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The Muslim Religion and the West
| Article
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18950 |
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Section : |
EDITORIAL
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1991 |
555 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
Ever since the Salman Rushdie affair, the typical educated professional person has been wondering whether the Muslim religion is the same sort of religion as Judaism and Christianity or different in crucial respects. This month The World & I presents a symposium on this topic.
Religion in general, and the Muslim religion in particular, fall outside my area of knowledge. Yet I admit to being trouble by the same questions and I do not believe that they are answered definitively by the commissioned articles. But perhaps there is no definitive answer. Perhaps the matter still remains to be settled by developments within the Muslim religion and communities.
Apart from definitive answers, the Muslim religion differs in certain basic respects from the Judeo-Christian religions. Although European nations long had religious tests for office and had incorporated religious beliefs in their systems of positive law (usury and sabbath day observance, for instance), the Muslim religion incorporates the entire body of civil law into its holy books.
Thus, although the Moorish conquerors of Spain displayed great tolerance of other religions while their Catholic conquerors expelled those they could not convert, it would seem that this tolerance was inconsistent with the concept of a secular state. Tolerance could be practiced toward Christians and Jews provided that they were subjects of a state governed by the Shari'a whereas the intolerance of Christianity, it seems had a much looser linkage to the religion.
There have been Muslim, even Arab Muslim, states in which the Shari'a is not the civil code. They are all under immense internal pressure to adopt the Shari'a. Similar pressures in Israel, for instance, are not only directed toward highly specific matters rather than the whole body of law but they also gain their force from the decisive character of small religious parties in the formation of coalitions and not from popular demand.
Are these differences transient? Will Muslim society evolve with economic development? Perhaps. There are ecumenically inclined Muslim religious figures who lean in this direction. Despite the emphasis in the Koran on submission rather than faith or belief, there are Muslim religious figures who talk of belief.
Yet both its emphasis on submission and the fact that no translation of the Koran is regarded as legitimate
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