The Baha’i Faith: An Islamic Paradigm for Peace

 

Preface

 

This website is NOT connected in any way with the Baha’i Faith, Islam, or any religion or religious sect, nor is its author, Dana Stone, a member of any formal religion or religious sect.  The intent of the monograph that follows is to assist those from western cultural backgrounds better understand Islam and how the Baha’i Faith evolved from it, becoming one of the most tolerant and peace-loving religious communities in the world today.  In many ways, the Baha’is provide a case study of how Islam and the Christian West have already become peacefully reconciled, and a paradigm for reconciliation on a broader scale.  In the end, love and worship of God should be a unifying shared experience among the peoples of this Earth, not a causus belli.  This is the spirit in which this website was built, and it is assumed that readers will follow this spirit as they turn the pages that follow.  DS

 

Table of Contents

 

1. Introduction
2. The Gate (“The Bab”)
3. Baha’u’llah (“The Glory of God”)
4. The Hijaz
5. Monotheism & the Hanifs
6. The Prophet Muhammad
7. The Qur’an
8. Baha’i Revelations
9. Islamic Law
10.  Sufism
11.  Conclusion

 

 

Introduction

 

O ye children of Men!  The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men.  Suffer it not to become a source of dissension and discord, of hate and enmity.  This is the straight Path, the fixed and immovable foundation.  Whatsoever is raised on this foundation, the changes and chances of the world can never impair its strength, nor will the revolution of countless centuries undermine its structure.  Our hope is that the world’s religious leaders and rulers thereof will unitedly arise for the reformation of this age and the rehabilitation of its fortunes.  Let them, after meditating on its needs, take counsel together and, through anxious and full deliberation, administer to a diseased and sorely-afflicted world the remedy it requireth . . . (1)

 

This voice and its extraordinary statement of religious principle written circa 1863 does not emanate form a Christian Unitarian, or Quaker, or European Christian progressive.  It is not even a Western voice at all.  On the contrary it is a voice speaking to us out of Shi’ih Islam, from Persia and Baghdad, the voice of the Baha’i prophet Baha’u’llah.  What is immediately striking about this voice is its clear opposition to “religious fanaticism” and hatred, and the insistence that “the manifold systems of religious belief, should never be allowed to foster the feelings of animosity among men.”(2)  How could Muslim religious men writing at the time of Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War have had such modern, progressive ideas about religion and world peace?  We are accustomed to thinking of Islam as typified by jihadi exhortations to fight and kill in the way of God.  For example, we read in the nine/one-eleven Surah from the Qur’an: (3)

 

“Allah has bought from the believers their lives and their wealth in return for Paradise; they fight in the way of Allah, kill and get killed.  That is the true promise from Him in the Torah, the Gospel and the Qur’an. (Qur’an, 9:111)

 

How can what many consider the most bellicose and intransigently intolerant religion on earth have been the source of such profound advocacy for peace and universal tolerance?  This paper is an attempt to help elucidate this issue and at the same time to draw attention to a different side of Islam which is more humanitarian, progressive, and ecumenical in its outlook, and point to some of the intellectual stepping stones that mark the path from Islam to the “People of Baha”, the “People of Glory” as the Baha’i are called in their scriptures.     

 

            During an age when we have witnessed a Muslim shoot Pope John Paul in Saint Peter’s Square, the Taliban dynamite the ageless Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, and Islamic terrorists unleash a campaign of arbitrary violence against innocent and defenseless people throughout the world, it is important to avoid demonizing Islam across the board and to establish instead a more informed balanced view that incorporates some of the progressive and peaceful currents in Islam that must be engaged if we are to reach an acceptable level of understanding, tolerance, and peace among the peoples of the

Earth.  The story of the Baha’i faith has special value in this context.  Although the Baha’is are categorically rejected as apostates by most Muslims, their religion, for all its progressive, ecumenical spirit, is Islamic in its origins.  Its story, and the story of its two prophets, the Bab and Baha’u’llah, provide a case study of how Islam evolved into one of the world’s most humanitarian and progressive religions.  It is a compelling story that is filled with heroism and heart-breaking martyrdom on a scale comparable to the Roman Christians.   For Baha’u’llah and most of his followers, theirs was a life “preceded in every step . . .  by an army of unforeseen calamities, while in His rear follow legions of agonizing sorrows.”(4)  During the early years of the faith, these dire circumstances served as a foil that illuminated the dignity, the magnanimity, and spiritual purity of the Bab and Baha’u’llah in their daily lives, giving them an exemplary authority that has commanded respect from those both in and outside their community ever since.  More important still to our present purposes is the intellectual achievement of their work.  Using Islamic tradition, the Qur’an, and the life of the Prophet Muhammad as their primary points of departure, they developed a logically coherent humanitarian theology that is at once anchored in Muslim history but at the same time in tune with the modern world and its future.  It is the intellectual and historical connections between Islamic past and the forward-looking Baha’i theology of world unity and peace that is primary focus of the pages that follow.    

   

The Bab (The Gate)

 

“I am the Gate, and you are the Gate of the Gate.”  (The Bab)

 

            In Shiraz, Persia, the evening of May 23^rd, 1844, an extraordinary new religion was born out of Islam.  A young Persian merchant of twenty-five, revealed that he was the long-awaited Mahdi, the Hidden Imam descended from the Prophet Muhammad, who after centuries of occultation, had returned to usher in a new era for mankind, an era in which we could ascend to a higher plane of consciousness and being, perhaps a return to Paradise!  Sayyid’Ali Muhammad, henceforth The Bab (“The Gate” in Arabic), made this revelation in an all-night ecstatic session to a new acquaintance, Mulla Husayn Bushru’i, who was himself on a quest to find the Mahdi at the behest of his mentor, Shaykh Ahmad.

 

            Shaykh Ahmad (1) and Mulla Husayn were part of larger movement within the faith    that sought to understand the ramifications of the end of the Islamic millennium (“one thousand years in your reckoning” [Qur’an 32:5]) in the context of contemporary 19^th Century history.  In the few centuries prior to that time, Islam had experienced an accelerating series of reversals.  In 1492 Granada fell to the Catholic Kings of Spain and Muslims were expelled or required to convert to Christianity; in 1585 the Ottomans were defeated at Lepanto by the combined Spanish and Venetian fleets; in 1798 Napoleon invaded Egypt and Palestine only to be supplanted by the English who stayed on in North Africa; at the same time the English continued their expansion in India at the expense of the Mogul kingdoms of the northern subcontinent; Russian imperial expansion annexed not only Siberia but the northern regions of Persia and much of the Ottoman Empire around the Black Sea; the French returned to North Africa in 1830 to occupy Algiers following a successful American expedition against the “Barbary pirates” only a few years before.  In the markets of the world, Western manufactured goods competed with traditional artisans and merchants of the Middle East, adding increased economic pressure to the growing political pressures and huge territorial losses.  The great Islamic kingdoms of the past were rapidly becoming mere pawns in the power politics of modern, western nation states.  Muslims of the period were dismayed by these reverses, and sought answers.  In that context, millennialism acquired new importance.   Much of the blame was placed on corruption and decadence among the political and religious leadership, which added internal tensions to the external ones exerted by the West.  Into this environment came Shakh Ahmad and his followers who combined Sufi mysticism with the search for the Mahdi (in Persian, Qa’im).  It was in the context of this search that Mulla Husayn discovered The Bab.  The morning after the Bab had revealed his mission and identity to the Mullah, he is reported to have said to him:

 

“Thou who art the first to believe in Me! Verily I say, I am the Bab, the Gate of God, and thou art the Babu’l-Bab, the gate of that Gate.  Eighteen souls must, in the beginning, spontaneously and of their own accord, accept Me and recognize the truth of My Revelation.”(2)

 

Soon the eighteen had found him and become his disciples, among them a woman, Tahirih.  These he called the “Letters of the Living,” and sent them out into the world to announce His coming.  Within a few short years most would be martyred.

 

            As the “Letters of the Living” dispersed, the Bab set out on pilgrimage for Mecca where, in order to fulfill a prophesy identifying the mahdi, he announced his own arrival.  Standing at the entry to the Ka’ba and grasping the door ring in his hand, he called out three times: ‘I am that Mahdi whose advent you have been awaiting.’”(3)  The prophesy fulfilled, he returned to Persia where his teachings soon attracted the attention of the authorities who promptly imprisoned him.  However, his charismatic presence and devout demeanor won over his jailers.  A number of clerics sent by the Sultan to examine him for heresy were converted to the new Islamic sect.  Those who accepted his teachings were now called Babis or “followers of the Bab.”  For long periods of his incarceration--and against the strict order of the Grand Vizier--he was allowed to receive visitors and dictate his revelations.  Much of his most important work was written in prison, in particular the Bayan, a work that contained new laws that superseded parts of Islamic law, or Sharia.  Understandably, this outraged conservative clerics.  It also led to riots and civil unrest in a number of towns in which many Babis were beaten and killed.

 

            The revolutionary core of The Bab’s theology was his evolutionary view of religion and the cycle of prophets.   Moses had brought Jehovah’s Commandments to the ancient Jews who lived by them until the advent of Christ; the Christian Gospels became the primary religious teachings during the Late Empire until the advent of Muhammad; the Qur’an was the authoritative religious text until advent of The Bab; and after the Bab, his own writings, including the Bayan, would become the dominant scriptures: 

           

“For example, from the inception of the mission of Jesus—may peace be upon Him—till the day of His ascension was the Resurrection of Moses . . . And from the moment when the Tree of the Bayan [The Bab’s book of laws] appeared until it disappeareth is the resurrection of the Apostle of God [Muhammad], as is divinely foretold in the Qu’ran . . . The stage of perfection  of everything is reached when its resurrection occurreth . . . The Resurrection of the Bayan will occur at the time of the appearance of Him Whom God shall make manifest [i.e., Baha’u’llah].  For today the Bayan is in the stage of seed; at the beginning of the manifestation of Him Whom God shall make manifest its ultimate perfection will become apparent . . .”(4)

 

According to this view, the cycle of prophets repeats every thousand years or so.  A prophet appears and delivers the teachings of God, which are codified into a system of laws that flesh out the ground rules for God’s covenant with is people.  With clear guidance as to the will of God, the faithful flourish under the laws of the covenant.  However, over the centuries these laws become rigid, stultified, and antiquated, as in the case of the Talmud and Sharia.  In the end, they cease to evolve with history as it changes and so become artifacts of the past that have limited application to contemporary life.  At this point God sends another Messenger who refocuses attention on the humanitarian core of all true religions and reveals new teachings that realign the eternal values with contemporary social and economic conditions. The Bab simply saw himself as the latest in this millennial cycle of divine messengers sent to replace the atrophied laws of the past with a new covenant that reaffirmed the core values taught by preceding prophets but in keeping with contemporary conditions.  

 

“I am, I am, I am, the Promised One!  I am the One whose name you have for a thousand years invoked, at whose mention you have risen [i.e., the Qa’im, or Mahdi), whose advent you have longed to witness, and the hour of whose Revelation you have prayed God to hasten.  Verily I say, it is incumbent upon the peoples of both the East and the West to obey My word and to pledge allegiance to My Person.”(5)

 

 The Shah, however, did not pledge allegiance to The Bab, but left him in prison, and eventually ordered his execution, which was carried out by a firing squad of 750 soldiers in Tabriz, July 9^th, 1850.  It had been just six years and eighteen days since he had revealed himself to Mulla Husayn.  His mission had lasted twice as long as Jesus Christ’s.   

 

Baha’u’llah (The Glory of God)

 

            After the Bab’s death leadership of the movement passed gradually to Baha’u’llah (The Glory of God), born Mirza Husayn Ali, November 12, 1817.  He was two years older than The Bab, whose revelation he had accepted in 1844, although the two never met in person.  The son of a powerful aristocrat whose functions included that of royal scribe, he grew up in the Shah’s court, in which he was assured a role of influence and power if only he chose to pursue it.  However, an abortive assassination attempt on the Shah by three disaffected Babi’s in August of 1852, shattered Baha’u’llah’s ties to the court.  As a member of the now feared and hated Babi sect, he was arrested, shackled, and thrown into the notorious “Black Pit,” a primitive prison that had originally been the outlet for waste waters from the public bath in Tehran.   In his own account of it he says:

 

“No pen can depict that place, nor any tongue describe its loathsome smell.  Most of these [150  prisoners] men had neither clothes nor bedding to lie on.”(1)             

 

 While in the midst of such dire deprivation, Baha’u’llah had a series of life-altering visions, which he understood to be divine visitations.  It was here in this prison that he came to believe that he was the Bab’s successor--“Him Whom God shall make manifest.”  It would take years, however, for him to reveal his role to the Babi community at large.  When he was released from prison, he told no one, but he was visibly transformed, as his daughter, Bahia Khanum, attests:

 

“We saw a new radiance seeming to enfold him like a shining vesture, its significance we were to learn years later.  At that time we were only aware of the wonder of it, without understanding, or even being told the details of the sacred event.”(2)

 

            The condition of Baha’u’llah’s release from prison was exile.  The chains and weights shackled to his body during his four months in prison left him weakened and with permanent skeletal damage.  After a short convalescence, he began on January 12^th, 1853, the arduous three-month trek from Tehran to Baghdad.  He could barely walk.  Two months after his arrival, his half-brother, Mirza Yahya, reached the city and challenged him for the leadership of the Babi community.  Rather than participate in an internecine struggle that would devastate both his family and followers, he withdrew to the foothills of the Zagros mountains in Kurdistan.  There he lived for a year as a hermit in the wilderness, and another year at a Sufi seminary in the town of Sulaymaniyyih, where he was well received.  The renewed contact with nature and the Sufi community reinforced for him the value of the spiritual quest and communion with nature that are both so essential in the Baha’i Faith. 

 

            Upon his return to Baghdad, he found the small Babi community in disarray.  No less than twenty-five men had claimed to be “Him Whom God shall make manifest.”  Mirza Yahya even plotted to have one of his rivals murdered, while at the same time the Shah’s government hired agents to assassinate Baha’u’llah.  In one encounter on the streets of Baghdad, the hired assassin dropped his pistol, whereupon Baha’u’llah is reported to have said to his aide: “Pick up his pistol and give it to him, and show him the way to his house; he seems to have lost his way.”(3)  Despite the disorder and danger, Baha’u’llah’s return revitalized the Babi movement both in Baghdad and, through correspondence, in Persia.  However, his presence in a city, so close to the Persian border, constituted a perceived threat, and the Shah’s emissaries to the Ottoman court sought his extradition back to Tehran.  When that failed, they petitioned for his removal to a greater distance.  The Sultan granted the request and “invited” him to Istanbul. 

 

            On leaving Baghdad, April 22^nd, 1863, Baha’u’llah and his immediate family were rowed across the Tigris with the help of the provincial governor, Namiq Pasha,  who had become a friend and admirer, to temporary accommodations in a large, rented garden.  There he stayed for twelve days, bidding farewell to his followers.  There, too, he revealed to his most intimate companions that he was “The One Whom God would make manifest,” whose coming the Bab had prophesied.   Later this garden was renamed the “Garden of Ridvan” (Garden of Paradise), and his stay there is celebrated as the holiest time of year.  The holy garden as emblematic of Paradise on earth is one of the central symbols of the faith, and is one of the reasons why the gardens and gardening among its adherents are spiritually charged.    

 

            Baha’u’llah was first taken to Istanbul, then Adrianople (Edrine), and finally, on August 31, 1868, to the prison city of Akka on the Bay of Haifa, where the most holy Baha’i shrines and World Center are now located at the foot of Mt. Carmel.  There he spent the rest of his life, at first in oppressive captivity along with his family and companions, and then, over time, in increasing freedom and state of well being.  He died there on May 29^th, 1892.  He was succeeded by his eldest son, Abdu’l-Baha, who oversaw the transition of the faith to a world-wide religion.  Upon his death (1921), Abdu’l-Baha’s grandson, Shoghi Effendi, became the leader of the growing Baha’i community.  He was responsible for translating many of the sacred texts and establishing the institutions that today give the faith cohesion and direction.  Following his death in 1957, leadership passed to an interim council of twenty-seven “custodians” and then, in 1963, to the elected nine-member Universal House of Justice. 

 

            Seen in its modern historical perspective, the Baha’i faith of today has evolved substantially from its origins in 1844, when the Bab first revealed himself.  His writings, and to a much greater extent, those of Baha’u’llah, form the Baha’i divine scriptures.  The exegetical works, translations, and recorded speeches of Abdu’l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi,(4) although of lesser weight, are an integral part of the religion and occupy a place similar to the Acts & Letters of the Apostles in the New Testament.  Taken as a whole, the work of these four men is an astonishing accomplishment.  It confronts the difficult problems faced by religion in the modern world with directness, clarity, and wisdom.  Among the many progressive beliefs central to the Baha’i faith are the acceptance of other religions and religious practices as divinely inspired, the insistence on the universal equality among all men and women, the elevation of justice over ritual, the harmony of science and faith, the sanctity of the individual’s search for truth, the replacement of a clerical hierarchy with democratic councils, the identification of religion with peace, the moral injunction against war, and the conjunction of progress with religious history.  In many respects it points the way toward an ecumenical consensus in which tolerance and peace among world religions would replace the hatreds and conflicts that currently disrupt the Earth today, particularly conflicts that involve Islam.  Since Islam provided the original foundation for the Baha’i faith, it is helpful to review some of the more relevant features of its history as well as the life and teachings of its Prophet, Muhammad.  

 

 

The Hijaz

 

            The Arabian Peninsula and surrounding Fertile Crescent and Nile Delta are home to the oldest civilizations on earth.  There are archeological sites in this region that are a hundred thousand years old.  It is where farming and animal husbandry were first developed, the earliest irrigation systems, the earliest cities, the birth of mathematics, the first astronomical records, where writing first appeared, the earliest know literature, and the oldest historical records.  Virtually every aspect of Near Eastern and Western civilization has its roots in this relatively small area and in the cultures of the Semitic peoples who have lived there since time immemorial.  One of the enduring features of the region is its strategic importance astride the major trade routs connecting the three continents, Asia, Africa, and Europe, and numerous seas and river systems that converge there.   The conjunction of continents, seas, and river systems is punctuated by the vast, inhospitable deserts that make travel extremely difficult.  These unique conditions juxtaposed two distinct Arab social orders—one urban and stationary supported by full scale farming and husbandry, the other tribal and nomadic supported by the limited resources of desert oases.  Economically, the nomadic Bedouin tribes and the urban Arabs depended on each other for the maintenance of the caravan routs and system of trade so vital to both their economies.  The social consequence of the interdependence was that tribal organization persisted in Arab communities, both urban and rural, combining elements from the ancient civilizations rooted there with more primitive social traditions from the Bedouin desert tribes.  Muhammad’s childhood provides an example of how these contrasting social backgrounds could be combined in the life of an individual; in accordance with custom, he was given as an infant to a Bedouin woman to be wet-nursed and raised until the age of about four, when he was returned to his mother in Mecca.  The mixture of these two strains, the desert-tribal and the urban, was the source of considerable tension during Muhammad’s time.  In the Qur’an itself, one often finds Muhammad frustrated by the conflicts inherent in integrating the desert tribes into the more civilized, urban Muslim social order: 

 

The desert Arabs are more steeped in unbelief and hypocrisy and are more likely not to know the bounds of what Allah has revealed to His Messenger. Allah is All Knowing, Wise.  And some of the desert Arabs regard what they spend [i.e., the zakat or alms tax] as a fine, and await the turns of fortune to go against you.  May the veil turn go against them!  (9:97-98)

 

            The desert tribes competed with each other through a formalized system of warfare, characterized by a strategy of raiding for live stock, portable goods, and captives, whose ultimate aim was to weaken and then absorb neighboring tribes, and in so doing, strengthen the dominant tribe.  In Muhammad’s lifetime, the process was loosely governed by rules designed to minimize casualties, and provided a respite of four sacred months for pilgrimage—primarily to shrines in Mecca--during which raiding was prohibited.  This environment of inter-tribal war pervades the early history of Islam and the life of the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions.  Consider, for example, the following passage from the Qur’an:

 

This is an immunity from Allah and His Messenger to those idolaters with whom you made compacts.  Travel, then, in the land freely for four months.  . . .  Honour your compact with them until the end of its term.  Allah loves the righteous.  Then, when the Sacred Months are over, kill the idolaters wherever you find them, take them [captive], besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every point of observation.  If they repent afterwards, perform the prayer and pay the alms, then release them.  Allah is truly All-Forgiving, Merciful. (9:1-6) 

 

Here it is clear that Muhammad and his community (the Muslim Ummah) were thoroughly immersed in the inter-tribal wars that characterized the Hijaz (the south central region of the Arabian Peninsula including the cities of Mecca, Medina, and Taif) during that period.  Seen from the sociological point of view, the Muslim Ummah can be seen as a newly-formed Arab super-tribe that would go on to assimilate all other Arab tribes in a few short decades of inter-tribal war and diplomatic negotiation.  The wars fought by Muhammad and the Ummah involved Bedouin nomads, of course, but primarily as federated allies in the larger struggle against the urban Quaryysh tribe that dominated Mecca, and to which Muhammad’s family belonged.  It was the victory over the Quaryysh and the capture of Mecca that established the Ummah as the dominant tribe in the Hijaz.  The birth of Islam in the fires of an inter-tribal civil war left an indelible imprint on the faith.   

 

            To the north and east of the Hijaz stood the two formidable empires of the Byzantines in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq, and the Sassanids in Persia, mutually engaged in a protracted struggle for regional dominance. The Arab tribes along their borders acted as federated vassal states and allies that helped buffer their patrons from direct attack.  In contrast, the Hijaz remained free of foreign political domination and enjoyed greater cultural liberty to develop and prosper on its own.  This political freedom gave added impetus to the early formation and spread of Islam, which was also bolstered, at the time of Muhammad’s birth in 570 C.E., by demographic growth among Arab-speaking populations in the Near-East in contrast to other Semitic groups, such as those speaking Aramaic--the language of the Jesus and the early Christians-- which were in decline. 

 

            This period in the Hijaz was marked by singular good fortune.  Yemen had traditionally been the most prosperous region of southern Arabia.  During pagan times the practice of cremation among the Greeks and Romans had favored Yemeni exports of frankincense which was widely used to mask the stench of burning flesh during cremation.  The Christians, however, because they believed in the resurrection of the body, abandoned the cremation in favor of burial, which greatly diminished demand for the export.  To make matters worse, the two super-powers of the day, the Persians and Byzantines, fought to control the Yemen by proxy through their allies.  Thus it was that in 525 CE, the Christian Abyssinians invaded and captured Yemen from Dhu Nuwas, its anti-Christian Jewish ruler who was allied with the Persian Sassanids.  In an attempt to further consolidate their control, they mustered a large army in 570 CE reinforced by elephants and marched against the Hijaz.  Outside Mecca, however, this formidable army succumbed to a plague--probably the bubonic plague which ravaged Europe and the Byzantine Empire from 542 to 558 CE (typically fatal to between 40% and 70% of its victims)--and was forced to turn back.  This episode, remembered in Arab history as the “Year of the Elephant”, confirmed the dominance of Mecca in the Hijaz.  It is also the year associated by tradition with Muhammad’s birth, although scholars date it a decade or two later.

 

            The ascendancy of Mecca in Arabia is somewhat of an anomaly because it had a limited agricultural base and was off the main caravan routes. The city’s importance was owed in large part to the political genius of Muhammad’s great, great, great grandfather, Qusayy.(1)  Toward the end of the fourth century CE, he united several feuding tribal clans into the Quaryysh Tribe and with them took control of the Ka’ba (the “Cube”), the principal religious shrine in city.  At that time the Ka’ba, which has since been rebuilt on several occasions, was a primitive, roofless enclosure of rough hewn stones without mortar.  The shrine was associated with a well spring, the well of Zamzam, which provided water for ritual cleansing.  A seven-revolution circumambulation of the shrine was one of the rituals performed by worshipers who visited it, a number associated with the lunar calendar in which four weeks approximate a lunar month.  Some of the divinities idolized there--they would eventually number about 360--were associated with the astronomical bodies.  These facts have led some scholars to suggest that the circumambulation may have been a human re-enactment of the movement of the heavens, a motif that is still seen in the circular dance of the Sufi Dervishes which intentionally mimics the movement of the cosmos.

 

            Having wrested control of the Ka’ba from competing tribes, Qusayy had his house attached to the shrine and used his control over it as “the Keeper of the Keys” to consolidate his power and collect revenues from pilgrims.  According to tradition, the shrine had been built by Abraham and his first son, Ishmael.  Through manipulation of this tradition, Qusayy elevated the status of his tribe by affirming his clansmen to be “the noblest and purest of the descendants of Ishmael” and proclaimed himself “King of Mecca.”  He made the Ka’ba and, of course, his own residence, the center of the city from which power and wealth radiated outward.  He further increased Mecca’s importance by removing idols worshiped by neighboring tribes in the neighboring sacred hills of Safah, Marwah and even from the City of Ta’if, and enshrining them in the Ka’ba, whose pantheon came to include an icon of Jesus Christ himself, said to have been brought there by a Copt named Baqura.  In this manner he was able to make Mecca the h

Holy City not just for the divinities worshiped in the Hijaz, but for those of all Arabia.   With the increased income brought by growing numbers of pilgrims, came the added economic benefit from barter and trading of goods.  The sacred four-month truce was instituted to allow pilgrims to travel to and from the holy shrine and also coincide with a cycle of fairs and markets throughout the Hijaz and beyond.  This confluence of religion and commerce brought additional revenues to the city and another source of taxation to the Quarysh oligarchs, who became disproportionately wealthy with respect to ordinary tribesmen.  The stratification of wealth had unanticipated social consequences because it undermined the egalitarian ethos of Arabian tribal life in which the leader or “sheik” was the first among equals and whose authority was based on consultation and consent.  Now, under Quraysh dominance, Mecca had gained new wealth and power but was fast loosing the sense of equality and shared wealth from earlier days, and those who lost the most were those toward the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.          

 

            For Muhammad, who was orphaned at the age of six with little inheritance, the economic and social inequities of life under the rule of the Quarysh oligarchs made a lasting impression and his drive to redress them became one of the dominant themes of his prophetic mission.  He was always the champion of widows, orphans, women, and the down-trodden.  He instituted an alms tax (zakat) to provide for the redistribution of wealth among the needy.  He even elevated generosity toward the poor above prayer in holiness, as expressed in the following passage from the Qur’an, where the phrase “turn your faces towards the East and the West” means “to pray”:

 

Righteousness is not to turn your faces towards the East and the West; the righteous is he who believes in Allah, the Last Day, the angels, the Book and the Prophets; who gives of his money, in spite of loving it, to the near of kin, and the orphans, the needy, the wayfarers and the beggars, and for the freeing of slaves; who performs the prayers and pays the alms-tax [zakat].  Such are also those who keep their pledges once they have made them, and endure patiently privation, affliction and in times of fighting.  Those are the truthful and the Good-fearing. (2:177)

 

The central importance of the zakat and redistribution of wealth within the Ummah has, in modern times, led to numerous experiments with socialism throughout the Islamic world, with varied results.  The interplay between these two traditions, which in many respects are diametrically opposed, is one of the most interesting dynamics in Muslim countries today and merits extensive examination in its own right in a separate paper.  In the passage above, one particularly controversial topic mentioned is the freeing of slaves.  Slavery was common practice in the Hijaz during Muhammad’s time, usually referred to in the Qur’an by the expression “what you hold by your right hand.”  Muhammad, however, instituted a humanitarian policy through which slaves, usually slaves who had accepted Islam, were purchased from their owners and set free.  At the same time, he made a habit of freeing slaves who were given to him or who fell under his control through inter-tribal war.  Nevertheless, the traditional acceptance of slavery has persisted, in spite of Muhammad’s disposition against it, down to the present day in many Islamic areas, particularly in the Sahara where armed Arabs are engaged in the slave trade of African blacks.(2)  This trade is such an egregious ethical violation, its continued tolerance by the Islamic international community is blight on the religion and certainly not in keeping with the spirit of the Qur’an.(3)  One final note regarding the Hijaz is the routine destruction of archeological sites that threatens to deprive Islam and the world of much of its own precious history.  The sources of this danger to historic preservation are two.  One, of course, is development of the area, spurred by the huge demands of the Hajj, the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca.  The other is the antagonism of some conservative Islamic sects, particularly the Wahhabite clerics who dominate in Saudi Arabia, against anything that might be construed as a shrine or relic, and especially any historical artifacts that might call into question Islamic history as crystallized in their teachings and beliefs.  It should be remembered that what is at stake is not just the archeology of early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but the nexus of the primeval migrations through which the ancestors of all mankind left Africa to inhabit the rest of the world.  Nor should it escape notice that this sect which began with the systematic destruction of iconic structures in Arabia and the Near East, including many sites held sacred by most Muslims, has expanded its modus operandi on the world stage where its disciples have attacked Shiite mosques, blown up the Buddhas of Bamiyan, and destroyed the Twin Towers.                        

   

Monotheism & the Hanifs

   

            The early history of religion in the Hijaz and surrounding areas has immense importance for world history through its obvious connections to Judaism and Christianity as well as Islam.  One of the best documented instances is the story of Noah, which first appears in the Sumerian epic poem, Gilgamesh, composed in the late third or early second millennium BCE.  It was incorporated with little modification into the Torah; it is a favorite Biblical story among Christians; and it is cited and retold in the Qur’an some thirty-four times.  What is not so obvious is the fabric of connections that go back to an even deeper past and encompass a wider range of cultures and systems of belief.  The unraveling of the threads of this fabric is an ongoing endeavor of encyclopedic proportions being undertaken by researchers around the globe, aided by new information technologies and often motivated by renewed interest in the origins of local cultures with the support of their Diaspora from abroad.  Such is the case of the Zoroastrians, who once formed the dominant religion of Persia, Tibet, Mesopotamia, and other regions in the Middle East.  Now after years of relative obscurity, they are enjoying a modest international revival which is encouraging new research into their history.(1)

           

            The Prophet Zoroaster’s dates are uncertain, but current scholarship suggests he lived c. 1500 to 1000 BCE.  He is thought to have been born in Eastern Persia, perhaps in Bactria.  His prophetic mission was to reform the Indo-Iranian religion inherited from Arian ancestors from Europe and which had strong ties through common Indo-European roots to the early Vedic religions of Northern India and the Norse pantheon of Europe.  On the basis of implements and practices mentioned in Zoroastrian texts, some scholars have dated the birth of this religion to the earlier transitional period from Neolithic to Bronze Age and the establishment of agriculture as the economic basis of society and religion.  One of Zoroastrianism’s most revolutionary aspects was suppression of warrior cults associated with war gods, such as Indra. On the social level this change was reflected in a theology that elevated herding and cultivation of the soil--“He who cultivates corn cultivates righteousness”(2)--over the aggression on the battle field, a difficult task in a culture dominated by warring communities.  Here it is important to call attention to a number of points regarding the Zoroastrians because of the way they dove-tail with the Baha’i view that there is continuity in God’s revelations to mankind.  First, scholars have confirmed that there was an intercontinental system of religious practice and belief that connected Europe and Asia from prehistoric times which is traceable in much the same way as the family tree of Indo-European languages.  Second, in Zoroaster’s revelations the beginnings of an evolutionary process can be discerned through which religion adapts to new socio-economic conditions, such as the use of bronze, the development of agriculture, and breeding of domestic animals, which in turn lead to attempts to suppress aggression and violence to protect their new economic base, all of which was done in the name of cosmic peace.  Third, in this evolutionary process an alliance is formed between God and mankind whose primary purpose is to combat evil and achieve peace on earth.  And fourth, the tradition established in Iran by Zoroaster has remained in tact, although beleaguered, to the present day, and has probably had a much more formative influence on Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baha’i Faith as well, than is usually recognized.

                 

            At the age of twenty Zoroaster is said to have retreated to a cave where he spent seven years meditating and seeking enlightenment.  There he experience several visitation from the Ahura Mazda (literally “Wise Lord” or “Lord of Wisdom”), the author of the Creation to whom alone Man owes his devotion.  Ahura Mazda is opposed by his twin opposite, the destructive spirit, Angra Mainyu, the embodiment of all evil.  Even though it was prophesied that Ahura Mazda and the forces of good would eventually defeat Angra Mainyu, there is nonetheless a fundamental dualism in this view of the cosmos.  In this sense, Zoroastrianism has been described as devotional monotheism (devotion to one god) and metaphysical dualism (belief in two separate and distinct divine forces differentiated along the ethical divide that separates good from evil).  Shortly after Ahura Mazda created the earth, Angra Mainyu broke through the lower dome of the sky and set about adulterating all earthly perfection with evil.  The period that ensued, and the one in which we live, is therefore the era of “Mixture” where “good” creation is contaminated by the evil spirit.  Ahura Mazda has enlisted the aid of mankind to help him return the Creation to its original pristine state.  The alliance with God and goodness of his common cause with the Creator has ennobled man and given him the opportunity to prove himself worthy in life of achieving everlasting peace after death.    Upon death, the good and evil thoughts, words, and deeds of each person are weighed on a balance scale; those whose good works outweigh the evil, go to Paradise; if the balance stays even, they go to a purgatorial Limbo where neither joy nor sorrow exist; and if evil outweighs the good, they go to a place of punishment in the underworld.  In opposition to older customs, money and lavish sacrifices avail no one in the face of divine justice; all are judged equally.  At the end of the era of “Mixture,” Ahura Mazda will send a savior, “a man who is better than a good man.”(3) Called Astvat-ereta (“He who embodies righteousness”), he will be born of a Virgin impregnated by bathing in a lake where the seed of Zoroaster is miraculously preserved in its pure waters.  Under the leadership of Astvat-ereta, mankind unites with the Creator to drive Angra Mainyu and the forces of evil from the earth.  A second and Last Judgment then takes place, and at its conclusion, the damned are destroyed, the saved cross a bridge to an earthly Paradise restored to its original purity and goodness where they live forever in the company of the Divine Creator.       

 

            When Zoroaster emerged from his cave and started teaching, he was at first ridiculed, but through a series of conversions beginning with his nephew, established a small band of followers who had to arm themselves for protection, so controversial was his message.  The fortunes of the new faith improved abruptly when the prophet fortuitously cured King Vishtaspa’s horse, which so impressed the king that he converted along with his Queen.  Subsequently, Zoroaster married the king’s daughter, Hvogvi, and many throughout the kingdom followed the example of the royal family and converted, too. 

 

            The rational ethical focus of Zoroastrianism is underscored by several essential aspects of this religion: 1) the designation of the primary metaphysical properties of the Creation in ethical terms, namely as “good” and “evil”, 2) the title naming the supreme deity “Lord of Wisdom”, 3) the alliance between God and man for the epic task of restoring perfect goodness to the Creation, and 4) the final judgement by which the good are rewarded and the evil punished.  Its moral teachings are encapsulated in the epigrammatic phrase: “Good thoughts, good words, good deed,” a creed repeated by the Buddhist saying, “Think good, speak good, and do good”, the three fundamental acts that determine karma.  This strong orientation toward ethical action that can be understood by reasonable people had broad appeal during a period of growing contacts among the diverse lands connected by the Silk Road.  Zoroastrianism spread east along the Silk Road into northern China, where it enjoyed official status in several northern states (temple remains have been found in Kaifen and Zhenjiang), and west through Persia, Babylonia and, in subsequent periods, the Hellenistic world and Roman Empire.  According to Herodotus, Zoroastrians were at the court of King Astyges of Media. When Astyges was defeated by Cyrus the Great (550BCE), founder of the Achaemenid Empire, they maintained prominence as functionaries in the state bureaucracy.  In spite of being caught on the losing side of a dynastic struggle upon the death of Cambyses (522 BCE), they continued to serve as judges, accountants, and controllers, as well as state priests until the Persian defeat by the Macedonians under Alexander the Great in 335 BCE. Persecuted by Alexander, they sought refuge in northern Media and in Parthia, where they were influential.  When the Sassanids (c. 226 CE) reestablished Persian autonomy, Zoroastrians regained political importance, again serving as judges, bureaucratic functionaries, and state priests, especially under King Ardasir.  It was during this third Persian dynasty that Zoroastrian texts were first committed to writing on a systematic basis.   Following the Sassanids’ defeat by Muslim forces in 642 CE, Zoroastrianism went into gradual decline suffering an unabated series of reverses that marginalized its followers to isolated areas in Persia or forced them to emigrate, as the Parsi community that settled in India near modern Bombay. 

 

            It is argued by a number of scholars that Zoroastrianism had a profound influence on Judaism, especially during the Babylonian Captivity (Nebuchadnezzar 597 BCE to Cyrus 538 BCE) as well as on Christianity and Islam.  It contains a number of elements which are readily identifiable as core monotheistic concepts characteristic of these closely related religions of Semitic origin.  They include the concepts of heaven, hell, and purgatory, a code of ethics, a Last Judgment, a Messiah, his birth by a virgin, a hierarchy of angels and demons, a Satanic enemy, and of course, devotion to a single god.   There are also some general similarities between the lives of Zoroaster and the Prophet Muhammad that merit attention.  Both retreat to a cave to meditate and seek enlightenment, where they receive a divine message.  Following the instructions of their revelations, they set out to reform the polytheistic religion followed by their contemporaries calling on them to worship a single god, only to be ridiculed and attacked.  Their first converts are family members and close friends.  Driven to defend themselves and their followers from violent attacks, they form military bands for self protection.  Through skillful political negotiation they enhance the status and power of their nascent religion.  A synergy develops between the new faith and the birth of a new political empire.  Religion, politics, and economic power enhance each other as together they spread far beyond their original local borders.   

 

            A probable conduit for familiarity with Zoroastrian doctrine and practice in Islam is the emancipated slave, Salman, who was among Muhammad’s closest Companions.  Born in Isfahan, Persia, he had grown up a Zoroastrian.  According to Islamic tradition, his father was responsible for a prominent fire temple, perhaps a head priest.  Literate and cultivated, and intimately familiar with different religious cultures of the Middle East, he converted to Christianity.  While traveling as an emissary for his bishop, he was treacherously sold into slavery, and ultimately became the property of a Jew of the Qurayza tribe in Medina.  Thanks to Muhammad’s established practice of manumitting slaves, Salman was purchased and freed.  He converted to Islam and was instrumental in the Muslim success at the Battle of Ahzab (the “Battle of the Ditch” also called the “Siege of Medina”).  Muhammad, who was very fond of him, made him an honorary member of his family. Muhammad’s wife, Aisha, recounted how he spent long evening hours at the Prophet’s house engaged in conversation about religion.   Muhammad’s familiarity with the Zoroastrians, who were commonly referred to as Magians, is attested to in the Qur’an, where they are identified as monotheists, along with the Sabians, who were probably a sect or population of Zoroastrians also, perhaps from the area around Basra.(4)

 

The believers, the Jews, the Christians and the Sabians—whoever  believes in Allah and the Last Day and does what is good, shall receive their reward from their Lord.  They shall have nothing to fear and they shall not grieve. (2:69; also see 7:85 & 5:69)

 

Indeed, the believers, the Jews, the Sabians, the Christian, the Magians and the idolaters—Allah shall decide between them on the Day of Resurrection. (22:17)

 

In addition to the points of coincidence among the religions cited above and Zoroastrianism, there are other similarities that have special relevance to Islam.  Similar to Islamic practice, Zoroastrians prayed five times a day--at dawn, sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight--and ritual ablations were often performed prior to prayer.  Islamic demonology also shows certain affinities with Persian antecedents.  In the Zoroastrian cosmology Ahura Mazda had a retinue of beneficent emanations similar to archangels and angels and Angra Mainyu a retinue of “Daevas”, “a race of evil purpose.” 

 

“The Daevas chose not rightly, because the Deceiver [Angra Mainyu] came upon them as they consulted, so that they chose the worst purpose.  Then together they betook themselves to Wrath, through whom they afflicted the life of man.” 

(Yasna, 30.6)

 

In Christian doctrine, Lucifer and his companion demons are fallen angels, but

in Islamic metaphysics there is God, the angels, man, and a forth spiritual manifestation called the jinn—familiarized as “genie” in Western folklore.  Jinn could be either good or evil, but it is significant that Muhammad describes Satan as one: “Satan, he was one of the jinn.” (18:50)   When God asks Satan to prostrate himself before Adam, he refuses:

           

He [Allah] said: “. . . Have you waxed proud or were you one of the exalted?”  He [Satan] said: “I am better than he [Adam]; You created me from fire and You created him from clay.”  (38:75-76)     

 

The jinn, like Satan (here called “Iblis”), who are created from fire, hark back to an earlier demonology like that of the Zoroastrians, although dualism in the strict sense is avoided here because Satan is “created . . . from fire” by God.  The jinn were a traditional part of the animistic pre-Islamic system of belief, but the manner in which they were incorporated into Islam suggests a supportive Zoroastrian influence.   

 

            During the third century CE another Persian prophet, Mani (c. 210-276 CE), founded a new religion known to modern readers as Manichaeism.  Having received divine revelation in his youth from a spirit he described as his “twin”, his “double”, his “Divine Self”, he claimed to be the last in a long line of successive prophets that included Zoroaster, Hermes, Plato, Buddha, and Jesus.  Following Zoroaster, Mani believed in the dualistic existence of two opposing forces, light and darkness, locked in perpetual conflict; but in contrast to Zoroaster who prophesied the ultimate triumph of good over evil, Mani taught they were equally balanced in power and neither could ever dominate the other.  Given the syncretic predisposition of its founder, Manichaeism incorporated the beliefs of many disparate religions, such as the transmigration of souls from Buddhism, numerous concepts from Neo Platonic philosophy, and Christianity to the extent that he described himself as a “disciple of Jesus Christ.”  He was branded a heretic by Christians, and rejected in Persia by the Zoroastrians priests under Bahram I, who put him in prison where he died awaiting execution.  Mani’s teachings were widely disseminated to the East as far as Tibet and China, and West throughout the Roman Empire.  Due to their tolerance of other religions, the Manicheans collected writings from a wide range of authors and sects.  To this practice is owed the preservation of many manuscripts including apocrypha as well as heretical and pagan works systematically destroyed by Christians.   St. Augustine of Hippo, who was a practicing Manichean for nine years, is perhaps the best known today of Mani’s many followers.  John, the author of the Book of Revelations, who paints the most vivid Biblical version of the war between the forces of good and evil recalls many features of the Zoroastrian/Manichean tradition.  The most notable importance of Manichaeism for the purposes of this paper stems from its syncretism, its practice of religious tolerance, and the concept of progressive revelation across religious lines on a global scale, all of which are recurring themes in the teachings of Muhammad, the Bab, and Baha’u’llah.

 

            The Christians with whom Muhammad came in contact in the Hijaz were primarily Nestorians and Monophysites (Copts are Egyptian Monophysites), sects that were heretical in both Western and Eastern churches.  These sects were essentially outgrowths of disputes among Greek-speaking Christians in the East who were involved in the protracted process of clarifying the inherent conceptual difficulties of the Incarnation of Jesus and the Trinity, especially the relationship between Father and Son, using the sophisticated and highly nuanced language inherited from Greek philosophy.  Words like essence (ousia), substance (hypostasis), nature (physis), person (hyposopon)--all subject to vicissitudes of interpretation--denote some of the major topics of controversy generated by attempts to explain how Father and Son are two but really one, the Son both god and human, and Jesus the son of the Father, but not created by him because both are “co-eternal.”  Further discord was added by the fact that these controversies were being translated into Latin and then back again to Greek in communications between Eastern and Western churches.  Foremost among those led by philosophical reasoning to “mistaken” heretical doctrine is Arias, a Christian of Libyan ancestry, who grew up in Antioch and served as presbyter of a local church in Alexandria.   In his view, the Son was of the same essence or nature as the Father, but not “consubstantial” with him.  The Son was begotten, the First-Born of the Creation: the Father was the eternal Creator and therefore not “created.”  As a consequence, Arias relegated the Son to the status of demigod, half way between man and God, a doctrine that did not square with Roman orthodoxy.  The controversy over Arias’ views became so heated that Constantine, who believed he needed the Church to be unified in order for him to exert control over it as he controlled the pagans through his role as Pontifex Maximus, summoned the First Council of Nicaea (June, 325 CE), which almost unanimously affirmed that Father and Son were both “consubstantial” and “coeternal.”  The Council redacted the Nicene Creed to encapsulate orthodoxy in a brief statement, which was slightly amended by the first Council of Constantinople (381 CE).  It was later modified with controversy in the Sixth Century by the addition of “and the Son” (filioque) in an attempt to combat the Arian heresy, a change which was not officially sanctioned until 1014 CE.  This statement, together with the Apostle’s Creed of the First Century, articulates the essentials of Christian belief and has remained to this day one of the principal unifying documents among Christian sects around the globe.  For those who don’t have it by rote, the entire text is given because of its historical importance.

 

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.  And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.  Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.  And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father [and the Son (filioque)]; who with the Father [and the Son] together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.  And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.  I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.  Amen

 

The schismatic Arias refused to accept the Creed or its doctrine and was promptly banished to Illyria by the Emperor who viewed his heresy as an act of rebellion. 

 

            It is ironic that this same dispute over the nature of the Son—was he “created” by the Father or “coeternal” with him—would resurface centuries later in the debate over Islamic law and the nature of the Qur’an.  There the fault line between “traditionalists”     and “rationalists” erupted in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries with the Qur’an replacing the Son in this dispute.  Restated in these terms, Muslim traditionalists argued that the Qur’an was “coeternal” with God, and therefore not “created,” while the rationalists believed it to be created by God along with the rest of the Creation.  The traditionalists won the power struggle if not the argument, and that victory set the stage for the future development of Islamic law, relegating reason to a subservient level in legal discourse, as shall be seen when we return to this subject later.

 

            The Arian controversy did not die when Constantine banished Arias to Illyria but continued for centuries, often in transmuted or variant forms, primarily in the East, and of these variants the Monophysites and Nestorians are among the more prominent.  As with the Aryans, these sects diverged from orthodox Catholic dogma on the nature and essence of Christ: the orthodox position was that Christ was one person, one essence, and two natures (i.e., one divine and one human); the Monophysite simplified this formula to one person, one essence, one nature; and the Nestorians held the doctrine of one person, two essences, and two natures.  Although these differences seem inconsequential today in an age when dogmatic niceties have negative connotations, they led not just to ostracism and banishment, but to imprisonment and sectarian persecution matched in violence only by that inflicted on Christians by the pagans in centuries prior.  Many of these conflicts had political overtones, to the extent that support of one camp over another was often given to secure and maintain power both at home and abroad.  These two sects were particularly hostile toward each other and through their hostility became politically aligned, the Monophysites, in spite of their heretical doctrine, with the Byzantine Empire and the Nestorians with the Sassanid dynasty in Persia.  This alignment crystallized when the Monophysites drove the Nestorians out of Antioch and Syria into Persia.  There, King Peroz (457-84), following the advice of the Bishop of Nisibis, sought to insure the loyalty of the Christian population within his boarders, long suspected of being a “fifth column” for the Byzantines against Zoroastrian Persia.  The Persian church had already asserted its independence from Antioch and the Byzantine Church at the Council of Seleucia (410 CE).  With Nestorians forced out of their schools and churches in Syria now seeking shelter in his kingdom, Peroz consolidated Christian unity in Persia by driving all non-Nestorians out.  This political maneuver took advantage of the preexisting enmity between the Nestorians and the Eastern Empire, which had acquiesced to the Monophysites’ demand for their expulsion. In this manner, the Nestorians severed the ties which in the past had bound them as Christians to the Emperor in Constantinople.  In like manner, the Byzantines used this same religious division to bolster the loyalties of their allies along the Syrian border by proselytizing the federated Arab tribes, such as the Salihids, who were fanatic Christians.   In 541 BCE, al-Harith, leader of the Ghassanid Arabs on the southern border of Syria, while on a visit to Constantinople, asked the Empress, Theodora, for Monophysite bishops for his tribe, and was granted two.  One of these itinerant bishops, Jacob Baradaeus, is said to have consecrated before his death in 578 BCE, twenty-seven bishops and the in-verisimilar number of a hundred thousand clergymen.  With the vicissitudes of church dogma and politics, the Monophysites were periodically harassed during times of enforced orthodoxy, which also led to increased dissemination of their doctrine through the Arab communities to the south, as in the case of Monophysite monks in the Arab regions of Syria who, during the reign of Justin (518-27 CE), were given the choice between embracing orthodoxy or expulsion.  They, for the most part, chose expulsion and their exodus in turn enhanced the spread of Monophysite teachings among Arab the populations into which they re-assimilated.   As a result, Christianity was widely infused throughout the Arab population which, unlike today, was highly tolerant of religious diversity.  Perhaps the Christian who had the greatest impact on Muhammad’s religious mission was Waraqa b. Naufal, his wife Khadija’s cousin. It was he who counseled him after his first revelation while still in a state of terror after his first visitation by the Angel Gabriel.  One of Muhammad’s later wives, Mariyah, was an Egyptian Copt (i.e., Monophysite) whom he married to strengthen political relations with Egypt.

 

            The Monophysites and Nestorians followed the lead of Arias in so far as they emphasized the human aspect of Jesus over the orthodox western doctrines of “consubstantiality” and the “co-eternal” nature of Father and Son.   In the context of this controversy, Muhammad, or course, would go a step farther and completely deny the divinity of Jesus and reject the doctrine of the Trinity.                            

 

And when Allah said: “O Jesus, son of Mary, did you say to the people: “Take me and my mother as gods, apart from Allah?”  He said: “Glory be to you.  It is not given me to say what is untrue.” (5:116) 

           

  Unbelievers too are those who have said that Allah is the third of three.  For there is no god except the One God. (5:73)

 

Although many Christians revere Mary, no established sect thought of her as a “god.”  Christianity as encountered by Muhammad, however, was a more complex matter.  It was noted previously that the images of Jesus had been brought to Mecca by a Copt Monophysite where both he and the Virgin Mary were worshiped as demigods along with the other companion deities in the Ka’ba.   It is these worshipers whom Muhammad addresses in the passage above.  The local idiosyncrasies and varied strains of monotheism that were current in the Hijaz at the time of Muhammad are important, and should be kept in mind as contributory to the cultural milieu in which Islam was born.  The most immediate and influential group of practicing monotheists on Muhammad, however, was not the Jews, Arians, Nestorians, or Zoroastrians, but the Hanifs whom in the early years of his mission he identified as Muslims.

 

            Relatively little is known about the Hanifs.  The pre-Islamic religion of the Arabs, both Bedouin and urban, was generally characterized by ancestor worship, animism, and the deification of natural forces loosely dependent on a Supreme Creator,  Al-ilah (literally “the god”), hence Allah.  His “daughters” referred to in the Qur’an as al-Lat and al-‘Uzza, may have represented the two phases of Venus or “Morning Star” and “Evening Star”, while the third, Manat, was identified with destiny.  In the Hellenized Nabataean city of Petra, which had come under Roman control during the reign of Trajan, al-Lat was goddess of spring and fertility who became identified with the Greco-Roman Athena/Minerva, al-Uzza with Aphrodite/Venus, and Manat with Nemesis.  Upon the ascendancy of Christianity in the Empire after Constantine (Emperor, 306-337 CE), the Judeo-Christian tradition supplanted the Greco-Roman pantheon in influence and infused Arab culture with a new sense of identity over the course of the next three centuries.  With the accelerated diffusion of Biblical texts throughout Arab lands, Arabs found a biblical context for their genealogy which traced back to Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, born to Hagar, the handmaiden of his then barren wife, Sarah.  The pivotal passage asserting this connection is from Genesis, which recounts how God protected Ishmael and Hagar in the desert after being cast out by Abraham at Sarah’s insistence.  It is cited at length due to its importance.

 

And the angel of the Lord said to her [Hagar], “Behold, you are with child, and shall bear a son; you shall cal his name Ishmael [literally “God hears”]; because the Lord has given heed to your affliction.  He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against every man and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.” (Gen., 16)   

            So she [Sarah] said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.”  And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son.  But God said to Abraham, “Be not displeased because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your descendents be named.  And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring.”  So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away.  And she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. 

            When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes.  Then she went, and sat down over against him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, “Let me not look upon the death of the child.”  And as she sat over against him, the child lifted up his voice and wept.  And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar?  Fear not; for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is.  Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him fast with your hand; for I will make him a great nation.”  Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the lad a drink.  And God was with the lad, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow.  He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt. (Gen., 21)

 

            Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah.  She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.  Jokshan was the father of Shea and Dedan.  The sons of Dedan were Ashurim, Letushim, and Leummim.  The sons of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida, and Eldaah.  All these were the children of Keturah.  Abraham gave all he had to Isaac.  But to the sons of his concubines Abraham gave gifts, and while he was still living he sent them away from his son Isaac, eastward to the east country.

. . .  Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him [Abraham] in the cave of Machpelah . . .  

            These are the descendants of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s maid, born to Abraham.  These are the names of the sons of Ishmael, named in the order of their birth: Nebaioth, the first born of Ishamel; and Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Misham, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jeur, Naphish, and Kedemah.  These are the sons of Ishamel and these are their names, by their villages and by their encampments, twelve princes according to their tribes.  (These are the years of the life of Ishmael, a hundred and thirty-seven years; he breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his kindred.)  They dwelt from Havilah to Shur, which is opposite Egypt in the direction of Assyria; he settled over against all his people. (Gen., 25.) 

 

In this account, and numerous variants available to them, Arabs found a documented scriptural link between their ancestry and Abraham.  Moreover, God had blessed this ancestry through his active intervention.  The name Ishmael, itself, means “God hears”; God had reassured Hagar, prior to his birth; again, He reassured Abraham that He would “make a nation of the son of the slave woman”; in the wilderness of  Beer-sheba “God hears” (a name pun) Ishmael’s cry and intervenes to save mother and child with water—again He reassures Hagar that He will make Ishmael “a great nation”; as he grows up, “God was with the lad”; Ishmael takes part in the Abraham’s burial; the genealogy of “the twelve princes according to their tribes” derived from Ishmael is spelled out; and a further connection is made between the Arabs and Abraham’s children with Keturah, whose sons were sent “eastward to the east country.”  Moreover, the “twelve princes”, like the twelve Apostles, and the twelve Imams, are linked to the twelve stations of the Zodiac, giving them a transcendent symbolic significance.  

 

            Prior to Constantine, Christians viewed the Arabs as treacherous barbarians, the outcast descendants of the renegade Ishmael, the “wild ass of a man . . . [who raised his] hand against every man and every man’s hand against him.”  In the fourth and fifth centuries, this perception gradually changed in the Eastern Empire, which had become dependent on federated Christian Arab tribes for the defense of its eastern borders against the Sassanids.  Christian Arabs by that time had become active participants in the Eastern Church at all levels and Arab bishops were in ample attendance at the ecumenical Councils of Ephesus (431 CE) and Chalcedon (435 CE).  The fusion of Christian and Arab elements produced many interesting cultural variations.  In the federated tribe of “Udra, for example, Christian spirituality and the Arab concept of  “manliness” fused in a new poetic form called ‘Udrl or ‘Udrite, which was ultimately conveyed through Spain to southern Europe where it contributed to the formulation of the Art of Courtly Love.  In broader terms, the enhanced environment of Arab-Christian interdependence fostered a theological metamorphosis by which the unredeemed “outcast Ishmaelites” were transformed into the legitimate heirs to the patrimony of Abraham.  Written works that elaborate the “Ishmaelite” version of Arab history in considerable detail include the apocryphal Jewish Book of Jubilees (c. 140-100 BCE) and the writings of the ecclesiastical historians Theodoret and Sozomenus from the fifth century CE.  The image make-over within Christendom was paralleled by a similar transformation in the pagan Arab communities where the wide dissemination of Christian and Judaic scripture, both  orthodox and heretical, stimulated interest in the story of the ancestral Abraham and its implications for Arab religious belief which was already infused with ancestor worship.  The Hanif were an integral part of this trend as it was manifested in the Hijaz.

 

            The Hanif who was probably Muhammad’s first source of inspiration was Zayd b. ‘Amr.  A small number of his writings have survived and in them any attentive reader of the Qur’an will detect, as in the following passages, many similarities in subject, treatment, and wording.(5)

 

Am I to worship one lord or a thousand?

If there are as many as you claim,

I renounce al-Lat and al-‘Uzza both of them

As any strong-minded person would.

I will not worship al-‘Uzza and her two daughters,

Nor will I visit the two images of the Banu ‘Amr. 

I will not worship Hubal’ though he was our lord

In the days when I had little sense. 

. . .

I serve my Lord the compassionate

That the forgiving Lord may pardon my sin,

So keep to the fear of God your Lord;

While you hold to that you will not perish.

You will see the pious living in gardens,

While for the infidels hell fire is burning.

 

An indication of the attitude of local Arab Christians to the Hanif is provided by the elegy written by Waraqa b. Naufal b. Asad.   He was reputed to be a former Hanif who had converted to Christianity and translated numerous religious texts into Arabic.  More significant still is the fact that, as noted above, he was a paternal cousin of Muhammad’s first wife, Khadija, his partner in the founding of Islam.   

 

            You were altogether on the right path Ibn ‘Amr,

            You have escaped hell’s burning oven

            By serving the one and only God

            And abandoning vain idols.

            And by attaining the religion which you sought

            Not being unmindful of the unity of your Lord

            You have reached a noble dwelling

            Wherein you will rejoice in your generous treatment.

            You will meet there the friend of God . . . 

 

Here it is noteworthy that a learned Christian would assert that Zayd b. ‘Amr had “escaped hell’s burning oven” and “reached a noble dwelling” because he had been mindful of the “unity of your Lord” and not because he had accepted Christ and the sacraments, the traditional Christian path to Heaven.  It is also significant that Muhammad, in a state of terror and confusion following his first revelation, was taken by Khadija to Waraqa b. Naufal who both reassured and warned him with these remarks:

 

Never did a man come with something similar to what you have brought [i.e., a divine visitation] but was treated with hostility.  If I should remain alive till the day when you [Muhammad] will be turned out [ostracized] then I would support             you strongly.  (Sahih Bukhari, Vol. 9, Bk. 87, No. 111.  The source of this account is Muhammad’s wife, Aisha.)

 

Here again is evidence of a fluidity that blurred clear distinction between Hanif and Christian doctrine when the Christian declares that if he lived he “would support [him] strongly”, just as he had supported Zayd b. ‘Amr in the elegy cited above.   

 

            According to Islamic tradition, Zayd bin ‘Amr objected publicly to the religious practices of the Quarysh leadership in Mecca, especially the polytheistic representation of idols they tolerated in the Ka’ba.  Abu Bakr’s daughter recalled the following anecdote about him: “Asmad, Abu Bakr’s daughter, said that she saw Zayd as a very old man leaning his back on the Ka’ba and saying, ‘O, Quraysh, By Him in whose hand is the soul of Zayd, not one of you follows the religion of Abraham but I.’”(6)  Zayd bin ‘Amr was driven out of town probably by his own relatives(7) and retreated to a cave on Mt. Hira, the same place where Muhammad was first visited by the Angel Gabriel.  Eventually he was forced to leave The Hijaz.  From there tradition reports, he travel to Syria but return to Mecca where he died, purportedly killed at the instigation of the Quraysh, whom he had opposed.  During the early phase of his prophetic mission, Muhammad elaborated the Hanif doctrine of Zayd bin ‘Amr.   In so doing, he assumes the role of a reformer who avoids the doctrinal labyrinth of Judeo-Christian sects and their disputes by returning to the fountainhead of true religion, the bosom of Abraham.  The return to the Biblical patriarch and putative common ancestor of all tribes had wide appeal for Arab society for on the one hand the reverence of ancestors was already established practice while on the other, it gave the ancestry of the tribes scriptural status as a people favored by God distinct from but equal to Christians and Jews.   This simple fact is the key to understanding how Muhammad interpreted the Muslim relationship to the other Biblical religions.  Although he associates himself with the Judeo-Christian prophetic traditions, he does not present Islam as derived from either Judaism or Christianity.  Muslims were more like Hanifs, and as such they were the direct heirs of monotheism as practiced by Abraham.  It is upon the Covenant of Abraham, the first Muslim, with God that Islam is directly founded.

 

Abraham was neither Jew nor a Christian, but a Hanif and a Muslim.  And he was not one of the polytheists. (3:67) 

 

Muhammad, of course, accepted as authentic the covenants of the other biblical prophets.

 

And [remember] when We took from the Prophets their covenant and from you            [Muhammad]    and from Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, son of Mary, too; and We took from them a solemn covenant. (33:7)

 

 But the heritage that matters most is the heritage from Abraham. 

 

And who has a better religion than one who submits himself to Allah, does right and follows the true religion of Abraham the upright one?  Allah has taken Abraham for a friend. (4:125)  

           

Indeed, Abraham was a model, obedient to Allah and upright; and he was not one         of the polytheists.  . . . Allah elected and guided him to a Straight Path.   . . .  and in the Hereafter he will be one of the righteous.  Then We revealed to you             [Muhammad]:  “Follow the religion of Abraham, the upright; for he was not one of the polytheists.” (16:120-123)   

 

The importance of Abraham is symbolized by the Ka’ba, the shrine that, according to Arab tradition, he and Ishmael build at Mecca, “the First house” of worship “founded for mankind,” implying both “earliest” and “first” in preeminence.  

             

Say: “Allah has spoken the truth.  Follow then the religion of Abraham, the upright; he was not one of the polytheists.”  The first House founded for mankind is truly that at Bakka [Mecca], blessed and a guidance to all the nations.             (3:95-96)

           

Allah has made the Ka’ba, the Sacred House, a foundation of religion for all mankind.  (5:97)

 

The building of the Ka’ba was accompanied by the formulation of the “sacred rites” given specifically to the people of the Hijaz by God, as differentiated from those granted other “people of the book”, such as the Jews and Christians.

 

  And while Abraham and Isma’il raised the foundations of the House [Ka’ba], [they prayed]: “Our Lord, accept [this] from us.  Surely You are the All-Hearing, the Omniscient.”

“Our Lord, cause us to submit to You, and make of our posterity a nation that submits to You.  Show us our sacred rites, and pardon us.  You are, indeed, the Pardoner, the Merciful.” (2:127-28)

 

These “sacred rites” specifically inherited from Abraham the “Hanif” included pilgrimage, circumambulation of the Ka’ba, ritual cleansing, fulfillment of vows, and prayer enacted through prostration.

 

And when We appointed for Abraham the site of the House [We said]: “You shall not associate with Me anything [i.e., other deities] and purify My House for those who circle round, those who stand up, those who kneel and those who prostrate themselves;”

And proclaim the pilgrimage to the people . . . during certain numbered days . . .

Then, let them complete their self-cleansing and fulfill their vows and circle round the Ancient House.

And to every nation, We have appointed a holy rite.   (22:26-34)

 

            The purity of the Ka’ba, however, had not been maintained.  During Muhammad’s time, the Quraysh leadership had housed in and around the shrine some three hundred and fifty deities, roughly the number of days in a year, to be venerated and visited during the sacred months of pilgrimage by worshipers from across the Hijaz and beyond.  The Hanif, of course, objected to the pagan defilement of the shrine and protested.  Exactly when and how Muhammad became involved in this movement is unclear, but the pivotal moment was probably the placing of the “black stone,” thought to be a meteorite that is embedded in the wall of the shrine as a reference mark for the ritual circumambulation.  According to tradition, some draperies in the shrine caught fire and damaged the roof.  Before repairs could be effected unseasonable torrential rains damaged the structure further.  The tribal clans of Mecca cooperated in making the repairs, but not without an undercurrent of competition which came to a head when it was time to reset the “black stone.”  Unable to agree on who should have the honor, they decided to leave it to fate and let the next person who appeared at the site choose.  That person chosen by fate was Muhammad.  His ingenious solution was to have a large cloth laid out and the stone placed upon it.  The clan leaders were then arranged around the cloth which they lifted by the hem, and in this fashion carried the stone to its destination where Muhammad himself set it back in the wall.  According to tradition, it was after this episode that his life became increasingly spiritual, a change that led to his visitation from the Archangel Gabriel in the Cave of Hira, and the beginning of his mission as Messenger of God.           

 

The Prophet Muhammad

 

            The Prophet Muhammad is one of the most extraordinary people to have ever lived.  He is, of course, extraordinary as the Prophet and founder of a major world religion which has endured almost a millennium and a half and now claims almost a fifth of the world’s population.  But what is also extraordinary is the range of his other achievements.  He was a talented business man, a successful military commander who unified the Arabian Peninsula, a great political leader, a masterful diplomat, a visionary social reformer, a literary genius who transformed his native language in spite of being “unlettered”, and a devoted family man.  What other historical personage accomplished so much on so many levels? Although many traditions have embellished the life of the Prophet, the essential facts and achievements are for Muslims incontrovertible and beyond rival.  Alexander the Great was backed by the powerful army of his father, Phillip, and the knowledge of his tutor, Aristotle: Muhammad grew up an impoverished, illiterate orphan at the edge of the desert.  For Muslims, this simply begs the question: If God didn’t help Muhammad, then who did?  And how can he have achieved what he did without divine intervention?   It just seems too large an accomplishment for one man in a single human lifetime.     

 

            Within Islam Muhammad’s life has immense importance because it is the ideal example which every Muslim should emulate, even though one must, in the end, fall short.  Moreover, his example is not just a model for emulation; it is the basis of Islamic law (sharia).  The laws that govern civil conduct in Muslim communities are directly or indirectly based on what he wrote, said, did, or what legal scholars think he might have thought, said, or done in given circumstances.  In this sense, the essence of Islam is to follow his example and to know Islam is to know its Prophet.  However, as we have pointed out above, the Prophet is an immensely complex and often seemingly contradictory person.  In the passage cited above from Qur’an 9:1-6, one reads:

           

when the Sacred Months are over, kill the idolaters wherever you find them, take           them [as captives] . . .   If they repent afterwards, perform the prayer and pay the alms, then release them.  Allah is . . . Merciful.  

 

How does one extrapolate from this moment in Muhammad’s life so deeply embedded in  the intertribal wars of The Hijaz, guidance for life in the modern world?   Herein lies the crisis in Islam today, the fork in the road.  In simplified form, it is the dichotomy between “kill” or be “merciful,” violence or peace, Muhammad speaking as military general or Prophet of “Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.” Muhammad’s answer is to be very cautious in interpreting texts; do not, he tells us, “take the words out of context” (15:12) and “as to those in whose hearts there is vacillation, they follow what is ambiguous in it [The Qur’an], seeking sedition and intending to interpret it.” (3:7)  His direction is to take the Qur’an as a whole, and not chose snatches “out of context” to support ambiguous interpretations.  From this higher perspective one can say with certainty that Muhammad, both by word and deed, was a believer in “Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.”  When in doubt, this is the Qur’an’s higher, over arching message.

 

            Muhammad ibn Abdullah (“son of Abdullah”) was orphaned at the age of six when his mother, Amina, died.  His father had died before he was born (c. 570 CE).  Although his immediate family was not wealthy, he belonged to the Banu Hashim clan of the dominant Quraysh tribe which had taken control of Mecca under the leadership of his forefather, Qusayy.  As a lesser member of this most powerful tribe he was cared for by his extended family and protected by its connections with those in power.  At an early age he was employed in the caravan trade and by his early twenties managed the caravans of Khadija, a wealthy widow.  When Muhammad was twenty-five they were married.  Although tradition holds that she was much older than he, she cannot have been very much older since she bore him three sons (who died in infancy) and four daughters.  Her importance in the founding of Islam was second only to her husband’s; without her, it probably would have never happened.  After Muhammad’s transformational experience rebuilding the Ka’ba, he became increasingly devout, spending up to a month each year at the Cave of Hira, fasting and meditating.  There or in the environs, traditions say that during his teenage years he happened upon the Hanif, Zayd bin Amr, whom he offered meat from a pagan sacrifice. The Hanif refused the offer saying: “I do not eat of what you slaughter on your stone altars nor do I eat except that on which Allah’s Name has been mentioned on slaughtering.”(1)  In the same area on Mt. Hira, at the age of forty he was visited in a dream by the Archangel Gabriel.  He was fear-struck by the visitation and doubted his own sanity.  He returned home quickly where he recounted what had happened to his wife, Khadija.  This dramatic moment was recounted by Abu