The Invisible World – Islam

Fromm’s understanding of the Old Testament Prophet[1]

1. He announces to man that there is God.
2. He dissents and protests when man takes the wrong road, but he does not abandon the people.
3. He is their conscience, speaking up when everybody else is silent.
4. He does not think in terms of individual salvation only, but believes that individual salvation is bound up with the salvation of society.
5. His concern is the establishment of a society governed by love, justice, and truth. He insists that politics must be judged by moral values, and that the function of political life is the realization of these values.
6. He is a revealer of truth.
7. He is at the same time also a political leader, deeply concerned with political action and social justice. His realm is never a purely spiritual one; it is always of this world. His spirituality is always experienced in the political and social dimensions. Because God is revealed in history, the prophet cannot help being a political leader. As long as man takes the wrong way in his political action, the prophet cannot help being a dissenter and a revolutionary.
8. He sees reality and speaks what he sees. He sees the inseparable connection between spiritual strength and historical fate. He sees the possibilities of change and the direction the people must take. He sees the future because he sees the forces operating now and the consequences of these forces unless they are changed.

Excerpts from the books by Alija Izetbegović

“Islam not only acknowledges the authenticity of socialism and Christianity but also insists on it… Islam is a secularized, world-oriented Christianity.“[2]

“Man is unpredictable, inexplicable, dissatisfied, filled with doubts and fear, “curved” as Einstein would say. The philosophy of man, having been long under the influence of linear, Darwinist vision, is now waiting for its turning point, its “Einsteinian shift.” A new understanding of man will relate to Darwin’s, like Einstein’s cosmos relates to Newton’s. If it is true that we rise through suffering and become dull through pleasure, then it is because we have a soul, which distinguishes us from our animal ancestors. Neither is man tailored according to Darwin nor is the universe established according to Newton.“[3]

“There is no amount of knowledge, data, and evidence that, taken individually or all together, could conclusively and decisively testify in favour of a religious vision of the world – none except Revelation. That is why Revelation is not only precious but also the greatest and irreplaceable knowledge.”[4]

“Faith is not a luxury. It is a call, an obligation, a demand. May God bestow on the Islamic nations and the entire world – faith.“[5]

“What in Christianity is ‘love your neighbor as yourself’, in Islam it is ‘believe and do good deeds’. These are the two goals to which Islam calls all people of good will… A person can pray, fast, and give zakat, yet remain empty… Islam has been reduced to a ritual, empty and devoid of essence.“[6]

“When my child asks me: ‘What is Islam?’, I will answer: ‘It is to believe and do good deeds.’ Then I will tell him about namaz, fasting, and Hajj, and at the end I will emphasize: these are rituals. They belong to faith if your soul is filled with faith in God and your behaviour with doing good. Without that, these rituals are as meaningless as any other superstition. Only the Quran is the complete truth about Islam. It is the word of God.  Namaz, fasting, or Hajj (the pillars) are human, all too human.“[7]

“The idea of Islamic renewal, which understands Islam as capable not only of educating human beings but also of ordering the world, will always have two types of people as its opponents: conservatives who want the old forms, and modernists who want someone else’s forms. The former drag Islam back into the past, the latter push it towards an alien future. … Both see Islam only as a religion… the Islamic approach is quite new in one aspect – that of its demand for the conjunction of faith and knowledge, morals and politics, ideals and interests. By recognizing the existence of two worlds, the natural and the interior, Islam teaches that it is man who bridges the chasm between them. Without this oneness, religion tends towards backwardness (the rejection of any kind of productive life), and science towards atheism.

Starting from the view that Islam is only a religion, the conservatives come to the conclusion that Islam should not govern the external world, while the progressive think that Islam cannot govern the world.  Practically – the result is the same.

The main, though not the only, bearer of conservative thinking in the Islamic world today is the class of hodjas and sheikhs, who, contrary to the clear position that there is no clergy in Islam, have organized themselves as a distinct class, that has monopolized the interpretation of the Quran and people. As priests, they are theologians, as theologians, they are inevitably dogmatists and, since the faith was given once and for all, it is, in their opinion, also interpreted once and for all, and it is best to leave everything as it was given and defined a thousand or more years ago. According to this inevitable logic of dogmatists, theologians become fierce enemies of everything new. Further development of the Sharia, as a law in the sense of applying the principles of the Quran to the ever-new situations brought by the development of the world, is equated with an attack on the integrity of the faith. Perhaps there is love for Islam in this, but it is the pathological love of narrow-minded and backward people, whose deadly embrace has almost suffocated the still living Islamic thought.

However, it would be a mistake to think that Islam remained a closed book in the hands of theologians. Ever more closed to knowledge and ever more open to mysticism, theologists have allowed much that is irrational to be written in this book, things totally foreign to Islamic learning, including sheer superstition. It will be immediately evident to anyone who knows the nature of theology why it has been unable to withstand the temptation of mythology, and why it has seen even in this a certain enrichment of religious thought. The monotheism of the Qu’ran, the purest and most perfect in the history of religious learning, has been gradually compromised, while in practice a distasteful trade in belief has emerged. Those who call themselves interpreters and guardians of the faith have made a career of it – a very agreeable and profitable one – and without many qualms of conscience have come to accept a state of affairs in which its messages have not been implemented at all. Theologians have turned out to be the wrong people in the wrong place. Now, when the Muslim world is giving all signs of an awakening, this class has become the expression of all that is gloomy and sclerotic in that world. It has shown itself to be quite incapable of taking any kind of constructive step towards making the Islamic world face up to the adversities which press upon it. As far as the so-called progressives, westerners, modernists and whatever else they are called are concerned, they are the exemplification of real misfortune throughout the Muslim world, as they are quite numerous and influential, notably in government, education and public life. Seeing the hodjas and conservatives as the personification of Islam, and convincing others to do likewise, the modernists raise a front against all that the idea represents.”[8]

“What do Muslims mean in the contemporary world? How far are we Muslim? … We are enslaved… uneducated… poor… divided! … This was the state of affairs which some have called with reason “the night of Islam”. In fact, that night began with the twilight of our hearts… We as Muslims cannot be subjugated, uneducated, estranged from one another. We can only be that as renegades from Islam… What was the position of the Qu’ran at the time preceding the age of stagnation and retreat?

Devotion to the Book did not cease, but it lost its active character while retaining what was irrational and mystic. The Qu’ran lost its authority as law while gaining in sanctity as an object. In study and interpretation, wisdom yielded to hair-splitting, essence to form and grandeur of thought to the skill of recitation. Under the constant influence of theological formalism, the Qu’ran was read less and “learned” (recited) more, while commandments on struggle, uprightness, personal and material sacrifice – harsh and repellent to our inertia – dissolved and vanished in the pleasant sound of the Qu’ranic text learnt off by heart. The Qu’ran is recited, interpreted and recited, then studied and recited again. One sentence is repeated thousands of times in order not to have to apply it once. An extensive and pedantic science has been established on how the Qu’ran should be pronounced so as to avoid the issue of how to practice it in daily life. Ultimately, the Qu’ran has been turned into naked sound without visible sense or meaning.”[9]

“Nothing which can make the world a better place may be rejected out of hand as non-Islamic. To be open to nature means to be open to learning. In order to be Islamic, any solution must fulfil two conditions: it must be maximally efficient and maximally humane. It must therefore reflect the reconciliation of religion and science in its highest form… By promising “religion without mysticism and learning without atheism”, Islam can interest all people, no matter who they are.”[10]