Tash-talking In Medieval Islam - Islam for Muslims - Nairaland
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| Tash-talking In Medieval Islam by Nobody: 3:53pm On Jul 26, 2016 |
Tash-Talking in Medieval Islam Now step four centuries back to 622 CE and about three squares to the west into what is now Saudi Arabia. Muhammad was busily founding Islam, a religion that quickly became the mortar for a new empire. Just as a unified China emerged from countless tiny states a millennium earlier, Muhammad used Islam to knit the many tribes of the Arabian Peninsula into a political unit that immediately began conquering its way both eastward and westward. By 750, after a century of violence and political uncertainty, one of the biggest empires in history sprawled over 5 million square miles from Spain through northern Africa and the Middle East, clear to the doorstep of India all under the banner of Islam. These sections take a closer look at Islam and one of the most important “golden ages” in human history one that included the small but vocal presence of religious doubt. 1 Like |
| Re: Tash-talking In Medieval Islam by Nobody: 3:56pm On Jul 26, 2016 |
Kindling the Islamic Golden Age [b]As the new Islamic empire grew, it encountered and absorbed several thriving cultures, including Egypt and Syria. Both had been part of the extended Greek empire at one time, and both had kept the legacy of ancient Greek thought alive and carefully preserved in great libraries through the centuries. Although an allergy to all things “pagan” had Christian Europe holding the works of ancient Greece at arm’s length like a moldy sock, Arab scientists and philosophers began translating those same texts into Arabic. Picking up where the Greeks left off, Arab culture made rapid advances in optics, physics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, and the arts, igniting a period known as the Islamic Golden Age. It’s called an Islamic Golden Age because the empire was unified under that religion, but Islam itself deserved little credit for the new flowering of learning. The Umayyad caliphs (Islamic clergy) shared Europe’s allergy to Greek ideas and vigorously opposed the translations out of concern that they might seriously challenge the house religion. And right they were. Eager to dip into the well of Greek knowledge, scholars and translators made an end-run around the caliphs, enlisting the support of wealthy businessmen to fund the translations, and the Golden Age happened anyway.A vibrant culture of intellectual inquiry was born. And unlike much later Islamic history, the chorus included voices challenging the religious party line, up to and including the integrity of the prophet Muhammad and the very existence of Allah himself. Not many voices were singing those particular tunes, to be sure, but enough to get the attention of modern scholars as well as some furious theologians in their own day. Things began to really take off around 750 CE when a new caliphate took the reins of the empire the Abbasids of Persia. Theirs was a more open and intellectual government than the Umayyad caliphate had been. They preferred sayings like, “The ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a martyr” over the less education-friendly platitudes of Muhammad. The Persians had been in touch with Greek ideas for centuries, after all, so the Abbasids quickly relaxed restrictions on the scholars’ work. They brought the translation of Greek works out of the shadows, and the Golden Age was fully underway.[/b] 1 Like |
| Re: Tash-talking In Medieval Islam by Nobody: 4:16pm On Jul 26, 2016 |
Railing theologians:“Against the Unbelievers” [b] Even though the new caliphate opened up to Greek ideas about the area of a triangle and the nature of the stars and such, they still weren’t eager to tolerate full-throated challenges to Islam. As a result, virtually no texts from the agnostics and atheists of this period have survived. Fortunately, just as in Judea and elsewhere, the outraged cries of their critics nicely confirmed their presence anyway. In fact, such cries were so common in this period that almost every major Islamic theologian of the time seemed to have written a treatise called, “Against the Unbelievers.” There’s no better testimony to the healthy supply of unbelievers, or zendiqs, than treatises addressed directly to them. You can easily trip on the terminology here. Not all zendiqs are atheists. Just as in ancient Greece, it was common in medieval Islam for everyone whose beliefs were unorthodox to be called “unbelievers,” and modern scholars know that heretics people who believed in an unorthodox creed were among the intended targets of these treatises. But scholars also agree that heretics weren’t the only targets, because the theologians often wrote two separate, distinct arguments: one addressed to heretics, the other to outright unbelievers. One such work begins with a long proof that the world did in fact have a Creator an argument generally intended for atheists rather than heretics. [/b] Railing back: Unbelievers say “Muhammad was a liar” [b] Standing up in the middle of the ninth century Islamic Empire and calling Muhammad a liar took a stainless steel spine. But Abu al-Hasan Ahmad ibn Yahyaibn Ishaq al-Rawāndī yes, that Abu al-Hasan Ahmad ibn Yahyaibn Ishaq al-Rawāndī did just that. Being a former Islamic theologian himself, al-Rawāndī knew what he was talking about, anticipating every argument of the theologians with a devastating counterargument. And he didn’t mince words. Not only did he call Muhammad a liar, but he also said the miracles of Moses and Jesus (both of whom are also revered in Islam) were nothing more than “fraudulent tricks.” Allah acts like “a wrathful, murderous enemy,” he said, adding that he probably couldn’t even add two and four. The Qur’an itself is described as “the speech of an unwise being” that contains “contradictions, errors and absurdities.” It’s no surprise then that al-Rawāndī’s written works including his most famous, The Book of the Emerald have vanished, except for a few fragments quoted by his hyperventilating critics. But his impact was still long-lasting; more than 200 years after al-Rawāndī’s death, the Persian theologian al-Shirazi was still spilling gallons of ink arguing against al-Rawāndī’s suggestion that truth can be discovered through human reason without the need for prophecy or revelation. Being called a zendiq in medieval Islam was generally a death sentence, but some people still managed to have fun with it. No one had a better time than Abu Nuwas, a Persian poet who delighted in shocking polite society by writing about everything Islam forbids, from masturbation to drunkenness to homosexuality. A story was told of an imam (Islamic cleric) who began to read from the Qur’an in the mosque. When the imam got to the line, “Oh, you infidels!”, Abu Nuwas shouted out, “Here I am!” That did it. An angry mob dragged him to the authorities. They assumed he was a heretical follower of Manichaeism, a rival religion of the time. They gave him the standard test, ordering him to spit on a portrait of the prophet Mani, founder of Manichaeism. They knew he wouldn’t be able to do it if he was a follower of Mani. I’ll do you one better, he thought, then stuck his finger down his throat and vomited on the portrait. Confused, the magistrates released him, never considering the possibility that he found Mani and Muhammad equally silly.Even if they had, an atheist was considered less threatening than a heretic. [/b] 1 Like |
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