joseph van essflo excerpt

T H E F L OW E R I N G O F

M U S L I M T H E O L O G Y

Josef van Ess

Translated by Jane Marie Todd

H A RVA R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S SCambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England

2006

Copyright © 2006 by the President and Fellowsof Harvard College

a l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d

Printed in the United States of America

Originally published as Prémices de la théologie musulmane,© Éditions Albin Michel S.A., 2002

This book was published with the support of theFrench Ministry of Culture—National Book Center /

Cet ouvrage a été publié avec l’assistance du Ministèrechargé de la culture—Centre National du Livre.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ess, Josef van.[Prémices de la théologie musulmane. English]

The flowering of Muslim theology / Josef van Ess;translated by Jane Marie Todd.

p. cm.“This book began as a series of four lectures given by Josef van Ess

at the Institut du monde arabe, Paris, in 1998.”Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-674-02208-41. Islam—Theology. 2. Islam—Doctrines. I. Title.

BP166.E7713 2006299.2—dc22 2005052792

C O N T E N T S

Note to the English-LanguageEdition vii

Introduction 1

1 Theology in Its Own Eyes:Division and Heresy in Islam 9

2 Theology and the Koran:The Mi‘rÁj and the Debate onAnthropomorphism 45

3 Theology and Science:Mu‘tazilite Atomism 79

4 Theology and Human Reality:Historical Images andPolitical Ideas 117

5 Theology and Its Principles:Hermeneutics and Epistemology 153

Notes 193

Index 209

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C O N T E N T S

N O T E T O T H E E N G L I S H - L A N G U A G E

E D I T I O N

This book began as a series of four lectures givenby Josef van Ess at the Institut du monde arabe, Paris,in 1998. These lectures constitute the first four chap-ters; the author added a fifth chapter and an intro-duction for publication as the book Prémices de lathéologie musulmane (2002). In a way, this book is anintroduction in French to van Ess’s masterwork, The-ologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra(Theology and society in the second and third centu-ries ah).

I N T RO D U C T I O N

In the mass media , Islam is the “Other,” repellentand strange. The notion commonly associated with itis the Sharia, Islamic law based on the Koran, whichwould seem to be incompatible with the rules of en-lightened reason. That view contrasts sharply withwhat TÁhÁ Husayn wrote in The Future of Culture inEgypt (1938): “Everything seems to indicate that thereis nothing to distinguish a European mind from theEastern mind.”1 And he added: “I am certain thatthere is no difference in essence or in nature betweenus and the Europeans.”2 MustafÁ ‘Abd al-RÁziq re-peated that idea in 1945, in the official speech he gaveto inaugurate his new duties as sheikh al-Azhar, thatis, as the head of a university that virtually embodiesthe spirit of the Sharia: “I see no real reason to setIslam and the West in opposition to each other.”3

At the time, these two Egyptian intellectuals couldcount on the assent of some Europeans. JohannWolfgang von Goethe had declared: “Orient und

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Okzident sind nicht mehr zu trennen” (East andWest can no longer be separated). Like later Roman-tic writers, though, Goethe was thinking about po-etry, especially Iranian poetry; by contrast, TÁhÁHusayn and MustafÁ ‘Abd al-RÁziq were thinking ofmedieval philosophy and what emerged from it. Inthe Germany of the Romantics, Ibn Rushd (Averroës)had been lauded as the representative of Islamic en-lightenment and considered a “rationalist” who hadtransmitted the legacy of enlightened Islam to a Eu-rope still in limbo.4 The film Destiny, by the Egyptianfilmmaker Youssef Chahine, also disseminates thatimage. For Chahine, however, Islam has two faces, anotion that has become quite familiar to us.

It is not enough to speak of philosophy, or merelyof fundamentalism and the law. A place must also beassigned to theology, ‘ilm al-kalÁm, as it was called,the “science of dialectical speech” practiced by thosewho knew how to “hold conversations” about theirreligion with those defending other interpretations,even if their interlocutors were not Muslim.5 Theword suggests that the “dialecticians” were engagedin apologetics. That is only partly true, however; the-ology would soon make other claims. The role it en-visaged for itself was to provide an authentic explana-tion of the world. Hence it was naturally taken to be a

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“philosophy” at a time when the true falsafa, that ofal-KindÅ and his circle, of al-FÁrÁbÅ and others, on upto Ibn Rushd—the only one that deserves to be calleda philosophy in our modern view—had not yet madeits appearance.

At that time, as in the eighteenth century inFrance, “philosophers” were simply intellectuals, andamong them a group of mutakallimÉn (those whopracticed kalÁm) had the very highest status, along-side physicians and “men of science”–that is, astrolo-gers and alchemists.6 In his KetÁbÁ de sÅmÁta (Bookof treasures), Job of Edessa complained about the“new philosophers” who were gravitating around al-NazzÁm, “vainly seeking the glory of the world.”7 ForJob of Edessa, a Christian physician and defender ofthe Greek legacy, such men were mere grandstand-ers, undeserving of the reputation they enjoyed. ForMuslims, however, they performed a function similarto that of the Church Fathers. They were not as im-mersed in the ideas of Plato and Aristotle as theirChristian counterparts, but they had the same ad-vantage Origen and Clement of Alexandria had hadsome centuries earlier: they still had historical op-tions available to them, options that would becomemore limited later on. As a result, they enjoyed a free-dom of thought that later generations could only

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dream of. For that reason, the kalÁm phenomenonreached its zenith very early; its most creative perioddid not occur after it had come of age, but well be-fore, at a time when signs of tedium and paralysishad not yet appeared.

That fascinating world has now collapsed, sub-merged by the waves of puritanism that prefiguredmodern fundamentalism. In Saudi Arabia, kalÁm isexcluded from the university curriculum—as is phi-losophy. We must not forget, however, that theologyin the sense described here has always been confinedto certain regions and certain moments in history,particularly Iraq during the early centuries of theAbbasid dynasty, and then Iran, where it flourishedagain until the Mongol empire. We are interestedhere in the beginnings, the time of open optionswhen kalÁm was still deeply rooted in Muslim society.It held a rank equivalent to that of jurisprudence.The first Iraqi jurist, AbÉ HanÅfa, who made a lastingmark on Islamic law, left behind only his theologicaltreatises (Letter to ‘UthmÁn al-BattÅ and the dialoguescollected by his students, Fiqh al-absat and KitÁb al-‘Álim wa’l-muta‘allim). His legal teachings seem tohave been transmitted only through the oral tradi-tion. The two disciplines were still rivals, and it wasnot at all obvious that jurisprudence would prevail.

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Both benefited from their close relationship to theirenvironment. Theologians were not concerned onlywith God and eternal truths; far from it. They alsodealt with believers’ everyday problems and personalworries. The theologians would begin to lose groundonly after they grew hungry for power and alliedthemselves with the Abbasid court. The shock pro-duced by the mihna, the inquisition launched underal-Ma’mÉn, was immeasurable. Those accused of be-ing the instigators—namely, the Mu‘tazilite theolo-gians—were not directly responsible for it. The initia-tive for that inquisition had been taken, rather, bythe caliph. But the persecution campaign cost theMu‘tazilites the sympathy of all its victims, membersboth of the lower classes and of the middle class.

Before religious thinkers congregated in the cap-ital, local orthodoxies of a sort had been created incities such as al-Kufa, Basra, and Damascus, and theyvaried according to which option was chosen. Thisstate of affairs is especially noteworthy when it comesto political theories; the positions differed from onecity to the next. At a particular time, the followingideologies were “true” wherever they had arisen:Qadarism, Murji’ism, and the different forms ofShiism. Later, however, they were all considered here-sies. Such was the influence exerted by the capital. In

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Baghdad, the imported “orthodoxies” were amal-gamated and underwent a process of attrition. Thecourt acted as a catalyst; scholars in the “provinces”who wanted to pursue a career in the capital wereforced to abandon local particularities or to refrainfrom openly propagating them. The geographer Ibnal-FaqÅh wrote, “The good thing about Baghdad isthat the government does not have to fear that oneschool will prevail over another as has happened inal-Kufa. There, the ‘Alids, alongside the Shiites, oftenmanage to rule the population. In Baghdad, all ofthem—Shiites, Mu‘tazilites, and KhÁrijites—coexist;each camp holds the others in check and prevents itfrom asserting its dominance.”8 Mu‘tazilism, thoughoriginally an import from the city of Basra, was ableto take advantage of the situation, creating the firstorthodoxy in the Muslim world that extended be-yond one locality. In broadening its theoretical baseand establishing a new balance between the variousviews, it managed to avoid becoming diluted. The ra-tionalism in which it took such pride was its most ef-fective tool.

The aim of this book is to clarify a few aspects ofthat development. Its subject is historical, nothingmore. Nevertheless, the Muslim worldview has con-served many traces of it. Mu‘tazilism was replaced by

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other orthodoxies, but the ideas it developed had asubversive influence on later movements. Althoughit was threatened in Baghdad in the late third cen-tury ah (ninth century ce), it managed to prevail inKhwÁrazm in about ah 400 (1010 ce), thanks to itsmissionary efforts. In ah 803 (1400–1401 ce), duringthe Syrian campaign of Timur Lenk (Tamerlane), theworld conqueror was accompanied by a Hanafite ju-rist who was a Mu‘tazilite. Ibn KhaldÉn met him inDamascus during the famous audience that TimurLenk granted him. In the end, Mu‘tazilite orthodoxyalso became a local orthodoxy. Theological problemsmay be eternal, but they are not static. The responsesthat befit a given situation at a given time quicklybecome rigid stereotypes. But sometimes they alsoprove to be viable alternatives to those offered in ourown time. Therein lies their importance, for Muslimsand for us as well. Modern thought is heir to a richpast, and recalling views and decisions that were oncetaken seriously will always prove useful.

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T H E O L O G Y I N I T S OW N E Y E S

Division and Heresy in Islam

Her esy occupies as vast a field in Islam as inChristianity. Is it really legitimate to confine it to theclassical age? During the mihna, or inquisition, themarriage of Ibn MÁlaj, a traditionalist who rejectedthe idea of the created Koran (khalq al-Qur’Án), wasvoided by the courts.1 There is a striking parallel be-tween that action and the present-day case of NasrAbu Zayd in Egypt, despite the twelve centuries thatseparate them. In our own time, the Egyptian Islam-ist group JamÁ‘at al-TakfÅr wa’l-Hijra inspires fear;but even in the ninth century ce, the Mu‘tazilites hadearned a reputation for their use of the takfÅr, that is,for the anathematizing of their adversaries. AbÉ Hay-yÁn al-TawhÅdÅ deplored the practice. AbÉ HÁshim,he said, had called his own father, al-JubbÁ’Å, an in-fidel, and vice versa; AbÉ HÁshim’s sister, he contin-ued, had anathematized both her father and her

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brother. She was an emancipated woman; she headeda women’s organization of sorts, whose aim seems tohave been Mu‘tazilite evangelization. As we know, theMu‘tazilites not only quarreled among themselves,but also directed considerable aggression toward the“others,” the hashwiyya, the uneducated, the rabble. Isthat because for at least a century the Mu‘taziliteshad been the elite, the intellectual “orthodoxy” oftheir time? The majority of theologians were stillMu‘tazilites when al-TawhÅdÅ was writing. He con-cluded with a somewhat critical remark: “I do notreally understand what takfÅr means for them! Whycan’t we put an end to that ordeal [fitna]?”2

Which of the two positions corresponded to thetypical attitude of Muslim society during the classi-cal period—the takfÅr practiced by certain intellectu-als or al-TawhÅdÅ’s discomfort with that behavior? Ido not know whether I shall answer that questionsatisfactorily. But let me briefly consider the termused at the time, kufr, or unbelief. Christians wouldhave preferred “heresy,” and today we speak of tol-erance and intolerance. My treatment will pay par-ticular attention to word choice. There are alwaysrealities behind language, however—the context, thesocial structures or institutions (if they exist), and

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T H E F L O W E R I N G O F M U S L I M T H E O L O G Y

the founding doctrines: in this case, scripture, theProphetic tradition, and historical myths.

The word for heresy in the European languagescomes from the Greek. But in antiquity, hairesismeant simply “choice”; the word had no negativeconnotations. Any school of philosophy could becalled a hairesis, and it was not considered scandalousor blameworthy to prefer one hairesis to another. Itwas only the Church Fathers who used the word tomean a reprehensible or foolish choice, a bad im-pulse—a hawÁ, as the Arabs and the Koran wouldlater say. In the religions of antiquity no mention wasmade as yet of aberration or schism. Rather than re-ject a foreign faith, they incorporated and trans-formed its elements, a process known as syncretism.The only exception was Judaism, which introduceda new factor, revelation. At the time, Jewish theolo-gians were wont to speak of their covenant with God.But the Israelites were not alone in doing so. TheChristians understood the birth of their religion as a“new covenant,” and the Muslims too possessed their‘ahd or mÅthÁq, with a new book and new command-ments. The words “pact” and “covenant” are legal no-tions; they imply the existence of an obligation, ataklÅf. Heresy or aberration can therefore become

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T H E O L O G Y I N I T S O W N E Y E S

apostasy, irtidÁd in Arabic, a term stemming from aparticular historical situation, the ridda, the rebellionof Arab tribes against islÁm—that is, against the com-munity as it existed immediately after the death ofthe prophet Muhammad.

Like kufr, the concept of apostasy refers to a typi-cally Islamic way of seeing things. Nevertheless, theproblem is characteristic of all three Abrahamic reli-gions. From a doctrinal and institutional point ofview, the religion that proved to be the most rigidand the best “armed” in that respect was not Islam;it was without a doubt Christianity. Given the pre-cariousness of its intermediate position in history,Christianity had to prove its supremacy over theother monotheistic religions by stressing that Juda-ism had come before it and that Islam had come afterit. It was only in Christianity that orthodoxy was de-fined by dogmas, some of which were summed up ina profession of faith, a “symbol.” That symbol waseven incorporated into the Christian rite, as the Ni-cene creed uttered during Mass. Dogmas were for-mulated and confirmed by councils, and the councilswere in turn legitimated by an institution, theChurch. The Church dispensed salvation; anyonewho repudiated it forfeited redemption. As a result,heretics could be denied a place within the Church

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and could even be denied the use of the word “Chris-tian,” as was the case with the Gnostics. Eventually,the Church laid claim to what was called the seculararm. In 1215, the fourth Lateran council obliged secu-lar authorities to take measures against the Cathari.The noun “Cathari,” in fact, is the source of the Ger-man word for heretic, Ketzer.

Neither Islam nor Judaism has ever had a church.Above all, both lacked the concept of redemption, afounding concept for the Christian Church. In Islam,there exists no special category of individuals, no spe-cial profession, whose task it is to dispense salvation;all Muslims are laypersons. There is also no universalcreed other than the shahÁda, which consists in recit-ing, “There is no god but God, and Muhammad isHis messenger.” From time to time, theologians ormuhaddithÉn (specialists in the traditions or sayingsof the Prophet, hadith) did write professions of faith(‘aqÁ’id) that can be compared to the Christian creed,but these texts entailed no obligation and remainedvalid only for a circumscribed time and place. No of-ficial institution ever constrained secular authoritiesto persecute heretics, though that did not preventparticular governments from becoming guardiansof orthodoxy. It must be conceded that everything Ihave said so far has no direct and necessary conse-

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quence for the analysis of actual practices. It is per-fectly possible to think dogmatically without havingdogmas, and I will not venture to argue that lay-persons are any less fanatical than members of theclergy. Islam as well as Christianity has an impressiverecord of executions, pogroms, and burned books.The systematic and structural differences I have de-scribed are real, but they were eclipsed by the preva-lence of a trait characteristic of all Abrahamic reli-gions: the devotion demanded by revelation. All thesereligions belonged to the same family, as it were. Still,we must always keep the differences in mind. In whatfollows, therefore, I shall speak of the small but sig-nificant difference.

What is perceived as a systematic difference is onlythe result of a historical evolution. Neither the Gos-pels nor the Koran establishes a system. The contentof the faith was defined later, through the work of ex-egesis. Although, when compared to the New Testa-ment, the Koran is much more explicit in its rulesand prescriptions, it does not contain a list of canon-ical doctrines. Even when it comes closest to an enu-meration of prescribed truths, in the verse known asÀyat al-birr (sura 2:177), there is a different emphasis:“Righteousness [birr] does not consist in whether you

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face towards the East or the West. The righteous manis he who believes in God and the Last Day, in the an-gels and the Book and the prophets; who, though heloves it dearly, gives away his wealth to kinsfolk, toorphans, to the destitute, to the traveller in need andto beggars, and for the redemption of captives; whoattends to his prayers and renders the alms levy.”3

This verse does not read like a doctrine, an ‘aqÅda, butis rather a nice mix of statements of faith and chari-table practices. The scripture emphasizes “the differ-ence between the formal act of turning toward Godand the acceptance of the existential consequences ofthat act.”4 The doctrinal details mentioned in thisverse—God, the Last Judgment, the angels, the Book,the prophets—were never placed in doubt, but theywere also never a focus of interest. From the begin-ning, theology was concerned with altogether differ-ent problems: free will and predestination, the attri-butes of divinity, justification by faith. On the whole,taken in relation to Christianity, Islam did not treatnew problems; it treated the same problems differ-ently.5

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to say there wasno doctrinal progress in Islam. That is far from thecase. Over the long term, however, that progressoccurred in jurisprudence rather than in dogmatics.

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That is the most important thing Muslims learnedfrom their sacred text: how to conduct themselves inan honest and upright manner. The Prophet himselfhad the opportunity to lay the social and politicalfoundations of his community in Medina. To thatend, he was able to make use of what the Koran of-fered him—namely, a law.

Here again, we find the minor difference. For Is-lam, orthopraxy is more important than orthodoxy.At the level of action, in the liturgy and in daily life,details counted a great deal. Anyone who wantedto emphasize the unity of the faith by designatingMuslims as such, irrespective of their denomination,called them ahl al-salÁt, that is, “all who pray in theMuslim manner,” or ahl al-qibla, because they allturned in the same direction (qibla) to pray.6 The law,like Christian dogma, presupposes a distinction be-tween true and false. But a jurist often has to con-front the fact that truth presents itself as a matter ofcircumstance. There are times when the qibla cannotbe determined, yet the prayer remains valid. The ju-rist always knows that the truth is not easy to findin a concrete case. Judgment, as his colleagues thefuqahÁ’ said, can attain only probability, never cer-tainty. In principle, this could be seen as an appealfor caution.

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Nonetheless, scripture also asserted that disagree-ment was harmful. The Jews and the Christians hadsown division in the world; that is why the new reve-lation was necessary. In the beginning, humankindhad been a “single community” (umma wÁhida), andGod had sent his messengers to maintain its cohe-sion. But no one followed his advice, and Islam cameinto being to restore the primordial state of thecommunity. “Had your Lord pleased, He would havemade all humanity a single community. They are stillat odds, except for those to whom your Lord hasshown mercy. To this end He has created them” (sura11:118; [translation modified]). The early Muslimspondered that verse a great deal. They were obviouslythe ones “to whom your Lord has shown mercy”; thatis why he had spared them antagonism, division.But reality quickly took a different course. With thefirst civil war, the “Great Discord” in Hishem Djaït’sexpression, the community split apart. As yet, thisevent had nothing to do with the doctrine of Islam: itwas a political dispute. The first major conquests,however, had convinced the Muslims that they wouldalways be victorious, thanks to the unity God willedfor them. Did the fitna now mean that, in spite of ev-erything, Muslims were “created” to remain divided,just as the Jews and Christians had been? Initially,

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people thought they could arrest that pernicious ten-dency. “Do something about this community beforeit turns against itself over scripture, as happened tothe Jews and Christians,” Hudhayfa b. al-YamÁn issupposed to have told ‘UthmÁn, a caliph who wouldbe murdered precisely because he had failed to re-spond to the rift. The statement is not authentic; itwas formulated after the fact, when Muslims realizedthey were condemned to live in a state of discord. Asa result, they made a virtue of necessity and discov-ered a kind of inter-Muslim pluralism. The Koran didnot shed much light on that question. But they wereable to turn to the Prophet, whose famous hadithwas beginning to circulate: “In my community, dis-agreement is a sign of divine mercy”; or, to restoreits original sense: “In my community, disagreement isan opportunity for divine mercy.” To this we ought toadd, “in contrast to earlier religious communities.” Itis no accident that this maxim repeats exactly the keywords found in the Koranic verse previously cited:“disagreement,” “community,” “mercy.” Hence,though the Muslims were no doubt “created” to bein disagreement, just as all other communities hadbeen, in Islam that same disagreement could be un-derstood in the sense of “diversity.” It was somethinggood.7

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Nevertheless, the hadith I quoted was acceptedonly in the field of jurisprudence. Divine mercy hadmanifested itself in the plurality of legal solutionsthat the sahÁba, or Companions of the Prophet, hadproposed. The fact that this first generation hadfailed at the political level was ignored. Nevertheless,even in the legal realm, people were not always in-clined to accept the disagreements among the Com-panions as something positive. The Mu‘tazilite theo-logian an-NazzÁm did not hesitate to treat their legalpositions with caustic irony.8 But the next stages ofMuslim law culminated in such a glorification of theancestors that they seemed to have become incapableof serious error. This led to the birth of the sunnahnabawiyya, the Prophetic tradition, which always leftchoices to the individual. The space that would laterbe occupied by legal options or schools, madhÁhib,was created only by virtue of the Companions’ dis-sent. Islam never had a uniform law, and a juristcould, at least theoretically, always allow himself toturn away from received opinion and adopt one ofthe minority views held during the first generation.Muslim law is a law of jurists; that is why it took a ca-suistic form, and why there was never a universallyconstraining code enforced by a sovereign.

* * *

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Here again we are faced with one of those minordifferences. The Justinian Code and the Codex IurisCanonici taught Christianity that, in jurisprudence asin theology, there was a single fixed system and thatit could no longer be called into question. Conversely,in Muslim law, even during the Ottoman Empire,there existed only an intention, a plan, a professorialexegesis of certain fundamental texts carefully cho-sen according to the consensus of a school. Let usrecall in this context that most theologians weretrained as jurists; they may therefore have come tothe realization that even in the field of theology itwas better not to restrict choice excessively. Quiteearly on, one of them, ‘UbaydallÁh al-‘AnbarÅ, judgeand governor of Basra, expressed that idea in theform of a maxim. Kull mutjahid musÅb, he said: “Who-ever forms a reasoned opinion is right.” He meantnot only that the judgment he pronounced as a qÁdÅ(judge) was valid in all cases and allowed for no judi-cial review but also that anyone who expressed hisown opinion in matters of faith was free to defendit—as was any detractor who reached a different con-clusion.9 It must be admitted, however, that in theol-ogy this liberal position did not prevail. That is be-cause theology, unlike jurisprudence, was concernedwith eternal truths and not with everyday matters.

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