like much Koranic directives, the commandment to fight was propped up by a series of, as it were, ‘sweetener’ revelations. Thus, in order to encourage participation and strengthen the resolve of those already committed, the command to fight was backed up by revelations that carried the divine promise of reward: ‘Let those fight in the way of God [falyuqatil fee Sabila Allah] who barter this-worldly life for the hereafter; and whosoever fights in the way of God, be he slain or victorious, We shall bestow on him a great reward.’(IV:74) In terms of the policy of mobilisation, the call to arms needed the assurance of recompense as also of compensation for those respondents and participants who had either fallen or been injured in action; and thus we have the following ayah: ‘Those who answered the call of God and the Messenger [even] after injury had befallen them – those among them [i.e. among the respondents] who do good [done the right deed] and feared God is a great reward.’(III:172) And the assurance went so far as to assert that those killed in fighting for God should not be reckoned as dead: ‘And reckon not those who are slain in the way of God, to be dead; nay, alive they are and with their Lord, by Him sustained.’(III:169; see also II:154) In this can be seen the bracing of the idea of dying for the cause of God; and indeed rejoicing such fatality as due to God’s beneficence, as the next verse declares in respect of those slain in the way of God: ‘Rejoicing in what God of His grace has granted them [i.e. the ones killed in action], and joyful in those who remain behind and have yet to join them, that no fear shall come on them nor shall they grieve. They rejoice in the grace and bounty from God and that God leaves not to be lost the reward of the believers [mu’mineen].’(III:170-71) In fact, the promise of reward goes further and, once again, includes the ultimate promise of Paradise: ‘…They, therefore, who emigrated and were turned out of their homes and suffered in My way and who fought and were slain, I will most certainly forgive their sins and I will certainly admit them into gardens beneath which flow rivers; a reward from God, and with Him is the excellent reward.’(III:195) Fighting against Fitnah What is evident from all such revelatory promises is that the commitment to Mohammad and his cause was less than wholehearted at least among the general inhabitants of Medina. Indeed, there is no doubt that the Prophet (but even more so, his successors) was faced with the problem of dissention over and above the outright hostility of disbelievers outside the jurisdiction of the umma. The ideological struggle, it seems, was proving less effective than one would suppose Mohammad and his companions had hoped for or anticipated. From the number of revelations in the Koran concerned with the ‘hypocrites’ or munafiqeen – that is, with the problematic of feigned piety and affectation of religiosity – there is good ground to infer that there was even at the time of Mohammad’s umma growing discontent and opposition within Muslim ranks, among converts, and also among some of the Ansar as well as certain Bedouin tribes. Upon the same ground, moreover, it is certain that these so-called hypocrites were increasingly becoming more than a source of mere irritation, but a politically important cause for concern, inciting sedition, threatening rebellious conduct or actually causing strife – what is in the Koran referred to as fitnah – which could not be left unchallenged. Thus, the Koran’s proclamations of jihad against the hypocrites, which is reflected in numerous verses that were produced (revealed) to deal with this problem (fitnah was to become far more serious and widespread after Mohammad’s death and even a graver, more dangerous situation during the rule of his immediate successors and the Caliphate regimes of the Umayyads and the Abbasids). The issue of fitnah, as distinct from the general problem of ‘disbelief’, was fundamentally, therefore, a political problem that had actually surfaced only with the

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establishment of the umma, with the formation of Mohammad’s proto-state, in Medina. It was as a result of the increasing concentration of power in the hands of the Prophet and his immediate companions (the mu’mineen) that discontent, opposition and dissention had begun to grow. This is reflected in the following verse: ‘And of those Arabs [Bedouins] who are [dwell] around you, there are hypocrites; and the inhabitants of Medina are grown bold [stubborn] in hypocrisy…’(IX:101; my italics) In practice, the problem was never fully resolved either by Mohammad or by any of his successors. The struggle or jihad to establish the ideological hegemony of Islam was of course deeply concerned with the attempt to eradicate fitnah; although, in the long term, the process merely resulted in, at best, containing it. For Mohammad, at any rate, the increasingly difficult political situation of fitnah was rather as equally important to deal with as the challenge of spreading his message by crushing the tribes and forces hostile to his apostleship (particularly the Quraysh). In both cases, he had to resort to the use of physical force, basically qital. But the qital against dissenters was justified on the basis of ‘deception’ and ‘imposture’, and so the dissenters were declared to be munafiqeen or hypocrites (see II:8-16). As the ‘corrupters of the earth’ or ‘mischief-makers’(see II:205) they were declared to be under the ‘judgement of Taqoot’ or Satan (see IV:60) and hence as ‘evil’ as the kafareen or the disbelievers, if not more so. The hypocrites were, in short, regarded as an enemy: ‘…They are the enemy, so beware thou [i.e. Mohammad] of them! May God annihilate them, whence do they deviate!’(LXIII:4) And therefore the killing of them encouraged as basic to the divine obligation of jihad. Thus in the following verse the ‘guiding’ of hypocrites is questioned and decreed to be refused: ‘What is the matter with you, that you are two parties about the hypocrites [munafiqeen], and [yet] God has cast them off [return them to unbelief] for what they have earned? Do you intend to guide those whom God has forsaken to go astray? But those whom God has forsaken to go astray, you shall never find for them a way.’(IV:88) And upon this pronouncement of divine protest and refusal, there follows the directive to fight and kill the hypocrites, should they not return to God’s way: ‘They long that you should disbelieve as they disbelieve, so that you would be alike; therefore take not from among them guardians [vali] until they emigrate in the way of God; but if they turn back [i.e. turn their backs to God’s way], then seize them and slay them wherever you find them, and take none of them as guardian or as helper.’(IV:89) In political terms, the fact of disobeying and opposing the authority of Mohammad and that of the mu’mineen (his elite group of companions – effectively, his successors) was the essential motive for jihad against the hypocrites: ‘And whosoever acts hostilely [opposes or breaches with] the Messenger after the Guidance has become manifest to him and follows a way other than the mu’mineen’s, We will turn him to that which he has turned and will cast him into Hell [jahanam]; and it is an evil destination!’(IV:115) Fitnah, however, is something of a blanket term, covering situations of ‘unrest’, of ‘mischief’, of ‘corruption’, of ‘oppression’ as well as of ‘sedition’ that affected the authority of Mohammad’s umma, its cause and its goal of extending its jurisdiction. But, even though it covers situations involving disbelievers, it is not fundamentally a political situation of sedition brought on by those who stood up for a different creed that challenged the basic idea of submission to the will of the One God or Allah. The strife, the seditious conduct, that the Koran is principally concerned with was one brought on for the most part by those from among the Muslims themselves or by those who had pledged allegiance to Mohammad and the umma; fitnah was chiefly an internal political problem of the umma – thus the term munafiqeen or hypocrites, dissemblers. For the Islamic movement, these Muslim hypocrites (considered as ‘turncoats’; these were the people who had ‘turned’ after they had embraced Islam, see

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IX:74) were politically extremely dangerous – thus, it is said of them: ‘Verily, the hypocrites are in the lowest level of the fire [of hell]…’(IV:145). They were considered as highly dangerous since they could confront the authorities (the controllers of the umma, as also the later rulers of the Islamic state) from within the same tradition, challenging their orthodoxy and their power-base upon more or less the same ideological, theological, and political basis, which would or could have, potentially, great resonance among the submitted in general. In other words, it was precisely because they were intimately connected with the same belief system that they could cause the kind of ‘mischief’ that could lead to sedition and civil strife: ‘Had they [the hypocrites] gone forth with you [i.e. in jihad] they would not have added to you aught save sedition [fitnah] and they would certainly have hurried about among you to sow dissension among you; and amidst you there are those who listen to them…’(IX:47) And Mohammad was directed not to allow them to join him in fighting his enemies: ‘…say thou: You shall never go forth with me and you shall never fight [tuqatalwa] an enemy with me…’(IX:83) The struggle or jihad against them on all fronts, therefore, was a matter of immense importance and urgency: ‘O Prophet! Struggle [jahada] against the disbelievers and the hypocrites, and be harsh with them; their abode is Hell [jahanam]…’(IX:73) This struggle included, of course, the kind of armed, violent action or qital against them that was also ordained to be used against all disbelievers. For, insofar as the powers that be were concerned, self-evidently, the problem of sedition or fitnah, encouraged and championed by the so-called hypocrites (effectively seen as being in collusion with the external enemy of disbelievers), was of greater import and exigency than the principle or the honour-code or tribal tradition prohibiting killing or slaughtering (qatl, murder) of those from among the same community, as in the case of those belonging to the umma. Thus we have the following ayah that establishes the universally applicable ordinance on the issue of fitnah: ‘And slay them [i.e. anyone causing fitnah] wherever you find them….for fitnah is more grievous than slaughter [alqatula]…’(II:191; my italics) And the matter of fitnah was considered so grave as to require the fighting of those thought to be instigating it, as disbelievers, even if necessary at the Sacred Mosque or the Ka’ba. And thus the above quoted ayah continues: ‘…but fight not with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you therein, then, if they fight you, slay them; such is the recompense of disbelievers.’ (ibid.; my italics) From the political perspective, the authority of the umma, as with its structural integrity and wider jurisdiction based on ‘treaties’ and ‘allegiances’, had to be protected against fitnah, since the very mission of Mohammad and the spreading of his message proclaiming the sovereignty of the Will of the One God depended on it. He had thus asserted to have been given absolute authority by God to despatch anyone causing fitnah: ‘…whenever they return to fitnah, they plunge into it headlong; therefore, if they withdraw not from you and not submit nor restrain their hands, then seize them and slay them wherever you find them; and against these We have given you perspicuous absolute authority [sultana mubina].’(IV:91) Fitnah, which was particularly whipped up and inflamed by the Prophet’s powerful tribal enemies of Mecca, was not only a threat to the structural integrity of his umma, but a sign of the weakness of his God, endangering his whole project. Thus we have the following verse, which reiterates the urgency of fighting to holt fitnah in order to ensure and secure God’s ordained way of life: ‘And fight them until there is no fitnah and there is only God’s deen [way of life], but if they desist [from mischief or causing fitnah], then there should be no hostility, save against the oppressors.’(II:193) The same point is stressed in VIII:39; and in this next verse the problem of fitnah is, again, declared not only to be more of a serious matter than the slaughter that is necessary to

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quell it, but pronounced to be even more grievous than having to breach the prohibition on fighting during the holy month: ‘They question you concerning the sacred month, and fighting in it. Say: Fighting in it is grievous, but to bar from God’s way, and to reject Him [kufuru-bih], and [hinder access] to the Sacred Mosque, and to oust its [locals] inhabitants [wa ikhraju ahulah – ahl is a common term for ‘belonging to’ a locality or a community/tribe; perhaps the nearest English equivalent is as being ‘a local’] are still graver with God, and fitnah is more heinous than the slaughter [i.e. the killing necessary to fight these atrocious acts]; and they [i.e. those responsible for the mentioned mischievous acts] will not cease fighting you till they turn you from your deen, if they can; and whosoever of you turns from his deen, and dies as a disbeliever, these are they whose acts [a‘amal pl. of ‘amal – also denotes works, deeds, actions] have come to nothing in this world and the hereafter; and they are the inmates of the fire [hell], therein shall they abide.’(II:217; my italics) ‘Fee Sabila Allah’: the Koranic Justification of Violence Considered politically, then, the movement of Islam was grounded principally on the jihad to advance and spread the socio-political system first established in Medina. It is for this reason that fitnah was seen as a ‘grave’ matter, for it posed a threat to the success of this new project. The success of this project depended on the exercise of power by an organised and disciplined force. The umma, founded at Medina, became the basic institution that co-ordinated and sanctioned such a force and, as the political (proto-political) precursor of the theocratic state (the Caliphate), it became, through the person of Mohammad as its Head, the prime mover of the historical process of jihad and qital. This historical process of struggle (armed actions as well as ideological struggles), as it has been argued, was thus political in essence. In the historical period of the umma (and its successor states), however, the political manifested itself in and through the religious; hence the struggle waged by Mohammad and his umma (and those waged by the later Caliphate regimes) was always executed in the Way of God. Throughout the Koran, therefore, all fundamental references to the practice of jihad and qital are qualified by the expression ‘fee Sabila Allah’ or ‘in the Way of God’ (sometimes shortened to ‘fee Allah’ or ‘for God’), as, for example: ‘And fight in the way of God and know you that God is the All-hearer and the All-knower.’(II:244) The expression justifies and legitimises the exercise of power; it makes the use of force constitutionally permissible and lawful. It is in this the antithesis of fighting ‘in the way of Taqoot’ – that is, fighting for ‘Satan’ or, in this-worldly terms, in the way of the enemies or oppressors of Muslims: ‘Those who believe fight in the way of God and those who disbelieve fight in the way of Taqoot; fight therefore against the guardians of Taqoot; surely, the strategy of Taqoot is weak.’(IV:76) Fee Sabila Allah is the Koranic expression that encapsulated the political ‘inspiration’ of the umma’s struggle to consolidate itself as a dominant and expanding power. It is the expression that, thus, ‘metaphysically’ determines and defines the obligation of jihad and qital as divine, and, at the same time, sanctifies this divine obligation in terms of active obedience in servitude or ibadah, which makes jihad and qital appear as irreproachably just and moral. The moral element of fighting ‘in the Way of God’, in the personal sense, is, for example, implied in the following verse: ‘Fight then in the Way of God [faqtilu fee Sabila Allah]; you are tasked [tukalafu – from taklyf meaning task, duty] but for thyself; and urge on [harza] the mu’mineen, perhaps [then] God will restrain the might of disbelievers. Verily, God is stronger in might and the severest in punishing.’(IV:84; my italics) Thus, an aspect of the strength of the obligation of fighting for God is in the moral sense of it being a duty which is personally felt and imposed as a responsibility – being charged to fight for God, in short, is or should be a personally exacting moral conduct, and as such amenable to God.

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The moral element, as also the lawful element, of jihad and qital lies in the truth-claim of the action or practice involved as being ‘in the Way of God’. The criterion for evaluating this is, in strictly fundamental terms, exclusively revelatory; it is based on the revelations in the Koran. Thus, specific acts or deeds discharged by Muslims fighting in the way of God could only be regarded as ‘moral’ and ‘lawful’ if they are in accordance with what is set down in the Koran. Strictly speaking, a Muslim cannot fight or kill simply on his or her personal claim of such an act being ‘in the way of God’. Belief or iman also comes into play here; but again fighting in the way of God based on a claim of personal belief is not necessarily either moral or lawful. The actions covered by the concept of qital (or jihad) must be judged to be in accordance with the revelations given in the Koran in order for them to be ethical or legal. This judgement, needless to say, presupposes a judge; that is, it calls for an agency recognised and acknowledged as being qualified to pronounce the judgment. It is for this reason that the principle of fighting or killing ‘in the Way of God’ is deeply engaged with the political process. Historically, in the very beginning of Islam, Mohammad was the sole judge and his was the sole judgement. After his death the issue of morality and lawfulness was dealt with by his immediate successors (the right guarded Caliphs) as leaders/rulers of the umma and as the principal interpreters of the Prophet’s revelations. But eventually, with the rise of the ulama, it was this latter who, within a political compromise situation, established themselves, and were recognised, to make the necessary judgement as the qualified interpreters of the revelations – the rulers or Caliphs (also Sultans, etc.) came to act as the chief executers of the judgement. However, fundamentally, in terms of the spirit and the letter of the Koran, any ‘knowledgeable’ and ‘respected’ Muslim can make a judgment on the morality or lawfulness of an act of fighting ‘in the Way of God’ and thus issue an instruction for its execution as long as he is acknowledged by and within a Muslim constituency (and this does not have to be by ‘election’ or by the recognition of a majority or the whole of Muslim community) as a distinguished upright devotee of the deen of Islam and as long as he is able to show that his judgement is derived from the Koran. The history of Islam is littered with such figures (indeed, to this day!) – Muslims who declared jihad and qital independently of (and often against and in opposition to) the officiated body of the ulama and of the rulers of a particular Islamic state. At bottom, at any event, all conditions and caveats concerning the morality and lawfulness of jihad and qital come to rest on the question of ‘belief’, ‘faith’, or iman; iman is, undoubtedly, central to the understanding and implementation of jihad and qital ‘in the Way of God’. So that the morality and lawfulness of fighting or killing ‘in the way of God’ are related to having iman in ‘what has been revealed to Mohammad’ (XLVII:2) – i.e. the Koran. This is what after all defines a person as a Muslim – believing in Mohammad’s message as divine (and not simply in monotheism; for otherwise Jews and Christians would also need to be regarded as ‘Muslims’!). Belief, in this specific sense of Mohammad being the Last Prophet and the Koran being the Last Word of God, is thus set in opposition and conflict to ‘disbelief’ – and jihad and qital are fundamentally aimed at defeating disbelief in the world of humanity. It is incumbent on all Muslims to struggle (jihad) against disbelief and to fight (qital) disbelievers ‘in the Way of God’. In fighting disbelievers (or hypocrites), for example, it is considered moral and lawful, in the Koran, not only to fight and kill them, but even to ‘crucify’ them or ‘cut off’ their hands and feet, etc.(see V:33) Therefore, extreme violence used against disbelievers is ethical and legal – obviously when carried out ‘in the Way of God’ – basically on the grounds of their disbelief in the divine message of Mohammad, which is expressed by the Koranic notion of kufr;

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that is, because disbelievers ‘turn their back upon [saduwua] the Way of God’(seeXLVII:1), and do not follow, as believers do, the truth revealed to Mohammad alone; they follow something of no force, of no validity, something which is null, non-existent: ‘…those who disbelieve follow nullity [al-batila – often translated as ‘falsehood’], and those who believe follow the truth from their Lord…’(XLVII:3) Thus, on the basis of this (Mohammad/Muslim) projected factitious notion of disbelief or kufr, anyone who turned his/her back on or opposed Mohammad’s Islamic movement was liable to receive the most brutal treatment at the hands of the mu’mineen under the pretext of fighting in the way of God: ‘So when you encounter those who disbelieve, smite their necks until you have annihilated [decimated] them, then either fetter the captives in bondage or set them free as by a binding obligation or by ransom, till the burden of the instruments [awzar – i.e. arms, weapons] of the war [al-harb] are laid down. So it is commanded; and if God had willed, He would have exacted retribution from them; but that He may try some of you by means of others. And those who are slain in the Way of God, never will He allow their deeds to go in vain.’(XLVII:4) And it is made abundantly clear that the brutality commanded in the above verse is justified because the disbelievers ‘have been averse to what God has sent down…’ and that they had turned ‘their back upon the Way of God and opposed the Messenger after the Guidance has been made manifest unto them…’(XLVII:9 and 32; see also 34) Jihad against Kufr Indeed, kufr was and was deliberately built up to be such a fundamentally important reason for unremitting hostility that the socio-political cause of the propagation of Islam was almost completely hidden by the religious motive of countering kufr wherever and in whatever form the idea presented itself. This essentially ideological struggle between Islam and kufr was the manifestation of the underlying political struggle for an ever-expanding social domination. The historical movement of Islam’s growth and expansion as seen on the surface appears dominated by the great enmity towards kufr and consequently by the jihad against those whose consciousness was claimed and declared to be distorted and corrupted by it – the kafareen. The conception of kufr has the great convenience of blanket applicability; it covers any system of belief, values and views that is considered to be contrary to that contained in the Koran. It covers shirk (the association of anything or anyone with God – thus idolatry), nifaq (hypocrisy), as well as the Judaic and Christian belief systems (though these latter were to some degree ‘tolerated’ under certain stringent conditions – see XXII:17, where this is hinted at in connection with the overall attitude towards the struggle against disbelief). Jihad is thus commanded against all those who follow these ‘contrary’ systems as ways of life – it was just, moral and lawful, thus, to fight and kill mushrikeen (idolaters) and munafiqeen (hypocrites) unless they repented. But insofar as those who follow shirk, the mushrikeen, once God has condemned them to damnation, there shall be no retrieve, even for close relatives: ‘It is not for the Prophet and those who believe to seek forgiveness for the idolaters [al-mushrikeen], even if they should be near of kin, after it has been proclaimed unto them that they are the inmates of Hell.’(IX:113) As for Jews and Christians, as already noted, historically they were, as People of the Book, for the most part tolerated as long as they did not interfere with the advance and spreading of Islam and paid the appropriate tribute (jizyah) to the state, in which case they, as dhimmis, came under the protection of the Islamic state: ‘Fight you those who believe not in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden, and follow not the True Deen [deen al-haq – i.e. Islam as the right way of life based on the truth revealed in the Koran], being of those who have been

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given the Book, until they pay the tribute [jizyah] by their hand [i.e. as a sign of subservience] and they remain in subjection.’(IX:29; my italics) Nonetheless, any interference in the affairs of the Islamic state, particularly if this was considered to be of an ‘aggressive intent,’ would justify jihad and qital against them. For, in spite of the fact that the People of the Book were regarded as to be, by monotheistic inclination, part of a ‘single community [umma]’ of faith as Mohammad’s (see XXI:92), they were, nonetheless, in strict Koranic terms, fundamentally considered as ‘disbelievers’ on the basis of shirk – that is, for associating their Prophets with God, which goes against the fundamental principle of the Oneness of God or Tawhid: ‘And say the Jews: Ezra is the Son of God; and say the Christians: The Messiah is the Son of God; that is the utterance of their mouths, conforming with the saying of the disbelievers before them; God fights them…’ And, moreover, their shirk goes even further than this, for they: ‘Take their rabbis and their monks as lords besides God, and Messiah son of Mary, while they were commanded to serve the One God only; there is no god but He; glory be to Him above that [which] they associate [with the One God].’(IX:30-31) This application of shirk to Jews and Christians is indicative of the rivalry between Mohammad’s Islam and these already well-established monotheistic movements – a kind of duel of beliefs initiated by Mohammad through the improvisation of the initial application of the notion of shirk. In its initial application, shirk was a notion exclusively related to the pagan belief system dominant among Meccans and the Arab tribes of Hijaz, and Mohammad was specifically tasked to warn them of this kufr: ‘Say [i.e. Mohammad]: What! Bid you me to serve others than God? O you ignorant ones! And indeed has it been revealed unto you and unto those before you: Verily, if you associate [anyone or anything with God], certainly your deeds would come to naught and certainly you would be of the losers.’(XXXIX:64-65) Shirk was directly related, in its concrete and conceptual development, to the so-called world of Jahiliyah and Mohammad’s jihad against idolaters – as, for example, indicated by this verse: ‘We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve because they have associated with God that for which He has sent down no authority…’(III:151; my italics) And it was because of this never-authorised association, because of shirk, that fighting and destroying them was divinely permitted and as a result Mohammad had obtained what God had promised him: ‘And certainly God made good to you His promise when you exterminated them by His permission…’(III:152) With the change of circumstances of jihad (the intensification and the necessity of the widening of the umma’s struggle) had come, naturally, a change of politics, and Jews and Christians, as ideological rivals of Islam, came to be included within the orbit of shirk, and thus became the subjects of political hostility within both the broad practice of jihad and even that of qital when political expediency demanded. Moreover, in the way the Koran raises this matter, Jews and Christians (regarded as untrustworthy for, apparently, secretly acting against Mohammad’s rule), were not to be taken as ‘guardians’ or ‘valis’: ‘O you who believe! Take you not the Jews and the Christians for guardians; they are guardians of each other; and whosoever of you takes them as guardians, verily he is one of them; verily God guides not an unjust folk.’ (V:51) In principle, nevertheless, repentance was the simplest way out of this situation, with Jewish and Christian communities and tribes becoming subjects of the umma (or the Islamic state) by ‘treaty’. However, as pointed out, repentance generally, but particularly in the case of the idolaters, had some severe conditions attached to it (e.g. payment of a special tax, bondage of one kind or other, provisions of slaves, particularly for military use, etc.). It was only under these circumstances that, upon the establishment of a covenant, immunity was granted in the name of God. The formal declaration of such immunity

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is given in the following ayah: ‘Immunity from God and His Messenger unto the idolaters with whom you made covenant.’(IX:1) But the immunity granted not only went with some strings attached, it also contained a warning that firstly, Mohammad and his forces are free of any obligation towards idolaters, and that secondly, the latter are not thereby given freedom to go back to their old ways – in most cases historically, the immunity granted was thus a temporary measure, a respite. This is how the matter is stated: ‘And a proclamation from God and His Messenger unto the people on the day of the great pilgrimage [hajj-e akbar – refers to the annual visit to the Ka’ba in Mecca]: God is quit [baraya or bara’at – free of, or finished with], and His Messenger, of the idolaters; it is better for you therefore to repent; but if you turn your backs, know you that you cannot weaken God; and announce to those who disbelieve, a painful chastisement; excepting those of the idolaters with whom you made covenant, who failed you not and supported not anyone against you, with them fulfil your covenant till the end of their term…’(IX:3-4; my italics) The ‘term’ referred to here is a ‘respite’ during, for example, the ‘sacred months’. After this term is up, however, should they have not repented, then the command is to kill them: ‘So when the sacred months are passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and seize them and besiege them and lie in wait for them at all ambush sites. Then if they repent and establish prayer and give alms [zakat – the specifically Islamic ‘charitable’ tax], then let them go on their way.’(IX:5; my italics) For, it should be stressed that ‘repentance’ is fully accepted, according to the Koran, not merely as a show of sorrow or regret, but essentially as a change of heart, as of submitting. The equating of repentance with submission is clearly suggested in the following ayah: ‘But if they repent and establish prayer and pay the alms [zakat], then they are your brethren in the deen…’(IX:11; my italics) Short of complete submission, then, disbelievers (including the People of the Book) will be considered and treated as kafareen or ‘infidels’. The sanction of jihad against kufr or disbelief and of qital against disbelievers or kafareen is so deeply embedded in the message of the Koran that Chapter IX (called ‘Repentance’), as perhaps the most salient of the Surahs chiefly concerned with the question of confronting disbelief and disbelievers, was actually composed to begin without the standard and obligatory ‘Bessmellah’ attestation (i.e. ‘In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate’) as a clear uncompromising sign or declaration of bellicose approach and attitude towards kufr. It was meant, in short, as an unambiguous warning message to all the mu’mineen (and all the submitted) and an emphatic notice to the world of disbelief or kufr that God and His Messenger will have no mercy or compassion in dealing with it! For, the mu’mineen are repeatedly reminded that disbelievers cannot really be trusted to keep their pledge, ‘observing neither bond nor treaty’ and that they are ‘transgressors’, and, in fact, are constantly attempting to ‘turn others away from His [God’s] way’.(IX:9-10) This distrust ran deep and was a problem that concerned the untrustworthy character and role of the Chiefs or Leaders of the disbelieving communities or tribes Mohammad faced (such as Abu-Sufyan, the Chief of the House of Umayya, and effectively the military Head of the Qurayshite confederacy opposing Mohammad’s umma), as indicated by this verse: ‘And if they violate their pledge after their covenant and revile your deen, then fight the Chiefs [ummata, Leaders] of disbelief, verily their oaths [mean] nothing…’(IX:12; my italics) The struggle against kufr was so intense that the Koran instructs the submitted to oppose and fight it even within their household and family: ‘O you who believe! Take you not your fathers and brothers as guardians if they love disbelief [kufr] above belief [iman]; and whosoever of you takes them as guardians, those they are the unjust [zalim – oppressor, also one who acts against what is right or the truth].’(IX:23) But one of the main concerns behind this ordinance was to re-endorse the exalted practice

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of jihad in the way of God. Historically, though Muslim forces had had a number of successes in skirmishes and battles against their Meccan enemies, particularly at the battle of Badr, after their defeat in the battle of Uhud, Mohammad was under great pressure to not only protect his umma, but also as part of a continuous effort, as remarked before, to reconfirm and demonstrate the power of his God by the strength of his own leadership in the struggle against disbelievers. Political expediency thus demanded the reiteration of the divine calling to jihad as the most eminent manifestation of serving God and as therefore a vastly superior undertaking than even trade (which was considered a pious, even an almost ‘scared,’ practice) and as a more precious concern than family or property. This is how God tells Mohammad to put this crucial matter across to his followers: ‘Say: If your fathers, your sons, your brothers, your wives, your clan, and your possessions that you have gained, and the slow-down in trade that you fear, and the dwellings that you love, are dearer to you than God and His Messenger and jihad in His way, then wait till God brings His command…’(IX:24; my italics) Jihad and the Acquisition of Wealth Jihad against kufr was thus commanded to be carried out at all social levels. The consolidation of Mohammad’s umma and its growth and expansion naturally depended on such all-out, exhaustive and unremitting struggle. But crucially also, there was of course ‘wealth’ to be gained by fighting the kafareen. Thus it was that in their struggle against kafareen, there would be ‘great many acquisitions [spoils] which they [i.e. the mu’mineen] will take…’ as ‘God did promise great many acquisitions [spoils] which you will take and speed this unto you…’(XLVIII:19-20) Under its essentially political-ideological impulse, jihad had definite and pronounced economic, commercial and fiscal objectives. The control of the caravan trade could only be achieved by the military defeat of the disbelieving tribes/clans (particularly the Quraysh of Mecca) conducting and dominating this lucrative undertaking. The capture of oases in the hands of disbelievers was absolutely crucial for gaining access to water and food provisions and hence vital to the survival and the process of the umma’s expansion. Qital brought in booty, and more importantly tribute – both unquestionably essential to the political and military functioning of the umma. Qital expeditions were quite integral to the advancing of the prosperity of the umma, and certainly particularly significant to the augmentation of umma/state treasury as well as the mu’mineen’s possessions and wealth. The Jewish and Christian tribes and communities were a target of qital, for example, not only because of their embracing of shirk, but also because they were a source of tribute and moreover of booty, as we see this hinted at in this verse: ‘O you who believe! Verily, many of the rabbis and monks eat away possessions of the people invalidly and bar from the way of God. Those who hoard gold and silver and expend it not in the way of God, announce unto them a painful chastisement.’(IX:34) In other words, the wealth hoarded is decreed here to be unethically/unlawfully obtained (from ordinary people) and not used in the way of God, consequently a perfectly legitimate asset to be seized. Similarly, the fighting of the idolaters had as part of its underlying purpose the gaining of suchlike divine bounties. And, more specifically, as regards those idolaters who controlled Mecca, there was, besides the all-important trade issue, the relatively smaller, yet rewardingly revenue-making, matter of the control of the Ka’ba (referred to as the Sacred Mosque) – the revenue was obtained mainly from the pilgrimage to it by Arab idolaters as a longstanding shrine. The matter of the acquisition of the revenue associated with the Ka’ba, as a consequence of fighting for the prohibition of the ‘unclean’ idolaters from approaching or controlling the holy site, is implied in this verse: ‘O you who believe! Verily, the idolaters are unclean, so let them not approach the Sacred Mosque after this their year; and if you fear poverty, then God will enrich you of His bounty, if He wills…’(IX:28; my italics)

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Economical gain from fighting was undoubtedly an extremely significant factor in the early periods of jihad, as it was, and more so, in the later expansionist wars. Mohammad, by background, experience and inclination, was certainly quite commercially minded – his divine message regarding jihad was as much concerned with the gaining of political power over all Arab tribes as with that of acquisition of wealth and of the control of Arab commercial life. However, both the pursuit of power as well as that of wealth was seen through the camera obscura of religious consciousness. Under the social conditions of Mohammad’s umma, and also of the states that succeeded it, wealth came with the control of power, and power (hence also wealth) appeared in the perception of those in control of the state, as well as their subjects, as a favour or a gift from God. But this aspect of the historical age does not make the acquisition of goods, possessions, of wealth and property, an inferior pursuit to the gaining of, and augmentation of, political power insofar as those involved in jihad were, for example, concerned. It is true that there are revelatory rulings in the Koran against the amassing of wealth (see, for example, CII:1 and CIV:2-3). But Mohammad’s rulings opposing the amassing of wealth were based on two interlinked factors: on the one hand, the political factor of opposing the amassing of wealth in the hands of the tribal and clan chiefs of the Quraysh who were his diehard enemies; and on the other hand, such rulings concerned the hoarding of wealth, associated with greed and avarice – the gaining of wealth or the rewarding of ‘good’ deeds with the granting of wealth is not in any way against either the spirit or the letter of the Koran. Wealth was, and could be within the juridical framework of the Koran, amassed through mercantile activities, through state appointments over tribute and tax collections, through state grants of landholdings, and quite legally and on a large scale through ‘spoils’ of war. For all such wealth received and amassed, God was thanked as its ‘true’ source. The bounties of God from fighting (e.g. booty or spoils) were, thus, fully and persistently embraced and defended by the ‘soldiers of God’ or the mujahideen – this and other ways of gaining wealth by means of jihad (‘other acquisitions [spoils] you were not able to take, God has verily encompassed them’ XLVIII:21) was part of their mindset and recognised as a crucial incentive by Mohammad (i.e. in the Koran): ‘Eat then of what you have taken as booty [qanymat], which is lawful and good; and fear you God; verily God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.’(VIII:69) The gaining of wealth as part of fighting was, indeed, an ancient tribal custom, which remained in force, at least in an Islamised modified form, under Mohammad’s umma and the later Islamic states. The continuation of this custom, besides its inherent appeal among Mohammad’s own followers, was crucial to enlisting the militarily invaluable fighting forces of many of the Bedouin tribes: ‘Say unto those of the Bedouin Arabs who stayed behind [i.e. had not joined Mohammad’s jihad]: You shall be called against a folk of mighty prowess; you shall fight against them until they submit, if you obey [i.e. obey this command], God will grant you a goodly recompense…’(XLVIII:16; my italics) This promise of a share in the spoils of fighting in the way of God needed to be clarified, moreover, because under Mohammad’s leadership the accepted custom regarding the sharing of booty or spoils had become modified in favour of his own fighters and the mu’mineen – acquisitions as a result of qital were made more a prerogative of the mu’mineen, Mohammad’s companions and his mujahideen. This is evident from the none-too happy attitude of the Bedouins regarding this change in the ancient custom, as this verse, which precedes and should be read along with that quoted above, indicates: ‘Those [Bedouins] who stayed behind will say when you [i.e. Mohammad] set forth for the gaining of acquisitions [spoils]: Let us follow you; desiring they to change the word of God [i.e. the conditions set upon those fighting for God, including the sharing of spoils]…’(XLVIII:15)

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But Mohammad the politician had to promise something to these Bedouins while ensuring that his own cadres’ gains from fighting would not in any way be ever jeopardised. Therefore delicate handling of the matter was required, and thus we have in the same Surah referring to acquisitions from qital, this rather artful play on words: ‘The custom [sunnata – also wont, habit; this is sometimes translated as ‘the course’] of God that has been effective in the past before, never shall you find in the custom of God a change.’(XLVIII:23) Appearing as a general rule, the verse states that God, in other words, never changes His custom or way or course. But here, in this specific case considered above, the idea that God never changes Hid sunna appears to apply, by its ambivalent wording, to both the old custom (‘effective in the past’) of sharing acquisitions as well as to that established for the mu’mineen, that is, to the newly modified rule, which because it was then established shall not be changed. For the newly modified rule was based on this command: ‘…God has raised the mujahideen with their possessions and their lives in rank above those who sit back…’(IV:95; my italics) Mohammad’s God, as is evident from the Koran, is generally quite acquisitively minded; He is certainly as much a ‘mercantilist’ God as He is a political as well as a fighting God. The securing of His Will’s dominance over the world of humanity was as much to be achieved by signs of obedience and servitude through prayer, the Friday assembly, fasting, pilgrimages, and so on, as through this-worldly concrete practices of fighting in His way and commercial intercourse and the acquisition of wealth by His favoured servants to advance His cause. The Word of God does not in anyway shy away from mixing the language of power with that of commerce; it does not repudiate or denigrate the gaining of power and of possessions (wealth) in the ‘here and now’. The Koran considers rewards and God’s bounties both as the payment of material benefits, earned for this-worldly purposes, and as a promissory note for paradisiacal ‘goods’ in the next world: ‘And there are some among [mankind] who say: Our Lord! Give us good [hasanah – denotes material benevolence; it also denotes charity] in this world and good in the hereafter, and save us from the torment of the Fire [Hell]. These shall have a portion of what they have earned, and God is quick in reckoning.’ (II:201202) Mohammad’s God is, also, a particularly demanding God in this-worldly terms: He is fiscally demanding, expecting and exacting taxes and tribute by ‘treaty’ under the force of arms; He is demanding of personal sacrifices, requisitioning personal and communal possessions, property and wealth in the service of jihad and qital in His way; He is, moreover, demanding of the sacrifice of life itself, commanding the submitted to, if necessary, die in fighting for His cause. In all these matters His Word is expressive of an obligatory conduct as if emanating from and conditioned by a kind of barter or rather a ‘reciprocal’ exchange relationship. Thus, even in the case of sacrifice of life in fighting for God, the divine obligation of jihad and qital appears as a ‘bargain’ providing for exchange of ‘equivalence’, as evident from this verse: ‘Verily, God has purchased from the mu’mineen their lives and their possessions for theirs to be the Garden [i.e. in lieu of granting them the gift of Paradise]; they fight in the way of God; they kill, and are killed; that is a promise binding on Him in the Torah, and the Gospel and the Qur’an; and who is more faithful to his covenant than God? Rejoice therefore in the bargain you have made; and that, it is the mighty triumph.’(IX:111) Jihad and Martyrdom The sacrifice of life, considered as the ‘sublime’ element of jihad/qital, is part of the ‘bargain’ that the mu’mineen need to ‘rejoice’ about; it is ‘the mighty triumph’ of the test of their devotion to the truth of God’s commandment, a ‘triumph’ of their

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commitment to fighting for Him, and a ‘triumph’ of the certainty of the justice of their action in the way of God – the certainty that fighting, killing and being killed are, objectively and subjectively, unquestionably for God. The offer of paradise in the bargain is taken as the promise of the gaining of transcendental bliss, riches, and success, well beyond the actual experience of the mu’mineen yet imaginable in terms of this-worldly ideals. It is a promise that provides a vision of God’s affection towards anyone among His servants who ‘sells his self to seek the pleasure of God’(II:207). The bargain of not merely dying for God, but of killing oneself for Him – effectively committing suicide in the struggle and fighting in the way of God – is an unequivocal aspect of the divine obligation of jihad: ‘And We have prescribed [katabuna – from kataba, what is ‘written’ as an obligation or that which is obligatory and indispensable] for them: Kill yourselves [aqutuluwa anufusakum – derived from qatl nafsah, ‘self-killing’ thus suicide, also denoted by antahara]…’(IV:66) Thus, the Koran not only does not forbid ‘self-killing’ or ‘suicide’, but it actually prescribes it as long as it is committed in fighting for the cause of God. There are, however, verses in the Koran that have been interpreted as being antithetical to any kind of killing; among these there are three, considered as basic, that are more often than any others produced to in fact demonstrate that not only suicide, but also the killing of any ‘soul’, is rejected and forbidden by the Koran. One of the verses often quoted, refers, in its relevant section, to the prohibition on the killing of one another, which is, however, interpreted and rendered into English in some Koran translations as ‘kill not your selves’. The relevant phrase in Arabic is: ‘wa la taqutuluwa anufusakum’, which in translation actually means, ‘and kill not one another’.(see IV:29) The Arabic for ‘and kill not your selves’ is: ‘wa la aqutuluwa anufusakum’ and NOT ‘wa la taqutuluwa anufusakum.’ In other words, there is not only a ‘misinterpretation’ involved here, but, incredibly, a mistranslation! At any rate, in the context of the verse, which is specifically addressing and concerned with those ‘who believe’ (i.e. Muslims), the prohibition on killing referred to is actually pertaining only to Muslims killing Muslims – and even in this case, as we have already pointed out, so long as the Muslim in question is not considered to be a ‘hypocrite’ or an ‘apostate’! Yet another often quoted verse produced with regards to this issue is verse 32 from the Fifth Surah, Al-Maidah. In this case, what is generally quoted is only the supposedly relevant sentence, which is as follows: ‘For this reason We prescribed to the Children of Israel that whoso slays a soul… it is as though he had slain mankind altogether…’(V:32; my italics) The interpretation supporting the prohibition of suicide, or with regards to the killing of any ‘soul’, comes down to the understanding of the term ‘soul’ in this verse, denoted by the Arabic nafs – which actually denotes both ‘soul’ and ‘self’. Soul is, of course, understood in its religious sense as that which gives life to a person. What is then simply declared is that, according to this verse, the killing of ‘a soul’ is considered as so heinous as to being like the murder/slaughter of the whole of humanity. Therefore, for this reason, the slaying of ‘a soul’, whether that be of another’s soul or one’s own (thus suicide) is forbidden by the Koran. The problem with this, however, is that in attempting to demonstrate this anti-suicide/antikilling stance of the Koran, often the verse in question is produced by ignoring the qualification stated in it which is essential to its intended meaning. This is how the relevant section of the verse actually is given in the Koran: ‘For this reason We prescribed to the Children of Israel that whoso slays a soul, unless it be for killing of a soul in retribution or for corruption done in the Land, it is as though he had slain mankind altogether.’(ibid.; my italics) Now, taking into account the qualifying sentence, what is prohibited is not ‘killing’ or ‘self-killing’, the ‘slaying of a soul’, in general or as a general rule. The qualifying sentence, indeed, actually specifies that the killing of ‘a soul’ is authorised if it is in retribution or that it is killing of ‘a soul’

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that has caused corruption in the land (on earth)! And, finally, there is the following statement: ‘and kill you not the soul God has forbidden [i.e. forbidden the killing of]’.(see VI:151) Here, then, we again have the same problem as that raised above in relation to the other often quoted verses: that is to say, firstly, that the sentence is taken out of context; and, secondly, it is interpreted simply in order to (fallaciously) establish a ‘Koranic general rule or edict’. The actual relevant part of the verse in question, in full, is as follows: ‘…and kill you not the soul God has forbidden except by Right [ilaa bil-haqa – haq denotes ‘right’ in the sense of ‘in accordance with the standard of truth and duty’; it also means ‘truth’]…’(ibid.; my italics) Thus, the Koran, contrary to such claims that it contains a general or blanket prohibition on killing, in fact permits the killing of ‘a soul’ if this is considered to be bil-haqa or is by rights based on and required by divine obligation, as for example in jihad. It is undeniable, of course, that the Koran forbids ‘murder’ (homicide); it is also incontestable that it sets out quite specific limits in relation to the act of killing, the depriving of life. But it is equally incontrovertible that God or the Koran does make definite and clear-cut exceptions appertaining to the act of killing under certain conditions and circumstances. Jihad and qital, in the way of God, are without a doubt the most significant of such conditions; and, as pointed out, under such conditions killing and self-killing are not only permitted, but actually commanded, when and if necessary. Interestingly, moreover, in the case of ‘suicide’, although it is conceded that not many among the submitted or even among the devotees, fighters or mu’mineen would kill themselves for the cause of Islam, the directive to ‘kill yourselves’ would not only stand, but its fulfilment is declared to be ‘good’ for the self-sacrificing victims. Thus, the verse prescribing ‘self-killing’, quoted above, goes on, ‘they would not have done it [i.e. kill themselves] but a few of them; yet if they had done as they were admonished it would certainly have been better for them and stronger in confirmation [of their iman].’(IV:66; my italics) This ayah then follows, indeed, with two verses substantiating the act of ‘self-killing’, of suicide, for God: ‘And then We would certainly have given them from Our own a mighty reward [ajra ‘azyma – mighty wage]. And certainly would We have guided them onto the Straight Way.’ (IV:67-68) The Koran, then, sanctions the highest sacrifice of all; but as with the act of killing, suicide or self-killing, as part of the divine obligation of jihad, is prescribed only with qital or fighting in the way of God: ‘Let those, then, fight in the Way of God who sell this-worldly life for the hereafter; and whosoever fights in the Way of God, be he slain or be he victorious, We shall grant him a mighty reward.’(IV:74; my italics) Intrinsic to the obligation of jihad is that the Muslim fighter must be willing to die in the way of God. But the above directive goes further: it states the absolute self-alienating of life, the selling of it as the depriving of one’s life (as well as the material factors of life). In other words, the Muslim fighter’s life is, like any good, entered into a barter; selling it is not merely a show of ‘willingness’ to die, but much more than that, it is a transference, an exchange, of life. What God gains, the fighter loses. Though, as pointed out, in the language of commerce, the exchange appears mutually advantageous; and ideologically, the exchange appears for the well-being of the Muslim community, and in the common interest of the universal Deen of Islam. And on closer reading, the ayah just quoted is actually imparting a general order: only those who sell the life of this world, only those who have entered into the bargain with God to give up their lives (over and above giving up their possessions), only these should fight in the way of God – thus it is stated: ‘Let those fight in the Way of God who sell this-worldly life’. In line with the principle of the ‘bargain’, and of ‘exchange relations’, Muslim fighting forces must be made up of those whose life God has purchased. For this reason, there should be no fear of death when God commands you

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to fight for Him: ‘Did you not consider those who went forth from their settlements [dayarah – ‘home town’ or habitation], and they were in their thousands, for fear of death; then God said to them: Die you! Then He gave them life. Verily God is gracious to the people, but most of the people are not thankful. And fight you in the way of God, and know you that God is All-hearing, All-knowing.’(II:243-44) The divine obligation of jihad and qital includes, obviously, the command ‘to kill’. But also, as shown above, it unreservedly includes the directive ‘to be prepared to die’ as well as the prescription ‘to kill yourself’ if the cause of God demands it. In other words, martyrdom is inherent in the obligation of jihad/qital. Martyrdom is, however, generally associated with ‘meeting death’, dying, in the struggle for the cause of God (i.e. for Islam) which may or may not come about as a result of ‘self-killing’. Thus: ‘If a wound has afflicted you, a like wound has also afflicted the people [who disbelieve]; and such days [i.e. of misfortunes] We deal out in turn among mankind, but that God may know those who believe, and that He may take martyrs [shuhada pl. of shaheed – from shaahid denoting ‘witness’; shuhada can therefore also mean ‘witnesses’, but given the context, it is here clearly denoting ‘martyrs’] from among you…’(III:140; my italics) In this case, martyrdom is the result of being killed (presumably from wounds) in fighting for God. That the ayah is indisputably referring to martyrs (and not as some translations have rendered as God taking ‘witnesses’) is quite unambiguously evident from the following succeeding verses: ‘And that God may purify [recover, revive] those who believe and obliterate the disbelievers. Did you imagine that you should enter the Garden [i.e. Paradise] while God does not yet know who from among you have struggled [jahadu] and who are the steadfast? And you indeed desired [longed] for death before you met it; so indeed you have now seen it, while you were beholding.’(III:141-143; my italics) As it can be seen, here the issue is unquestionably the attainment and the honorific conferring of martyrdom. Moreover, there are certain fundamental points made here in relation to this honour which are important to highlight: Firstly, looked at from the standpoint of the Koran’s determination, martyrdom is only conferred by God – or to put it in a much stronger tone, as the above verse states it, God takes a martyr. Secondly, when conferred, it is only bestowed on the steadfast fighters for God; and with it comes the prize specified as the privilege of entering Paradise. Now, considering this honour of martyrdom from the viewpoint of the victim (obviously before he/she becomes a martyr!), the first and primary condition specified in the above ayah is the desire for death, the willingness to die. But this ‘desire’ for death for God as a state of mind is based on the illusion of ‘life in the next world’ derived from iman; in other words, what is engaging this mindset is the imagination of beholding death, in fighting for God, as attaining life in Paradise. This ‘beholding’ of death as ‘life in Paradise’ is based on the absolute certainty of the truth of God’s promise and His Word as stated for example in the following ayah (already quoted previously): ‘And do not speak of those who are slain in the way of God as dead; nay, they are alive…’(II:154; my italics) In the Koran, there is, in fact, a distinction made between martyrdom and, for want of a better term, the ‘routine’ meeting of death in fighting for God. Both kinds of death are acclaimed and commended by the forgiveness of sins and the mercy of God in the hereafter, as announced in these verses: ‘And if you be slain in the Way of God or die, then forgiveness [pardon] from God and mercy is better than what they amass. For if indeed you die or be slain, verily unto God shall you be gathered.’ (III:157-58) But a Muslim fighter is distinguished as a martyr only on the basis of the dynamic nature of his/her deeds and action that attest, confirm and demonstrate his/her devotion, commitment and the certainty, or iman, as regards fighting in the way of God. And this is determined by the desire or the willingness to die. In its strictly Koranic conception, therefore, martyrdom is inextricably linked to the honour of being killed

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which is intrinsically affected by a diehard state of mind conditioned by the willingness to die. Appropriately, conditioned by iman, the specifically Koranic understanding of a shaheed (a martyr) is that he/she is always alive and present – thus he/she is in this sense a ‘witness’ of the truth of God’s Will, power, favour and promise. In the mythology of Islam, it is believed that one Muslim above all stands as the most glorious of all shaheeds – not Mohammad, in fact, but a mujahid known simply as Hamzeh; one of the mu’mineen companions of the Prophet – he was, it is said, the youngest son of Abd al-Muttalib, a great Qurayshite hunter and warrior. Hamzeh was killed in action during the battle of Uhud (627), and was, apparently, declared by Mohammad himself as the Sayyid al-Shuhada, the Master of Martyrs. In this role, according to all true erudite Muslims, Hamzeh has no equal – not even the figure of Hussein, the third Imam of Shiites, regarded by the latter as a remarkably outstanding symbol of martyrdom, comes close to him. For Muslims, the martyrdom of Hamzeh is something to be emulated in their continuation of jihad. For, in belief and in practice, jihad, considered as the ‘glory’ of Islam, is the perpetual arena of martyrdom, and qital is the fateful epilogue of this dramatic self-sacrifice. It is ironic that the self-sacrifice of martyrdom is, by the command of God, underpinned by fear and the threat of chastisement. Thus, the submitted, and particularly the mu’mineen, are questioned if showing any reservation in going forth to fight in the way of God: ‘O you who believe! What is amiss with you that when it is said to you: Go forth in the Way of God, you sink down to earth. What! Are you contend with this-worldly life, rather than the world to come? But the provisions [enjoyed] in this world compared to the next world, is but little.’(IX:38) And then, subsequently warned with the threat of punishment: ‘Unless you go forth, He will chastise you with a painful chastisement and He will substitute in your place another folk…’(IX:39) In other words, Mohammad (God in the Koran) was not fully convinced of the psychological effectiveness and vigour of the consciousness and sensibility of ‘self-sacrifice’ in martyrdom. Nonetheless, martyrdom is, in Islamic mythology and in Muslim imagination, a state of ‘being’ that brings with it the ‘light’ of witnessing the absolute Truth of the Oneness of God. The shuhada belong necessarily and essentially to the universal plan of divine being; they serve as examples of ‘ideal’ Muslims, ensuring, in belief, the continuity of the Koranic universal project throughout the diversity of successive struggles. Martyrdom is meant to create the illusion that this continuity is the visible vigil – that is, the shaheed is a witness on the vigil of jihad in the way of God to guard the fundamental living principle of the Oneness of God. The shaheed negates his/her very materiality and worldly being for this absolute Truth, which is then supposed to guarantee, through the stubborn force of memory, the infinite maintenance in existence of the ideal fighter for God. The mythology of martyrdom is meant to achieve the political reintegration of the martyr – the transforming of death in fighting for God into an object of ideological and political consciousness. The goal inherent in it is thus political. Martyrdom is central to the understanding of the link between the illusory universality of the Oneness of God and the practical process of jihad in its explicitly violent form as qital, because it is the symbolic expression of the ultimate act of political self-sacrifice appearing as a manifestation of absolute submission or being a true Mu’min. Qital is the basic domain of martyrdom in which is expressed the divine obligation of jihad to subject the conditions of life to the Will of God as set forth and formulated in the Koran as Allah’s Constitution. Qital, the continuation of jihad by violent means, is, however, not merely the domain of martyrdom, but also, thereby, the process in which the conception of the Oneness of

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God is transformed into a practical instrument of political structuring of social life. It demonstrates, in a way that is emphatic and authoritative, that the socio-political relations based on the act of submission cannot be understood without considering the role of force. When qital is taken into account, one can see clearly that jihad was the struggle to create a political structure in which the universal expansion of the Islamic way of life would be determined by, on the one hand, the subjugation of communities, tribes and peoples by means of the routing of their independent authority and their particular belief systems; and, on the other hand, by the territorial expansion of the Islamic state (initially, the umma) through conquest. The status of the umma (as also of that of the later Islamic state) as the universal socio-political entity is derived from its practice of qital as the continuation of jihad. The radical chains of the mu’mineen as a self-conscious select group (class-like ‘brotherhood’) are forged by jihad and the group’s transmutation into a ‘state-class’ or a ‘state-aristocracy’ was initially driven forward by the practice of qital and subsequently boosted by the broadening of qital into the Futuhat wars. With qital, we can see that Mohammad imposed his will (as the Will of God) not merely by means of political acumen, but also by the force of armed action. The banner of Islam that waved over lands from India to Spain was a distinctive mark of his legacy of armed struggle or qital (no ‘nation’, let alone empire, ever willingly and freely gave up its independent system of beliefs and authority at the calling or ‘invitation’ of Mohammad or his successors). All sorts of metaphysical ‘certainties’ are conjured up to raise the banner of the peaceful spirit of Islam, but they have no resonance over the ‘metaphysics’ of the Koran’s pronouncements (directives) on qital, which brandishes the sword of domination and subjection. The Golden Age of Islamic culture, of the advance of education and knowledge, owes more to the political necessity of jihad and its armed struggle manoeuvres than to the spirit of the ‘revelatory knowledge’ or ‘ilm al-ilahyee offered by and gained from the Koran. It was by reason of its conquests that Islam incorporated into its world the developed cultures of Byzantine, Sassanian and Indian. And with these conquests, it was by reason of its ideological hegemony forged through jihad that Islam was able to appropriate the vast accumulated wealth of knowledge both abstract and practical and present this knowledge as its own. Jihad: the Making of Arabic as the Language of Power Essential to the Islamic ideological hegemony in the conquered territories was the diffusion of the Arabic language. The ideas of Mohammad’s successors as rulers, plainly, needed the Arabic language to make these ideas become the ruling ideas. And one of the most crucial features of jihad was the imposition of the Arabic language across all lands annexed by means of its exaltation among all the vanquished peoples. Jihad as the struggle for shaping socio-political reality necessarily involved the making of Arabic as the administrative as well as the cultural lingua franca. To achieve this, the Arabic of Mohammad (or at least to begin with that of his tribe, the Quraysh) was proclaimed (justified by the Koran’s own divine revelations) as the language of God’s Word, the language in which God revealed His Will to the Prophet. Thus: ‘These are signs [ayat] of the Book manifest [al-kitab al-mubin – an explicit scripture of Truth, devoid of error] Verily, We have sent it down as an Arabic recitation [qur’anan arabyan – this is often translated as ‘Arabic Qur’an’] that you will understand [ta’qiluna, from the verb ‘aqala, denotes reasoning; thus understanding the truth of the recitation through reasoning and reflection].’(XII:1-2; see also XLIII:3) Arabic, being the sacred language of the Koran, then, was made by the early successors of Mohammad, the Arab rulers of the Islamic theocratic order, the

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dominant, ruling language of all non-Arabs: ‘And verily, it has come down from the Lord of the worlds. The Spirit of Faith has come down with it. Upon your [Mohammad’s] heart that you may be one of the warners [i.e. Prophets]. In explicit [mubin, clear or manifest] Arabic tongue [speech]…And if We had sent it down unto any of the non-Arabs [‘ajameen, pl. of ‘ajam, denoting all ethnically non-Arab peoples; ‘ajam has a similar connotation to ‘Gentile’ for Jews]. Then he [Mohammad] had recited it to them they would not have become believers.’(XXVI:192-195 and 198-199) The Arabic language was thus considered, according to these verses, essential to bringing off belief in the divine message of the Koran. This point is also brought out in the following verse, which, in this case, conveys the critical importance of Arabic to the launching of Mohammad’s movement: ‘And had We made it in a non-Arabic recitation [qur’anan ‘ajamyan] they would have said: Why are not its verses [ayat] been made clear? What, non-Arabic [tongue] and an Arabian [i.e. an Arab Messenger]? Say: To the believers it is a guidance and a healing; but those who believe not, in their ears is a heaviness, and to them it is a blindness…’(XLI:44) Upon the force of these verses, no higher justification was, therefore, required for Arabic to become the educational, scientific, philosophical, cultural lingua franca of all the conquered (and converted) peoples. Indeed, an important political function of the Arabic language was in the transformation of direct domination into social subjection by its fundamental mediating role in enabling the process of jihad to establish the ideological hegemony of the successors of Mohammad as conquerors and rulers. The power believed to be invested in the Koran’s revelations (verses) is for Muslims irrevocably tied to the Arabic language of the mode of its presumed original communication by God. The language, then, is itself seen as a source of power; or, in reality, as a key element of Islamic hegemony: ‘And indeed We have set forth for the people in this Qur’an [alQur’an] examples of every sort that haply they may mind. An Arabic recitation [qur’anan arabyan] without any crookedness that haply they will be godfearing.’(XXXIX:27-8) Islam, as a way of life striving towards universality, inevitably needed Arabic to be consciously developed and promoted as more than solely the exclusive language of the Arab rulers, more than simply being superimposed on the vanquished; it had to become the language of Muslims. For Arabic to assert itself successfully in the conquered territories, therefore, it had to be the language of the Islamic state and of the Islamic institutions of socialisation. And therefore, after its initial imposition, Arabic was to become the critical medium for creating the appearance of integration; the medium for the substantiation of belief and thus of making the subjects of the Islamic state’s dominion feel as if they all truly belonged to the mythical umma or the Muslim community. No doubt, however, that Arabic was primarily the language of authority, and hence, for this reason, a crucial weapon in the process of the practice of jihad. The Arabic tongue of Mohammad’s recitation was considered important enough to his jihad as to be stressed in the warning to be conveyed to Mohammad’s Meccan enemies, as this following verse declares: ‘And thus have We revealed to you [i.e. Mohammad] a recitation in Arabic, that you may warn the mother of towns [i.e. Mecca] and those around it, and that you may warn them of the day of coming together [yuma al-ja’am – moment of assembling or meeting] wherein there is no doubt…’(XLII:7) Thus, it was because Arabic was regarded as the language of authority that it could have a dynamic part in jihad and hence in aiding the process of domination. In fact, in terms of the eminently revelatory idiom of the Koran, with its threats and warnings of divine retribution, Arabic came to fulfil a role arguably as important as

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that of the ‘sword’ and the ‘steeds of war’ in the jihad and battles of the Futuhat. Here is, for example, one of those warning ayahs in which the Arabic of the communication is insisted on being crucial to the authority of the message: ‘And thus We have sent it down, an Arabic recitation, and have therein distinctly shown some of the threats, that haply they may have piety [yataqwana, from taqwa, i.e. strict adherence to obligations] or that it may be for them a reminder.’(XX:113) At any rate, no matter how it evolved (or was developed) as a means of communication within the expanse of the Muslim community, as the language of the Caliphate, Arabic was always to function, through jihad, as the language of power, of the Arab rulers, which made possible for them to take a conscious political position in relation to the ruled to assert their particular will. This function could easily be justified according to the following verse in which God Himself made His commands and rulings only in Arabic: ‘And thus We have sent down the true ruling [hukman, from hukm, i.e. command, judgment, authority] in Arabic…’(XIII:37) Moreover, since Arabic was (and is), of course, not only the language in which the Koran must be read and recited (qara’a), but also the language of theology (a Greek discipline adopted by Muslim scholars, Arab and ‘ajam or non-Arab alike) – i.e. being the essential language of ‘textual’, exegetical, commentary and interpretation (of Sharh or Tafsir) – it was to become the language of the ‘class’ of ulama. This bond between ‘class’ and language was quite consciously developed and then ‘miraculously’ promoted and boldly justified in accordance with the Word of God. The ulama’s aim and their interests resided in a power that the Koran attributed to its language: that of providing divine signs for all the submitted, whoever they may be, and of establishing its authority among them. Insofar as Arabic was claimed to represent all divine representations, it was affirmed to be the element of the universal deen of Islam; it was promoted to have within it at least the possibility of understanding God’s Will that by its mediation had gathered itself into the Koran, within its words, as the absolute guidance for the only way of life for the totality of the world. And since the Arabic Koran (allegedly) possessed the necessary directives with which to guide all the possible social and personal relationships between human beings, it had to be the language also, by that very fact, of their political order. Thus, for the ulama – that is, those very interpreters of God’s Word – the ayahs of the Koran were communicated exclusively in Arabic for them as the learned or knowledgeable folk, and this at least according to the following verse: ‘A Book whose verses are made plain in Arabic recitation for a learned folk.’(XLI:3; my italics) It was on the back of their increasing control over the language of the Koran that the ulama made themselves, from a flourishing elite stratum, into a powerful ‘class’ that positioned itself, from within the political structure, between the Arab Caliphate and its subjects. It was their hold on language also that gave them the weapon of knowledge and the tools of its manipulation to serve, secure and advance their ‘class’ interest, enabling them to present class-power in its mystified form as divine (God-given), and its exercise in the practice of jihad as a divine obligation. And thus, as the language of ‘class’ and divine power, Arabic apparelled in hallowed, mystical light the levers of appropriation throughout the conquered territories, forming and embracing all the subsequent legal, juridical developments of forms of property that corresponded to the dominant interest of a ‘state-aristocracy’ formed on the basis of the historic compromise of the Caliphate regimes and the ulama. The Arabic language of the Koran, accordingly, was an indispensable co-ordinating factor in the effectiveness of jihad as a medium that bound together the collective will of rulers and the function of domination in a process of struggle for the expansion of Islam. The obedience, the performance of duty, the sacrifice, and the devotion that jihad demanded of Muslims were predicated on the knowledge of Koranic revelations

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and the articulation and transmission of these. ‘Ilm (knowledge) and the Arabic of the Koran are rigorously interwoven; they share, obviously, the same origin and the same ideological function; they support and complement one another. Arabic language, however, was not merely the means of communication of these revelations as divine directives, but a powerful instrument in the managing of these to sustain and enhance political control over the scope and direction of jihad. Arabic as the tongue of the Prophet and the language of the Word of God was therefore not incidental to jihad in its historic function of shaping reality to conform with the Koran’s message; rather, as an ‘accident’ of history it was made a force essential to the historical process of jihad. If jihad was a struggle in the service of a socio-political order that perpetuated the subjugation of diverse peoples, subjecting them to the will and power of a theocratic class-state, Arabic language was a means facilitating the mystification of this struggle as one in the service of God and for God. This proper being of the Koran’s Arabic language is what the Muslim world was to call the Word of God. On the side of the influences or impact of jihad, then, we need to place the privileges accorded to the Arabic language: the powers attributed to it since Mohammad and the technical improvements introduced in it over at least three centuries after the Prophets death by successive generations of Koran ‘reciters’, ‘interpreters’ and scholars who came eventually to form the ulama. According to this order, every chapter and verse of the Koran has the stamp of the ulama’s influence upon it; all the language deposited upon revelations by development in time is the effect, either direct or indirect, of the transference of a ‘rationality’ formed not in Heaven but on the solid ground of powerful interests. It was with the domination of the Arabic language through and by means of jihad that the Koran was made into Allah’s Constitution; the constitution of a world-aspiring power. Jihad: Defensive or Offensive? Thus arranged and understood upon the earthly ground of powerful interests, the Koran has as a condition of its constitutionality the expansion of the original umma. Islam is effectively nothing more than the achievement of this expansion on a world scale. Hence its apparent communality of interest; that air of righteousness it projects as if it were so obviously divinely ordained. But the Koran did not become the Word of God par eminence without the use of force, without jihad and qital. One might say, therefore, that Mohammad and his successors used their ingenuity to promote this image of one all-embracing community as that of their ‘true deen’, which was thus broadcast and disseminated as the ultimate divinely revealed order of life to be spread far and wide to rescue humanity from the world of ‘ignorance’, ‘corruption’ and ‘oppression’. And it was with this aspiration that the submitted were urged on to undertake through jihad and qital the creation of a history, not strictly speaking of their own, that was then claimed to be ‘truly’ in the way of God. But the history that was made was far from peacefully achieved; it was a history as irruptively violent as any known or written about, with jihad as its fundamental driving force. Yet it was, and became more so in time, a history guided by traditions, custom, regulations and undeniably an established legal framework – even as regards the force of violence, the jihad and qital, Islam had developed a framework of rules and regulations on the fundamental basis of the Koran’s directives. The general formalisation of Koranic directives and commands into the Sharia was a consequence of the process of jihad in creating and consolidating Islamic hegemony throughout the conquered lands. And it was precisely at this point, where it seemed that this formalisation of Koran’s Guidance into the Sharia had signified an attempt at adaptation of it to the needs of political rule and social control that the process of ‘reformulation’ and ‘adaptation’ terminated. It is in fact here, as regards Islamic

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hegemony, that the question of Koranic Divine Law arises with such heavy overdetermination, counteracting any attempt at a process of ‘reformation’. The Futuhat wars of the early successors of Mohammad, as part of the obligation of jihad and conducted in the way of God, were, let us not forget, justified as the march for the establishment of the Word of God into the lands of kafareen with longstanding laws of their own that were considered overruled by the superior authority of the Koran as God’s Last Word. That the fruits of this march were confiscated by successive states and rulers, and that there was actually a process of practical incorporation by means of Islamisation of the laws of these conquered lands, does not alter the fact that the Koran was and remained the fundamental premise for all rules and regulations Islamised or that the Divine Law it set down is by definition final and absolute and eternal. The fighting and the wars of conquest, that came to be called the ‘holy wars’, were thus proclaimed to institute God’s law as revealed to Mohammad as God’s Last Prophet and set down in the Koran as God’s constitution. And in their conduct, as guided by the Koran, these holy wars were in their violence and brutality as ‘barbarous’ as any other of the then or since wars conducted to this day by every power that was or has been inherently imperialistic. Nonetheless, like every power known to history, Islam, through its apologists, has attempted, particularly in modern times, to portray itself and its exercise of power as ‘beneficent’, the form of its past worldly domination as divinely ordained ‘benign imperialism’, and its wars of conquest as simply and solely in defence of the Truth and as bil-haqa, by divine right. It is thus that jihad is declared to be ‘only’ a defensive act, and to support this insupportable fiction, verses from the Koran are produced to ‘confirm’ such a fallacious declaration. Thus we have the following: ‘And fight in the Way of God those fighting you [yuqatilunakum] but do not transgress [ta’ataduwua – also translated as ‘to aggress’ or ‘to be aggressive’ – a’ataday actually denotes ‘aggression’]; for verily God loves not transgressors. And slay them wherever you find them, and drive them out [expel them] from where they drove you out [i.e. Mecca], and fitnah is more grievous than slaying [slaughter], and fight them not by the Sacred Mosque [the Ka’ba] until they fight with you there, then if they do fight you, slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers. But if they give over [desist], then verily God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate. And fight with them till there is no fitnah and the deen is God’s only, but if they give over, then there should be no hostility except against the oppressors [al-zalimeen]. The sacred month for the sacred month; sacred things demand retaliation: whoso commits aggression [a’ataday] against you, you [too] commit like aggression against him; and fear you God, and know that God is with the pious ones.’(II:190-94; my italics) These four ayahs are said to form the basis of the guiding principles on fighting (including on the conduct of war): Muslims are, of course, permitted to fight those fighting them, but are prohibited to exceed the limits of aggression committed against them. Hostile action must be like for like (‘an eye for an eye’), and therefore governed by the custom of ‘retaliation’ (carried over from pre-Islamic tribal custom – ‘blood for blood’ or, with consent, a form of ‘recompense’), and it must thus be halted if and when an adversary ceases fighting. The verses, however, have been interpreted to mean that fighting (here the specific reference is to qital and not jihad) is ‘only’ permissible ‘in self-defence’. The stipulations just mentioned, however, do not in any way seem to be concerned with fighting only in order to defend; rather, all they seem to demand is merely the meeting of ‘aggression’ with equal ‘aggression’, of a return of like for like in a situation of fighting (or war). Now, the only verse among these that actually comes close to an interpretation of ‘defensive’ fighting is ayah 191 – ‘fight them not by the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you there’. Yet, even strictly within the ayah’s own context and terms of reference, there is a fundamental factor

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that goes a long way to dispute this ‘defensive’ or ‘self-defensive’ proposition: the stipulation set forth, it must be strongly noted here, is specifically concerned with fighting within the locality of the Ka’ba; that is, fighting in or around the holiest of all shrines (the ‘House of God’) – considered as such a sacred site not only at the time of Mohammad, but even during pre-Islamic times (Ka’ba was the shrine to the Divine One, or Allah). The principal factor here, therefore, was not acting in ‘self-defence’ but needing exceptional leave to fight by, around or within such a sacred site! Because of its supreme sacredness, Muslim forces had to obtain permission from Mohammad to fight in the vicinity of the Ka’ba (similarly, as we have seen in other ayahs, they needed permission to fight during the ‘sacred months’ – see II:217); and the ayah was revealed to grant such exceptional leave in the particular circumstance of the Meccan enemies standing firm and fighting the Muslim forces rather than giving over, for the Ka’ba was declared to be the Sacred Mosque for all people: ‘Verily, those who disbelieve and obstruct people from the way of God and from the Sacred Mosque which We have made equally for all people…’(XXII:25; my italics) In other words, the stipulation set forth in this verse is specific; it is not establishing a general rule. In fact, what is established as a general rule, in these verses, is the absolute obligation of fighting against fitnah and oppression (zulim) wherever and under all circumstances! Muslims must fight disbelievers (hypocrites, and the rest) until there is ‘no fitnah’, until Islam (al-Deen Allah) is the only way of life: ‘And fight you with them until there is no fitnah and the deen should be God’s entirely…’(VIII:39) On a similar note, it is claimed that the Koran prohibits ‘invasion’, which obviously goes against the very fact of Islam’s history. One of the main verses often given in support of this idea is the following: ‘And if you fear treachery from a folk, then throw back unto them on equal terms; verily God loves not the treacherous.’(VIII:58) From the preceding verses and the context, we learn that the ‘treachery’ in question is a reference to the breaking of agreements made and treaties established. What the verse therefore implies is that should there be treachery on the part of the disbelieving enemy with whom Muslims have an agreement (a covenant), then the Islamic authority should rescind the agreement (‘throw back unto them’) in the same way as their enemy had breached or broken it (‘on equal terms’), and, as a result, fighting them can justifiably (morally and legally) be resumed. But the supposedly accepted interpretation goes much further than this: it maintains that the verse directs firstly that prior to taking any military action, the enemy must be given proper notice of such action, that there must be made a formal declaration of war; and secondly that, as a consequence, invasion of another’s territory, in the military sense of incursion, is prohibited – unless, of course, a declaration has been made or war has already started. According to this ‘interpretation’ the fighting that ensues is not an act of aggression or one of conquest by invasion. The contentious point in all this revolves around the understanding of what signifies a ‘declaration of war’. In the verse quoted, the matter seems quit straightforward: an enemy has been ‘treacherous’ and breached an agreement, and thus war against them is declared on that basis. But as a general rule, as it has been repeatedly pointed out previously, what the Koran considers as a justifiable condition for a declaration of jihad and qital, over and above such specific cases (on these latter see also, for example, IX:12-13), is the rejection by anyone of the call or summoning to embrace Islam or the apparent placing by them of any obstacle in the way of the propagation of the Prophet’s divine message. Refusal to submit could (and was) thus regarded as a legitimate reason for a declaration of hostilities on the grand-old principle of: ‘if you are not with us, then you are against us’! In this twisted, warped, logic, the conquest of Sasanid and Byzantine territories was not really an ‘invasion’ at all, since the rulers of these Empires had rejected the invitation to embrace Islam, and therefore the Islamic authority had ‘justifiably’ made a proper declaration of war against them!

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The Koran, of course, does not forbid Muslim authorities to be benevolent towards or establish treaties with non-believers who do not fight the practice of their faith and hence the propagation of Islam, their deen: ‘God forbids you not, regarding those who have not fought you in your deen’s cause…that you show them kindness and deal with them justly…’(LX:8) But it does forbid any association with those who fight against the instituting of Islam: ‘God only forbids you, regarding those who have fought you in your deen’s cause…that you make friends of them; and whosoever makes friends of them, these are the unjust.’(LX:9) What is certain, in any case, is that according to the Koran: ‘God loves those who fight in His Way in ranks as if they were a firm, unbreakable wall.’(LXI:4; my italics) In military terms, however, the explanation (justification) of jihad, qital or harb (war) as only a ‘defensive’ action is as equally absurd as that of it being only an ‘offensive’ struggle. In any military action there are both offensive and defensive tactics. More over, it is simply not possible to spread the Faith by defensive action – i.e. by action that is solely carried out to protect what already exists! To define or explain jihad as a form of defensive struggle not only goes against historical evidence, but also against the revelations set forth in the Koran. If jihad as the highest of all divine obligations was commanded to be only ‘defensive’ in essence, then Islam would have remained confined to, at best, Western Arabia or the Hijaz, or perhaps even limited to Medina, where the umma was first formed. This is not to deny that in any form of struggle (civil or class or all-out war), as mentioned, there are offensive and defensive tactical considerations; obviously, there were times, when the Muslim community needed to defend itself against aggression and attacks by its enemies. Nor can it be denied that according to the Koran the believers’ response has always to be like for like. So that in dealing with disbelievers, or responding to the breaking of a treaty, or treachery, or finally as in war, the Koranic directive is for a ‘balanced’ response. Thus we have the following verses (segments of which have already been quoted above) that illustrate this point: ‘Verily, the vilest of beasts in God’s sight are the disbelievers… Those of them with whom you have made a covenant, then they break their covenant every time…So, when you come upon them anywhere in war, dissipate [scatter or decimate] them, for those who come after them [khalufahum, those succeeding them] shall be mindful [be warned]. And if you fear treachery from any people, then throw back to them [rescind the covenant] on equal terms; verily, God loves not the treacherous. And let not those who disbelieve think that they have prevailed over Me; they cannot weaken My resolve. And prepare against them whatever force and steeds of war you can, to terrify thereby the enemy of God and your enemy, and others besides them that you know not [not yet known to you; i.e. clandestine and/or future enemies] – God knows them. And whatever you expend in the way of God shall be repaid you in full; you will not be wronged.’ (VIII:55-60) In Conclusion One thing in any case is certain: if jihad is indeed, in the Koran, the nexus of political power and the idea of the Oneness of God, if it is the struggle through which the Will of God necessarily releases, as if of itself, the conditions that make its supremacy possible, then jihad cannot posit itself except in a relentless and perpetual expansionist tendency or movement; nor, on the other hand, can it incorporate the inertia of ‘selfdefence’ as its sole or exclusive defining mode. Jihad is a mode of struggle which accommodates dimensions which extend from political-ideological to armed-military actions, to the acts of ‘thought-control’ (called ‘spiritual’ inner struggle) and those of social-control. It is a struggle that clothes itself in the ideology of ‘divine right’, bilhaqa; it appeals to the past as the space of the future; it invokes tradition as the basis of the rebirth of the myth of the old. The key to its unchanging defining purpose in

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fact lies in the basic strategy of the seizure of power. And because it is the nexus of political power and the idea of the Oneness of God, jihad is action, and a conception of struggle, that is essential to the realisation of God’s Will in the here and now; it is essential to the establishment of the Koran as Allah’s Constitution. This is why mere transcendental reflections, more so in their modern formulations, do not find their fundamental foothold in the interpretation of the Koran, and are opposed by perpetual conflicts within Muslim thought. Actual jihad is, in Muslim belief, both the space in which the divine message of the Koran is given to practice and the original form that makes this message possible in this world and designates its primary roots; it is indeed believed to provide a means of linking God’s Will with social needs. We are led, therefore, to believe that in Mohammad’s time (and followed on during the rule of his successors), jihad was intended (revealed) by God as the obligation to eradicate the chaos of kufr (disbelief) so as to replace this fitnah by the order of an uninterrupted progress towards the Kingdom of God, that Mohammad and his companions, the mu’mineen, in attempting to create this divine order, encountered, in the process of their victory, the historical necessity of establishing the political institution of divine authority, that the violence of jihad in its continuation as qital was forced on them by their opponents’ rejection and refusal of the Prophet’s divine message. A political reading of the Koran, however, shows jihad as fundamentally a struggle, extremely violent and brutal as and when necessary, to expand Islam as a way of life based on a theocratic mode of total domination; that it was, indeed, the actual establishment of the political institution of divine authority in the form of the umma at Medina that made jihad, in its continuation as qital, the essential instrument of spreading the divine message by force of arms. It is precisely for this reason, which was decidedly political in essence, that jihad was made the highest of all divine obligations. Further still, it was in order to encourage jihad, to steel Muslims’ hearts and to possess them not with fear of death, that the Koran inspired the promise of Paradise in life as in death, and identified the true devotees of Islam as the mu’mineen and ‘ranked’ them above all other Muslims, and hence authorised them to be the ‘class-like’ elite within the emergent Islamic system. Jihad is, on this basis, the final test set down by the Koran. In its practice, it exemplifies the abolition of individuality in favour of the glorification of divine authority, of unquestioning obedience and servitude, of bondage, concretely and in consciousness. There can be no meeting ground between self-emancipation and the practice of jihad. Jihad is based on a conceptual framework for action resting on the practice of the commandments contained in the Koran as Divine Law, a practice in its entirety in accordance with the interest of servility not freedom. It is furthermore an adequate orientation for the establishment of a social order of subjugation manifesting itself as social subjection. Jihad is the form of practice intended to bring about total submission; it is an integral part of the Koran’s comprehensive system of control. The Koran’s appeal to jihad is the attack, violent, brutal and relentless, on any critical and independent thought or action – independent, that is, of its own jurisdiction and authority. With jihad as its highest obligation, the Koran demands the kind of struggle that would ensure its absolute authority, the institution of its ‘way of life’ as the complete abolition of all other ‘ways of life’, and the incorporation within its dictated orbit of life all peoples by means, if need be, of fear and terror (all in the name of God). Finally, the Koran’s deification of jihad makes the struggle in the way of God not only relentless but endless. Through its practice, the fact of brute power becomes the means of the realisation of the domination of Allah’s Constitution.

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Glossary

‘Abd ‘Adl ‘Ajam ‘Alim ‘Amal

Servant, devotee (slave). Justice – ‘idalat Ethnically non-Arab people; pl. ‘ajameen A ‘knowledgeable’ person – knowledgeable of the Koran Action based on the practice of Koranic principles as the conduct of a true Muslim. Ahkam Commandments Al-‘arabiyya Arabic tongue (pre-Islamic). Al-Ghayb God’s ‘unseen power’ – power that stands beyond human knowledge Amr An Order or Command – ameer, commander of the faithful Amr bil-Ma’ruf wa Nahya Koranic principle of godfearing righteousness in the social ‘amil-Munkar sphere of life – a legalistic convenance of social/personal conduct strictly in accordance with Divine Law. Trans. ‘Enjoin the Good and Forbid the Wrong’ Aql Reasoning powers, ‘intellect’ Ard (arz) ‘Land’ – al-ard, the Land or the earth Arsh The Supreme Throne of Divine Power Asl Basis – principal basis of law Ayah Sign, as in ‘divine revelation’; a verse of the Koran (pl. ayat). Ayyam al-Arab The historical age of the beginnings of the rise of Arab identity. Bait Allah House of God. Darajah Rank or degree (of status) Deen The Way of Life; trans. ‘religion’. Fiqh Islamic jurisprudence. Firqah Faction, sect; also trans. ‘party’. Fitnah Sedition, disorder, rebellion Fitrata-Allah The Way that God initiated Futuhat Wars of Conquest Hadith The recorded, written Traditions of Mohammad’s sayings and deeds Haq Truth, also right in the sense of ‘in accordance with the standard of truth and duty’ – bil-haqa, ‘by right’ or ‘with truth’, i.e. by ‘divine right’ Harb War – al-Harb al-Muqaddas, ‘Holy Way’ Hashim Mohammad’s clan/household. Hijrah Emigration of Mohammad from Mecca to Medina ‘Ibadah Serve, worship; obedience of God’s Will in servitude, bondage, and subjection. ‘Ibadat Islamic religious rituals – prayer, purification, charitable acts, fasting and pilgrimage Ilah ‘One’ to be served, worshiped and obeyed; ‘one’ who has power – ‘god’. ‘Ilm ‘Knowledge’ – divinely inspired knowledge, Revealed Knowledge, knowledge of the truth of the Koran Jahanam Hell Jihad A socio-political and ideological struggle having the religious appearance of a conscious, persistent and perpetual struggle in the Way of God Jizyah Tribute/tax on those ‘outside’ the ‘Muslim Community’ Kafar Unbeliever – ‘infidels’; also the ‘ungrateful ones’ (pl. kafareen). Kalamat ‘Words’ – kalamat-e Allah, God’s ‘words’ as Commands

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Khalifa Khilafat Khitab Kitab Kitaba Kufr

Majlis Mala’ Maula Mazhab Meerath Mu’mineen Munafiqeen Mushrikeen

N’amat Nabee Nafs Naskh Niyat Noor (Nur) Qadi (qazi) Qanymat Qawl Qidavat (qizavat) Qital Qiyas Qum Qur’an Quraysh

Rabb Rafiq Rasul Riba Rooh Sabila-Allah Sadiq Sadiqeen Sahaba

Sajdah Salaheen

Successor – ruler or Caliph. Caliphate ‘Speech’ – pronouncement of decisive judgements Book – al-Kitab, the Holy Book, the Koran. The act of writing – derivatives used in the Koran for expressing divine commands. ‘Disbelief’ – concealing/covering or rejecting the Truth of God’s Will as set forth in the Koran as His last Word; also ‘ungratefulness’ Assembly Assembly of tribal/clan chiefs and notables. Protector. Religion – also a ‘school of thought’. Heritage ‘Believers’ – the select group of Muslim devotees of Mohammad; mu’min, singl., a believer Hypocrites – dissemblers; nifaq, ‘hypocrisy’ or affectation of religiosity Idolaters – those who associate anyone or anything with God; shirk, the ‘sin’ of associating anything with God (the opposite of Tawhid) – literally meaning ‘division’ Bounties, favours, as rewards from God Prophet Self or Soul Abrogation of a Koranic verse – mansukh, an abrogated verse Good intention, connoting complete conviction – in ‘good faith’. ‘Light’ – ‘Light of the Divine Truth’ Islamic judge Booty, spoils of war (as ‘divine bounties’) The ‘saying’ or promise of the heart as an attribute of being a Muslim. Legal judgement Armed struggle; fighting, slaying, killing – qatl, murder/homicide The use of Analogy in legal matters based on the Koran Folk, people Koran; recitation – qara’a, ‘to recite’. Mohammad’s tribe, assumed to be descended from Ishmael. The most powerful of the tribes in Western Arabia, controlling Mecca. Lord – title only of God. Comrade. Messenger – Rasul-allah, God’s Messenger. Usury – strictly meaning ‘increase’ Spirit The Way of God – also the ‘cause’ of God Truthful to the Word of God The Truthful ones – Koranic expression for ‘rank’ and ‘status’ Companions of Mohammad – closest of all of the Prophet’s followers, much more so than, for example, the Ansar or the residents of Medina who helped Mohammad; the Ansar is often trans. as the ‘Helpers’ Prostration The Righteous – Koranic expression for ‘rank’ and ‘status’

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Shaahid Shaitan Sharia Shirk Shura Sirat al-Mustaqim Sunnah Sunnata-Allah Surah Tabraka Tanzil Taqoot (Taqut) Tasleem Tawhid Umayya

Umma Ummat Ummat Yahoudun Ummi Ummu Uqud Urf Vali Wajib Waratha Wasiyat Zakat Zalim Zamzam

Zina

Witness; shaheed (pl. shuhada) a person ‘witnessing’ death as the light of the Truth of God or a martyr Satan Islamic Legal System – as distinct from Koranic Divine Law. Association – the sin of associating anyone or anything with God Council – applied to legal matters, a process of ‘consultation’ The Straight Way – Divine Law. The Traditions of Mohammad sayings and deeds God’s custom or course of setting the ‘precedent’ Chapter of the Koran. Blessed Revelation. False deities, symbols of Evil or Satan; also symbols of oppression, tyranny. Surrender Oneness and Unity of God. The most powerful clan of the tribe of Quraysh and the militaristic defenders of Ka’ba and Mecca; the clan/household of the Umayyad rulers. Community; Mohammad’s proto-political organisation established at Medina (community-state). An outstanding leading group or body of believers Distinguished group (community) as a body of leaders Common folk – ‘illiterate’ or ‘unlettered’ people; it also has the sense of the inhabitants of Mecca (pl. ummiyun). Mother or Essence or Basis. Divine bonds, pledges, oaths of allegiance. Local customs (taken into account in legal decisions) Guardian – trans. ‘friend’; also ‘ruler’ or ‘governor. Obligatory Inherit/inheritance Bequeath (personal will or testament) Islamic ‘charitable’ tax; ‘poor-rate’, ‘alms’ Oppressor; an unjust person Pre-Islamic spring-well as source of water at Mecca, Connected to the shrine of Ka’ba as the holiest of all Islamic sites – originally a pre-Islamic ‘pagan’ shrine (of Allah, the Divine One) – Ka’ba means ‘cube’. Adultery