CHAPTER XV

SCRIPTURAL FAITH AND ETHNICITY:

Some Lessons from the Islamic Experience

SULAYMAN S. NYANG

Howard University

            As we move towards the end of this decade in the last century of this millennium we are being forced by the trend of global events to address a number of issues which sometime in the distant past did not occupy the attention of our ancestors. Because of the growing power of these events and owing to the complexities they create for the average human being, it is now imperative that some attention be given to them. One of the key issues that is beginning to make life nasty, brutish and short is the conflation of two explosive issues in the human condition. These are the issues of religion and ethnicity. Much blood has been shed by many human beings who sometimes really believe that their violent actions serve a divine cause. This distortion of the teachings of the Great Religions of humanity has been most brutal and fanatical when the blood of the tribe is sanctified and made sacred by the fanatical utterances of the religiously intoxicated.

            We must think seriously about the roots of religious and ethnic bigotry. We must examine how, why, and when men and women of faith succumb to the inner urging of the darker side of their lives. Why is it necessary for men and women of faith to embrace fanatically their ethnic group to the point of violating the rights and dignity of others in the name of the Creator? Why do we human beings affirm at one level of our being the universality of the Divine Revelation and yet hypocritically betray it by dancing joyously at the shrine of our tribal gods? How do we reconcile ourselves to the fact that our tribal loyalties in themselves are neither enough to guarantee us a stable and spiritually rewarding life nor sufficient in making the other human being inferior and worthless in the eyes of the Creator?

            In addition to the "why" questions, there are also the "whens" and the "whats." When does tribal loyalty reinforce religious loyalty? Does it take place under certain conditions? If this hy-pothesis is correct, then what are the historical and contemporary evidences that can help us chart a path of religious and ethnic reconciliation? The skeptic and cynic might well ask at this juncture whether such a process of reconciliation has any future. Those of us who are die-hard advocates and promoters of dialogue between the members of the religious traditions of humankind, will never give up hope. We will continue to ask and answer the questions dealing with the whys and the whens. In so doing, we must focus our attention also on the quiddity or nature of the phenomenon.

            But if indeed there are many of us in the world who still have residual if not substantive hope in the interfaith process, then why can we not begin to explore the how questions? Let us start with how can we avoid the repetition of Bosnia and Rwanda, two of the most recent ghastly examples of man’s inhumanity to man. These two tragedies which are daily brought into our living rooms tell us a great deal about ourselves and about the strange and sometimes bizarre psychology which defines our identity, our self-image and our self-worth. Watching such events unravel before our eyes forces the religiously conscious human being to ask the long-standing question: Are God and his message to humankind still relevant? It is indeed to this and other related questions that we now turn.1

            The purpose of this paper is to examine the theological and historical evidences regarding Islam and ethnicity in human societies in our age. The first part of the paper addresss the theo-logical questions regarding the Qur’anic view of man. Under this section we will explore the role and place of ethnicity in Muslim theological discourse. Attention will be focused on the Qur’anic and hadithic literature. Opinions of Muslims scholars who deal spe-cifically with the ethnic question will be drawn from whenever avail-able and necessary.

            The second section will look at the historical record to de-monstrate how the theological formulations of the Qur’an and the hadithic literature stating the Prophetic positions on issues of this kind have been violated or circumvented by Muslims in the past and in the contemporary period. By examining the men and women over time, and how those who wish to construct an edifice of peace and tolerance in interreligious societies can work together in becoming more appreciative of their common humanity regardless of their national, racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds.

            The third section of this chapter will offer a number of con-clusions about the nature of ethnicity and how Islam and Muslims have dealt with it theologically and historically. It is hoped that such conclusions can add to the discourse on ethnicity and religion in our contemporary world.

ISLAM AND ITS THEOLOGICAL POSITION ON ETHNICITY

            Modern human beings are so assimilated to the culture of nationalism that they hardly bother to examine its assumptions. Furthermore, the nationalist and ethnic chauvinists have been so successful in their propaganda campaigns that they usually co-opt religion and religious leaders in their war of words against their perceived enemies sitting on the opposite ends of the fault lines of ethnic and nationalist entities.2 Such smugness would have gone unchallenged if human society had not witnessed the holocaust against Jews in Germany, the brutalities against Bosnian Muslims and the rape of their women by their onetime Serb neighbors. These and several other outrageous developments in recent hu-man history have made it imperative for scholars and other res-ponsible members of society to look for the root causes of such violent acts, especially because some of the perpetrators of such acts have rationalized their misdeeds in the name of one religion or the other.3

            Islam is one of the three Abrahamic religions and one of the five major religions of the world. Its position on and attitudes to-wards ethnicity can be gleaned from several verses from the Qur’an and from the hadithic literature attributed to the Prophet Mu-hammad. The theological position is graphically stated in the creation story. Similar to, but significantly different from, Hebrew and Christian biblical accounts of the creation story, the Qur’anic account raises several points that deserve attention whenever and wherever anyone wishes to discuss the attitudes of world religions towards the ethnic question.4

            First of all, it should be noted that in the Islamic view of creation, when Allah (God) decided to create Man, he consulted with his angelic courtiers. They at first expressed doubts about Man and wondered whether he would not be shedding blood on earth. To this expression of doubt about the human condition, Allah res-ponded by saying that He knows what his angelic courtiers did not know.5 The Qur’anic story later tells us that Allah’s decision was to create a viceregent(Khalifa) in the person of Adam, the primal Man. Chosen to be deputized by the Creator and charged with the custodial responsibility of managing nature and the processes of human development on earth, Adam became the Great Trustee of creation.6 He and his progeny were now destined to create an earthly civilization which would be bounded by a covenant with the Creator. From a Muslim point of view Adam was the first Prophet of God on earth and his world was to be ordered in accordance with the teachings of the Creator. This dignified place and role in creation is, to use a more contemporary metaphor, encoded by DNA in all human beings on earth.7

            This Adamite gene is the basis of human equality founded on monogenesis. Most significantly for our discussion here is that part of the story where Allah invited all his angelic and jinnic creations to bow before Adam. According to the Qur’an, when Allah called upon Iblis (Satan) to bow before his new human creation, he refused, saying that he could not bow before Adam because he was a lower grade of being. This is to say, he (Iblis) was made out of smokeless fire while Adam was made out of dust. This statement of Iblis’ has been identified by Muslim scholars as the first creational evidence of prejudice and discrimination.8 Building upon this understanding and taking Iblis as a creature whose pride and prejudice have com-bined to disobey a Divine command, Muslims can now describe any manifestations of racism and ethnic chauvinism as Iblisian. This terminology and the understanding it conveys are beginning to gain greater currency in the modern world. This is not because Muslims have not paid attention to this phenomenon before, but because it is only in this age that the races and ethnic language groups have come together more closely than at any time in the history of the humankind.9

            Although Muslims have always witnessed over the last four-teen centuries the diversity of the human races through the annual event of pilgrimage, their collective experience at the Hajj (annual pilgrimage) was not shared in by members of other faith com-munities. Indeed, until the fifteenth century of the Gregorian ca-lendar, not many European and Asian believers of Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism knew people of other races who embraced their faiths.10 The situation has changed radically and dramatically largely because of the electronic revolution and the emergence of what is called the televillage. Two factors have accounted for this change. The first is the historical events known as the age of discovery and the colonization of the non-European worlds by European powers. The second was the scientific and technological revolution which now governs the way we act and feel.11

ISLAM AND THE MANIFESTATION OF ETHNICITY IN

            THE MUSLIM WORLD

            The theological teachings of Islam certainly do not count-enance racism, ethnicity and tribalism in human societies. How-ever, because of the moral fragility of human beings, they cannot be trusted to live faithfully at all times in accordance with these Divine commands. The earliest manifestation of tribal loyalty in Islamic history took place immediately after the death of the Prophet. It came from some of the Arab tribes who felt that his death terminated their obligations to the Muslim community. Convinced that their bonds were linked only to the deceased leader of the Muslim community and determined to reassert their old sense of freedom and independence, they took to arms.

            These acts of rebellion were not allowed by the succeeding leadership to go unchallenged.12 Known as the Rida wars, these armed conflicts between the young Muslim community and the tribal Arabs resisting the hegemony of Islam, set once and for all the unacceptability of tribalism and the universality of Islam. In addition to the total rejection of tribalism, the Rida wars also left another important legacy to Muslims. Henceforth, in Muslim official circles and in popular imagination, the celebration of one’s tribalism and ethnic chauvinism would be associated with jahiliyya days. This is to say, those who sacrifice universality on the altar of tribal and ethnic gods would be guilty of shirk (associating partnership with God) because, like Satan in the Creation story, they are rejecting the principle of universal equality among human beings and extolling the principle of genetic or moral superiority with no basis.13

            This association of ethnic chauvinism and tribalism with Iblis in the Creation story has a powerful message to send to Muslims and others familiar with this Qur’anic account of the Creation story. Muslims who appreciate the message contained in such a story have throughout history tried to discourage ethnic chauvinism. However, their efforts failed on several occasions because of the contradictions in Muslim society. The existence of slaves from societies outside of the Arab World and the Arab emphasis on ge-nealogical lines together created a phenomenon which increasingly favored Arab families over the latter-day Muslims from other ethnic background. Because of this discrimination in favor of Arabs, a condition made possible by many of the non-Arab Muslims began to question the un-Islamic nature of this practice and soon a cultural movement, known to students of Muslim civilization as the Shuubiya Movement, came into being.14 Pitted linguistically and ethnically against the dominant Arabs ruling over the Ummayyad dynasty, and thoroughly convinced by their Islam that they had all the rights of citizenship by virtue of their profession of the Islamic faith, these advocates of the non-Arab movement would later be identified by scholars as contributors to the overthrow of the Um-mayyad dynasty. One can say retrospectively that the Shuubiya movement in Islam helped usher in a new order under the leader-ship of the Abbassids. This new dispensation redefined the nature of the relationship between Arabs and non-Arabs within the Islamic civilization. Though ethnicity continued to exist in Muslim ranks, its negative and blatantly favoristic character was no longer allowed to raise its ugly head.

            There is however one major historical event which deserves our attention here. This relates to the story about the revolt of the East African slaves known to history as the Zinj Uprising of 869 A.D. Brought from Africa to work in the salt flats near Basra in southern Iraq, they operated very much like the other slaves in Muslim so-cieties of the Mediterranean. It should be stated categorically that at this time there was no racial association of slavery with one particular ethnic/racial group as in the case of the United States of America. The Islamic economy did not depend on the slaves and such persons who found themselves in this servile position were employed mainly as house servants and to a lesser extent as members of the military. In terms of severity of labor conditions, the Zanj were certainly unmatched.15 Convinced that their conditions were intolerable they responded favorably to the agitation from the Shiite advocates of social equality and freedom.

            It is said by historians that this movement of slave rebels captured many cities and towns and that by 878 CE they were near Baghdad itself. It was only in 883 CE that the central government successfully put an end to their rebellion. In discussing the case of the Zinj we do not in any way intend to convey the feeling that racism was the reason for their servitude; rather, the idea is to tell the reader that the agitators against the intolerable conditions of the Zinj slaves were themselves Shiite Muslim Arabs and that Islam was the motivation force for their sense of outrage.16

            Without undue stretching, one can draw a parallel to the abolitionist movement and the Christian sense of outrage that galvanized its movers and shakers. This fact was not lost to Adib Rashad, a prolific African American writer, when he wrote in 1995, that "(i)t is most interesting to note, however that in Western societies opposition to slavery spawned anti-slavery movements whose numbers and commitment often came from church groups. No such movements ever developed in other societies-including Islamic societies."17 Although Rashad acknowledged the absence of a mass movement against slavery in Muslim lands, he was quick to add the following: "Despite the fact that there were no Muslim grassroots movements seeking to abolish slavery, it is imperative to discuss briefly what the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) stated regarding this sensitive subject. Although the Qur’an did not abolish slavery in clear, specific language, Qur’anic injunctions elevate the moral and material status of slaves and encourage their freedom. The freeing of slaves was/is regarded as a meritorious act, an act that brings a human being closer to God."18 The African-American author went on to tell us that there were twelve chapters and thirty-two passages in which references are made to slavery. He also made reference to the numerous hadiths on slavery from the Prophet himself.

            These references, as I have tried to explain earlier, are simply the idealization of what humans are supposed to do in their social sphere. In Islamic history the Shariah became the vehicle through which such interpretations were made for society by a community of legal scholars called Fuqaha. In the majority of cases the jurists accepted the established tradition that Muslims should and must not enslave one another and that persons who became Muslims should be accorded their equal rights. There were however in-stances in Muslim history when individual Muslims, out of greed or personal power, contravened the established Muslim tradition. Adib Rashad, in the work cited above, reminded us that Muhammad bin Hamid (infamously known as Tippo Tip) carved out a slave trading empire for himself in the upper Congo in central Africa in the last decades of the last century.19

ISLAMIC EXPERIENCE IN NORTH AMERICA

            We have dwelled on the issue of slavery and its effects on the enslaved because in the Western World today we are still dealing with the after effects of the African slave trade. The continuing stigmatization of blackness and the negative consequences it has for those lumped together under this category in American and elsewhere in the World, have together affected almost all dis-cussions on religion and race. It is only through such discussions that we can grasp the problems and challenges facing those of us living at the point where race, color and ethnicity intersect. This is particularly relevant for those of us in North America when we recognize the fact that the coming of Islam to the United States of America has led to two tendencies toward race and racism. I have called these two tendencies as the "Webbian" and the "Elijahan" tendencies.20 The former is the articulation of the traditional po-sition which is captured in one of the Qur’anic verses as follows:21

Oh Mankind! Lo! we have created you male and female, and have made you into nations and tribes that ye may know one another. Lo! the noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best of conduct.

            This Qur’anic verse must always be placed side by side with the famous words of the Prophet when he made his Farewell Address to the Muslim ummah at Mount Arafat in Arabia. As re-ported in the collections of hadiths by Imam Buhari and several others, the Prophet told the assembly the following:22

            There is no advantage for Arab over a

            Non-Arab, or for a white man

            over a black man, excepting by piety.

            The American advocate of this traditional Qur’anic position was a white American Muslim who had embraced the religion after many years of spiritual journey within the Theosophical Society of America. While serving as U.S. consul in Manila, Philippines, Mr. Alexander Russell Webb, who changed his first name to Mu-hammad, preached this doctrine to fellow Americans out of his headquarters in Manhattan, New York, where he edited the first known Muslim publication on the continent and at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1893.23 In Webb’s as well as in any genuine Muslim’s mind, racism and ethnic chauvinism cannot be accepted by Islam and Americans can benefit immeasurably from an exposure to such a teaching because it would help reduce drastically the tensions generated by race consciousness and race conflict.

            While the Muslim traditionalists peddle the old message from the Prophet, another message self-consciously identified with Islam by its advocates, but in principle antithetical to its tenets about monogenesis, appeared among blacks living in Detroit in the 1930’s. This second message was that of the Nation of Islam founded by a mysterious character, Farad Muhammad. Much has been said about this man and his movement.24 What is relevant to our discussion here is his use and misuse of Islam in the creation of a mythology/theology and a genesis story to address the negative legacies of slavery and racism among U.S. blacks. These have lived in the south since slavery, but were beginning to establish new homes in northern cities where they were also encountering immigrants from overseas.

            From the above we can see that two opposing tendencies have emerged among Americans who call themselves Muslims. Although the vast majority of them would classify themselves as orthodox Muslims who have no connection with the views of the Nation of Islam, the fact remains that race and racism have become a part of the Muslim American consciousness. Because of this state of affairs in American (and Western) society, it is important to focus on how race and racism are dealt with in American Muslim circles. Three points about the nature of ethnicity within the larger Ame-rican Muslim community:

            The first point is related to the call for, and the maintenance of, Muslim solidarity. This appeal to universal brotherhood (or sisterhood) of humankind is heard almost daily among Muslims in the United States of America. Their call for solidarity is seen in theological and political terms. Theologically, Muslims quote to each other the Qur’anic verses which direct humankind to see themselves as children of Adam and to do good works during their lifetime in this sublunar world. Politically, Muslims appeal to the universal ummah whenever they wish to register their presence in the councils of men and to demonstrate their ability to sink their differences.

            The second point is the fact that ethnicity in the global context could be acknowledged without necessarily undermining the basis of Islamic solidarity. This is an important point because on this matter the Muslim community in the United States of America, for example, stands to benefit from the historical experiences of Catholic Americans. This group of American Christians have been characterized historically as a community of ethnics who are untied by a common faith in Christ and by their adherence to a body of teachings whose interpretation rests entirely in the hands of papal leadership at the Vatican. Although Muslims do not have any universal structure that parallels the Catholic arrangement, the fact remains that American Muslims, as a religious minority living in a predominantly Christian society, have over the last quarter of a century tried to create national and international organizations that would allow for greater communication and mutual collaboration in the development of Islamic communities in North America.25

            By over stressing ethnic identities Muslims could easily undermine their solidarity in America or elsewhere in the world where they constitute a minority. Fearful of this negative outcome, many a Muslim now advocates inter-ethnic cooperation and col-laboration in order to safeguard their individual and collective selves. If and when they live up to this ideal, Muslim men and women can be said to be on the path of greater unity. Under such conditions ethnicity and tribalism cannot last long and Muslims stand to profit immeasurably whenever such a state of affairs exists.

            The third point is the fact that ethnicity and tribalism can be a source of alienation in a society where members divide along racial, ethnic or tribal lines. Since Islam abhors any attempt to glorify one’s race or ethnicity, it would indeed be "Iblisian" (Satanic) to act towards fellow human beings strictly on racial or ethnic lines. This applies to those who embrace racist or tribalistic ideologies of hate and are most likely to make other human beings feel alienated by their racially or ethnically antagonistic neighbors.

CONCLUSIONS

            First, Islam is a world religion categorically opposed to any form of discrimination among human beings. Those humans who are too proud to share the earth and its wealth with their fellow humans because they believe that their racial or ethnic group has special favors from the Creator, are Iblisian in character and, for this and other reasons, deserve condemnation. The second con-clusion is that though Islam as a belief system opposes racism and ethnic chauvinism, the historical experiences of the Muslim peoples have made it categorically clear that ethnic or tribal pre-judices have not disappeared completely. The Shuubiya Movement and the contemporary uses and abuses of Islam about which we wrote above lend support to the argument being made here. The third conclusion is that ethnicity and Islam are not necessarily opposed to each other and that Muslims living in the modern period are challenged to live peacefully with their neighbors regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliations. This is the only way a theology of pluralism can mature.

NOTES

            1. M. Darrol Bryant, "Overcoming History: On the possibilities of Muslim-Christian Dialogue", Hamdard Islamicus, Vol. XVII, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), pp. 5-15; M. Darrol Bryant, Pluralism, Tolerance and Dialogue: Six Studies (Waterloo, Ontario: University of Water-loo Press, 1989), especially chapter 1. See also Seyyed Hossein Nasr, "Comments on a Few Theological Issues" in the Haddad edited, Christian-Muslim Encounters (Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1995), pp. 457-467 .

            2. Religion and nationalism are in many instances closely wedded together in various parts of the world. The IRA campaign in Northern Ireland, the Bosnian conflict in the Balkans, the Islamic campaign of HAMAS in the Middle East, the use of Islamic symbols and slogans in the former Soviet republics in central Asia, the Sikh quest for a national state called Kalistan carved out of India are some of numerous examples one can cite.

            3. For some discussion on the dynamic interaction between religious fundamentalism and the national state, see Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds. Fundamentalisms Comprehended, Vols. 1-5 (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).

            4. For a more comprehensive discussion of Christian, Jewish and Muslim understanding of the creation story, see the following works: Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent (New York: Ran-dom House, 1988); Louie Jacobs, A Jewish Theology (New York: First Vintage Books, 1996); Jaafar Sheikh Idris, "Is Man the Vice-gerent of God?" Journal of Islamic Studies, I (1990), pp. 99-110.

            5. For details on the Qur’anic story, see Chapter 2, Verses 30-39.

            6. For some discussion of man’s role as Khalifa (Vicegerent) of Allah in this world, see The Qur’an, Chapter 2, Verses 30; Chapter 6, Verses 165.

            7. For the Qur’anic reference to Adam as Prophet, see Chapter 2, Verses 37.

            8. For the Qur’anic account of Iblis’ (Satan’s) refusal to bow to Adam, see Chapter 2, Verse 34.

            9. For some recent Muslim discussion on tribalism, racism and ethnicity in contemporary Muslim societies, see my essay on "Islam and Racism" in Sulayman S. Nyang and Henry O. Thompson, ed., Islam: Its Relevance Today (Barrytown, New York: Unification Theological Seminary, 1991), pp. 83-91. See also the recent issue of a major Muslim publication in the U.S., Message International, March, 1996, devoted to "Muslim Tribalism."

            10. It is interesting to note here that when Christian philo-sopher Justin wrote to emperors of his time he defended his co-religionists by saying that they were a people who had completely changed their way of life in matters of sex, money and racial relations. As quoted in Elaine Pagels’ work listed above, Justin wrote that ". . . we, who hated and destroyed one another, refusing to live with those of a different race, now live intimately with them" (p. 59).

            11. For some discussions on the impact of the early Western encounter with the Muslim and Third World regions of the world, see Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Wa-shington, D.C.: Howard University, 1982); Bernard Lewis, The Middle East and the West (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1964), chapter 2; Joel Kovel, White Racism: A Psychohistory (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), especially chapter 9. For some Muslim and Third World perspective on contemporary cultural forces impacting on the Muslim and Third Worlds, see Ali A. Mazrui, Cultural Forces in World Politics (Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1991).

            12. For accounts of the Ridda wars, see F.E. Peters, Allah’s Commonwealth (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973), pp. 78-89.

            13. For Qur’anic rejection of ethnicity and tribalism, see Chapter 49, Verse 13.

            14. On the Shuubya Movement, see Pes, op. cit., pp. 401-408.

            15. For more information on the Zanj revolt, see Peters, op.cit., pp. 477-80.

            16. Ibid.

            17. Adib Rashid, Islam, Black Nationalism and Slavery: A Detailed History (Beltsville, Maryland: Writer’s Inc., 1995), p.50.

            18. Ibid.

            19. On the historical record of slavery in Muslim Africa, see Allan G.B. Fisher and Humphrey J. Fisher, Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971).

            20. See my first editorial in the maiden issue of The American Journal of Islamic Studies, I, (Spring, 1984), p. ix.

            21. The Qur’an, Chapter 49, verse 13.

            22. This part of the Farewell Address has been cited by many biographers of the Prophet of Islam.

            23. For a biographical sketch of M.A.R. Webb, see Emory H. Tunison, "Mohammed Webb: First American Muslim." The Arab World, I, III (1945), pp. 13-18.

            24. For details on the early history of the Nation of Islam, see C. Eric Lincoln, Black Muslim in America (Boston, Mass: Beacon Press, 1973); U.E. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search of an Identity in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).