Tolerant and Humane Aspects of Muslim Civilisation

http://muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=384

Tolerant and Humane Aspects of Muslim Civilisation

Muslims, as a minority in Western societies, have come under severe strain
since September 11th, 2001, in particular. The Italian Prime Minister,
just like the deceased Dutch right winger Pym Fortyn and scores more in
their wake, have engaged in open diatribes against Islam, labelling it a
faith of darkness, a negation to civilisation and progress; intolerant
and in-humane, and so on and so forth; a language reminiscent of that
thrown at the faith in the 19th century just prior to, and in the wake
of, the occupation of Islamic lands. Occupation which then was justified
as a civilising mission - for the good of Muslims. Today's media and
numerous and rapidly expanding web-sites keep adding to the stream of
similar derogatory terms. Some writers and sites are more virulent than
others.

The way anti Islamic sentiments are stirred by politicians of most hues,
not just the right wingers, might trigger wider, and violent anti-Islamic
reactions, whose consequences will be beyond future control of civilised
societies.

Of course, in many minds, the Muslims deserve such an end since it is too
often believed that Islam is a basically backward and intolerant faith.
This, of course, is what by and large the current meia stance and most of
the academic writing have made of Islam and Muslims, drowning out the
otherwise very few voices such as those of Prince Charles, who has always
tried to be objective in his views on both Islam and Muslims. Yet,
although demonised, painted as the followers of a faith of darkness and
intolerance, Muslims are in fact, the followers of an intrinsically just
faith.

The myth of Islam as a religion of the sword

Qu'ran III, 128: God has said `.... and those among men who pardon others,
and God loves those who act rightly.'

Aggression or violence by the use of the sword and Islam are nearly always
depicted as co-existent. History though, reveals the complete opposite.
From the early stages of Islam and during the whole of history of the
Caliphate, it has usually followed the sunnah policy of general leniency,
to all, especially the defeated. Hence, the entry of the Prophet (PBUH) in
Makka was followed as Scott says: `with a magnanimity unequalled in the
annals of war, a general amnesty was proclaimed and but four persons,
whose offences were considered unpardonable, suffered the penalty of
death.'

Davenport narrates how in the early stages of Islam, the Prophet (PBUH)
sent a messenger to the governor of Bossa, near Damascus, who was taken
prisoner and murdered by the Christian leader. Three thousand Muslim men
were duly equipped for retribution. The Prophet exhorted them to display
their courage in the cause of The Most High. At the same time, however,
he enjoined them to collect their booty not from the ordinary people, but
from the public treasuries of the conquered state:

"In avenging my injuries, said he, `molest not the harmless votaries of
domestic seclusion; spare the weakness of the softer sex, the infant at
the breast, and those who, in the course of nature, are hastening from
this scene of mortality. Abstain from demolishing the dwellings of the
unresisting inhabitants, and destroy not the means of subsistence;
respect their fruit trees, do not injure the palm, so useful to Syria for
its shade and so delightful for its verdure."The Prophet (PBUH)

The first four caliphs after the Prophet (PBUH) followed exactly
these precepts.

'Be just', ran Caliph Abu Bakr's (632-4) proclamation;

"Be valiant; die rather than yield; be merciful; slay neither old men, nor
women, nor children. Destroy no fruit trees, grain, or cattle. Keep your
word even to your enemies." Caliph Abu Bakr

Under Caliph Omar (634-44), Syria was conquered by the Muslims. One day,
probably early in September 635, as Glubb narrates, the Muslims flooded
into Damascus at dawn. The Byzantine governor surrendered on
terms that all non-Muslims were to pay a poll tax of one dinar. These
terms can be seen to have been of extraordinary generosity. Cities taken
by storm were, in Europe, liable to be sacked, even as recently as the
Napoleonic Wars.

The Muslims had first hand experience of such a fate when their towns and
cities were taken by the Crusaders with many instances of the slaughter
of Muslims who were given no quarter. Thus, in 1098, during the first
crusade (begun in 1096), when the Crusaders took Ma'arrat an'Numan, the
slaughter never stopped for three days so that the Franks killed more
than 100,000 people. Quoting Robert the Monk, following the taking of
Ma'arrat:

"Our men' said the pious and charitable chronicler (Lebon's words)

'walked through the roads, places, on the roofs, and feasted on the
slaughter just like a lioness who had her cubs taken from her. They cut
into pieces, and put to death children, the young, and the old crumbling
under the weight of the years. They did that in groups. Our men grabbed
everybody who fell into their hands. They cut bellies open, and took out
gold coins. Oh detestable cupidity of gold! Streams of blood ran on the
roads of the city; and everywhere lay corpses. Oh blinded nations and
destined to death; none of that multitude accepted the Christian faith.
At last Bohemond brought out all those he had first invited to lock
themselves in the tower of the place. He ordered that all old women be
put to death, and also old men, whose age had rendered useless; then all
the rest he ordered to be taken to Antioch to be sold as slaves. This
massacre of the Turks took place on 12 December; on Sunday; but on this
day not all work could be accomplished; so the following day our men
killed all the rest." Robert the Monk

Radulph of Caen said how: "In Maarra our troops boiled pagan adults in
cooking pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled."
To avoid such a fate, many Muslims were said by a Christian writer to
have jumped down wells to their deaths.

And what happened at Ma'arrat happened in every single town and city taken
by the Crusaders. And yet, even when Muslims were slaughtered en masse,
still they found reserves of unequalled humanity. Finucane tells how in
1221, the defeated Christians were visited by their (Muslim) enemies, who
brought them food to save them from starvation. Such stories of Christian
Muslim cooperation, no matter how transient, humane or justified the
relationship, Finucane also notes, were usually received 'with
incomprehension in Europe'.

Toleration of Difference

In the words of Daniel: 'The notion of toleration in Christendom was
borrowed from Muslim practice'. And Davenport puts it:

'As nothing in the world can cause an Osmanli to renounce his religion, so
he never seeks to disturb the faith of others.To the Muslim doctors (of
the faith) conversions of souls belong to God.'

During the Muslim advance, there were hardly any examples, as was the case
elsewhere, of forceful conversion, even in regions such as North Africa,
which is often argued as a case of conversions by force of the sword.
Forster pointed out, that in North Africa, Islam flourished apart from
reliance on 'political domination' and that its 'votaries' were
'unshackled' by restraints of a Muslim government'. Equally, Voltaire,
although no friend of Islam, still recognised that 'it was not by the
force of arms that Islam established itself in half of our hemisphere,
but instead did so through enthusiasm and persuasion.'

Glubb finds that in religious toleration,

"the Muslims of the seventh century had abstained from persecution and had
permitted Jews and Christians to practise their own laws and to elect
their own judges. Yet nearly a thousand years later, people in Europe
were still being tortured and burned alive for their faith. And in
general, the Ottomans continued the policy of religious toleration which
they had inherited from the Arabs." Glubb

Araya Goubet, too, notes how 'religious tolerance, Islamic inspiration,
permitted the harmonious coexistence of Christians, Moors, and Jews until
the end of the fifteenth century. The dominance of the Christian clergy
led to the gradual exclusion, subjugation, and expulsion of the other
religious groups, starting in 1492 but culminating in 1567 when Philip II
published a decree forbidding Moriscos [Christianised (ex) Muslims] from
using Muslim names and the Arabic language. The Moriscos were finally
expelled in 1609. Ultimately the history of the Iberian people can be
summed up as 'living togetherness' until 'its breaking apart beginning in
the fifteenth century.'

Islamic civilisation and race

With respect to the Islamic view of ethnicity, it can safely be said that
no other faith can show as equal a sense of brotherhood regardless of an
adherent's origins. It sufficed for the intending Muslim to make the
profession of faith to compel equality of treatment from other Muslims.
This was a consequence of the Quranic injunction that piety, conformity
to Qur'anic rules, was the only criteria for the evaluation of a person.
Moral differences between humans were assessed clearly in terms of their
deeds irrespective of their original cultures. It seems significant that
the first appointed caller to prayer in Islam was black. Moreover Islam
called for the freeing of all slaves and indicated that all creation was
to be treated with justice and hence care.

In Islam, simply, and for fourteen centuries, no person was stigmatised
for their colour. The offspring of a non-white mother and white father
was entitled and admitted to full equality, and was not excluded from
high office. From 946 to 968, Egypt was governed by Kafur, a Negro born
in slavery. Whether in tenth century, or today, says Levi Provencal,
there is no lack of coloured people in the ranks of aristocracy or the
merchant classes: this has always been an essential feature of Muslim
worldview.

It is significant that throughout the centuries that acceptance of Islam,
paying zakat, performing prayers and the hajj and observing the
obligatory rules of Ramadan applied absolutely without restriction as to
the participant's origins or circumstances. Malcom X during his Hajj
seems to found th is to be overriding feature, remarking on:

"..the colour-blindness of the Muslim world's religious society and the
colour blindness of the Muslim human society: these two influences had
each been making a greater impact, and an increasing persuasion against
my former way of thinking." Malcom X

In Mecca there were 'no segregationists-no liberals'; indifference to
colour was spontaneous, and for Malcom X this was evidently a shattering
experience: 'I shared true, brotherly love with many white complexioned
Muslims who never gave a thought to the race, or to the complexion, of
another Muslim.'

Political, Economic and Cultural Participation for all

Scott notes, how even in the earliest stages when the first shock of
conquest had passed, 'the overpowering terror inspired by the presence of
the (Muslim) invaders had subsided. They proved to be something very
different from the incarnate demons, which a distorted imagination had
painted them. They were found to be lenient, generous, humane.' People
under the Muslim realm, Scott notes, were enabled to participate in the
benefits of the civilization, almost from the very beginning inaugurated
by their rulers. Indeed, throughomut Islamic rule, whether under the
Arabs, or under the Turks, all minorities benefited from freedom and
equality of opportunities that cannot even be equalled in any of today's
Western powers.

Van Ess notes that there were no imposed ghettos in the Islamic world all
the way down to modern times. Members of the same religious community
often lived in the same quarter for reasons of family solidarity; but
they were not kept apart from Muslims deliberately and on principle. In
Cordoba, there were eight hundred public schools frequented alike by
Moslems, Christians and Jews, where instruction was imparted by lectures.
The doors of the college were open to students of every nationality, and
the Andalusian Moor, Scott adds, received the rudiments of knowledge at
the same time and under the same conditions as the literary pilgrims from
Asia Minor and Egypt, from Germany and France and Britain.

In this very field of scholarship, doors were open to all scholars whether
they were Chinese, Indians, Africans, Europeans, Jews, and all thrived.
Some of Islam's earliest and most prominent scientists at the Abbasid
court, Ishaq Ibn Hunayn and Hunayn Ibn Ishaq were Nestorian Christians.
Thabit ibn Qurrah, the astronomer, was a Sabean. The Bakhishtu family who
held most prominent positions in the court in the ninth century were
Christians, too. And so were the historian-physicist Abu'l Faraj; 'Ali
ibn Ridwan, the Egyptian, who was the al-Hakem's Doctor; Ibn Djazla of
Baghdad, and Isa ibn 'Ali, another famed physicist; and so on. The Jews
had the most glorious pages of their civilisation under Islam, too. If
one just sifts through the hundreds of pages of Sarton's Introduction to
the History of Science, one is amazed at the many names of Jewish
scholars who worked in the midst of Islamic civilisation on all subjects.
Some were not only scholars, but even
occupied some of the most trusted positions in the Islamic jurisdictions.
Maimonides (philosopher-physicist) was Salah Eddin Al-Ayyubi's doctor,
and
Hasdai ibn Shaprut, followed by his sons, held some of the most prominent
positions in Muslim Spain. Nearly all Muslim envoys to Christian powers
were Jews; and most Muslim trade was in the hands of the Jews.

Even when Islamic land was threatened by both Crusaders and later the
Mongols (mid-thirteenth century) so that much of the population was wiped
out (800,000 deaths in Baghdad alone in 1258), minorities, whether Jewish
or Christian (even if allies of the Crusaders) still survived under
Islamic rule to our present day with all their powers, privileges and
wealth intact. This fact is surely a far cry from the stereotyped image
of Islam as the religion of intolerance. Which highlights the true
character of Islamic civilisation, a character that has remained
completely alien to their successors. The Muslims did not attack the
faith and practice of others. Difference of faith is a state with which
Muslims could, and can live.

A Humane Civilisation for all living things

The Quran sura ii, 190-193, clearly sets out the Islamic position with
regard to the use of force: no one must go beyond acceptable limits
because Allah does not like any sort of proactive aggression, physical or
verbal.

The story of Turkish/Algerian corsairs spreading terror on the high seas,
and European coastlines was a political ploy used to justify the conquest
of Algeria by the French in 1830. Earle and Bono, and above all Fisher,
each has debunked this legend. Indeed, piracy was practiced mostly by
Europeans; and there was hardly any pirates left in Algiers by some time
in the eighteenth century as Valensi and Braudel have shown. As for such
captives who allegedly were impaled in their thousands outside the gates
of Algiers, or any other place where the Turkish writ ran, there is none
of such. Pilgrim accounts of the fourteenth century by the Irishman,
Simon of Semeon tell that tales about Christian slaves who were yoked
like animals are not to be believed.

Islam, generally supposed to be a source of cruelty, shows the complete
opposite. Thevenot remarks that one of the teachings of Islam (zakat) is
well observed amongst the Turks, for they are charitable and quite
willingly help the poor, whether they are Turks, Christians or Jews. Some
Turks give their wealth to the poor when alive, others leave, on their
death, large sums to found hospitals, build bridges, caravansaries and
aqueducts. Those who do not have the means spend their time repairing
roads and filling cisterns. Tournefort provides corroborating evidence,
maintaining that apart from individual alms-giving, no nation spends as
much as the Turks do on foundations. The rich visit prisons in order to
free those who have been imprisoned for debts. Tournefort saw that many
families whose properties had been ruined by fires, recovered through
charities. He saw people who visited the afflicted in their homes: the
sick, even when attacked by the plague, were helped by neighbours and by
the funds of religious foundations .

Muslim generosity often strikes many a traveller as being misplaced. Among
the singularities noted by a foreigner in Cairo, Volney mentions the large
number of hideous dogs wandering in the streets and the kites hovering
over houses, uttering mournful noises. He points out that Muslims kill
neither, though both dogs and kites are supposed to be impure. On the
contrary, devout Muslims establish bread and water foundations for dogs.
Thevenot also observes that the charity of the Turks extends to animals
and birds. On market days many people buy birds which they soon set free.
Thevenot noted persons who leave enormous wealth to feed cats and dogs.
They even give money to bakers or butchers for this charitable purpose.
Tournefort says it is a fact that in Istanbul (Constantinople) people are
eager to execute the wishes of the donors by distributing food to animals
in public squares. Benevolence was a form of charity which was commended
by the Prophet as the first of all virtues; a benevolence which, indeed,
is extended to all animals.

Islamic Faith as Source of humanity

From these above instances, it is argued that the Islamic society is far
from deserving the dark image it has been too long painted. The Muslims,
of course, are no super-humans. Many amongst them accomplish terrible
deeds against others, their own, and even to themselves. Most
importantly, the goodness of Muslims as an entity has nothing to do with
the fact that Muslims as individuals are better than others. Far from it;
they are as good and as bad as anybody else. The difference is the faith
itself, its laws and rules, and the changes it makes within individuals
and society, especially when such a faith, and its fundamental law, the
shari'a, an often demonised concept, work. Of course it is easy to pick
on an individual case of strict application of the Shari'a ignoring its
wider positive impact. It is indeed, the shari'a, which insists on the
protection of others including the Christians, the Jews, and others who
live under an Islamic state; so condemning as invalid the whims of any
ruler or individuals. Indeed, any Muslim true to his faith by following
the Shari'a has absolutely no excuse for hurting anyone of a different
faith who had not harmed him; or sought to harm him.

Furthermore, it is Islam, faith alone, that changed people for the better
as is here well expressed by a few illustrations. Thus, when the
Abyssinian king asked them about the new religion, Jaafar, cousin of the
Prophet (PBUH) answered:

"We were plunged in the dark meanders of ignorance and barbarism; we
adored idols; we ate animals that had died of themselves; we committed
hateful things; we wounded the love of our own relations, and violated
the laws of hospitality. Ruled by our passions, we only recognised the
law of the strongest, until God has chosen a man from our race,
illustrious by his birth, for very long respected for his virtues. This
Prophet had taught us to profess the unity of God, to reject the
superstitions of our fathers, to despise Gods of stones and wood. He
commanded us to speak the truth, to be faithful to our trusts, to love
our relations, and to protect our guests, to flee vice, to be kind and
generous towards our parents and neighbours. He has forbidden us from
despoiling women's honour, and from robbing orphans. He recommended us
prayers, giving alms, and fasting. We have believed in his mission; we
have respected the laws and the morale that he brought us on behalf of
God."

Smith expands on this:

"The Dark Ages of Europe would have been doubly, nay trebly dark;
for the Arabs who alone by their arts and sciences, by their agriculture,
their philosophy, and their virtues, shone out amidst the universal gloom
of ignorance and crime.'

.. And it was the same changes Islam brought to others elsewhere. In
contact with Islam, every nation prospered as recognised by Forster, who
praised `the salutary moral influence of Islamism upon its "Negro"
proselytes." Smith

In Conclusion, if those leading the onslaught on Islam believe everything
will be better without the `darkness of Islam' as they put it, they can
be guaranteed, that without Islam, monsters will prevail.

by: FSTC Limited, Mon 13 October, 2003

----------------------------------------------------------------
This e-mail has been sent via JARING webmail at http://www.jaring.my