Contention One: Ummatic Exceptionalism and the Prospect of Double Humiliation

This piece is the first in a series of contentions making the case of Muslim unity. See series introduction here. 

لا يصلُحُ آخرَ هذه الأمّة إلا بما صَلُحَ به أولُها

“The later generations of this Umma will not succeed except by that which brought success to the early predecessors.”1


Précis.
The Ummatic covenant we have with Allah is an honor and a responsibility; it means that the Umma will not be victorious in this world and, more importantly, in the afterlife except through Islamic unity, through “holding on to Allah’s rope all together.” Personal piety, while absolutely the necessary first step, ought not to be used to cover up, denigrate, or obfuscate our collective obligation, or else, we fear being like the Israelite tribes censured by Allah for “believing in part of the book and rejecting part.”

The Umma as the community of the Final Messenger z is in possession of a divine mandate, which is both an honor and a duty, to stand in witness in relation to humankind. It is to carry on the mandate of the Final Prophet z as the newly chosen Umma, chosen not for a lineage, ethnicity, or identitarian badge but by virtue of its covenant to deliver Allah’s message, embody it, and stand in witness to and against mankind:

وَكَذَٰلِكَ جَعَلْنَاكُمْ أُمَّةً وَسَطًا لِّتَكُونُوا شُهَدَاءَ عَلَى النَّاسِ وَيَكُونَ الرَّسُولُ عَلَيْكُمْ شَهِيدًا

Thus We have appointed you a middle nation, that you may be witnesses against mankind, and that the messenger may be a witness against you.2

This mandate requires strength, leadership, and organization, all of which in turn require political unity. Muslims did stand in witness over humankind for centuries in the past, before a downfall that has left them in no position to do so. What has caused the downfall of Muslim civilization? This question has reverberated through Muslim minds for nearly two centuries, asked as much by earnest reformers as outside observers.

Imported ideas and perhaps lack of courage have so blinkered the visions of many that the easiest answer seems to be the lack of some virtue that one’s favorite Western ideology claims for its success. “(Individual) freedom!” proffers the liberal, “(economic) equality!” contends the socialist, and “gender equality!” proclaims the feminist. Others put all their eggs in the basket of democracy, constitutionalism, robust institutions, or a determined, ruthless strongman like China’s Xi or Russia’s Putin. The answers and solutions continue to proliferate, all of which may have some instrumental value.

The correct answer, the faithful instinctively know however, is always the same: faith. Or to use the Prophet’s z words, when asked to describe the greatest weakness (al-wahn) of this Umma, “excessive love of this world and dislike of death.”3 This is the answer you will hear from the pulpits of the Umma. Given, however, that faith has seventy-some branches, as the Prophet z declared, the challenge always remains to identify, and to know not merely in theory but in the depth of our hearts: which of the branches of faith have we lost, and how may we recover them?

Far from being hidden in riddles, the answer, a reader of the Qur’an cannot but feel, is clear as day, as if shouted from the rooftops. Not only has Allah informed us of it directly, He has also shown it to us in the ways of those given the Book, and hence the divine mandate, before us. In a well-known hadith, the Prophet z warns, “You will surely follow the ways of those before you, inch by inch, yard by yard, so much so that if they slithered into a lizard-hole, so will you.” “Do you mean the Christians and the Jews, O Messenger of Allah?” they asked. “Who else?” he replied.4 By warning us of our likes in the past, the Qur’an lays bare the pitfalls of the future; the trials, temptations, and sources of renewal and strength. Like all revivals of the past, we too must start by returning to Allah’s words.

Learning from Past Nations: The Imperative of Political Unity & Solidarity

The following is an explicit Qur’anic account of why Allah punished a people, whom He had once favored with guidance and prophets, for their cardinal sin:

وَإِذْ أَخَذْنَا مِيثَاقَكُمْ لَا تَسْفِكُونَ دِمَاءَكُمْ وَلَا تُخْرِجُونَ أَنفُسَكُم مِّن دِيَارِكُمْ ثُمَّ أَقْرَرْتُمْ وَأَنتُمْ تَشْهَدُونَ ❃ ثُمَّ أَنتُمْ هَٰؤُلَاءِ تَقْتُلُونَ أَنفُسَكُمْ وَتُخْرِجُونَ فَرِيقًا مِّنكُم مِّن دِيَارِهِمْ تَظَاهَرُونَ عَلَيْهِم بِالْإِثْمِ وَالْعُدْوَانِ وَإِن يَأْتُوكُمْ أُسَارَىٰ تُفَادُوهُمْ وَهُوَ مُحَرَّمٌ عَلَيْكُمْ إِخْرَاجُهُمْ ۚ أَفَتُؤْمِنُونَ بِبَعْضِ الْكِتَابِ وَتَكْفُرُونَ بِبَعْضٍ ۚ فَمَا جَزَاءُ مَن يَفْعَلُ ذَٰلِكَ مِنكُمْ إِلَّا خِزْيٌ فِي الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا ۖ وَيَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ يُرَدُّونَ إِلَىٰ أَشَدِّ الْعَذَابِ ۗ وَمَا اللَّهُ بِغَافِلٍ عَمَّا تَعْمَلُونَ ❃

And ˹remember˺ when We took your covenant that you would neither shed each other’s blood nor expel each other from their homes, you gave your pledge and bore witness. But here you are, killing each other and expelling some of your people from their homes, aiding one another in sin and aggression; and when those ˹expelled˺ come to you as captives, you still ransom them—though expelling them was unlawful for you. Do you believe in some of the Scripture and reject the rest? Is there any reward for those who do so among you other than disgrace in this worldly life and being subjected to the harshest punishment on the Day of Judgment? For Allah is never unaware of what you do.5

The reference, exegetes agree, is to the Medinan Jewish tribes’ political alliance with the warring pagan Arab tribes against fellow Jews prior to the Prophet’s z arrival, which involved them in fighting and expelling fellow believers. When these same Jews would be taken as prisoners and enslaved, they would ransom them, following the Torah. They violated the core of their covenant with Allah when they embraced the pagan Arab tribal order for financial and political gain, thereby splitting into mutually warring tribes, allying themselves with the tribes that suited their interests. Yet, when it came to those commands that they found convenient, they faithfully adhered to them, ransoming the prisoners of war whose misery they had themselves caused. Sources indicate that they were devout adherents of their law and even bore significant personal loss to abide by it.6

The sin named in these verses is in no uncertain terms abandoning political unity. The divine penalty of double humiliation—“ignominy” in this life and “grievous doom” in the next—was for picking and choosing from the divine law. They ignored the command of political unity and honoring the lives and properties of every clan and every believer among them. Remarkably, they are declared as having disbelieved (takfurūn) in part of their Book despite their personal charity, ritual fastidiousness, and social piety, since they failed to honor the prohibition of taking the lives and property of their fellow believers.

They divided up into tribes, just as Muslims today have become divided into nation-states, and they ganged up against each other, allying with the polytheists, just as Muslims today have. There is barely a border between two Muslim nation-states that is free of hostility and animosity. Be it Saudi-Yemen, Iran-Iraq, Pakistan-Afghanistan, Egypt-Sudan, or Algeria-Morocco, hardly any border has been free of rivalry and bloodshed, often in explicit alliance with the enemies of Islam. The Saudi-Iranian rivalry has long wreaked havoc on the entire region, leading to unconscionable massacres in Syria and Yemen in the last decade alone. The ongoing betrayal of Gaza by nearly every Muslim nation-state is another reminder of the “double humiliation” forewarned in the verse.

Those who preach to Muslims to compromise with the secular nation-state should pay heed that Allah declares the once-chosen people’s separation and dispersal into various nations a severe punishment: “And we sundered them throughout the earth into nations.”7 The lesson is this: the Umma entrusted with divine revelation cannot prosper by ignoring it, nor by picking and choosing from the Book. Else, it incurs the divine curse of double humiliation. Being doctrinally and ritually fastidious on private morals is of no avail if we willfully neglect the command of ummatic solidarity.

The Qur’an and the Sunna endlessly caution Muslims against falling into the errors of “those before you.” Of these, the single most damning vice, the one most frequently repeated, is disunity and discord among the believers. Whenever warning the community given revelation, the key vice that Allah singles out is that of mutual discord, disunity, and transgression. More specifically, the keywords describing this error in numerous verses are tafriqa, ikhtilāf, tanāzuʿ (division, discord, disagreement, dispute), and baghy (transgression).8 In contrast, Allah declares unity, the “coming together” of hearts and forces (taʾlīf), and the holding of Allah’s rope all together (iʿtisām), as among the greatest blessings and signs of divine favor.

When a religious community loses its autonomy and is dispersed in different political and cultural worlds, its religious integrity is also inevitably lost. Observing this connection in Jewish history, leading American political theorist of Jewish roots Michael Walzer observes how the loss of political independence prompted a radical altering of the religion: “since writers in the [Jewish] diaspora could not recapitulate the experience represented in that text [the Hebrew Bible], they were forced into a radical reinterpretation or, better, a series of reinterpretations, of its meaning.”9 Or, in Imam al-Māwardī’s (d. 1058) more inspired words,

فَلَيْسَ دِينٌ زَالَ سُلْطَانُهُ إلَّا بُدِّلَتْ أَحْكَامُهُ، وَطُمِسَتْ أَعْلَامُهُ. وَكَانَ لِكُلِّ زَعِيمٍ فِيهِ بِدْعَةٌ، وَلِكُلِّ عَصْرٍ فِيهِ وِهَايَةُ أَثَرٍ. كَمَا أَنَّ السُّلْطَانَ إنْ لَمْ يَكُنْ عَلَى دِينٍ تَجْتَمِعُ بِهِ الْقُلُوبُ حَتَّى يَرَى أَهْلُهُ الطَّاعَةَ فِيهِ فَرْضًا، وَالتَّنَاصُرَ عَلَيْهِ حَتْمًا، لَمْ يَكُنْ لِلسُّلْطَانِ لُبْثٌ وَلَا لِأَيَّامِهِ صَفْوٌ، وَكَانَ سُلْطَانَ قَهْرٍ، وَمَفْسَدَةَ دَهْرٍ

No dīn loses political authority except that its rulings are altered and its symbols obliterated, such that every leader adds to it a new heresy and every era a new weakness. Similarly, no stability or greatness comes to a polity if it lacks a dīn that unites the hearts such that people voluntarily submit to its obligations and unquestionably come to mutual aid for its sake. Such a polity is reduced to tyranny and corruption.

Those who naively think that secularizing and privatizing Islam, embracing the politics of modern-day petty kingdoms (that recall the “ṭāʾifa kingdoms” of the now-vanished world of Andalus) will save them from the impending reconquista or that their religious salvation can remain unscathed despite their betrayal of Muslim suffering must think again. The petty kingdoms of Andalus that ended with extermination and humiliation of the Muslims and extinction of Islam from the Iberian Peninsula must serve as a warning for what today confronts many Muslim communities across the globe.10

In short, the ultimate divine command to the believers, to the Umma chosen to be the trustee of the divine message, to us as it was to the Israelites, is to “hold onto the rope of Allah all together and be not divided.”11 Conversely, the Quran also affirms that embracing Allah’s message wholeheartedly leads to earthly flourishing as well as harmony and solidarity, whereas discord and disunity are a result of forgetting part of Allah’s message: “They forgot a portion of that which they were reminded, so We caused among them animosity and hatred.”12 Put differently, the two commands that are brought together in “holding on to the rope of Allah,” namely, that of embracing Allah’s religion completely and doing so as believers in solidarity, are two sides of the same coin.

The Ummatic covenant is exceptional

Since the Umma is chosen and called to stand in witness to all other nations, it has an exceptional status. The chosenness of this Umma, what we may call ummatic exceptionalism, is underpinned by the aforementioned covenant with Allah which governs our success in this life and the next.

The belief that the Muslim Umma is exceptional, i.e., that it is bound to Allah in a special covenant, is itself unexceptional. As a matter of creed, Muslims have always believed in the finality of the Prophet Muhammad z and the consequent duty of the Umma to become the privileged repository and missionary of Allah’s final revelation. A corollary of this belief is that this Umma can never flourish in rebellion against Allah. The political and social implications of this creed are often little understood. Because the Umma is chosen and exceptional, it can never flourish by abandoning Allah’s guidance, by rejecting part of the Book even as it accepts some of it.

This may explain why Muslim nation-states have not enjoyed earthly flourishing by imitating the same means of embracing secularism, capitalism, nationalism, and other ideologies through which the non-believing nations have attained power. This is a corollary of what we have called ummatic exceptionalism. Our attempt to seek strength and honor (ʿizza) by imitating non-believers will always fail. This notion is what Imam Mālik f had in mind when he remarked, “The later generations of this Umma will not succeed except by that which brought success to the early predecessors.”

The crucial aspect of this exceptionalism for us is the link between ummatic unity and the divine favor of right guidance. The Prophet z declared that “Allah will not gather my Umma upon error,”13 an idea that, according to classical exegetes, is implied in the Qur’an when the prophetic mandate is passed on to the Umma as a whole.14

Even secular historians have often recognized some truth to Islam’s exceptionalism in other respects. One observes, for instance, that the Islamic caliphate was exceptional in the millenia long history of empires in West Asia in that it was driven by a religious message, whereas the norm of great imperial expansions in world history has been that religion was seldom more than an instrument of imperial ideology:

“More unmistakably than any other major event in world history, the rise of Islam and the establishment of the early caliphate proves that ideas, too, matter in human affairs and can sometimes enter decisively into the balance of forces so as to define long-lasting and fundamental human patterns.”15

It has also often been observed that Muslims have been most successful even in worldly pursuits, most open-minded and discerning, when they were governed by Islam, in contrast to other civilizations that have presumably found these virtues by abandoning religion.

Historians of religion have noted that Islam is unique among religions in its self-awareness as a distinct religion in its foundational text, the preservation of its scripture and message, as well as Muslims’ continued insistence on the truth and relevance of their religion.16 Many have also noted that Islam’s social and political concepts are uniquely attractive and resilient as alternatives to modern concepts of freedom, accountable governance, political consciousness, and solidarity:

“Muslim political identity…made a palpable difference on the eve of modernity. Under modern conditions, despite being wrong-footed by the nationalist paradigm, Muslim identity has proved sufficiently resilient to benefit dramatically from the rapid development of communications, and this enhancement of an old Islamic conductivity has made possible some notable episodes of transnational mobilization…But even in this modern guise of nationalism, ethnic identities have not been able to retain the moral high ground—witness the majorities of Muslims identifying first and foremost as Muslims rather than as citizens of their countries.”17

Given these and other aspects of its history and doctrinal foundation, Islam has been described as the most modern religion and yet also the most disruptive to Western modernity.18

In short, as Muslims our path to development and flourishing, and the urgent need for human and institutional development in Muslim societies, must be ummatic. It must be based in ummatic unity and solidarity and oriented towards fulfilling the Umma’s divine mandate. The only alternative is further decline into the divine punishment of double humiliation.

 

Notes

  1. Attributed to Imām Mālik b. Anas I.
  2. Qur’an, al-Baqara, 2:143. See also, Āl-ʿImrān, 3:110; al-Hajj, 22:78.
  3. Abu Dawūd, #4297.
  4. Narrated by Abu Saʿīd and Abu Hurayra, recorded by Bukhari #3456 and Muslim #2669. The actual measures in the text are shibr (a handspan) and dhirāʿ (forearm).
  5. Qur’an, al-Baqara: 84-5.
  6. Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, https://tafsir.app/ibn-katheer/2/85; Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wal-tanwīr, https://tafsir.app/ibn-aashoor/2/85.
  7. Qur’an, al-ʿArāf: 168.
  8. For instance: 2:103, 42:14; 3:19, 45:17, 2:213, 98:4.
  9. Michael Walzer, “Introduction: The Jewish Political Tradition,” in Jewish Political Tradition, vol. 1, Authority, ed. Michael Walzer et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. xxii. When religious communities lose power, they are tempted to adjust their “truth” in order to survive. Perhaps it is this diaspora that is described in the Qur’an as their being “cut up into sundry groups across the land” (7:167-68) as a form of divine punishment.
  10. For an introductory history, see Hugh Kennedey, Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus (Routledge, 1996), esp. Ch 6, 8. He concludes succinctly, “Muslim disunity was a major cause of weakness,” as Muslim rulers continually sought Christian allies against their co-religionists (306).
  11. Qur’an, Āl-ʿImrān, 3:103.
  12. Qur’an, al-Māʾida, 5:14
  13. Tirmidhī, #2167, graded ṣaḥīḥ by al-Albānī and al-Arna’ūṭ. The original text is:
    إنَّ اللَّهَ لا يَجمعُ أمَّتي— أو قالَ: أمَّةَ محمَّدٍ صلَّى اللَّهُ علَيهِ وسلَّمَ — علَى ضلالةٍ، ويدُ اللَّهِ معَ الجماعةِ، ومَن شذَّ شذَّ إلى النَّار
  14. See al-Qurṭubī, Tafsīr, s.v. 2:143; where he states, “Our scholars have said that the Lord here informs us in His Book of His granting of His privilege to declare our probity (ʿadāla) and fitness for the grand testimony upon His creation,” and “this is proof of the soundness of consensus (siḥḥat al-ijmāʿ) and its authority.”
  15. William H. McNeill, Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000, 2nd ed (University of Chicago Press, 1984), 21.
  16. For unlike any other extant religious text today the Qur’an knows that it is a scripture, that it preaches a distinct religion complete with doctrine and a set of practices, that identifies and responds to the arguments of its non-believers and positions itself vis-à-vis  other religious traditions such as Judaism and Christianity. Most of all, it is the only scripture that is believed by its friends and most foes to have been preserved.
  17. Michael Cook, Ancient Religion, Modern Politics (Princeton University Press, 2014), 52. Apart from political identity, Cook makes similar observations about Islam’s exceptionalism, in particular vis-a-vis the most popular non-Western religions, Catholic Christianity and Hinduism, in the areas of social (Islamic egalitarianism and solidarity (213-4)), political (359), and martial (247) values and norms, as well as their power and popularity in the modern world. He also proposes that many Muslims stand out in their “fundamentalism,” namely, in their firm belief in the “inerrancy” of their scripture and preference for the religion’s pristine form over later accretions (373).
  18. This is an interpretation of Shadi Hamid’s thesis in his book Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), which builds on and adds to Michael Cook’s thesis mentioned above.

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