Revelation and Salvation
Towards an Islamic View Of History
Mahmoud A. Ayoub
Islam is a conscious act of submission of the creature to the will of the creator. I use the words 'conscious act' deliberately to distinguish between inherent islam, which is the law of God for all created things in nature, and voluntary islam, which is the human faith-commitment to affirm the Oneness (tawhid) of God and obey His will. Faith and obedience, however, presuppose knowledge and knowledge requires communication. This communication of the divine will to humankind is what Islam calls wahi, or revelation. Yet revelation is not simply the issuance of edicts which must be unquestionably obeyed. It is rather a relationship of intense involvement of God in human history and of man in the divine challenge as God's viceregent (khalifa) in the earth. [1].
God, the Qur'an tells us, [2] communicates to all creatures what we may call their instincts of survival. He communicates through normative laws to the sun and the moon, to the stars, and to day and night to follow a predetermined course and not to overstep their limits. [3] In this general sense, all things are 'muslims', submitters to the will of God. This universal islam is presented in the Qur'an as a challenge to man's willful rejection of faith. How would you, humankind, reject faith in God when to Him have submitted all that is in the heavens and on the earth voluntarily and by coercion? (3:83). Thus what we term the laws of nature, such as the law of gravity, are according to Islam the ways in which nature expresses its islam to God.
Angels, like the rest of creation, are muslims by nature or, in some sense, by compulsion. They lack the faculties which distinguish man as a volitional being from the rest of creation. Angels cannot disobey God or commit acts of evil and sin. I believe Satan was not an angel even though, under the influence of Jewish and Christian tradition, some Qur'an commentators and tradi- tionists have argued this only as a possibility. [4] Nor is Satan's power to do evil beyond the divine will and decree. He is simply given respite to the day when they (humankind) shall be raised up (15: 28-35). Hence human evil-the only true evil in the world because it is an act of voluntary choice can be overcome by divine guidance which is the task of prophets, the recipients of divine revelation.
Islam insists, both in the Qur'an and prophetic, hadith tradition, that every human being is born with an innate knowledge of God. This knowledge is not so much awareness or information, rather it is a state of innocent faith, a state (fitra) of the original creation expressed anew in every child. 'Every child,' the Prophet is said to have declared, 'is born in the (state) of fitra; then his parents make him into a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian (i.e., Zoroastrian).' In another version of the same tradition, the Prophet adds: 'And if (the parents) are Muslims, then a Muslim.' [5] The Qur'an states, even more precisely, that this state is the fitra in which God created humankind, there is no changing of God's creation (30: 30). Man is therefore created with a primitive but wholesome knowledge of God. The role of the prophets is to guide humanity through revelation to live the full implications of this knowledge.
History is, according to the Islamic view of revelation, the history of God's dealing with humanity through His prophets. Yet revelation in its primordial beginnings belongs to metahistory, the time when we were all in the realm of atoms, ideas in the mind of God. On that primordial day, the Qur'an states, God took from the children of Adam, from their loins, their progeny and made them bear witness against themselves, saying: 'Am I not your Lord?' They answered: 'Yes, we hear and we witness' (7: 172). This primordial act of divine revelation was the covenant which God made with all human beings to 'hear and witness' to His absolute sovereignty and lordship over all creation. The rest of human history continues to echo, through the prophets whom God sent to every nation, this divine challenge. History is, moreover, the stage on which we act out our response to this primordial question.
In yet another Qur'anic verse we read: We have offered the trust (amana) to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refuse to bear it and cowered before it. Yet man bore it, for man is truly wrongdoing, foolish (33: 75). This trust is, according to tradition, divine Oneness with all the implications of this knowledge for human life and history. Man is foolish not because he is unable to bear the trust he voluntarily chose to bear, but rather because he continuously wrongs his own soul by knowingly breaking his covenant with God through the sin of association (shirk) of other things with Him, yet God is All-Merciful and Compassionate. In His infinite mercy, He called man time and again back to Him. This He did through a long series of prophets from Adam to Muhammad whose number was, according to tradition, 124,000.
This divine insistence on our salvation through prophetic guidance implies two important but paradoxical principles. It implies first that man is a sinner, capable of great evil. The second principle is that man is nonetheless God's viceregent in the earth whose ideal goal is prophetic existence. These two principles are dramatically expressed in the Qur'anic portrayal of Adam as the crown of creation before whom angels had to bow down in respectful obeisance. In contrast, the Qur'an portrays Adam and Eve as disobedient sinners begging for divine mercy and forgiveness. [6]
The story of Adam's creation, fall and restoration as related in the Qur'an is an instructive commentary on the biblical account which the Qur'an accepts in its broad outlines. When God decided to create Adam, He announced to the angels: 'I am about to make a viceregent in the earth.' The angels protested: 'Will you place in it one who would spread corruption in it and shed blood while we proclaim Your praise and sanctify You?' Then God told Adam all the names, which may be regarded as the first act of divine revelation to man in history. God then challenged the angels to name the things whose identities He revealed to His viceregent, but they admitted their ignorance and sought God's mercy. 'Praise be to you, we have no knowledge save that which You taught us....' Adam, who was taught by God the art of language with all its symbolism, was higher than the angels. Thus they were ordered to prostrate themselves before him in veneration, not worship; they all did except Iblis (Satan) who refused and was puffed up with pride (2: 30-34).' [7]
In an interesting colloquy between God and Satan, reported in the Qur'an, we see both the reason for man's exultation and for Satan's pride. God asks Iblis: 'What prevented you from prostrating yourself before one whom I fashioned with my two hands . . . ?' Satan answered: 'I am better than he; you created him of clay and created me of fire' (38: 75). [8] Thus God expelled the arrogant Satan from his presence and placed Adam in the garden of Paradise.
Adam, however, was made not for Paradise but for the earth. God therefore gave Satan authority over Adam and his descendants in order that the eternal battle between good and evil should rage on its legitimate stage, earth. Adam was tempted by Satan with eternal life, everlasting dominion and angelic existence. He fell and was sent with his spouse to the earth to exercise their true mission, God's viceregency.
From the beginning, God created the human soul and inspired it with its evil and piety (91:6-7). Thus man is as prone to evil and destruction as he is to righteousness and good deeds. With this choice, however, go sin and repentance, and forgiveness and guidance. Adam did disobey his Lord, but then he received certain words from his Lord and He turned towards him, for He is truly relenting, compassionate (2: 36). Thus Adam sinned and was guided back to God by God through revelation. Adam was both the first sinner but also the first prophet. Every man and woman thereafter carries in him or herself the same potential. This is not to say that every human being is a prophet, but that the goal of humanity is life with God. Nowhere more powerfully and aesthetically has this ideal been interiorized and presented than in the lives and works of the mystics, the friends (awliya') of God, whom we call Sufis.
It has already been observed that every human individual is born in the state (fitra) of innate faith in God as the one and only creator and sovereign lord of all beings. What then, it must be asked, is the role of the prophets in human history? Their role is twofold, first to remind men of their covenant with God, or bring them back to the state of pure faith. Man, according to the Qur'an, is a forgetful creature. The Qur'an was sent, as were other scriptures, from God as a reminder. Indeed, one of the many names of the Qur'an is al-Dhikr (the remembrance). The second task of the prophets, or to be more precise, the prophet-messengers, is to transmit divine precepts or moral imperatives which are to regulate human conduct. In Islam, this is known as the shari'a, or sacred law.
Islam distinguishes between a prophet and a messenger, and between these and the righteous friends (awliya') of God. A prophet is one who receives revelation in dreams and by other indirect means. He may be sent to only a few people and for a specific purpose, or he may be a prophet in himself. In contrast, a messenger is one who receives direct revelation through an angel, or even more directly from God, as was the case with Moses. A messenger, in addition, is a legislator. Every messenger (rasul) is a prophet (nabi) but not every prophet is a messenger. This is because the main distinction between the two rests not on revelation, but on the promulgation and application of sacred laws based on revealed divine principles.
Among the 124,000 prophets, tradition asserts that there were 313 messengers. The Qur'an refers to eighteen, five of whom are known as ulu-al-'azm, or messengers with power or resolve. These are: Noah, the father of humanity after the Deluge; Abraham, the archetypal man of faith in the one God; Moses, the recipient of the Torah; Jesus, the Word of God and His spirit and the recipient of the Evangel; and Muhammad, the recipient of the Qur'an, the seal of the prophets and last messenger to humankind. Moses and Muhammad, however, occupy a special place in prophetic history because they were prophets and statesmen. They did not simply transmit the message, they implemented it in the life of a socio-political order.
Islamic tradition insists that God never left any community without a warner, in order that men should have no argument or contention (hujja) against God after the apostles (4: 165). The question was inevitably asked: What becomes of humanity in times of prophetic interruption (fatra), and even more seriously after prophecy has ceased altogether? Several answers to this question have appeared in the form of minority sects in Islam, some of which, like the Bahais, broke away completely from the community. What may be termed the 'orthodox' Shi'i answer has been more or less tolerated as a fifth way (madhhab) alongside the four official Sunni schools.
Based on a complex system of Qur'an exegesis and prophetic hadith tradition, Shi'i Muslims early in the community's history posited another cycle concentric with that of prophethood and extending beyond it. This is the cycle of walaya, (authority or allegiance) or imama (temporal and spiritual headship) of the Muslim community. The imams must always be physical as well as spiritual heirs to the prophets. With the exception of Jesus whose first heir or viceregent (wasi) was Simon Peter, the imam must be a brother or descendent of the Prophet. The imam may also be a prophet, as was the case of Abraham. [9] But in general, the imamate is higher than prophethood and below apostleship. The imam is the bearer of the knowledge of the prophet whom he succeeds and by prophetic inheritance from one prophet to the next, the imam is also heir to the knowledge of all previous prophets. His task is not to promulgate new laws, rather it is to interpret, safeguard and implement the shari'a of the prophet of whom he is the heir. Like prophets, the imams must be protected (ma'sum) by God from error. They must also manifest miracles as proof of their imamate.
The doctrine of the imamate no doubt evolved as part of the general loyalty of an important segment of the Muslim community to 'Ali (the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet) and his descendents. As a result of complex historical circumstances which cannot be considered here, the Shi'a (followers) of 'Ali and devotees of the ahl al-bayt (household) of the Prophet Muhammad, built an impressive philosophy of history and a tragic ethos around the personalities of the imams. For the purpose of this discussion, it must be observed that while the imams are not recipients of revelation, they are muhaddathun (i.e., spoken to) by angels. [10] More importantly, the imamate is a necessary extension of prophethood. Without it, revelation remains unfulfilled beyond the time of the prophet to whom the revelation was sent. Of course, Shi'i Muslims in all this had the Qur'an in mind. But it was inevitable that a universal doctrine of the imamate had to evolve to fit the Islamic universal doctrine of prophethood and revelation. [11]
I spoke earlier of Abraham as the 'archetypal man of faith'. He exhibits in the Qur'an and Islamic tradition a robust and dynamic personality. More significantly, however, Abraham typifies man's spiritual journey from that primal state (fitra) of innocent faith in God to doubt, then to faith, and finally to absolute certainty. From a contemplative observation at night of the universe around him, Abraham deduced that it must have a lord. He first took the moon, on account of its splendour, to be that Power. But the moon set and Abraham cried with disappointment: 'I do not love those that set.' He then saw the sun, even more luminous and of much greater magnitude. Abraham exclaimed: 'This is my lord, this is greater!' But when the sun also set, he exclaimed: 'O my people, I dissociate myself from what you do' (7: 76 8). Finally, in an outburst of divine illumination, Abraham cried out: 'I turn my face to Him who created the heavens and the earth, a man of pure faith, nor am I one of the Associators [i.e., of other things with God]' (6: 79).
It was after this discovery of the truth by his unaided reason that Abraham received revelation. He discovered God, as it were, then God guided him and granted him the gift of prophethood, then chose him as His intimate friend (khalil) and finally appointed him as the imam (leader) of humankind. It is perhaps not fortuitous that Abraham, the father of prophets and first muslim, left us no specific corpus of revelation. 'The scrolls of Abraham' are mentioned in the Qur'an, [12] but tradition asserts that they were lost. Abraham left no revelation of his own because he belongs to all revelation. He is the hero and maker of revelation-history rather than its guide. The mission of Muhammad and the Qur'an was to call men to the pure (hanif) faith of Abraham, who was neither a Jew nor a Christian but a man of pure faith, a muslim, that is, a submitter to God. [13]
The Qur'an is, for Muslims, the final revelation to humankind. Before discussing the nature of the Qur'an and its relationship to human history, it may be well to say a word about the life and character of Muhammad and the manner of the revelation of the Qur'an to him. Mecca before Islam was a thriving commercial city in north Arabia lying on the trade route between Syria in the west and south Arabia and India in the east. Mecca also housed the ancient shrine of the Ka'aba, which was an important place of pilgrimage and a lucrative source of income for the city. With the rise of material wealth, morals declined so that sensitive men and women rejected the idolatry of their society and its moral turpitude. They either turned to Judaism or Christianity, or privately worshipped God in anticipation of a new prophet who would usher in a new era. It was in this highly charged atmosphere that Muhammad, son of 'Abd Allah, was born in 570 or 71 AD. Muhammad lost his parents in infancy and was cared for by his grandfather, 'Abd al-Muttalib, and when he died, he was cared for by his uncle, Abu Talib. Muhammad was, according to tradition, a man of mild and contemplative nature. At the age of 25, he married a rich widow, Khadija, who stood by him until she died about ten years later. Khadija had a Christian cousin named Waraqa b. Nawfal who may have been well-versed in scriptures. Tradition tells us that Waraqa could read and write both Hebrew and Arabic and that he read the Gospel in Hebrew and translated it into Arabic. At the beginning of Muhammad's prophetic career when he was uncertain of the source and nature of his revelation, he found great support in this Christian man who on seeing him and hearing what he had to say, cried out: 'Holy, holy! Verily by Him in whose hand is Waraqa's soul, . . . there has come unto him the greatest Naimus (law) who came to Moses aforetime, and lo, he is the prophet of this people.' Soon, however, Waraqa died. [14]
Every year, we are told, Muhammad used to leave his home during the month of Ramadan for Ghar Hira, a cave on a mountain outside Mecca. There he spent his nights in devotion and contemplation until one day an angel appeared to him, later identified as Gabriel, the angel of revelation, who communicated the first five verses of the Qur'an: (1) Recite in the name of your Lord who created (2) created man from a blood clot. (3) Recite, for your Lord is most magnanimous, (4) Who taught by the pen. (5) He taught man that which he knew not (95: 1-5). After a brief interruption, revelations continued to come, warning the Meccans of the coming day of judgement and calling them to moral righteousness and the worship of the one and only God. (1) Have you considered him who cries lies to the faith? (2) It is he who repulses the orphan; (3) nor does he urge the feeding of the needy. (4) Woe to them that pray, (5) but are negligent in their prayers; (6) they who act hypocritically, (7) and withhold the utensil (102). In this brief sura of the Qur'an is expressed the entire message of the Book. The message is to have faith in God and manifest this faith through worship and good works.
