What Kind of Religion Is Islam?

What Kind of Religion Is Islam? May 3, 2004

French historian Alain Besancon raises this question in a fine article in Commentary . He suggests that religions can be classified as either revealed or natural, and asks whether Christians and Jews can regard Islam as either of these. Christians and Jews cannot consider Islam a revealed religion, he claims, because the elements of the Qur’an taken from the Bible are not recognizable to Christians and Jews: “The Abraham of Genesis is not the Ibrahim of the Qur’an; Moses is not Mousa. As for Jesus, he appears, as Issa, out of place and out of time, without reference to the landscape of Israel. His mother, Mary or Miriam, identified as the sister of Aaron, gives birth to him under a palm tree. Then Issa performs several miracles, which seem to have been drawn from the apocalyptic gospels, and announces the future coming of Muhammed.” In contrast to the fundamental historical emphasis of the Bible, the Qur’an is not an historical document: “Muslims also hold that they received a revelation. It is conceived, however, not as part of a historical narrative but as the transmission of an eternal preexisting text. In this transmission, the prophet Muhammad, does not play a role akin to that of Moses and Jesus. He does nothing but receive texts, which he repeats as if under dictation.” Thus, “foreign to Islam is the idea of a progressive revelation.” Even the Jesus of the Qur’an does not reveal or bring anything new: like all other prophets, “Issa is sent to preach the oneness of God.”

Besancon suggests that there are some significant analogies between Islam and Greco-Roman “natural” religion. For instance, “Islamic civilization is the civilization of the good life, and it offers a certain latitude in the realm of sensory pleasure. Asceticism is foreign to the spirit of Islam. There is a Muslim spirit of carpe diem, a this-worldly contentment that often fascinated Christians who may have seen in it a dim echo of the ancient, classical world.” Also, “In concordance with natural religion . . . Muslim religious life offers more than one model of piety. For the truly devout, two ways are open, just as in the Greco-Roman world: philosophy (Arab falsafa, itself heavily impregnated with neo-Platonism) and mysticism. Less rigorous souls, with the help of the law and moderate observance of the ‘five pillars’ of Islam, can adhere to a mild but perfectly sufficient religious regimen.”

Yet, Islam is not exactly a natural religion either. Instead, Islam represents a third type of religion, one that doesn’t fit easily into the categories of revealed or natural. Besancon points to three qualities of Islam that make it hard to classify: first, its “occasionalist” ontology (there are no secondary causes, and for some Muslims the universe is created anew moment-by-moment); its abandonment of history; and its tendency to push religion into areas of life “beyond what biblical religion considers appropriate.” He concludes that “To treat Islam suitable, it becomes necessary to forge a new concept altogether, and one that is difficult to grasp ?Enamely, an idolatry of the God of Israel. To put it another way, Islam may be thought of as the natural religion of the revealed God.”

Much food for thought here. Besancon raises precisely the question I’ve tried to raise in an article on Islam (submitted to a theological journal; if accepted, I’ll post bibliographical information here), namely, How does Islam fit into redemptive history? Can we find a place for such a religion, which has persisted and threatened Christendom for well over a millennium? My answer to that question differs from Besancon’s in a crucial respect: I believe that God raised up Islam to be a mirror to Christendom, in which we see our own flaws and corruptions. Besancon actually betrays one of these corruptions in his comments about the “domain” of religious life according to the Bible. According to his account, Christianity teaches that “man is responsible for conducting his affairs within the framework of a universe ?Enatural, social, political – that operates by internally consistent rules. The performance of one’s religious and moral duties is thus confined to a rationally definable area.” That is not, I believe, what Christianity teaches at all, for Besancon has made the existence of a “secular” space an essential feature of Christian faith. On the contrary, here is something that we can learn from Islam ?Ethat in fact there is no secular space, and that religious duties must be “pushed beyond” the “rationally definable area” provided by modernity.


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