Talk:Islam

Started an entirely new article on Islam by editing my lecture notes. This version still requires a lot of cleaning up, which I will tackle over the next few days. Robert Stockman 19:03, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

Made a zillion little edits to add macrons and footnotes, clarifying text, adding detail,and correcting dates as I went. Robert Stockman 19:07, 9 May 2007 (CDT)

Hi, I've made some edits/suggestions which you're welcome to revert. I didn't deal so much with an overarching concern, which is that the voice seems to lean more to a Muslim self-description (emic) rather than a university-level outsider's view (etic). You may want to differentiate the traditional description, based on the Quran and later Islamic sources, from a more historical-critical account. That's why I added 'traditional' to one of the headings. Anyway, it's a full and ambitious article, good luck and hopefully we can help each other out as time goes by. David Hoffman 23:49, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

David, please stop adding Wikipedia stuff. Write original stuff or quote scholarly resources. Nancy Sculerati 00:08, 11 May 2007 (CDT)

Is there a current Citizendium policy on adding bits of material from Wikipedia like this, or a good reason not to?—Nat Krause 18:23, 11 May 2007 (CDT)

Thank you, David, for these edits. Most are very useful. I have smoothed out a few sentences by adding pronouns. I have dropped "traditional" because I don't think my description of the life of Muhammad is traditional at all. That would include reference to miracles, for example. It is "respectful" but as an academic historian of religion, it seems to me that is part of my ethical obligation. I don't depart from academic perspectives; I am not sure there is a single "etic" understanding of Muhammad. More a bit later. Robert Stockman 13:13, 11 May 2007 (CDT)

I apologize I had to dash out of the house before finishing. There is no single emic (insider) or etic (outsider) perspective on this subject, so we have to exercise a certain amount of professional judgment. If you have any specific suggestions about perspective, please feel free to discuss them here. I am still adding material to the article and the Wikipedia article on Islam, which is quite good, has some useful material that needs to be used, so I plan to "mine" it a bit, for ideas at least. An interesting issue is how to resolve different perspectives. Published encyclopedias rely on a single expert's professional judgment, as edited by professional editors. Wikipedia goes quite far the other way, so any little controversy has to be mentioned, just in a neutral way. But mentioning controversies in a neutral ay is not always the best either; some controversies really are controversies to a very small number of people, or are simply not important in a neutral summary of a topic. Islam is a hot-button topic with controversies of this sort. Robert Stockman 16:11, 11 May 2007 (CDT)

Hi. Perhaps I reacted to the life of Muhammad section because of the overall organization. It seems like the later sections are intended to be historical starting with or after The Quran piece. The Muhummad section comes before Beliefs, so somehow it seems set up to be more confessional, like here's the basic religion and then later you read a more analytical-critical history. (Also, Muhammad's life is described at face value as if the Quran is a historical account, e.g. how people felt, what they said.) It would read easier for me if the section at least added "according to the Quran" much more. More importantly, perhaps you should think about maybe placing the Muhammed section within beliefs or within the historical exposition. The M-Station seems like it could go under beliefs. Also, Law and Theo/Phil could be extracted from the historical review, though they do have their own histories. Off the top of my head: Intro, Term, History (incl pre-Islamic context), Beliefs/Practices, Law, Theo/Phil. If history (or other sections) get too long, they can then be summarized here and moved into their own articles. I also was impressed with the quality of the wikipedia article and some other wp material, eg on Islamic thinkers. And I know what you mean about controversies. One controversy that you are starting to deal with is the modern polarization in Islam. Here I like your approach to the 3-prong reaction (provided you have scholarly sources to back it up), but you might want to touch upon the [academic and popular] controversy over how to describe the fundamentalist/Islamicist side, which I think is of high general interest. Anyway, hope you don't mind my stream of consciousness here, take care David Hoffman 21:52, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

David, thank you so much for your additional questions.

I started with Muhammad because he came before the beliefs. The beliefs to some extent evolved after his death; the basic elements were all there, but the description gives the prevailing current understanding, and I suspect (though I am not an expert) that many of the elements of the summary postdate the prophet by a century or two. For example, when I was a lowly teaching assistant at Harvard and I had to give a basic summary of Islam in a course, I gave the five pillars in the "wrong" order and that generated a reaction from the Muslims in the class. The pillars are Qur'anic, but I doubt the order or the specific wording are.

The understanding of the life of Muhammad, similarly, has evolved over time. But the basic facts probably have evolved less. And as I said, if you want to give the pieces roughly in the order they developed (which gives the article a narrative thread; it is always easier to understand something when it tells a story) then you start with pre-Islamic Arabia, describe the life of the Prophet (I use that term because it is a sociological category a la Max Weber, in addition to being a theological term), move on to beliefs (since they existed during Muhammad's lifetime), then talk about succession and Islamic civilization. The civilizaiton section, actually, still needs a lot of development; there is a lot of basic historical information missing.

Regarding "according to the Qur'an," most of the account of Muhammad's life is NOT Qur'anic. It is based on sunnah and hadith, which in term were arranged into biographies within a few centuries of Muhammad's death and then reinterpreted by modern scholars, Muslim and non-Muslim, in the last two centuries. In fact, the details have been footnoted in Montgomery Watt's biogaphy, which many Muslims today would find off-putting. He openly dismisses the notion that Muhammad was a "real" prophet, for example (something I am sure he would not raise if he were writing a summary of the life of Jesus Christ). Since Watt, who wrote almost 50 years ago,western academic scholars generally have written their accounts critically but at the same time more sympathetically. Generally, scholars will not raise the issue of whether Muhammad's revelation really was from God in a modern biography. that issue is bracketed off because, if a religious studies scholar wants to deal with that, he or she will deal with it phenomenologically.i.e., will consider the cases of Muhammad, Rama, and Isaiah (for example) together to define the contours of the concept.

The location of the science., philosophy, etc: Those section need to be lengthened, split off, and re-summarized. By and by.

The modern polarization stuff at the end: I need to add footnotes for that, which comes from one of several books I have (can't remember which, off hand).

I'm lousy with photographs. Anyone want to tackle that?

Oh, p.s. David: I changed your reference to "Islamicist" to "Islamist." The former term refers to someone, such as myself--who is not a Muslim--who studies Islam professionally.

Robert Stockman 08:20, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

On M's life, I put in a sentence to give you a sense of what I had in mind for a more neutral write-up, based of course on your knowledge of the content. On beliefs, I think it's awfully difficult to fit them into a roughly chronological narrative. Even above you struggle with it (saying first they evolve after his death, later that they existed during his lifetime). Plus, as a historian you know that many of the beliefs exist before M, in a sense, and they are reworked, reformulated etc in a new religious framework. I still think you'll limit others (and maybe yourself) from developing the belief section (e.g., mentioning a few medieval and modern interpretations, w/o having to create a separate article) as long as it needs to fit within the present set-up. For instance, jihad is important to explain contextually, as if you've started nicely, but to really explain jihad you need some history -- and already it presupposes some knowledge of what comes later in the chronology. Oh, and thrust & parry on Islamicist  ;-) If you google Islamicist you'll see the extremist meaning is often used (including by scholars , e.g., Islamicist Utopia and Democracy, Lahouari Addi, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 524, Political Islam Nov., 1992). So be careful who you tell you're an Islamicist! (e.g., google: "state department" Islamicist) Your duelling banjo, David Hoffman 10:26, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

By and large, I like your changes and kept them, except for minor rephrasing. Thank you. I agree that a single chronological framework is imperfect and that there will have to be departures from it. For now, I'd rather put it after Muhammad's life and before the rest of the history, but maybe we should move it; I'll consider that idea later. I agree "Islamicist" is ambiguous, but the term is widely used to refer to scholars of Islam, whereas "Islamist" is not, so the latter term is narrower and more precise as a way to refer to an Islamic "fundamentalist" (a term I have other concerns about, since "fundamentalist" disguises more differences than unifies them). Robert Stockman 00:42, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

Christianity as context for article on Islam

More seriously, here's a point that deserves it's own section. In various places you explain Islam in comparison to Christianity. (less frequently, Moses etc) I think this assumes that your readers are either Christian or very familiar with Christianity. It also gives unnecessary primacy to Christianity as the context for the study of religion. (Plus, it might be patronizing in parts, as if readers won't understand w/o the comparison. Still, I agree that explanatory contextualization is useful, but I wouldn't do it this way.) So, I will boldly cut out some of this material. You are welcome to revert (the beauty of wiki) and defend the need for these pieces here. Alternatively, it may make sense to do a short section on comparison of Islam with other religions. David Hoffman 10:32, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

David, I agree with you here. My lecture notes were developed in the context of a section of a course on Islam presented at a Catholic University where the majority of the students were Christian and Catholic (and a substantial minority, I'm glad to say, were Muslim). These comparisons work better in a classroom than in an encyclopedia article and I had been toying with taking them out altogether. Eventually sections on comparisons of Islam with all other major world religions will be in order. A lot has been written about its debt to Judaism, as you may know. A section on Islam and Christianity probably would include some of this material. Robert Stockman 00:42, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

Shahada

Congratulations for the work done on this article. About the shahada as a pillar of Islam, I wonder if the way the text is written doesn´t give a wrong idea ("Repeating the shahādah, "there is no God but God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God.") Is it actually repeating the shahada a pillar of Islam or the since belief of the text of the shahada? Or maybe both? --José Leonardo Andrade 09:24, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

Submission to the will of God

I remember several years ago trying to find out just exactly the word "Islam" *means*. Turns out to be "submission to the will of God". Shouldn't this be in a prominent, early part of the article? It's easy enough, perhaps, to figure out what "Christianity" means, at least in a general way, but I've never once met a reasonably well-educated, non-specialist, person who could tell me what "Islam" meant. Hayford Peirce 18:01, 20 June 2007 (CDT)

Hayford, thank you for your comment. The term "islam" is defined in the first section of the article, "definitions," right below the opening paragraph. The term means "submission"; the "to the will of God" is implied only. Robert Stockman 20:19, 20 June 2007 (CDT)

Hi, Robert, thanks for the heads-up. I must have read down as far as the sentence just before the explanation! Geez! Hayford Peirce 21:06, 20 June 2007 (CDT)

Jihad

Arne Eickenberg added material to the jihad section recently, much of it quite useful. I have made some changes, to (1) make the transliteration consistent; (2) to eliminate a few comments that, while ostensively neutral, might not sound that way in some cases; (3) to eliminate a comment that the lesser and greater jihads are not traditional. I have heard Muslims cite hadith about them. I have left the section about the New Testament term agonia even though the above section about Christian language indicates an agreement that we would drop comparisons to Christianity (as we would have to add comparisons to other religions as well if we kept them). I suppose we will need to move the Christian comparisons elsewhere eventually.

Robert Stockman 14:45, 22 August 2007 (CDT)

I'm not an Islam scholar, so I won't edit anything else at first. All the changes are to my mind okay, except for the "lesser jihad" thing. As far as I know the hadith in question here belongs to the non-authorative hadiths. Many publications on the matter. Online e.g. here (see the paragraph "Only one jihad" for a quick overview). Only some writings from the sunnah and the hadiths are considered more or less equal to the Qur'an, and this hadith is not one of them. On the dropping of Christian comparisons: in essence comparisons could be moved altogether, either to a discrete paragraph or to different articles that go deeper into the subject. However, since there are not few theories on the Christian origins of Islam, we should maybe cotton on to the fact that if there are to be religious comparisons with Islam, they will primarily be Christian comparisons. Or are there writings that e.g. suggest a Buddhist origin of the jihad?  Arne Eickenberg  talk 15:54, 22 August 2007 (CDT)

I left the Christian comparison; I think it is useful. Perhaps if someone develops an article on Islam and Christanity, it should go there (much easier to create than an article on Islam and Buddhism). Or perhaps it should stay right where it it. I like the addition, but as you can see from the talk, some have objected to comparisons in the article.

As for the nature of the hadith about the greater and lesser jihads, I will ask some experts. But it is worth keeping to state the other side (possibly with caveats; I'll explore that). On just about every aspect of Islam one can imagine, there are at least two sides, and everyone cites hadith, Qur'an, and history. It is dizzying to wade through it all. The web page you cite clearly is biased, and is authored anonymously by "Carlos" as well, so it is not an impartial source, either. Robert Stockman 08:37, 23 August 2007 (CDT)

"I'm not an Islam scholar, so I won't edit anything else at first." Is Robert Stockman an Islam scholar? My impression is: he isn't, he does not even understand Arabic. It might well be that "it is common" to translate jihad as struggle, but it gives the wrong impression without mentioning the core meaning: effort, endeavor -- ijtihad being from the same root.

This article shows to me that Wikipedia is much better, because there are Muslims who can intervene! Your article is clearly anti-Islam!

Jihad was not seen mostly just as War. From the 8th on, there were Sufi circles stressing the greater importance of the inner struggle -- without necessarily denying the need to fight the exterior enemy. Very interesting in the context of the Zionist bias in US-media: the often stressed difference between a fight to defend your home and the fight to conquer is not mentioned.

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"He it is Who hath revealed unto thee (Muhammad) the Scripture wherein are clear revelations - they are the substance of the Book - and others (which are) allegorical. But those in whose hearts is doubt pursue, forsooth, that which is allegorical seeking (to cause) dissension by seeking to explain it. None knoweth its explanation save Allah. And those who are of sound instruction say: We believe therein; the whole is from our Lord; but only men of understanding really heed." (3:7)

Text here was removed by the Constabulary on grounds of civility. (The author may replace this template with an edited version of the original remarks.)

Through the centuries Muslim knew that the qur'an is true, but that humans can only strive to understand this truth. Ambiguity is part and parcel of Islam, it is no coincidence that Sunnis accept four madhahib as equally right, and Shiites different marja as equally follow-worthy.