by Ulf Wolf
Not so sure about that one.
The Preservation of the Qur’an
From its inception and during the lifetime of Muhammad, Islamic doctrine stressed preservation of the scripture. As a result, one of the earliest expressions of practiced piety focused on studying, reciting, and writing down the scripture.
Also, once Muhammad died, the preservation of the scripture soon became a conscious concern among his companions and successors. As a consequence, historical sources refer to immediate efforts undertaken by successors of Muhammad to collect and properly record (for posterity) all the chapters of the Qur’an.
Within two or so decades after the death of the Prophet, various extant copies of parts of the Qur’an were then collected and collated by a group of close companions of Muhammad known for their knowledge of the Qur’an.
This committee’s task—commissioned by Muhammad’s third successor, Uthman ibn Affan—was to standardize the book, and that committee’s systematic efforts to do just that are the basis of the codified official text currently used by all Muslims.
The thematic randomness of verses and chapters that still characterizes the existing Qur’an tends to prove that those early companions who recorded this official version of the Qur’an were, indeed, primarily concerned with establishing a true replica of the text and made no attempt to edit its contents in order to produce a coherent narrative.
Based on this, most scholars agree that the Uthmanic text genuinely reflects, both in its content and form, the message that Muhammad preached.
Interpretations of the Qur’an
Despite the general consensus among Muslims on the authenticity of the Qur’an, they also concede that many words in the Qur’an can be interpreted in many equally valid ways.
The Arabic language, like other Semitic languages, consists of both consonants and vowels, and the meanings of words are derived from both.
For several centuries, however, the written texts of the Qur’an showed only the consonants—leaving the vowels to guesswork. Consequently, many words can be vocalized in many different ways, with (naturally) different meanings, and allowing for various, all equally legitimate—by the recorded text—interpretations of the Qur’an.
One of the disciplines of Qur’an scholarship is exclusively dedicated to the survey and documentation of acceptable and unacceptable variant readings.
According to Muslim scholars, there are some 40 possible readings of the Qur’an, of which only 7 to 14 are legitimate. The equal legitimacy of various possible interpretations of the scripture is supported by a statement in the Qur’an itself that portray verses as either unambiguously clear, or as ambiguous because they carry a meaning known only to God.
Therefore, barring a small number of unquestionably clear injunctions, the meaning of the Qur’anic verses is rarely final.
While the Qur’an is the primary source of authority, law, theology, and identity in Islam, it is in many cases either completely silent on important Islamic beliefs and practices or it gives only general or vague guidelines without elaboration or clarification. This is, in fact, true of some of the most basic religious obligations such as prayer, which the Qur’an stipulates without details.
To compensate, further details on the teachings and laws of the Qur’an are derived from the sunna, the example set by Muhammad’s life, and in particular from hadith, the body of sayings and practices directly attributed to him.
Hadith
As the second(ary) source of authority in Islam, hadith complements the Qur’an and provides the most extensive source for Islamic law.
The ultimate understanding of the Qur’an is rooted in Muhammad’s life and the ways in which he demonstrated and applied his message. There is some evidence to suggest that Muhammad’s sayings and practices were in response to questions about Islam raised by his companions. Unlike the Qur’an, however, in the early periods hadith was only circulated orally, and no attempts were made to establish or codify it into law until the second century of Islam.
Due to this late effort to collect and compile reports about Muhammad’s sayings and practice, Muslim scholars concede that the authenticity of these reports is not assured.
In fact, history tends to verify that many spurious reports of the views and practices of Muhammad were often intentionally put into circulation by various political and sectarian groups to support their own views and claims.
Other additions emerged from the natural tendency to confuse common practices that predated Islam with new Islamic laws and norms.
The inaccuracy and fading of memory, the dispersion of Muhammad’s companions over vast territories, and, finally, the passing away of the last of these companions has also contributed to the problem of authenticating Muhammad’s sayings and practices—a rather impossible task.
However, in an attempt to place the authority of hadith on firmer—and more believable—ground, Muslim scholars developed several disciplines dedicated to examining and verifying the relative authenticity of various reports attributed to the Prophet.
Both the actual contents of these sayings, as well as the relative reliability of those who transmitted them, were carefully scrutinized, and, by an established scale of believability the hadiths were classified into sets of varying authenticity, ranging from the relatively sound and reliable to the outright fabricated and rejected.
This rather painstaking effort culminated in the 9th century—some 250 years after the death of Muhammad—in the compilation of several collections of what was now deemed to be sound (sahih) hadith. Of six such highly reliable compilations, two in particular are considered by Muslims to be the most important sources of Islamic authority after the Qur’an.
These are Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari (the sound books of Muslim and Bukhari).
Islamic Law
Historically, the assessment and compilation of hadith went hand in hand with the elaboration of Islamic law and the parallel development of Islamic legal theory.
Initially, neither Islamic law nor its procedures were systematically developed or elaborated (although there is little doubt that both the Qur’an and hadith were regularly used to derive laws to govern the lives of Muslims).
However, by the beginning of the 9th century, the legal use of these two sources was systematized and a complex legal theory was introduced.
In its finalized form, this theory maintains that there are four sources from which Islamic law can be drawn. These are (in order of priority) the Qur’an, the hadith, the consensus of the community, and legal parallel.
Invoked only in the absence of explicit rulings in the Qur’an or hadith, consensus confers legitimacy retrospectively on historical practices of the Muslim community. In legal parallel, the causes for existing Islamic rulings are applied by analogy to similar cases for which there are no explicit statements in either the Qur’an or hadith.
By the use of these methods, a vast and diverse body of Islamic law was then laid out covering most aspects of personal and public life.
In addition to laws pertaining to the five pillars, Islamic law also covers such areas as diet, purity, marriage and inheritance, commercial transaction, relationships with non-Muslims, as well as criminal law.
Jews and Christians living under Muslim rule are by the law itself subject to the laws of Islam; however, such communities have traditionally been permitted to run their internal affairs on the basis of their own religious laws and practices.
The Spread of Islam
From its inception, Muslims have seen Islam as a universal code: truths and laws that (must) apply to all of humanity (if not the universe).
Therefore, even during Muhammad’s lifetime, two attempts were made to spread (by military conquest) Islam northward into the Byzantine domain and its capital in Constantinople, and within ten years after the death of the prophet, Muslims had indeed defeated the Sassanids of Persia and the Byzantines, and had conquered most of Persia, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt for the good of their souls
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These conquests continued, and the Sassanian Empire was soon after destroyed and the influence of Byzantium was largely diminished.
For the next several centuries, continued conquest grew Islam into a multinational and very influential civilization.
Islam in the 20th Century
While most of the accepted Islamic religious and cultural traditions were established between the 7th and 10th centuries—considered the classical period of Islamic history—Islamic culture continued to develop as Islam spread into new regions and mixed with diverse cultures.
The 19th-century occupation of many Muslim lands by European colonial powers was a turning point in Muslim history since the traditional Islamic systems of governance, social organization, and education were undermined by the colonial regimes.
Despite the political and ethnic diversity of Muslim countries, the core set of Islamic beliefs continues to provide the basis for a shared identity and affinity among Muslims.
Still, the radically different political, economic, and cultural conditions under which today’s Muslim lives make it difficult to pinpoint what constitutes standard Islamic practice in the modern world, leading many contemporary Muslims to draw on the historical legacy of Islam as they confront the challenges of modern life.
:: Hinduism ::
The word Hindu is derived from the river Sindhu, or Indus. Hindu was primarily a geographical term that referred to India or to a region of India (near the Sindhu) as long ago as the 6th century BCE.
The word Hinduism is an English word of more recent origin. Hinduism entered the English language in the early 19th century to describe the beliefs and practices of those residents of India who had not converted to Islam or Christianity and who did not practice Judaism or Zoroastrianism.
In the case of most religions, beliefs and practices come first, and those who subscribe to these beliefs and practices are recognized as followers of that particular religion.
In the case of the Hindu, however, this relationship is reversed, and the acknowledgment of being a Hindu takes precedence, and it is the beliefs and practices of acknowledged Hindus that constitute the contents of their religion.
While the West knows them as Hindus, the Hindus themselves prefer to the Sanskrit term Sanatana Dharma to name their religious tradition.
Sanatana Dharma is often translated into English as “eternal tradition” or “eternal religion,” but translating Dharma as “tradition” or “religion” gives a limited, even mistaken, sense of the word. Dharma has many meanings in Sanskrit—the sacred language of Hindu scripture—including “moral order,” “law,” “truth,” “duty,” and “right action.”
Possibly the most important element of the Hindu tradition is that it encourages Hindus to seek spiritual and moral truth wherever it might be found, while at the same time acknowledging that no one creed can harbor such truth in its fullness and that each individual must realize this truth through his or her own systematic effort.
Hindu scripture, based on the insights of Hindu sages and seers down the ages, serves primarily as a guidebook, for it is our experience, our reason, and our dialogue with others—especially with enlightened individuals—that provide the means of testing our understanding of spiritual and moral truth.
For ultimately, truth comes to us through direct consciousness of the divine or the ultimate reality. In other religions, this ultimate reality is usually called God. The Hindu refers to it by many names, but the most common name is Brahman.
In most religions, truth is delivered or revealed by a divine source and enters the world through a single agent—Abraham in Judaism, Jesus in Christianity, and Muhammad in Islam. These truths are then wrestled down in scriptures that from there on serve as the main (if not only) source of knowledge and divine wisdom: the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur’an.
For the Hindu, by contrast, there is no single revelation or orthodoxy (established doctrine) by which people may achieve knowledge of the divine or lead a life backed by religious law. The Hindu tradition acknowledges that there are many paths by which a person (seeker) may seek and experience religious understanding and direction. Hinduism also knows (and makes known) that that every individual, whether beggar or king, has the potential to achieve enlightenment.
Today’s Hindu is found primarily in India and neighboring Nepal, with a scattering in Bali in the Indonesian archipelago.
There are also some Hindu communities in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, Mauritius, Fiji, the West Indies, East Africa, and South Africa.
World-wide, Hindus today number nearly 900 million, including about 20 million who live outside India, making Hinduism the third largest religious community in the world, after Christians and Muslims.
Ever since its inception, Hindu thought has transcended geographical boundaries and influenced religious and philosophical ideas throughout the world. Persian, ancient Greek, and ancient Roman thought may well have been influenced by Hinduism.
Three other religions that originated in India are, in fact, closely related to Hinduism: Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, and in the 19th century, German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer read both Hindu and Buddhist scriptures and based much of his thinking on them.
Meanwhile, in the United States, 19th-century writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau drew on Hinduism and its scriptures in developing their philosophy of transcendentalism.
More recently, Martin Luther King, Jr. studied Hindu leader Mohandas Gandhi’s teachings on nonviolent protest, while George Harrison embraced Hinduism during the 1960s.
Millions of Westerners today practice meditation or yoga to achieve relief from stress or physical fitness (if not enlightenment—though there are some that do, of course), indicating a growing Western receptiveness to Hindu practices.
What Is Hinduism
The truth is that Hinduism’s universal world-view and its willingness to accept and celebrate diverse philosophies, deities, symbols, and practices makes it very hard to pin down, define or classify.
In fact, a religion that emphasizes similarities and shared characteristics (Hinduism) rather than differences (Islam, Judaism, Christianity) will always have a difficult time setting itself apart—unless, of course, this very quality is considered its defining feature.
Of course, there are beliefs and practices that may be identified as exclusively Hindu; still, over time the Hindu tradition has concerned itself largely with the human situation rather than the Hindu situation; and instead of basing its religious identity on separating Hindu from non-Hindu or believer from nonbeliever, Hinduism has striven to recognize and embrace any principles and practices that would lead a person to become a better human being and to better understand and live in harmony with Dharma.
Now, there is a crucial distinction between Hindu Dharma and Western sense of religion. In the West a religion is understood to be conclusive—that is, it is the one and only true religion.
Also, a religion—as understood in the West—is as a rule exclusionary: those who do not follow it place themselves beyond salvation.
Finally, our Western religions are as a rule separative—that is, to belong to it, one must not belong to another.
Dharma, on the other hand, does not imply (nor abide by) any of these rules.
The Dharmic Tradition
Dharma (Sanskrit—or Dhamma in Pali) is an all-important Hindu concept. In addition to tradition and moral order, Dharma also signifies the path of knowledge and correct action (as well as law and truth).
So, due to Hinduism’s emphasis on living in accordance with Dharma, anyone who is striving for spiritual knowledge and seeking the right course of ethical action is—in the broadest sense—a follower of Sanatana Dharma.
Since Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism share the concept of Dharma with Hinduism (along with other key concepts), it could be said that all four of these Indian religions belong to the Dharmic tradition.
So, on one level Hinduism ca
n indeed refer to the beliefs or practices of any of the Dharmic traditions, and the word Hinduism retains this sense in some places of the Indian Constitution of 1950. When it comes to religious studies, however, Hinduism is used in a narrower sense to distinguish it from the other Dharmic religions of Indian origin.
How do we, then, identify a Hindu?
A Hindu is someone who does not subscribe to a religion of non-Indian origin, and someone who does not claim to belong exclusively to another religion of Indian origin—Buddhism, Jainism, or Sikhism.
It must, however, be said that this attempt at a Hindu definition produces a rather artificial distinction between Hinduism and other Dharmic traditions, stemming from the effort to place limits on a system that sees itself as universal in order to create a strictly religious identity.
In fact, labeling the other Dharmic traditions as non-Hindu is based more on politics than on philosophy. Indeed, there are greater differences of belief and practices within the wide scope of Hinduism than between Hinduism and the other Dharmic systems.
Indian historian Irfan Habib stresses this point when he quotes an early Persian (tongue-in-cheek) source stating that Hindus are those who have been debating with each other—on common ground—for centuries; for if they recognize one another as somebody they can either agree with or oppose intelligibly, then, Habib’s view is that both must be Hindus.
As an example, despite the fact that Jains reject many Hindu beliefs, Jains and Hindus can still debate and thus Jains are also Hindus; for such discourse does not (and cannot) take place between Hindus and Muslims because they do not share any common ground.
Sanatana Dharma
Evidence from unearthed inscriptions indicates that Hindus were using the word Dharma to name their religion as early as the 7th century BCE.
