Ibn Warraq är pseudonymen för en ex-muslimsk författare som även är grundare av Institutet för sekularisering av det islamska samhället. Han lever numera i exil. Han är väl insatt i kritiken av den muslimska läran och hans böcker är en djupdykning ner i religiös historia, religiösa skrifter, tolkningar och resonemang. För den som önskar en rik bakgrund till islam, dess tankar och brister är hans böcker en guldgruva. Här nedan har vi fått äran att presentera ett utdrag ur hans bok ”Why I am not a muslim” från 1995.
The Totalitarian Nature of Islam
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Bousquet, one of the foremost authorities on Islamic law, distinguishes two aspects of Islam that he considers totalitarian: Islamic law, and the Islamic notion of jihad that has for its ultimate aim the conquest of the entire world, in order to submit it to one single authority.
We shall consider jihad in the next few chapters; here we shall confine ourselves to Islamic law. Islamic law has certainly aimed at ”controlling the religious, social and political life of mankind in all its aspects, the life of its followers without qualification, and the life of those who follow tolerated religions to a degree that prevents their activities from hampering Islam in any way.” The all-embracing nature of Islamic law can be seen from the fact that it does not distinguish among ritual, law (in the European sense of the word), ethics, and good manners. In principle this legislation controls the entire life of the believer and the Islamic community. It intrudes into every nook and cranny: everything – to give a random sample – from the pilgrim tax, agricultural contracts, the board and lodging of slaves, the invitation to a wedding, the use of toothpicks, the ritual fashion in which one’s natural needs are to be accomplished, the prohibition for men to wear gold or silver rings, to the proper treatment of animals is covered.
Islamic law is a doctrine of duties – external duties – that is to say, those duties ”which are susceptible to control by a human authority instituted by God. However, these duties are, without exception, duties toward God, and are founded on the inscrutable will of God Himself. All duties that men can envisage being carried out are dealt with; we find treated therein all the duties of man in any circumstance whatsoever, and in their connections with anyone whatsoever.”
Before looking at Islamic law in detail, we need to know why it developed the way it did.
No Separation of State and Church
Jesus Christ himself laid down a principle that was fundamental to later Christian thought: ”Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things which are God’s” (Matt. 22.17). These two authorities, God and Caesar, dealt with different matters and ruled different realms; each had its own laws and its own institutions. This separation of church and state is nonexistent in Islam – indeed, there are no words in classical Arabic for the distinctions between lay and ecclesiastical, sacred and profane, spiritual and temporal. Once again, we must look to the founder of Islam to understand why there was never any separation of state and church. Muhammad was not only a prophet but also a statesman; he founded not only a community but also a state and a society. He was a military leader, making war and peace, and a lawgiver, dispensing justice. Right from the beginning, the Muslims formed a community that was at once political and religious, with the Prophet himself as head of state. The spectacular victories of the early Muslims proved to them that God was on their side. Thus right from the start in Islam, there was no question of a separation between sacred history and secular history, between political power and faith, unlike Christianity, which had to undergo three centuries of persecution before being adopted by ”Caesar.”
Islamic Law
The sharia or Islamic law is based on four principles or roots (in Arabic, ”usul,” plural of ”asl”): the Koran; the sunna of the Prophet, which is incorporated in the recognized traditions; the consensus (”ijma”) of the scholars of the orthodox community; and the method of reasoning by analogy (”qiyas ”or ”kiyas”).
The Koran, as we saw earlier, is for Muslims the very word of God Himself. Though it contains rules and regulations for the early community on such matters as marriage, divorce, and inheritance, the Koran does not lay down general principles. Many matters are dealt with in a confusing and perfunctory manner, and a far greater number of vital questions are not treated at all.
The sunna (literally, a path or way; a manner of life) expresses the custom or manner of life of Muslims based on the deeds and words of the Prophet, and that which was done or said in his presence, and even that which was not forbidden by him. The sunna was recorded in the traditions, the hadith, but these, as we saw earlier, are largely later forgeries. Nonetheless, for Muslims the sunna complements the Koran and is essential for understanding it properly, for clarifying the Koranic vaguenesses and filling in the Koranic silences. Without the sunna Muslims would be at a loss for those details necessary in their daily lives.
The Koran and the sunna are the expressions of God’s command, the definitive and inscrutable will of Allah that must be obeyed absolutely, without doubts, without questions, and without qualifications. But with all their attendant obscurities, we still need some kind of interpretation of the sunna and the Koran, and this is the task of the science of sharia (fiqh).
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Ijma. The saying ”My community will never agree on an error” was ascribed to the Prophet and, in effect, was to make an infallible church of the recognized doctors of the community as a whole. As Hurgronje says, ”this is the Muslim counterpart of the Christian Catholic doctrine of ecclesiastical tradition: ’quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est.’ ”
The notion of consensus has nothing democratic about it; the masses are expressly excluded. It is the consensus of suitably qualified and learned authorities. However, there were still disputes as to whose ijma was to be accepted: some only accepted the ijma of the companions of the Prophet, while others accepted only the ijma of the descendants of the Prophet, and so on.
The doctrine of the infallibility of the consensus of the scholars, far from allowing some liberty of reasoning as one might have expected, worked ”in favor of a progressive narrowing and hardening of doctrine; and, a little later, the doctrine which denied the further possibility of ’independent reasoning’ sanctioned officially a state of things which had come to prevail in fact.”
By the beginning of A.D. 900, Islamic law became rigidly and inflexibly fixed because, to quote Schacht:
“The point had been reached when the scholars of all schools felt that all essential questions had been thoroughly discussed and finally settled, and a consensus gradually established itself to the effect that from,that time onwards no one might be deemed to have the necessary qualifications for independent reasoning in law, and that all future activity would have to be confined to the explanation, application, and, at most, interpretation of the doctrine as it had been laid down once and for all.”
This closing of the gate of independent reasoning, in effect, meant the unquestioning acceptance of the doctrines of established schools and authorities. Islamic law until then had been adaptable and growing, but henceforth,
“It became increasingly rigid and set in its final mould. This essential rigidity of Islamic law helped it to maintain its stability over the centuries which saw the decay of the political institutions of Islam. It was not altogether immutable, but the changes which did take place were concerned more with legal theory and the systematic superstructure than with positive law. Taken as a whole, Islamic law reflects and fits the social and economic conditions of the early Abbasid period, but has grown more and more out of touch with later developments of state and society.”
Kiyas or analogical reasoning is considered by many learned doctors to be subordinate to, and hence less important than, the other three foundations of Islamic law. Its inclusion may well have been a compromise between unrestricted liberty of opinion and the rejection of all human reasoning in religious law.