Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society
Part 2. DUTIES AS PHYSICAL BEING
Exposition
1.
Duties of Omission (or, Duties of Respect for the Self ).
END: Natural Self-Preservation ─ as the Holy
Qur’an commands:
“… and make not your own hands contribute
to (your) destruction …” (2:195).
(1)All things which harm physical health, prohibited:
“O mankind! eat of
whatsoever is on the earth, lawful and wholesome, and follow not the footsteps
of Satan (by using unlawfully-acquired and unclean and unwholesome foods).
Lo! he is to you an avowed enemy”. (2:168).
(2)Self-stupefaction, gluttony and intoxication,
prohibited:
“O you who believe! Make not unlawful the
good things (whether they be foods or drinks or any other lawful pleasures)
which Allah has made lawful for you, nor transgress (in respect of your
physical, mental, moral, spiritual and social health by making lawful for
yourselves harmful foods, drinks, etc.); verily Allah loves not the
transgressors.” (5:87).
“…
and eat and drink, but be not immoderate and intemperate: verily He loves not
those who are immoderate and intemperate.” (7:31).
“Eat of the good things We have
provided for your sustenance, but commit no excess therein, lest My wrath
should justly descend on you; and those on whom descends My wrath do perish
indeed.” (20:81).
“O you who believe! Intoxicants
and gambling, (dedication of) stones, and divination by arrows, (all these) are
an abomination, —of Satan’s handiwork: shun such (abomination), therefore, that
you may prosper.” (5:93).
(3)Considering lawful pleasures relating to natural
appetites as illegitimate, prohibited:
“O you who believe! Make not
unlawful (for yourselves) the good things (relating to lawful pleasures) which
Allah has made lawful for you …” (5:87).
(4)Abusing or damaging any limb of one’s body, including
Castration, prohibited:
The Holy Qur’an says: “… and defraud not your trust…” (8:27).
The various limbs of
the body, and the talents of a Muslim, are the “property” of God and he
possesses them in “trust” for Him. A Muslim should not, therefore, abuse or
damage any limb of his body.
(5)Committing suicide prohibited:
“And kill not (or, destroy not)
yourselves; verily Allah is unto you ever Merciful.” (4:29).
(2)
Duties of Commission: (or, Duties of Love for the Self).
END: Happiness of the moral
agent through the maintenance and promotion of his physical well-being:
(1)Proper
satisfaction of natural appetites enjoined:
(a)Satisfaction of Hunger and Thirst:
“… and eat and drink, but be not
immoderate and intemperate…” (7:31).
“They ask you (O Muhammad!) what is lawful
to them (as food). Say: Lawful unto you are all things good and pure.” (5:5).
(b)Satisfaction of sexual appetite: Satisfaction of sexual
appetite has been permitted by the Holy Qur’an through lawful marriage only,
and marriage has been enjoined:
“Marry those among you who are single.” (24:32).
A very important point
should be noted here. Although the union of man and woman in marriage involves
the satisfaction of sexual appetite, it is not, in the view of the Qur’an, the
end of marriage,—the end being spiritual companionship and mutual love, to
which the sexual union itself should contribute, but which is marked off
distinctly from mere sexual pleasure. The Holy Qur’an says
“And among His signs is this, that
He created for you mates from yourselves, that you might obtain tranquility and
solace in them, and He has ordained between you love and mercy. Verily in that
are signs for those who reflect.” (30:21).
(c)Rest and sleep
“It is of His Mercy that He has made
for you Night and Day, that therein (i.e., in the night) you may enjoy rest,
and that you may seek of His Grace (during the day);—and in order that you may
be grateful (to Him).” (38:73).
(2)Physical cleanliness enjoined:
“… then purify (yourselves) (with physical
cleanliness)…”(5:6).
“Allah intends not to lay upon you a
hardship, but intends to purify you (with physical cleanliness) and to complete
His favor to you, that you may be grateful (for His bounties).” (5:6).
“… and He sent down water upon you
from heaven that He might cleanse you thereby and remove from you the stain of
Satan (—dirt being physically a symbol of evil)…” (8:11).
“Verily Allah loves those who turn
to him constantly, and He loves those who practice cleanliness (in body, mind
and spirit).’’ (2:222).
“And Allah loves those who always keep
themselves clean.” (9:108).
(3)Physical
development enjoined:
“Against them (i.e., the enemies of
Islam, or, the forces of evil) prepare your Power (as individuals and as a
community) to the utmost of your capacity…” (8:60).
Development of power by
an individual includes the building up of a powerful physique. Hence, the
command for the physical development of the individual is contained in the
above comprehensive verse. This fact is corroborated by a Hadith of the Holy
Prophet (Peace be on him), reported by Muslim in his sahih in the following
words:
“A physically-strong
Believer is better and more loved by Allah than a physically-weak Believer. And
there is good in either of them. Be enthusiastic for everything which brings
you good, and seek therein Divine Help, and do not lose heart in your endeavor…”
(Kitab al-Qadr).
Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society
APPENDIX
CHRISTIAN CIVILISATION IN ITS AGE OF FAITH
Before closing this discussion, it is necessary to attend to the
Jewish-Christian allegation, referred to in the present work on different
occasions, that, as one Orientalist has worded it, “Islam is the bastard child
of Judaism and Christianity”, and hence whatever is good in the value-system of
the Islamic civilisation is in bondage to the Biblical civilisation. In that
connection we may give here a brief review of the civilisation nurtured on an
international level by Christianity, under the Biblical civilisational
value-system, since its coming to power and until the Renaissance in western
Europe brought about by the Islamic civilisation,—whereafter the West adopted a
secularistic and free-thought approach. We shall present here its basic
characteristic features, leaving out certain, vital facts for being dealt with
in the next chapter under different headings; and our review, here again for
avoiding all possibilities of doubt as to accuracy and authenticity, will be
submitted in the words of a devout and eminent Christian historian of that
civilisation, i.e., Will Durant. Projecting it as ‘Civilisation in the Age of
Faith’, he says (The Age of Faith, pp. 44843):
“The foster mother of the new
civilisation was the Church … There is an epic grandeur, sullied with
superstition and cruelty, in the struggle of the new religion to capture, tame
and inspire the minds … to forge a uniting empire of faith…
“… In paganism the family had been
the social and religious unit; it was a loss that in medieval Christianity this
unit became the individual.
“… the status of woman was hurt by
the doctrine … that woman was the origin of sin and the instrument of
Satan.
“The Church did not condemn slavery.
Orthodox and heretic, Roman and barbarian alike assumed the institution to be
natural and indestructible … slavery continued throughout the Middle Ages,[1]
and died without benefit of clergy.
“Next to determination of faith, the greatest power of
the Church lay in the administration of sacraments—ceremonies symbolising the
conferment of divine grace … More Important was the sacrament of penance …
According to the Gospel (Matthew, 16:19; 18:18), Christ had forgiven sins, and
had endowed the apostles with a similar power to ‘bind and loose’. This power,
said the Church, had descended by apostolic succession from the apostles to the
early bishops, from Peter to the popes; and in the late twelfth century the
‘power of the keys’ was extended by bishops to the priests … Absolution in
confession removed from sin the guilt that would have condemned the sinner to
hell … The Church claimed the right to remit such punishments … The Church
commissioned certain ecclesiastics, usually friars, as quaestiarii to raise
funds by offering indulgences in return for gifts, repentance, and prayer.
These solicitors … developed a competitive zeal … they exhibited real or false
relics to stimulate contributions and they kept for themselves a due or undue
part of their receipts.
“The official prayers of the Church
were often addressed to God the Father; a few appealed to the Holy Ghost; but
the prayers of the people were addressed mostly to Jesus, Mary, and the saints.
The Almighty was feared … Jesus was closer, but He too was God, and one hardly
ventured to speak to Him face to face … It seemed wiser to lay one’s prayer
before a saint certified by canonization to be in heaven, and to beg his or her
intercession with Christ … Every nation, city, abbey, church, craft, soul, and crisis
of life had its patron Saint, as in pagan Rome it had a god … The Church
arranged an ecclesiastical calendar in which every day celebrated a saint; but
the year did not find room for the 25,000 saints that had been canonized by the
tenth century. The calendar of saints was so familiar to the people that the
almanac divided the agricultural year by their names … Many saints received
canonization through the insistent worship of their memory by the people or the
locality, sometimes against ecclesiastical resistance. Images of the saints
were set up in churches and public squares, on buildings andreceived a spontaneous worship … With so many
saints there had to be many relics— their bones, hair, clothing, and anything
that they had used. Every altar was expected to cover one or more such sacred
memorials … The churches of Constantinople, before 1204, were especially rich
in relics; they had the lance that had pierced Christ and was still red with
His blood, the rod that had scourged Him, many pieces of the True Cross
enshrined in gold, the ‘sop of bread’ given to Judas at the Last Supper, some
hairs of the Lord’s beard, the left arm of John the Baptist … In the sack of
Constantinople many of these relics were stolen, some were bought, and they
were peddled in the West from church to church to find the highest bidder. All
relics were credited with supernatural powers, and a hundred thousand tales
were told of their miracles. Men and women eagerly sought even the slightest
relic, or relic of a relic, to wear as a magic talisman—a thread from a saint’s
robe, some dust from a reliquary, a drop of oil from a sanctuary lamp in the
shrine.
Monasteries vied and disputed with
one another in gathering relics and exhibiting them to generous worshipers, for
the possession of famous relics made the fortune of an abbey or a church. The
‘translation’ of the bones of Thomas á Becket to a new chapel in the cathedral
of Canterbury (1220) drew from the attending worshipers a collection valued at
$300,000 today. So profitable a business enlisted many practitioners; thousands
of spurious relics were sold to churches and individuals; and monasteries were
tempted to ‘discover’ new relics when in need of funds. The culmination of
abuse was the dismemberment of dead saints so that several places might enjoy
their patronage and power … The worship of God as Lord of Hosts and King of
Kings inherited Semitic and Roman ways of approach, veneration, and address;
the incense burnt before altar or clergy recalled the old burnt offerings;
aspersion with holy water was an ancient form of exorcism; processions and
lustrations continued immemorial rites; the vestments of the clergy and the
papal title of pontifex maximus were legacies from pagan Rome. The Church found
that rural converts still revered certain springs, wells, trees, and stones;
she thought it wiser to bless these to Christian use than to break too sharply the
customs of sentiment … So a dolmen at Plouaret was consecrated as the chapel of
the Seven Saints, and the worship of the oak was sterilized by hanging images
of Christian saints upon the trees. Pagan festivals dear to the people, or
necessary as cathartic moratoriums on morality, reappeared as Christian feasts,
and pagan vegetation rites were transformed into Christian liturgy. The people
continued to light midsummer fires on St. John’s Eve, and the celebration of
Christ’s resurrection took the pagan name of Eostre, the old Teutonic goddess
of the spring. The Christian calendar of the saints replaced the Roman fasti;
ancient divinities dear to the people were allowed to revive under the names of
Christian saints; the Dea Victoria of the Basses-Alpes became St. Victoire, and
Castor and Pollux were reborn as Sts. Cosmas and Damian … The finest triumph of
this tolerant spirit of adaptation was the sublimation of the pagan
mother-goddess cults in the worship of Mary. Here too the people took the
initiative. In 431 Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria, in a famous sermon at
Ephesus, applied to Mary many of the terms fondly ascribed by the pagans of
Ephesus to their ‘great goddess’ Artemis-Diana; and the Council of Ephesus in
the year, over the protests of Nestorius, sanctioned for Mary the title ‘Mother
of God’. Gradually the tenderest features of Astarte, Cybele, Artemis, Diana,
and Isis were gathered together in the worship of Mary. In the sixth century
the Church established the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin into heaven,
and assigned it to August 13, the date of ancient festivals of Isis and
Artemis. Mary became the patron saint of Constantinople and the imperial
family; her picture was carried at the head of every great procession, and was
(and is ) hung in every church and home in Greek Christendom. Probably it was
the Crusades that brought from the East to the West a more intimate and
colourful worship of the Virgin … Just as the sternness of Yahveh had
necessitated Christ, so the justice of Christ needed Mary’s mercy to temper it.
In effect the Mother—the oldest figure in religious worship—became … the third
person of a new Trinity … knights vowed themselves to her service, and cities
gave her their keys … The Church … made great festivals of the events in Mary’s
life—the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Purification (Candlemas), the
Assumption.
“… In Christian theory the whole
human race had been tainted by the sin of Adam and Eve. Said Gratian’s Decretum
(c. 1150), unofficially accepted by the Church as her teaching, ‘Every human
being who is conceived by the coition of a man with a woman is born with
original sin, subject to impiety and death, and therefore a child of wrath’;
and only divine grace, and the atoning death of Christ, could save him from
wickedness and damnation … The preaching of this doctrine … gave many medieval
Christians a sense of inborn impurity, depravity, and guilt, which colored much
of their literature before 1200.
“… by the age of sixteen the medieval
youth had probably sampled a variety of sexual experiences. Pederasty …
reappeared … In 1177 Henry, Abbot of Clairvaux, wrote of France that ‘ancient
Sodom is springing up from her ashes’ … The Penitential—ecclesiastical manuals
prescribing penances for sins—mention the usual enormities, including
bestiality; an astonishing variety of beasts received such attentions … Cases
of incest were numerous. Premarital and extramarital relations were apparently
as widespread as at any time between antiquity and the twentieth century … Rape
was common … Knights who served highborn dames or damoiselles for a kiss or a
touch of the hand might console themselves with the lady’s maids; some ladies
could not sleep with a good conscience until they had arranged this courtesy.
The Knight of La Tour-Landry … if we were to believe him, some men of his class
fornicated in church, nay, ‘on the altar’; and he tells of ‘two queens which in
Lent, on Holy Thursday … took their foul delight and pleasance within the
church during divine service’. William of Malmesbury described the Norman
nobility as ‘given over to gluttony and lechery’, and exchanging concubines
with one another lest fidelity should dull the edge of husbandry. Illegitimate
children littered Christendom, and gave a plot to a thousand tales. The heroes
of several medieval sagas were bastards—Cuchulain, Arthur, Gawain, Roland,
William the Conqueror, and many a knight in Froissart’s Chronicles.
“Prostitution adjusted itself to the
times. Some women in pilgrimage, according to Bishop Boniface, earned their
passage by selling themselves in the towns on their route. Every army was
followed with another army, as dangerous as the enemy. ‘The Crusaders’, reports
Albert of Aix, ‘had in their ranks a crowd of women wearing the habit of men;
they traveled together without distinction of sex, trusting to the chances of a
frightful promiscuity’ … The university students, particularly at Paris,
developed urgent or imitative needs, and filles established centres of
accommodation … In Rome, according to Bishop Durand II of Mende (1311), there
were brothels near the Vatican, and the pope’s marshals permitted them for a
consideration. The Church showed a humane spirit toward prostitutes … A council
at Rouen, in the eighth century, invited women who had secretly borne children
to deposit them at the door of the church, which would undertake to provide for
them; such orphans were brought up as serfs on ecclesiastical properties. A law
of Charlemagne decreed that exposed children should be the slaves of those who
rescued and reared them [2]
… Penalties for adultery were severe; Saxon law, for example, condemned the
unfaithful wife at least to lose her nose and ears, and empowered her husband
to kill her. Adultery was common notwithstanding.
“… Feudal masters seduced female
serfs at the cost of a modest fine; he who ‘covered’ a maid ‘without her
thanks’—against her will—paid the court three shillings. The eleventh century,
said Freeman, ‘was a profligate age’, and he marveled at the apparent marital
fidelity of William the Conqueror, who could not say as much for his father.
‘Medieval society’, said the learned and judicious Thomas Wright, ‘was
profoundly immoral and licentious’.[3]
“… In the Middle Ages … men, good and
bad, lied to their children, mates, congregations, enemies, friends,
governments, and God. Medieval man had a special fondness for forging
documents. He forged apocryphal gospels … he forged decretals as weapons in ecclesiastical
politics; loyal monks forged charters to win royal grants for their
monasteries; Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury, according to the papal Curia,
forged a charter to prove the antiquity of his see; schoolmasters forged
charters to endow some colleges at Cambridge with a false antiquity; and ‘pious
frauds’ corrupted texts and invented a thousand edifying miracles. Bribery was
general in education, trade, war, religion, government, law. Schoolboys sent
pies to their examiners; politicians paid for appointments to public office,
and collected the necessary sums from their friends; witnesses could be bribed
to swear to anything; litigants gave presents to jurors and judges … perjury
was so frequent that trial by combat was sometimes resorted to in the hope that
God would identify the greater liar. Despite a thousand guild and municipal
statutes and penalties, medieval craftsmen often deceived purchasers with
shoddy products, false measures, and crafty substitutes. Some bakers stole
small portions of dough under their customers’ eyes by means of a trap door in
the kneading board; cheap cloths were secretly put in the place of better
cloths promised and paid for; inferior leather was ‘doctored’ to look like the
best; stones were concealed in sacks of hay or wool sold by weight; the meat
packers of Norwich were accused of buying measly pigs, and making from them
sausages and puddings unfit for human bodies, Berthold of Regensburg (c.1220)
described the different forms of cheating used in the various trades, and the
tricks played upon country folk by merchants at the fairs.
“… Once at war, Christians were no
gentler to the defeated, no more loyal to pledges and treaties, than the
warriors of other faiths [4]
and times. Cruelty and brutality were apparently more frequent in the Middle
Ages than in any civilization before our own.
“… In all classes men and women were
hearty and sensual; their festivals were feasts of drinking, gambling, dancing,
and sexual relaxation: their jokes were of a candor hardly rivaled today; their
speech was freer, their oaths vaster and more numerous. Hardly a man in France,
says Joinville, could open his mouth without mentioning the Devil.
“… begging flourished … Mendicancy
reached … a scope and pertinacity unequalled today except in the poorest areas
of the Far East.
“Cleanliness, in the Middle Ages, was
not next to godliness. Early Christianity had denounced the Roman baths … and
its general disapproval of the body had put no premium on hygiene. The modern
use of the handkerchief was unknown … One result of the Crusades was the
introduction into Europe of public steam baths in the Moslem style.
“… In the thirteenth century the
chamber pots of Paris were freely emptied from windows into the street … People
eased themselves in courtyards, on stairways and balconies, even in the palace
of the Louvre.
“… The commonest meat was pork. Pigs ate the refuse in
the streets, and people ate the pigs.
“… Drunkenness was a favourite vice
of the Middle Ages, in all classes and sexes. Taverns were numerous, ale was
cheap. Beer was the regular drink of the poor, even at breakfast. Monasteries
and hospitals north of the Alps were normally allowed a gallon of ale or beer
per person per day … A customal of the abbey of St. Peter in the Black Forest
includes some tender clauses: ‘When the peasants have unladen the wine, they
shall be brought into the monastery, and shall have meat and drink in
abundance. A great tub shall be set there and filled with wine … and each shall
drink … and if they wax drunken and smite the cellarman or the cook, they shall
pay no fine for this deed; and they shall drink so that two of them cannot beat
the third to the wagon’.
“… Gambling was not always forbidden by law; Siena
provided booths it in the public square.
“… The French and Germans in
particular were fond of the dance … Dancing could become an epidemic: in 1237 a
band of German children danced all the way from Erfurt to Arnstadt; many died
en route; and some survivors suffered to the end of their lives from St. Vitus’
dance, or other nervous disorders.
“… Several persons, of any age or sex, might sleep in
the same room. In England and France all classes slept nude.
“Does the general picture of medieval
Europe support the belief that religion makes for morality? Our general
impression suggests a wider gap between moral theory and practice in the Middle
Ages than in other epochs of civilization. Medieval Christendom was apparently
as rich as our own irreligious age in sensuality, violence, drunkenness,
cruelty, coarseness, profanity, greed, robbery, dishonesty, and fraud. It seems
to have outdone our time in the enslavement of individuals … It surpassed us in
the subjection of women; it hardly equalled us in immodesty, fornication, and
adultery, in the immensity and murderousness of war. Compared with the Roman
Empire from Nerva to Aurelius, medieval Christendom was a moral setback. “… The
intellectual virtues naturally declined in the Age of Faith; intellectual
conscience (fairness with the facts) and the search for truth were replaced by
zeal and admiration for sanctity, and a sometimes unscrupulous piety … The
civic virtues suffered from concentration on the afterlife … Perhaps hypocrisy,
so indispensable to civilization, increased in the Middle Ages as compared with
the frank secularism of antiquity, or the unabashed corporate brutality of our
time.” (All italics, present writer’s).
[1] And it continued in
Christendom with greater virulence and unspeakable cruelty the thereafter also,
as we shall notice in the next chapter.
[2] Mark the tone of Christian
charity towards the orphans!
[3] Is the society in
Christendom in any way less immoral and licentious today!
[4] On Will Durant’s own
admission elsewhere in his book under reference, Islam stands excluded here
from ‘other faiths’.
