<div dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8387/islam-history" target="_blank">http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8387/islam-history</a><br>..... The controversy
right from the moment of the Prophet's last illness before his death.
The controversy over his succession, and what such succession meant,
tore apart the immediate followers of the Prophet, and incited tribal
warfare, fratricide and schisms that since then have provided the
backdrop to Muslims in respect to their own understanding and practice
of Islam as religion and politics.
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>Islam as the Abrahamic vision of man's relation with God </b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>was
supplanted by the theology of political Islam. </b></span>The process began in the
midst of the Prophet's last illness and accelerated with his death. The
majority Sunni sect in Islam coalesced around the view that the
immediate successors of the Prophet, elected or chosen, ought to be the
closest companions of Muhammad, and their rulings in the formative stage
of Muslim history became the standard by which subsequent generations
of Muslims innovated the requirements of ruling an empire.</p>
<p>Those Muslims who dissented from the majority view represented by
Sunni Islam were the Shi'a, or the party of Ali. Ali was a cousin of the
Prophet, raised from his childhood in the Prophet's household and,
hence, the closest companion of Muhammad. Ali was also the Prophet's
son-in-law by marriage to Fatima, his only surviving child.<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b> The Shi'a
Muslims believed Ali was the designated successor of the Prophet because
of their familial ties, but he </b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>was forcefully denied the succession by
those who usurped it immediately following the Prophet's demise.</b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b> Shi'a
Islam evolved as the main minority sect with its own theopolitics within
Islam</b></span>.</p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>The first Muslims were Arabs of the desert, the Bedouins, among whom
Muhammad was born. Their tribalism persisted despite the Prophet's
warnings and it shaped Islam from the first hour of the post-Prophetic
history. Sectarianism within Islam was the unavoidable outcome of clan
and tribal conflicts among the first Muslims,</b></span> and the Sunni-Shi'a divide
became the main cleavage as a result, setting the template of further
divisions as <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">sects proliferated </span>over time in the history of Islam.</b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>Less than a century after the Prophet's death in 632 C.E., his
followers, the Bedouin Arabs, became the rulers of an empire that
stretched from the Iberian Peninsula in the West to the Indus River in
the East.</b></span> There was nothing in the Qur'an, or in the traditions of the
Prophet, to instruct these Arabs on the mechanics of administrating an
empire. <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>They took to imitating the rulers of Persia, whom they defeated,
and adopted the administrative manuals of both Byzantine and Persian
officialdom</b> </span>to rule the lands and peoples they conquered. And in order
to provide legitimacy in the name of Islam to Arab rule <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>in Damascus and
later in Baghdad, the <i>ulema</i> (religious scholars) worked out the details of law and society, the <i>Sharia</i>, derived from the Qur'an and the Prophetic traditions.</b></span></p>
<p>The origin of Islamic culture and civilization lies in<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"> <b>the empire
</b></span>that Bedouin Arabs, through the force of arms, established in a very
short period. This <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>was also the origin of political Islam, which came to
represent the dominant face of Islam as theopolitics.</b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>The fight that erupted, with the news of the Prophet's demise, among
his closest companions</b></span> over succession related to temporal power that
the Prophet had exercised, and not his role as a Messenger of God (<i>Rasul Allah</i>).
This fight <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>culminated in 680 C.E. with the defeat of the Prophet's
grandson, Husayn, killed and decapitated in the field of Kerbala,</b></span> close
to the banks of the Euphrates in Iraq, by the army sent out by Yazid I,
the Ummayad Caliph of the rapidly expanding Islamic empire.</p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>The event in Kerbala</b></span> was a watershed in the history of Islam. Ethnic
Arabs, recently converted to Islam, delivered Husayn's cruel end. Ever
since, this crime, as sordid as the crucifixion of Jesus, <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>has stained
Muslim history with the mark of Cain.</b></span></p>
<p>After Kerbala,<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b></b></span>t<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b><u> it could no longer be said</u><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"> </span></b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)">that Islam, as Abrahamic
monotheism, guided politics ethically along the path of justice and
mercy.</span> Instead, the politics that surfaced upon the death of the Prophet
hardened after the killing of Husayn, and politics henceforth came to
define Islam as faith, culture, and society.</p>
<table style="margin-bottom:5px;max-width:600px" align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td style="max-width:600px;border:1px solid black"><img src="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/pics/699.jpg" border="0" height="303" width="600"><p style="font-size:82%;margin:4px 6px">In
the Battle of Kerbala, depicted in Abbas Al-Musavi's painting, Husayn,
the son of Ali and grandson of Muhammad, was killed along with his
family and all his followers by the armies of the Umayyad Caliphate. It
was the most crucial moment in the split between Shi'a and Sunni Islam.
(Image source: Brooklyn Museum)</p></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>The Ummayads in Damascus, the imperial capital, were the first
dynastic rulers among Arabs in Islamic history. </b></span>The founder of the
dynasty, Muawiyyah, seized power following the murder of Ali, the fourth
Caliph and the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet. With the Ummayads
the institution of the Caliphate, which was an innovation to fill the
void of leadership among the Arabs in Medina following Muhammad's death,
adopted the pomp and pageantry of the Persian and Byzantine rulers. <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>The
Caliphate, from that first century of Islamic history until its
abolition in 1924 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern
Turkey, was the embodiment of Oriental Despotism.
</b></span><p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>Those Muslims who witnessed </b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>the tribal conflicts erupt</b></span> after the
Prophet's demise and recoiled in revulsion from politics turned inward
in seeking union with the divine mystery, as mentioned in the Qur'an.
They<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b> sought solace in the spiritual dimension of Islam and emulated the
Prophetic tradition of withdrawal from the world through prayer and
meditation. They became the founders of the Sufi, or mystical, tradition
in Islam. This was <span style="background-color:rgb(255,229,153)">the "other" face </span>of Islam, <span style="background-color:rgb(255,229,153)">distinct from</span></b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>political
Islam</b></span>.</p>
<p>The physical expansion of the Islamic empire was carried forth by the
armies of the Caliphs. But<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b> the spread of Islam as a faith tradition was
a slow process, carried forth by Sufi missionaries belonging to various
fraternal orders and independent of political rulers of the world of
Islam</b>.</span></p>
<p>There is a world of difference in conversion brought about at the
point of sword of conquering armies, and conversion that results from
the communion of hearts and minds among people. The latter is more
genuine and transformative than the former in every religion. The Qur'an
itself -- verse 49:13 -- warned the Prophet that the acceptance of
Islam by the Arabs of the desert was one of submission in the face of
defeat, and that belief had not entered their hearts. This verse might
be read as forewarning of crimes Muslims would commit through history in
the cause of political Islam, beginning with the killing of Husayn in
Kerbala.</p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>Political Islam from its outset was an inquisition.</b></span> It <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>began with Abu
Bakr, the first Caliph,</b></span> when he subverted the Islamic principle stated
in the Qur'an -- "there is no compulsion in religion" (2:256) -- and <b>
<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">declared war on those Arab tribes who withheld their loyalty from him
following the death of the Prophet. The "Ridda Wars," or the "Wars of
Apostasy," launched by Abu Bakr inaugurated political Islam, and since
then, the precedent he set for Muslim-on-Muslim violence has plagued
Islamic history into our times.</span></b></p>
<p>The role of the <i>a'lem</i> (pl. <i>ulema</i>; religious scholars) was instrumental in the making of political Islam. The <i>ulema</i>
provided legitimacy to the Ummayad Caliphs in Damascus in the period of
intra-tribal conflicts that had led to the killings of the three
Caliphs (Umar, Uthman, and Ali) after Abu Bakr and then the massacre in
the field of Kerbala.</p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>The consensus of the <i>ulema</i></b></span> -- <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>accepted by</b></span> those who eventually came to represent the majority <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>Sunni Muslims</b></span> (the word "Sunni" derived from <i>Sunna</i>,
meaning following the path or tradition of the Prophet) --<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b> was that
political and social order however provided and maintained was
preferable to</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b><i>fitnah</i> (disorder</b></span>). <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>This consensus provided
doctrinal legitimacy to the Caliphs. In return, the Caliphs recognized
the special function of the religious scholars and jurists in the
drafting, codification, and implementation of <i>Sharia</i>, or Islamic laws.</b></span></p>
<p>As a result of this bargain between men wielding swords and men
wielding pens, the foundational arrangement of political Islam was
firmly established. It was an arrangement consistent with the thinking
prevalent in antiquity that religion (<i>deen</i> in Arabic) prescribed the totality of human affairs. This meant, as it was understood by the <i>ulema</i> in the formative period of Islamic history, that <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>the primary function of state and government (<i>dawlat</i> in Arabic) was the establishment of the rule of <i>Sharia</i>.</b></span> As Ann K.S. Lambton in her study, <i>State and Government in Medieval Islam</i> (1981), observed:</p>
<blockquote><p>"The law precedes the state and is immutable at all times
and under all conditions. The state is there to carry out the law. To
disobey a law or to neglect a law is not simply to infringe a rule of
the social order: it is an act of religious disobedience, a sin, and as
such involves a religious penalty."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Once the bricks and mortar of political Islam were set in the making
of the Islamic civilization,<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"> <b>Islam as the official doctrine of the state
and empire clearly demarcated the norm as prescribed in the <i>Sharia</i> and made the <i>ulema</i>
its official guardians. The Islamic state was a nearly perfect
embodiment of<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"> a closed totalitarian system</span> designed by men towards the
end of the first millennium of the Common Era, and any suggestion of
change or adoption of new idea in matters of either religion or politics
<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"> was condemned as <i>bid'ah</i> (heresy deserving punishment).</span></b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>But Muslim dissidents who viewed</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>the doctrine of political Islam,</b></span> or
what might also be referred to as "official" Islam,<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b> as</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>an aberration</b></span>,
<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>went underground and kept the "other" Islam free from the <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">shackles of
politics.</span></b></span> Beneath the hardened features of political Islam, the "other"
Islam of Sufis provided solace to Muslims by tending to their humanity
in the light of God's most favoured attributes of mercy and compassion.</p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>The "other" Islam</b></span>, unlike political Islam, <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>is not bound by time and
space. It is directed to man's inner yearnings for that which is
eternal. It plunges in search of the inner meaning of the Qur'an as the
Word of God, and the assuredness that God's mercy is not denied to any
of His creations.</b></span> The Qur'an states, "We are nearer to man than his
jugular vein" (50:16), reassuring man that he is not alone and God is
not some distant uncaring deity.</p>
<p>Whereas the defining characteristic of political Islam was religion
inseparable from politics, in "other" Islam politics was the corruption
of religion and the dissolution of belief. Hence, from the perspective
of "other" Islam, the <i>Sharia</i> as the corpus of Islamic laws codified by the <i>ulema</i> and sanctioned by the Caliphs was a poor, even corrupt, representation of the divine <i>Sharia</i> (in Arabic, a "path") imprinted in the hearts of all believers as the path to acquiring God's infinite grace<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><span></span></span>.</p>
<p><b><i>ii.</i></b></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>Political Islam and the Islamic civilization it inaugurated was</b></span>
time-bound as a theopolitical system constructed in a certain historical
period or context. It <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>was a construct of late antiquity and the early
medieval era. </b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>Since it was a fixed and closed system, it was invariably
given to decay and dissolution.</b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>During the Middle Ages, the Islamic civilization flourished just as
other civilizations had. </b></span>As Abdus Salam (1926-1996) -- a physicist of
Indo-Pakistani origin and the first Muslim scientist awarded the Nobel
Prize for Physics in 1979 -- observed in one of his lectures,<span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b> the world
of Islam and the world of Christianity (Europe) were more or less at a
similar stage of development around the middle of the seventeenth
century.</b></span></p>
<p>The evidence of this relative equality of the two civilizations,
Salam suggested, could be seen in their technological achievements
represented by the two monuments, the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, and St.
Paul's Cathedral in London, England, completed about the same time. Some
two decades later, Salam observed,</p>
<blockquote><p>"there was also created -- and this time only in the West
-- a third monument, a monument still greater in its eventual import
for humanity's future. This was Newton's <i>Principia</i>, published in 1687."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Newton's monument had no counterpart in India, or anywhere else in the Muslim world.</p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>The Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment and the Scientific
Revolution, led by men of astounding intellect from Leonardo da Vinci to
Galileo and Newton, propelled Europe out of the medieval age into the
making of the modern world. </b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>But Islamic civilization, held together by
political Islam, descended into a death spiral. A century after Newton
published his major work, the Ottoman Empire was turning irreversibly
into a pale shadow of a civilization that once had threatened the powers
of Europe at the gates of Vienna.</b></span></p>
<p>In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and
Washington by the Islamist terrorists of al Qaeda, Bernard Lewis
published <i>What Went Wrong?</i> (2002). It was Lewis's effort to
answer why, and how, the world of Islam had failed to accommodate the
imperatives of the modern world.</p>
<p>"In most of the arts and sciences of civilization, medieval Europe
was a pupil and in a sense a dependent of the Islamic world," wrote
Lewis.</p>
<blockquote><p>"And then, suddenly, the relationship changed. Even
before the Renaissance, Europeans were beginning to make significant
progress in the civilized arts. With the advent of the New Learning,
they advanced by leaps and bounds, leaving the scientific and
technological and eventually the cultural heritage of the Islamic world
far behind them."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The civilizational success of political Islam in late antiquity and
the early medieval era ironically carried within it the seeds of its own
decline and demise. <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>World War I eventually put an end to the
anachronism that the Ottoman Empire had become, and the abolition of the
Caliphate was a formal effort to bury political Islam for good.</b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>Thoughtful Muslims, for nearly a century before the demise of the
Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the Caliphate, had been thinking and
writing about the need for an Islamic reform. Europe's cultural
advancement following the Reformation and Enlightenment held up a mirror
for the Islamic world to follow in similar direction to similar ends.</b></span></p>
<p>In India under British rule, for instance, there were a significant
number of Muslims who painfully recognized the malaise of Islamic
societies and offered remedy for their advancement into the modern
world. Among them the notable were Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-98), the
founder of the Aligarh University; Syed Ameer Ali (1849-1928), jurist
and historian; and Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), poet and philosopher.</p>
<p>One of the most important works was published in 1925 by Ali Abd
al-Raziq (1888-1966), an Egyptian scholar and jurist at Al-Azhar
University in Cairo. In his seminal work, titled <i>al-Islam wa 'Usul al-Hukm</i>
(Islam and the Fundamentals of Authority), al-Raziq pointed out that
there was no basis in the Qur'an and the Sunnah (traditions) of the
Prophet for the institution of the Caliphate.</p>
<p>Al-Raziq was not someone from outside the ranks of the <i>ulema</i>, or a lay scholar unfamiliar with the intricacies of Islamic jurisprudence and theology in the construction of <i>Sharia</i>. He was a student of Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) at al-Azhar, when Abduh had been appointed<span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b> the Grand Mufti of Egypt.</b></span></p><span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>
</b></span><p><span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"><b>Al-Raziq's main contention was based on the distinction between
spiritual and temporal authority. He indicated that the confusion among
Muslims in the period after the Prophet arose from their inability to
distinguish between the Apostolic role of Muhammad and the authority he
derived as the Messenger of God (<i>Rasul Allah</i>), and the Caliphate as a temporal institution.</b></span> Al Raziq wrote:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Muhammad was but an apostle, sent on behalf of a
religious summons, one pertaining entirely to religion and unmarred by
any taint of monarchy or of summons to a political state; and he
possessed neither kingly rule nor government, and he was not charged
with the task of founding a kingdom in the political sense, as this word
and its synonyms are generally understood."</p>
</blockquote>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>Al-Raziq </b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>was denounced by his peers. He was made to appear before the
Council of the Greatest Ulema of Al-Azhar to hear the judgment against
him, as his license to teach and practice law was revoked. Egypt was
then ruled under Britain's supervision</b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>, which likely saved al-Raziq from
</b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>even more severe punishment.</b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>But al-Raziq had stripped away the argument of traditional Islam on the sanctity of the Caliphate, and with it went the idea of <i>Sharia</i>
being sacred. In the half-century following the abolition of the
Caliphate by Mustafa Kemal, Muslims under European rule gained their
independence as new states emerged in the Middle East and elsewhere in
the world of Islam.</b></span></p>
<p>This period in the middle decades of the last century was <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>a period of
intense expectations on the part of Muslims for progress in their
living conditions. A massive effort was invested to make the transition
from the world of pre-Newtonian knowledge and learning to the modern
world of science, industry and democracy.</b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>There was a consensus among the rich and the poor that Islam was not
intrinsically opposed to the modern world. There was a readiness among
Muslims to follow in the footsteps of the West</b></span>.</p>
<p>This consensus was reflected in a well-known and widely circulated
aphorism attributed to Muhammad Abduh. On returning to Cairo from a
visit to Europe, Abduh told his students, "I travelled in the West and
found Islam, but no Muslims; I have returned to the East and find
Muslims, but not Islam."</p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>The transition into the modern world, however,</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>proved immensely
complex and difficult.</b></span> Europe's transition had required several
generations and a couple of centuries to break away from the feudal age
into the modern age. The resistance from those invested in the <i>ancien</i> arrangements of society and culture was immense, and wars that followed were fierce.</p>
<p>Something similar to the European experience was unavoidable for
Muslims in their effort to break from the hold of their traditional
culture. And not unlike the wars in Europe<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>, wars within the world of
Islam since the 1970s are symptoms of <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)">the Muslim struggle to transit
into the modern world.</span></b></span></p>
<p><b><i>iii.</i></b></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>The abolition of the Caliphate in 1924 was the formal announcement of</b></span>
<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>political Islam's</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>death</b></span>. <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>But it refused to die, even as it was laid to
rest. Its twitching was felt in the deep dark interior of the world of
Islam, in remote and unwelcome places such as Nejd inside Arabia.</b></span></p>
<p>Here in Nejd, the medieval theology of Ibn Taymiyyah had struck
roots. It had impressed <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>an eighteenth-century itinerant preacher in the
region, Abdul Wahhab (1703-92), who turned Ibn Taymiyyah's extremist
thinking into an even more rigid and austere doctrine, hostile to all
things inimical to the Bedouin tribal culture of his time and
environment.</b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>Abdul Wahhab's version of political Islam impressed a local tribal
chief, and the marriage of convenience between the preacher and the
tribal leader gave birth to the first Saudi state in the interior of
Arabia. But when it sent tribal warriors to raid towns inside the
frontiers of the Ottoman Empire, it provoked</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>the Caliph of Islam in
Istanbul, on whose orders this nascent state of the Wahhabi ruler was
destroyed.</b></span></p>
<p>But <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>the eventual collapse of the Ottoman Empire</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>provided the
conditions for the rebirth of the Saudi state as a kingdom under Abdul
Aziz ibn Saud in the 1920s. Fortune, in the guise of great power
politics, smiled upon him. He seized the support offered by the British,
in return for influence in a region of strategic importance. The
discovery of oil made the Saudi kingdom a prize to be protected by the
Western powers, first Britain and later the United States, with far
reaching consequences for the rest of the world, and even more so for
the world of Islam and Muslims.</b></span></p>
<p>Any modernizing revolution is hugely disruptive. The movement from
one stage of social development to another is not linear; it is,
instead, filled with zigzags and reversals at every stage of the process
toward an uncertain future.</p>
<p>When a people, however, pushes back against this process of change in
their midst, or seeks to abort it, this reactionary effort pins its
hopes on longing for an idealized past. The Newtonian revolution and the
emergence of modern Europe made political Islam anachronistic.<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>
Wahhabism, as the official doctrine of the Saudi kingdom, was much more
than a return of the most extreme version of political Islam in the
early decades of the last century. It was, and remains, a demented
effort of the most backward people within the world of Islam to remain
culturally tied to antiquity, or <i>jahiliyya</i> (the age of ignorance), which</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>Islam at its origin derided and rejected.</b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>Political Islam in whatever version -- Wahhabism, Khomeinism,
Ikhwanism (the Muslim Brotherhood) and their derivatives -- has no
answer</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>for Muslims on how to make their historic transition into the
modern world.</b></span> It can continue to rage against the modern world until its
civilized inhabitants, including Muslims, have had enough of its
destructiveness and obliterate it.</p>
<p>Then that vision of Abrahamic monotheism, which Muhammad was
mysteriously directed to deliver to his people, will be emancipated from
political Islam.</p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>This message Muhammad was given admonished Arabs for their lack of
faith, provided them with ethics for living honorably, told them in no
uncertain term that the God of Abraham made no distinction among nations
and people who believe in Him, and that on the Day of Final Reckoning,
they need have no fear if they strive in doing what is right.</b></span></p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>
</b></span><p><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>This is the "other" Islam. This is submission to truth, whose most
righteous exemplar was Abraham when his faith was tested by his Deity,
according to the Hebrew Bible, to sacrifice his son. And this is the
faith of Sufis who took Muhammad's message to people in places far
removed from the desert confines of Arabia.</b></span> It is simply, as the Qur'an
reminds (30:30), <i>deen al-fitrah</i>, the natural religion, or
inclination, of man to know his Creator. There is no return of this
"other" Islam; it never went missing.</p></div>