Prophecy and Power E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 243

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Heralded as the greatest living Arab poet, Syrian-born Adonis is also a staunch critic of violence and despotism in the Islamic world. In this book, he explores the nature of political power in Islam by focusing on the figure of the prophet Mohammed as both a political and a mythical leader. In conversation with Houria Abdelouahed, Adonis examines the Qur'anic intervention in establishing the prophet's power, especially when the text is read based on faith and not reason. The authors discuss the historical developments before and after the prophet's death, which established the power of the Caliph or the leader as absolute. The second part of the book examines the consequences of these developments in the Arab and Islamic world today, where this 'tyrannical' understanding of power continues to hold sway. The authors conclude with a call for secularism in the Arab world and a passionate plea for the separation of religion from the political, legal and social spheres.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Epigraph

1 God, ‘The Messenger of Muhammad’?

Notes

2 The

Ghazawāt:

The Violence Involved in the Foundation of Islam

Notes

3 Putting the Text to Work

Notes

4 Saqīfa: Power in a Tizzy

Notes

5 The City of God and Entitlement

Notes

6 Tillage? Woman, the Most Noble of Words

Notes

7 ‘Love’s Capital Is Not to Have Any’

Notes

8 The West of the Enlightenment: What Does It Have to Do with the Orient?

Notes

Epilogue: Leaving the Cave!

Notes

Glossary

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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Prophecy and Power

Violence and Islam II

ADONIS

HOURIA ABDELOUAHED

Translated by Julie Rose

polity

Copyright Page

Originally published in French as Prophétie et Pouvoir. Violence et Islam II © Editions du Seuil, 2019

This English edition © 2021 by Polity Press

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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4214-7

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4215-4 (paperback)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Adūnīs, 1930- interviewee. | Abdelouahed, Houriya, interviewer. | Rose, Julie, 1952- translator.

Title: Prophecy and power : Violence and Islam II / Adonis, Houria Abdelouahed ; translated by Julie Rose.

Other titles: Prophétie et pouvoir. English

Description: English edition. | Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA, USA : Polity Press, [2021] | “Originally published in French as Prophétie et pouvoir. Violence et Islame II (c) Editions du Seuil, 2019.” | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “A penetrating analysis of Islamic power by the greatest living Arab poet”-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020048685 (print) | LCCN 2020048686 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509542147 | ISBN 9781509542154 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509542161 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Violence--Religious aspects--Islam. | Violence in the Qur’an. | Islam and politics--21st century. | Islam and state--21st century. | Adūnīs, 1930---Interviews.

Classification: LCC BP190.5.V56 A355213 2021 (print) | LCC BP190.5.V56 (ebook) | DDC 297.2/7--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048685

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048686

by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL

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Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

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Epigraph

What he wanted was power; in Paul, the priest once more reached out for power; he had use for only such concepts, teachings and symbols as served the purpose of tyrannizing over the masses and organizing mobs. What was the only part of Christianity that Mohammed borrowed later on? Paul’s invention, his device for establishing priestly tyranny and organizing the mob: the belief in the immortality of the soul – that is to say, the doctrine of ‘judgement’.

Nietzsche, The Antichrist

1God, ‘The Messenger of Muhammad’?

H: In Violence and Islam, we tried to explain the failure of the Arab Spring.1 We will pursue our thoughts here about an uprising that occurred at the same time as the rise of Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS and Daesh), whose flag proclaims for all the world to see this testimonial of faith: Allāh rasūlu Muhammad (God is the Messenger of Muhammad). That symptomatic inscription reveals a historic truth we’ll try to unpack. How did God become the Messenger of Muhammad? Which is another way of saying: what exactly is Islamic State the name of?

A: It would be prudent to say first off that we’re not criticizing for the sake of criticizing, and that we refuse to adopt Arab and/or Western political and ideological stances. Our work is an attempt to establish an objective understanding of Islam, from a practical and theoretical point of view, in order to make a distinction between those who read the religious corpus, in particular the Qur’an, with their own interests in mind, and those who read it to get closer to God. We’ll begin by summarizing the principles of Qur’anic exegesis and the way the Qur’an and the ḥadīth2 were constituted, so that our readers can understand the status of the prophet in Islam and the connection Muslims have maintained with the person of Muhammad for fifteen centuries. So we’ll be tackling the task of considering Muhammad the man as absolute (ultimate, supreme) authority. This is how we understand the phrase used by IS, ‘God is the Messenger of Muhammad’, which means ‘God wants what Muhammad wants’.

H: The issue of reference is closely connected to the writing of history whereby no distinction was made between historic facts and legends. So we’ll be contributing to the deconstruction of a corpus that has governed us from the moment it was first founded by transforming ‘legend history’, to use Michel de Certeau’s expression, into ‘work history’.

A: As for the title, Violence and Islam, let’s just say that the issue of violence is intrinsically bound up with Islam as an institution: first, Muhammad proclaims that there is no hierarchy between the prophets,3 but at the same time he claims he’s the Seal of the Prophets. Second, proclaiming himself the Seal of the Prophets, he, unlike his predecessors, is the bearer of ultimate truths. Third, and this is the consequence of what I’ve just recalled to mind, Islam, instead of being universal, finds itself split or riven into believers (the faithful) and non-believers (infidels), and, more precisely, into Muslims and non-Muslims.

H: The Seal of the Prophets doesn’t adhere to any kind of continuity, but is all about revisions and excisions. While acknowledging the prophets who preceded him, Muhammad strips other religions of their singularity, if not of their essence, thereby destroying the basis on which those religions rest.

A: Absolutely. And we should examine what the end of prophecy means. Does it stem from a divine decision? And how can we be sure God said those last words to his last prophet? What sense are we to make of a Revelation that was meant to be the closure of prophecy?

H: What sense, indeed, are we to make of a prophecy that announces its own end? We grew up with phrases no one ever questioned. The moment they touched on the prophet of Islam, we internalized them as absolute truths. We never, for instance, looked into the verses that criticized the Jews, the first monotheists: ‘twisting with their tongues and traducing religion’,4 or ‘perverting words from their meanings’.5 In relation to what truth is there twisting? And when it says of Jesus, ‘they did not slay him, neither crucified him’,6 it’s not just the basis of Christianity that is thereby attacked, but the event itself.

A: This points to the huge contradictions that are strewn throughout the Text and that merit a study that’s not just theological but also anthropological and historical. We need to reconsider the relationship between Islam and the other religions of Arabia, to revisit and analyse the conflicts within Islam itself, and also to proceed to a linguistic analysis. That way, we might be able to see how God became a Muslim property. The logic that dominates the Text and the corpus of the sunna7 is this: if God exists, he can only be Muslim. Doesn’t the verse say precisely, ‘The true religion with God is Islam’?8

H: Is that any different from Judaism, which chooses itself a people?

A: It’s very different from Judaism, as the God of Islam has nothing more to say since he’s said his last word to his last prophet, who, towards the end of his life, states: ‘Today, I have perfected my good deeds and chosen [raḍītu],9 for you, Islam as religion.’ And: ‘You are the best nation ever brought forth to men.’10 God thereby becomes part of Islam and not the other way round. This internal contradiction puts Islam in a bind. Because saying that God is a Muslim makes God, and consequently the truth, a possession of Muhammad’s. Where was God for fifteen centuries? How come he didn’t show himself earlier, given that man has been on Earth for millions of years?

H: Adonis! There’s historical time and there’s mythical time. Religion is tied up with the second. And one could retort that God had sent other prophets, well before Islam.

A: It’s good to raise the question because it allows us to clear up a very important point: the verses refer to the Jews, not because of their doctrine, but because they fought Muhammad.

H: In Ṭabarī’s commentary, we read that the Jews perverted their Holy Book,11 but he doesn’t say what the taḥrīf (the perversion of meaning) consists of, or in relation to what. Apart from that, we find ourselves confronting an extremely problematic and very violent act of appropriation in terms of theory because Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, becomes a Muslim.12 The Jewish prophets are given as Muslim and this, even before the advent of Islam.

A: You’re right to talk about violence because Islam, in theory, adopted what came before it but cancelled it out, in practice, at the same time. The religions all became Muslim. Just read the verse we mentioned above: ‘The true religion with God is Islam’.13 As I said a moment ago, God himself became a Muslim. And the world was thus turned into a property of Islam. That goes against the truth, against humankind and against God himself. It’s the height of violence.

H: Yet while cancelling out all that came before it, the Qur’an makes use of Babylonian and Sumerian myths and legends, such as the Flood, which is in the Epic of Gilgamesh. It also took up narratives from the Bible, such as the story of Job, the story of Noah, of Moses …

A: Unlike Christianity, which can be considered a revolution, since it transformed the very idea of God, Judaism doesn’t contain anything new, except the idea of the chosen people. Islam is like Judaism, and the shar‘ (Muslim law)14 is a bit too much like Jewish law for comfort. There are differences in the details, but the core remains the same. Yet Judaism evolved compared to Islam for it became part of Western civilization. We find Jewish intellectuals who don’t believe in the Bible and don’t concede that it’s sacred in any way. This liberty is not available to Muslims. You could even say that the Jewish spirit is more alive and well in the Muslim religion than it is in the Bible. But we need to go further: unlike Jews or Christians, who have the right to change religion, Muslims don’t have the right to change religion. Assassination awaits anyone who is tempted to leave Islam. He is counted among the apostates, and his murder, consequently, becomes lawful.

H: I’d just like to make it clear that, when you say ‘Assassination awaits anyone who is tempted to leave Islam’, you’re actually talking about someone born into a Muslim family or a Muslim environment, or on Muslim soil. Since there is no baptism, the child is born a Muslim, even if the parents are atheists or communists. And he or she is not free to change faith later on in life. From the moment Islam becomes a ‘genetic’ inheritance, there is no freedom.

A: I’ve often talked about this issue, as you know. I see Islam as a political and economic coup d’état – just like Judaism, in fact. Islam needs to go through an internal revolution.

H: Any such revolution comes up against a corpus that produced the figure of a prophet as an absolute authority. And this human corpus itself became an absolute authority. Our task consists in reminding people of this and analysing it.

A: How come the heaven of prophecy closes forever after? And how come the ḥadīth becomes the absolute authority? We might even say that you can criticize God but not Muhammad. Criticizing Muhammad boils down to cancelling out the authority. That’s one reason why the words used to describe Muhammad’s greatness reveal themselves to be a political construct. This latter – which has been promoted to the same rank as the divine Text – becomes the essential origin of the shar‘, and so the sunna15 can then be imposed as the essential principle of jurisdiction and thought.

H: Yet when we manage to get out from under this ban on thinking and we read the corpus with a critical eye, we very quickly see it’s a text that’s human, all too human. The jurisprudence that has governed us to the present day, and which draws largely on the sunna, arose as a way of legitimizing practices that saw the light of day when the religion was founded.

A: But what is the sunna? What is this corpus that was to create such discord between Muslims? Conflicts over the sunna have sparked a political war within Islam. There were a great number of dissident groups in the beginning, when it was founded: seventy, more or less, such as Al-Ḥarūriyya, Al-Qadariyya, Al-Jahmiyya, Al-Murji’a, Al-Rāfiḍa, Al-Jabriyya, Al-Khawārij, Al-Shī’a, Al-Bāṭiniyya … All these groups were exterminated. No other religion has had so many divisions that were literally spread and dominated by the jamā‘a.16 When Shāfi’ī17 says: ‘He who gives his view on the subject of the Qur’an is in error, even if what he says is true’, he says this in the name of the jamā‘a. This rules out the notion that an individual can choose for himself, based on his experience or the extent of his knowledge, for example. Interpretation henceforth requires some kind of a political power. In the eyes of the jamā‘a, the individual has no existence as a free autonomous being in control of himself and of his thoughts.

H: There have also been divisions and schisms within Christianity.

A: Not with the same degree of violence. In Islam, such divisions are over the divine essence.

H: In Christianity, too. Much was written about the issue of the divine essence by the Church Fathers. Tertullian, among others.

A: In Islam, political power has always triumphed. From the moment Islam was founded, civil society has always been under the domination of the political power. So, when people talk, today, about change, it’s not so much about changing the social or political structure as about a succession of individuals exercising power.

H: In Christianity, you also had the despotism of the Church. Only, the West has seen secularization, whereas we come up against something unthought-of, something that cannot let itself be thought, by virtue of the fact that everything that touches either closely or remotely on prophecy is regarded as sacred.

A: In Islam, there is no thinking outside religion. When the verses incite us to reflect, what you have to understand by this is that we need to reflect based on what the Qur’an says. Just as there is no truth outside the Qur’an, so there is no thought outside the Text. Thinking comes down to thinking through the Text based on the Text and not based on the world.

H: Ignorance plays an undeniable role in the maintenance of this lockdown on the Text, and even its idealization. Many Muslims don’t know that the word ḥanīf,18 which refers to their religion, is an epithet that predated Islam and was only applied to Islam by Muhammad much later on. The ḥanīfiyya religion was preached by Maslama – who was actually known as Maslama al-Ḥanafī – in southern Arabia, namely Yemen, which is under bombardment today.

A: Indeed, as a religion ḥanīfiyya was spread widely throughout South Arabia.

H: In today’s Muslim imagination, Muhammad was born a Muslim. Since there’s a ban on thinking, people don’t even ask themselves what a Muslim could possibly have been before Islam came along. Well, the hagiographical texts claim he was wathanī (a pagan). In his excellent book, Muhammad Mahmūd19 cites Al-Kalbī as saying that Muhammad, like the people of his tribe, was an idolater. We read: ‘For the Quraysh,20 Al-‘Uzzā was the greatest god. It has come down to us that the Messenger of God one day said that he’d made an offering to Al-‘Uzzā.’21 Certain ḥadīths cited in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī22 fit in with that.23

A: Of course. Muhammad was born into a pagan context. But do the works make reference to his religious practices from the time before Islam?

H: Laqad ’ahdaytu li-l‘uzzā shātan wa ’anā ‘alā dīni qawmī (I made an offering to Al-‘Uzzā when I practised the faith of my community). That’s a ḥadīth cited by Al-Kalbī and by Al-Bukhārī. The latter goes further, stipulating that Muhammad was a wathanī, whereas other people in Mecca were ḥanafiyyūn. He converted later to ḥanīfiyya.

A: The fact that he was a pagan and that he converted to Islam might encourage Muslims to see this as a positive point: God chose him.

H: Al-Jāḥiẓ24 reports what Muhammad said to Zayd ibn ‘Amrū bin Nufayl: Yā Zayd! Innaka fāraqta dīna qawmika wa shatamta ālihatahum (O, Zayd! You have cut your ties with the religion of your community and you have insulted their divinities). There are two things we might say about that. First, Muhammad defended paganism as a faith and practice in Quraysh. Second, people in his tribe went on to renounce paganism.

A: Muhammad converted to ḥanīfiyya under the influence of Waraqa ibn Nawfal, his wife Khadīja’s cousin, who was a man of immense erudition, a man who knew all about the religions and religious practices of Arabia.

H: The Qur’anic verse fits in with Muhammad’s conversion:

Did we not expand thy breast for thee,

and lift from thee thy burden,

the burden that weighed down thy back?25

The commentator Al-Ḍaḥḥāk26 says that wizr (burden) is the associationism Muhammad lived surrounded by. Ṭabarī, for his part, explains that God expanded Muhammad’s breast, opening his heart to the right path.

A: Muslims can interpret this story as proof of their prophet’s greatness and of his victory over associationism. He is thereby an example to follow. The verse invites people to follow Muhammad’s lead and abandon their old beliefs. The verse is to be applied to the whole of humanity.

H: Qutada27 interprets ‘burden’ as ‘Muhammad’s grave sins which God has erased’.28 We have a verse that says wa wajadaka ḍāllan fa hadā (‘Did he not find thee erring and guide thee?’).29 It’s clear that the change was gradual: Muhammad broke with idolatry, then adopted ḥanīfiyya before finally settling on Islam.

A: Mecca was a meeting place. Muhammad was well up on the customs of the peoples who flocked to Mecca for trade, bringing with them their stories, their beliefs and their religious practices. On top of that, he himself was involved in trade, which necessitated trips to Shām, today’s Syria. This allowed him to get abreast of the civilizational and religious practices of the region.

H: The hagiographers don’t specify the precise moment at which Muhammad dropped paganism for al-Ḥanīfiyya. We read that the Revelation began when he was forty years old, an age that was seen generally and traditionally as the age of reason. On the other hand, we don’t have any precise historical details about his conversion to ḥanīfiyya.

A: All the hagiographies talk about the relationship Muhammad kept up with Waraqa ibn Nawfal. We know that the ḥanīfiyyūn were against paganism and respected Christianity and Judaism.

H: The al-Ḥanīfiyya religion really left its mark on Islam. The pilgrimage existed in al-Ḥanīfiyya, just as prayer did, just as fasting did. Islam would later be defined as the ḥanīfa (pure or original) religion. The Qur’an mentions ḥanīfan ten times, seven times linking the expression to the religion of Abraham. The prophet of Islam was to adopt the term ḥanīf to refer to pure Islam.30

A: We might remember the figure of Maslama. His education was very similar to that of Muhammad’s and he was known as Maslama al-Ḥanafī. The name was changed to Musaylima al-Kadhdhāb, the forger (liar, falsifier).

H: He preached the dīn ḥanīf, the pure religion – the Islam that was to take on the adjective ḥanīf, that was to fight Maslama. Ma‘rūf al-Ruṣāfī31 says: ‘If Maslama had not been defeated, Islam would have had a different face.’

A: This is where it would be interesting to reread the history of Islam and explore the religious and anthropological context of Arabia in its relationship with other countries. Mecca was a great scene of religious and commercial rivalries.

H: Zayd ibn ‘Amrū bin Nufayl, who was a ḥanīf, played a major role in Muhammad’s religious awakening. Zayd refused to make offerings to the divinities of Quraysh. Muhammad, we read, was later to grant him a place in paradise. That’s how he expressed his gratitude to Zayd.

A: These are interesting examples that invite us to look more closely at the way Muhammad’s religious awakening evolved through contact with influential people in Arabia. But we need to go further and question the very notion of ‘prophecy’. What is prophecy? How did Muhammad succeed in creating a Muslim climate? How was he able to create Islam?

H: The theme of being chosen is traditional and perfectly familiar, and prophecy is a very old concept. It already existed among the Sumerians. Today, we no longer ask ourselves the reason for being chosen. Well, the first Arab hagiographers noted the following thing: ‘The Jews have their prophets and the Christians have their prophet. In contrast, the Arabs have no prophet.’ This remark stresses the psychological dimension, namely the narcissism of a people or tribe deprived of the prestige of being chosen in the context of an Arabia haunted by tribal wars.

A: Quite. Islam as Revelation and prophecy can only be explained in light of the social, intellectual and economic conflict of the day. The story of Abraha al-‘Ashram makes sense here. We should add that at the time there was another crisis, namely the fall of Byzantium which left the world without a great power.

H: I seem to recall that there are several versions of the life of Abraha al-‘Ashram. Ṭabarī writes that Abraha built a cathedral at Sanaa (in Yemen) that was meant to compete with the pilgrimage to the Ka‘ba, and that he tried to destroy the latter some time around 570–571. But his army was wiped out by illness and by the miraculous abābīl birds, which dropped stones on the army.32

A: The conflict between Abraha and the Meccans wasn’t religious, it was economic and political.

H: Abraha wanted to get control of Mecca because it was on a trade route between Yemen and Shām. What’s interesting is that pagan Mecca resisted Christianity, which existed in the north and in the south of Arabia. How did Muhammad later manage to convert Mecca to Islam? Was it ‘progress in the life of the mind’, to borrow the phrase Freud used in describing monotheism? Was it a desire for a distant world or, as we’ve suggested, the desire to enjoy the privilege of prophecy?

A: This is connected to the commercial genius of the Quraysh, who managed to generate such power. I don’t think it’s got anything to do with a spiritual need. The history of Islam is devoid of a spiritual horizon. I’ve talked about this often: the mystics, philosophers and poets do not represent institutional Islam.

H: Can we say that there was, nevertheless, a need on the part of the Arabs for a God who transcended the visible world and broke with the divinities man had made up himself?

A: I’d say that the Arabs had a great need for a reference point that could gather them together.

H: Are you alluding to the chaotic state Arabia found itself in – I mean the never-ending conflicts between the Jewish tribes and the interminable wars between the two Arab tribes, the al-‘Aws and al-Khazraj?33 Gathering together, at that point, takes on a political significance.

A: There were indeed many tribal wars and conflicts. The economic strength of the Quraysh was decisive: the people of Quraysh knew how to put their economic genius to work to gain hegemony over the region. And prophecy was the means of consolidating that hegemony. So prophecy is a Qurayshite invention. The passage from paganism to Islam, as you said, was gradual. In the beginning, Mecca kept its paganism and various rites set up a bridge between the old world and the new religion. In this area of the world, where tribalism was powerful, Quraysh triumphed, in actual fact, not from a tribal point of view but in terms of religion.

H: That fits in with the image the hagiographies painted of Muhammad, after the event. Before the coming of Islam, we read, he didn’t get involved in tribal allegiances and he did his utmost to reconcile the tribes whenever they were in conflict.

A: Muhammad managed to take the tribal conflict to another level. And this stance of his, according to which ‘I say nothing, it’s God who says everything’, shows his genius. Because from the moment it’s God that’s doing the talking and expressing himself, Muhammad is no longer part of the conflict.

H: He also drew on the cultural context of Arabia. When he recounts how he heard stones telling him ‘peace and salvation are on you, O Messenger of God!’ or Buhaira stipulating that a cloud protected Muhammad whenever he was on his travels, this appeals to the magical thinking and animism that were so widespread in Arabia at the time.

A: Muhammad knew how to give to a legend a scope and value that were divine. That was his masterstroke. What the Babylonians, Mesopotamians, Greeks, Romans and other peoples saw as imaginary constructions became, for the Muslims, divine truth.

H: There are two different levels: what Muhammad said, and what the hagiographers wove together as narratives and which are constructions created after the event. The problem is that these constructions have never been analysed as such. By way of example, apart from the cloud protecting Muhammad, Buhaira was supposed to have seen the Seal of Prophecy. It’s as if the Seal of Prophecy were material, tangible, palpable, visible. Which is a de-metaphorization of, and a limiting of, the faculty of representation and imagination. Only, since sacralization rules out all questioning, Muslims still give these legends full credence, thereby investing them with the status of celestial truth.

A. Exactly. There was a certain exploitation of the cultural context and intellectual conditions of the time. When Muhammad speaks of jinns,34