What Really Went Wrong? – A Shi’i Response to Bernard Lewis By Jalaledin Ebrahim, M.A

“What Really Went Wrong? – A Shi’i Response to Bernard Lewis”

By Jalaledin Ebrahim, M.A

It was July 11, 1957 when a young 20 year old Iranian citizen of Arab, Persian and English ancestry, then still a student at Harvard University, became invested with the authority of ‘Imamah’ over a far flung community of over 12 million Muslims. A direct descendant of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (May peace be upon him) through the line of the Prophet’s cousin, Ali, and his daughter Fatima, His Highness the Aga Khan is the 49th Imam of an obscure (to the Western media and in many parts of the Muslim world) sect of Islam that traces its roots to the Fatimid caliphate and the leaders of the Nizari community, legendarily known as the Assassins.

Fast forward to 2003.

Forty-six years later, this cosmopolitan polyglot billionaire was the singular Muslim religious leader who was quietly invited to both the White House and 10 Downing Street. These consultations, before and after the second Gulf War, were held presumably to discuss urgent matters that were affecting the future and political re-structuring of Afghanistan where approximately a million of his followers are citizens.

It is interesting to note that upon the investiture of his title and position as the Imam of the Time in 1957, the Aga Khan returned to Harvard University to complete his studies in Islamic history before he assumed his role as “Imam of the Atomic Age.” What was he saying by his own example to his followers about the importance of secular education, learning and wisdom? This inspiring Muslim leader is today the head of a vast conglomerate of multinational industries, corporations and non-profit non-governmental organizations that make up one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the world, with a reputation for conservative modern fiscal management. Under the umbrella of the Aga Khan Development Network, (www.akdn.org) with world headquarters at Aiglemont, France, these organizations are funded both by the Aga Khan’s personal wealth as well as the support of partners from most of the international financial institutions of the Western world. These include USAID and CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) the International Finance Corporation, the European Economic Community and other collaborative private foundations.

So, here we have a model of an educated Muslim religious leader who can walk the corridors of power in the Western world and still command the respect and admiration of the political structures, leaders and institutions of the Third World, in Africa and Asia.

How is this possible if, from what we are led to believe in reading “What Went Wrong? – The clash between Islam and modernity in the Middle East” by the prominent scholar, Bernard Lewis, that Islam is a world faith in decline because it has been unable to keep abreast of the material, industrial and technological developments of the Western world and secular society?

Granted that the question that Lewis poses is limited, one might argue, by design, to the Arab Middle East, which with North Africa, makes up less than 25% of the world’s Muslims, and not the whole of the Islamic Ummah. However, it is itself premised on the fact that there is something in Islam that cannot reconcile itself to modernity. Given the ascendancy of fundamentalism in the Muslim world, one can see how a lay person could easily make such an assumption. But the same assumption cannot be made so lightly by a pre-eminent scholar of Islam unless there is a serious oversight or a flaw in his analysis.

Rewind – to after the final pilgrimage to Mecca and on the return journey to Medina by the Holy Prophet in the 7th century, and the last year of the Holy Prophet’s life (May peace be upon him). Muslim historians agree on an important event that took place at Ghadir i Khumm that was critical to the future of the Muslim Ummah: “Muhammad caused the caravan to be stopped and from an improvised pulpit delivered an address.” Once again the principal Sunni and Shi’i sources show no disagreement over the facts of the episode. The following is the account given in Ibn Hanbal, a Sunni collection of hadith:

We were with the Apostle of God in his journey and we stopped at Ghadir Khumm. We performed the obligatory prayer together and a place was swept for the Apostle under two trees and he performed the mid-day prayer. And then he took ‘Ali by the hand and said to the people: ‘Do you not acknowledge that I have a greater claim on each of the believers than they have on themselves?’ And they replied ‘Yes!’ And he took ‘Ali’s hand and said: ‘Of whomever I am Lord (Mawla), then ‘Ali is also his Lord. O God! Be Thou the supporter of whoever supports ‘Ali and the enemy of whoever opposes him.’ And ‘Umar met him (‘Ali) after this and said to him: ‘Congratulations, O son of Abu Talib! Now, morning and evening (i.e. forever) you are the master of every believing man and woman.”

(An Introduction to Shi’i Islam, Moojan Momen, p. 15, Yale University Press).

It is on the basis of this specific event that Shia Muslims claim the authority of Ali and his descendants to be uniquely eligible to lead the Muslim Ummah. The Shia do not and cannot accept the notion that it had completely escaped the Apostle of God’s attention to appoint his own successor, especially when he knew he was ailing. The Holy Quran itself speaks about the important issues of inheritance. So how is it possible that one of the world’s greatest statesmen, who had succeeded in uniting the warring tribes of Arabia and who was entrusted with conveying the “Final Revelation” of Allah, could simply forget such an important detail? This is, then, the basis of the religious authority of the Shia Imams. What, then, is the nature and extent of this authority?

His Highness the Aga Khan III, the predecessor of the present Imam of the Time, addressed this issue best himself in his own memoirs in 1954:

“Thus far, I have described those tenets of Islam which are professed and held in common by all Muslims of any and every sect or sub-sect. I now come to the divergence of the streams of thought. The Sunnis are the people of the Sonna or tradition. Their Kalama, or profession of thought, is: “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the Apostle of God.” To this the Shias add: “And Ali, the companion of Mohammed, is the Vicar of God.” Etymologically the word “Shia” means either a stream or a section.

The Prophet died without appointing a Caliph or successor. The Shia school of thought maintains that while direct Divine inspiration ceased at the Prophet’s death, the need of Divine guidance continued and this could not be left merely to millions of mortal men, subject to the whims and gusts of passion and material necessity, capable of being momentarily but tragically misled by greed, by oratory, or by the sudden desire for material advantage. These dangers were manifest in the period immediately following our Holy Prophet’s death. Mohammed had been, as I have shown, both a temporal and a spiritual sovereign. The Caliph or successor of the Prophet was to succeed him in both these capacities; he was to be both Emir-al-Momenin or “commander of the true believers” and Imam-al-Muslimin or “spiritual chief of the devout.” Perhaps an analogy from the Latin Western world will make this clearer: He would be “Supreme Pontiff” as well as “Imperator or temporal ruler.

Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, the husband of his beloved and only surviving child, Fatima, his first convert, his bold champion in many a war, whom the Prophet in his lifetime said would be to him as Aaron was to Moses, his brother and right-hand man, in the veins of whose descendants the Prophet’s own blood would flow, appeared destined to be that true successor; and such had been the general expectation of Islam. The Shias have therefore always held that after the Prophet’s death, Divine power, guidance, and leadership manifested themselves in Hazrat Ali as the first Imam or spiritual chief of the devout. The Sunnis, however, consider him the fourth in the succession of Caliphs to temporal power.

The Imam is thus the successor of the Prophet in his religious capacity; he is the man who must be obeyed and who dwells among those from whom he commands spiritual obedience. The Sunnis have always held that this authority is temporal merely and secular, and is exerted only in the political sphere; they believe therefore that it appertains to any lawfully constituted political head of State, to a Governor or to the President of the Republic. The Shias say that this authority is all-pervading and is concerned with spiritual matters also, that it is transferred by inherited right to the Prophet’s successors of his blood.”

(The Memoirs of Aga Khan – World Enough and Time, p 178-9, Cassell & Company, London 1953).

The authority vested in the Shia Imam to interpret the Holy Quran contextually and to guide the Ummah in the finest tradition of Ijtihad (intellectual and mystical interpretation) is thus the essential key to questions of how to respond to changing and newly emerging conditions of society. It is this institution of continuous religious authority which addresses the ability of Islam to creatively evolve with the changing cycles and rhythms of human affairs.

As Karen Armstrong correctly points out in her book, “The Battle for God – A History of Fundamentalism,” in referring to the great Shii Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq (d. 765 CE):

“He declared that even though he, as the Prophet’s descendant, was the only legitimate leader (Imam) of the ummah, his true function was not to engage in fruitless conflict but to guide the Shiah in the mystical interpretation of scripture. Each Imam of Ali’s line was, he taught, the spiritual leader of his generation. Each one of the Imams had been designated by his predecessor, who transmitted to him a secret knowledge (ilm) of divine truth. An Imam was, therefore, an infallible spiritual director and a perfect judge. The Shiah thus abjured politics and became a mystical sect, cultivating the techniques of meditation in order to intuit a secret (batin) wisdom that lay behind every single word of the Koran. The Shiis were not content with the literal meaning of scripture, but used the text as a basis for new insights. Their symbolism of the divinely inspired Imam reflected the Shii sense of a sacred presence, which a mystic experienced as immanent and accessible in a turbulent, dangerous world.”

The later institutional developments of the ulema and the Sharia courts came into being precisely because both the Sunnis, from the very beginning, and the majority of the Shia, much later, lost sight of the concept of Imamah as “a living tradition.” – the noble tradition of Ijtihad (interpretation) by the Ahl al-Bayt (The House/family of the Prophet). While the Sunnis denied the ideal of the Perfect or Ideal Man (which is essential to Sufism), following instead a political definition of the Caliph, the majority of Shia relied on the notion of occultation and the “hidden Imam” because the Alid lineage which they followed came to a mysterious end. Hence, many centuries later, the vast majority of the Muslim world is stuck in regressive and retrogressive interpretations of the Final Revelation, whereas in fact, the Imam has the authority to interpret the Holy Quran according to the time and epoch in which Muslims are living.

At least in principal, if not, in fact, this is so, because based on the Imam’s authority, the sharia can actually be abrogated as was evidenced by the proclamation in 1164 by the 23rd Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslim community of Qiyama (Resurrection): “Persian historians relate that in line with the circumstances expected in the Qiyama times, Hasan ‘ala dhikrihi’l-salam had actually abrogated the sharia, relieving his community of observing its commandments and prohibitions.” (A Short History of the Ismailis – Traditions of a Muslim Community, p. 140, Edinburgh University Press).

It has to be noted that for the majority of Muslims, this concept of a divinely inspired Imam is considered heretical. But clearly, in order to address the conditions of modernity, the 49th Imam, based on his divinely inspired Ijtihad, has boldly abrogated much of the sharia by his involvement with international financial institutions and his multinational banking interests, and by adopting a cosmopolitan global approach to the social issues of the Muslim Ummah. This Imam is interested in the essence of the Faith, not its traditional forms of orthodoxy or ortho-praxis. He is interested in the qualities that we as Muslims should aspire to as individuals and as a global community, not the letter of antiquated laws which cannot be sustained in a modern economy or a secular penal system. He is interested in the creation of a high level of material and spiritual well-being for both his followers and the citizens of the countries in which they live, and not a policy that isolates Muslims from the rest of humanity.

His introduction of micro-banking in Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan addresses the need for access to capital for the disadvantaged. His creation of a Nursing School within a state-of-the-art university teaching hospital in Pakistan, developed by Harvard and McMaster Universities, addresses the need for women to become part of the workforce and have access to quality education and parity in a Muslim society. The charter for this University calls for an internationalization of the institution, and so new faculties of medicine and nursing have already been opened in East Africa. He can do all this by virtue of the institution of Imamah. He oversees over 300 secular schools and 200 hospitals and clinics in Asia and Africa. Note the emphasis on secular schools. It is a story that is untold by the Western press despite a steady stream of official press releases which are circulated to the Western media. It is a success story in the world of Islam and it is being censored or ignored both by his detractors and those who complain of the deficient curricula of the madrassahs of other Muslim communities.

This aspect of Islam is completely lacking in Bernard Lewis’ analysis of “What Went Wrong?” There is not even a mention of the dissolution of the Caliphate in 1925 by Ataturk, which led to a complete vacuum of religious authority in the Muslim world. The only significant reference to the Caliphate in “What Went Wrong” is in fact totally oblivious to the concept of the Shia Imamat: “But in the sense of a state ruled by the church or by priests, Islam was not and indeed could not be a theocracy. In this sense, classical Islam had no priesthood, no prelates who might rule or even decisively influence those who did. The caliph, who was head of a governing institution that was state and church in one, was himself neither a jurist nor a theologian, but a practitioner of the arts of politics and sometimes of war. The office of ayatollah is a creation of the nineteenth century; the rule of Khomeini and of his successor as “supreme jurist” an innovation of the twentieth.” (“What Went Wrong?” p, 114, Bernard Lewis, HarperCollins, 2002).

This is clearly fallacious. The Imamat, as an institution of religious authority and legislation, has existed, albeit clandestinely at times, since the event of Ghadir i Khumm. It flourished during the Fatimid Empire (909-1171 CE) which was founded by the 11th Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims until the death of the 18th Imam when the Nizari-Mustali conflict in 1094 between two contending brothers split the Shia Fatimid Caliphate.

But today the spiritual lineage of the Nizari line of Imamah is still in tact in the person of the 49th Imam. It is with the guidance of his grandfather (a former President of the League of Nations) before him (who encouraged his followers to drop the veil and to offer equal access to education for the women of the community) and his own contemporary and far-sighted vision for his murids (disciples) and the Muslim Ummah as a whole that Islam can count on a successful working model of an institution of religious and temporal authority that is in sync with modernity. It is proof positive that Islam can stand continuous reform and Ijtihad from within, without losing touch with its heritage as one of the great civilizations of the world.

In conclusion, it is this author’s bias, conviction and contention that Bernard Lewis missed the essential cause for the decline, as he sees it, of Islam in the modern world. Lewis reduces the causes to gender inequality, a loss of interest in the sciences, and the emergence of the Western capitalist system and the secular society that evolved with it. But if these issues have found few champions in the Muslim world, it is because of the stagnation of Islam’s religious and temporal institutions which have been freeze-dried in antiquity. It is because of the Muslim world’s failure to acknowledge the rightful succession to the Holy Prophet, and the divine guidance that continues to flow in his progeny that Muslims have often become mired in a 7th century paradigm. Hence the large scale regression to fundamentalism and orthodoxy.

The Holy Quran refers to the concept of Caliph frequently and yet one has to ask the question: “where exactly is this Caliphate?” If it can be dissolved by a secular leader like Ataturk and then sustain consensus over its dissolution by the Ummah as was the case in 1925, then the majority of Muslims have in fact chosen on their own authority to abrogate the principal of inspired leadership as it is defined in the Final Revelation of Allah in Surah 4:59
“O ye who believe!
Obey God, and obey the Apostle,
And those charged
With authority among you.
If ye differ in anything
Among yourselves, refer it.
To God and His Apostle,
If ye do believe God
And the Last Day:
That is best, and most suitable
For final determination.”

If this verse of scripture has any merit today, then it stands to reason that somewhere there are those charged with authority amongst Muslims, and clearly with the absence of the Holy Prophet, our differences can only be referred for determination to his legitimate successor(s). A lack of authentic leadership leads to schism, fragmentation, anarchy, regressive interpretations that have no bearing on the Divine Creation as it has unfolded to this day, not to mention illegitimate calls for Jihad and fatwas calling for capital punishment by those who lack the religious authority of the Imam. This is precisely the decline that Bernard Lewis is observing and commenting on.

What really went wrong was that the Muslims in the 7th century failed to accept the designated successor of the Holy Prophet, and a system of leadership and authority that was both enshrined in the Revelation and in the Sunnah of the Holy Prophet. The Muslim world has evolved as a world civilization, often with great bursts of vitality and creativity, as with the Abbasids and the Ummayads, the Fatimids, the Seljuks and the Safavids, and finally the Ottomans. It has in more recent times been at risk of regressing to a gradual state of tyranny and anarchy, often propped up by authoritarian monarchies and secular dictatorships or the remaining vestiges of the former colonial political structures in which the rest of the Muslim Ummah lives, precisely because it has lacked a stable system of religious and temporal authority of its own – one that could have evolved and flourished, without interruption over a 1400 year period.

The Shia Imamat as it is embodied in the institutions of the Aga Khan Development Network will serve, Inshallah, as a successful model to other Sunni and Shia Muslim communities. If Muslims continue to ignore the lessons of Islamic history and revert to obsolete forms of governance and the antiquated laws of sharia, then the Muslim Ummah will continue to decline. But there will still be at least one upstanding, progressive and liberal Muslim community that will be the standard bearer for the Muslim Ummah, because it is a community which has truly heeded the words of the Holy Prophet at Ghadir i Khumm and the Revelation with which he was entrusted and because Islamic spirituality and practice is assured of the interpretation of this Revelation by the Imam of the Time.