Ismail Raji al-Faruqi: From 'Urubah to Ummatic Concerns Ataullah Siddiqui Abstract The author highlights some of al-Faruqi's perceptions and approaches to the understanding of other faiths, his views on rasawwuf, his initia­ tive for the movement for Islamization of Knowledge, and his concerns about the Ummah and da'wah. Although a brief article cannot do full justice to a lifetime of scholarship, this review may provide insights into, and also an overview of, al-Faruqi's thought: his understanding of other faiths, particularly the Abrahamic faiths; his treatment of differ­ ent approaches to Islam, in particular, the Sufi perspective of tasawwuf and its relationship with other faiths; and his contributions as a Muslim intellectual seeking to spread the Islamic message in America and to harness Muslim intellectual resources in pursuit of Islamization of knowledge. Pre·Abrahamic Faith, Hanifism 1 and 'Urubah We begin where al-Faruqi began his exploration of pre-Abrahamic faith, in the religions of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations. AJ-Faruqi discusses the region and its people extensively in his writings as a backdrop to the study of Judaism and Christianity. His attention was focused on the region, primarily because of the geographic, ethnic, and linguistic commu­ nity of the Near East. What is perhaps llllique in al-Faruqi's assessment of the region is that he saw its history as interconnected, a kind of eternal his­ tory, traversed in time and religious culture. Second, this culture and its his­ tory reveal themselves like the leaves of a book, and their connection with the Arabian peninsula unfold the eternal moral and spiritual impact as Ataullah Siddiqui is a research fellow at the Islamic Foundation, Leicester; a visiting fellow in the Centre for History of Religions, Inter-Faith Dialog� and Pluralism, University of Leicester; and a co-editor of Encounters: Journal of Inter-Cultural Perspectives. 2 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 1 6 3 untouched by the Persian elements of Mesopotamian beliefs, particularly, their eschatological and Messianic beliefs. The Arabs rejected those beliefs, and this, al-Faruqi argues, is the m o n why Abraham, whom he calls “the Mesopotamian AnoNte from Ur,”l finds spiritual connections and solace among them. Abraham’s beliefs and practices not only root him spiritually in monotheism but are also the very reason why he was forced to leave his country. His beliefs made him, both physically and socially, an outcast in his own community. In 26-24 B.c., he was persecuted in Ur, the capital of Mesopotamia, a city he left in order to pursue his faith. The obvious direc- tion that he could take from there was to the Arabian peninsula, which he did with Hagar. The Mesopotamians used various names for their gods. Some evolved from cosmic features such as heaven, the winds, the foothills, and fresh waters, while others from the moon, the sun, and the stars. An (or Anum) was the god of the heavens and the father of other gods. Rain was seen as his semen, which impregnated the earth and produced vegetation. Enlil was the god of the winds and storms, while Eaki was the god of underground fresh water. But above all, Marduk, the city god of Babylon, claimed supremacy; he was appointed as a kind of permanent king of the gods. Al- Faruqi describes the salient characteristics of the religious culture of these Near Eastern peoples and his conception of their relations with God, and argues that they saw themselves as servants of a transcendent deity. Furthermore, although the Mesopotamians had various deities, these too were regarded as servants. He finds that they never took a single phenom- enon or element of nature and subscribed to it completely. In al-Famqi’s view, the “association was always functional,” accidental, but not total; therefore, they were not mushrikun. This is where one finds difficulty with al-Faruqi’s excessive analysis, while n%etheless being intrigued with his imaginative ideas. Absolving the Mesopotamians from the burden of shirk, al-Faruqi con- trasts their view of God with the Egyptian perception of God. The Egyptians, he found, “perceived the divine presence immediately in nature, the Mesopotamians deduced the divine presence immediately from nature.” He saw the Egyptian perception of god to be in and of nature, whereas he saw the Mesopotamian God to be in but “never equivalent to or convertible with it.’” Al-Faruqi seems to prepare the ground for Ambism, both in a geo- graphical and spiritual sense, as a corollary of his long and ardent argument for ‘urubah. Once he reconciled and then reinstated the Mesopotamians as Siddiqui: Ismail Raji al-Faruqi: From ‘Uncbah to Ummatic Concerns 3 monotheistically inclined, the true realization of monotheism was “redis- covered” and “reaffirmed when Islam succeeded them. He found this his- torically crude legacy buried under the rubble of Greek and/or Roman belief systems and their “sacramentalist” versions of religion. Once the monotheistic set-up is established from the Arabian peninsula, his ‘urubuh theory finds its way and enters into the Near Eastern regions and the ancient Mesopotamian belt. Al-Fatuqi pictures the Arabs and the regions they per- tain to as rejoining the “semitic civilization.” Al-Faruqi was preoccupied with the specific scheme of ‘urubah or Arabism while at McGill University. His preconception of ‘urubah stemmed from his obsession with three stages of it. There is a contrast, for example, between al-Fatuqi’s concept of Arabism and the Western under- standing of nationalism which permeated so much of the Arab world, espe- cially during his lifetime. Al-Faruqi describes Arab nationalism as a p d - uct of the last two hundred years of Western political life, while Arabism is, by contrast, thousands of years old. Al-Faruqi’s early writings place much emphasis on defining ‘urubuh in a restricted sense, but in his later writings he explains ‘urubah, in a wider sense and attributes a large part of the world wherein he finds a degree of Arabness “despite [its] being non- Arabic speaking.” He described Arabism as an “Arab stream” where the Arabness, in fact, “animates that stream and gives it momentum,” and pro- vides them with “their language, culture and religion.” This, he believes, the Arabs received in four succeeding waves, which he identifies as “Muslims in the seventh century A.D., and Arameans in the fifteenth centu- ry B.c., as Amorites in the second and third, and as Akkadians in the fourth and fifth millennia B.c.” Throughout these events, al-Faruqi finds that “something eternally and unchangeably Arab persisted throughout history and by so doing, the Arab essence gave identity to the Arab stream and con- tinuity to the events that make up its Al-Faruqi discusses his Arabism with reference to the three monotheistic religions with Middle Eastern foci. He extends his arguments beyond geo- gmphic regions and Abrahamic religions, but little is known in historical terms. He begins his progression theory with Judaism. The Judaic period, he emphasizes, starts with Abraham. He also distinguishes between the “Hebrew” religion and “Judaism.” One is the pre-exilic Judaism, the other “post-exilic” Hebrew ritual. He stresses that the post-exilic stunts the prophetic development of its continuity. He blames this lack of continuity of the prophetic tradition on an overwhelming exclusionism. The rabbinic 4 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 163 tradition, al-Faruqi suggests, is responsible for derailing Judaism from the Prophetic tradition of religion; instead, it has guided the Jewish people toward the exclusivism of people and land. He further argues that the Jewish election theory is ethically unsustainable. Al-Faruqi’s concept of ‘uncbah, however, and its extended use have been criticized. Stanley Frost, then Dean of the Faculty of Divinity at McGill University, expressed his objections as follows: 1. 2. 3. What historical or factual evidence have you for claiming an iden- tifiable continuity of being from Akkad through to modem Islam? What is the principle of identity historically? Can any de f~ t ion be drawn that finally is not a broad linguistic one? In that case, would not the Indo-Aryan Stream of Being stand as a parallel? And therefore destroy the universalist significance of the Arab Stream B i.e. it but one among many? By what right do you take a part of the whole (presuming you have substantiated your thesis that there is such an identifmble stream) and make it the definitive, constituent element? In other words, is not “Arab” at best but one element, and if any inclusive word is to be found must not the word (and the idea) be “semit- ic”? To say “Arab stream of being” calls the whole concept into dispute. Your attempt to dismiss an historical identity, or an “elective” identity and to find “transcendence-conscious” identity ignores other (e.g., the Greek and the Indian) cultures. This Semite has no other monopoly here, and it does him disservice to claim this for him: This touched al-Faruqi’s academic nerve as well as his Arab identity. So, here, we would like to quote, in full, his response to the Semitic and Arab claim, which Stanley Frost so poignantly identified: 1. I have identified this ideological substratum as “transcendence- consciousness,” uncovered it in Crescentine religions and cultures as well as in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I take it that you do not find fault with my reading this transcendence-consciousness in their respective texts and scriptures. I have also repudiated every possibility of identifying this consciousness otherwise, in particular as historical (i.e., really-racial) or elective (i.e., claim- ingly-racial). The criticism is that in transcendence-conscious- ness, “the Semite has no monopoly.” The answer is that the Greek Siddiqui: Ismail Raji al-Faruqi: From ‘Urubuh to Ummatic Concerns 5 and Indian cultures certainly possess a transcendence-conscious- ness, but that their transcendence is of a totally different, indeed, contrary kind. The Greek, for instance, moves one directionally from this world to the realm beyond. He conceives of his god as projection of nature and this-world. Though not its photographic (and hence empirical) projection, his god is definitely a human god and this is in last resort, the real ground of his naturalism, his humanism. Consider, in support of this the three-volumed evi- dence of Warner Jaeger’s P ~ i d e r a . ~ The ethical relevance of the Greek deity to this world is never perpendicular, but trajectorial. His god begins this career always here on earth; He starts in and from nature, shoots upward to heaven where he hypostasizes him- self and then returns down to earth to rule. It is this that makes Greek nature the over-charged concept it is. Man, like the acorn, Greek culture has consistently maintained, contains in himself the “form” of his perfection. Under such metaphysic, God can never be the transcendentally transcendent being He is. On the other hand, the Indian is conscious of the transcendent realm that is so transcendent that it is not ethically relevant for this world. The realm of Nirvana is not one in the likeness of which man ought to mould reality, but one to which he ought to aban- don reality having condemned it axiomatically beforehand. Its relevance, therefore, is utterly negative. It does not exist that man and world may be redeemed here, but simply rules for conduct on earth. The look in god‘s eye towards earth and man is uniquely Semitic (Arab) whether Jewish, Christian or Islamic. Christianity has even built its whole theology on this earthbound look of God. The Christic nature of the God of Christianity represents the ulti- mate conclusion of this Semiteness. No comparison between it and Indian religion is possible here: Referring to Stanley Frost’s second criticism, al-Famqi wrote: 2. L call this unique transcendence-consciousness Arab, rather than Semitic, because Arab is not the name of an element in the Stream, of “one among many.” Judaism, for instance, is Jewish because it is the religion of the Jews who were the inhabitants of Judah. But it is also Arab because geographically, ethnically, lin- guistically and ideologically, the Jews who were the inhabitants of Judah were one with the Arabs. The Jews were an element among other elements such as the Phoenicians, the Anaanites, the Ancient Ma’inites, etc. But all these were Arabs. It is true that all Arabs in my sense are Semites, but this all-inclusive sense of 6 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 1 6 3 “Semite” is a relatively modem - I suspect Western - concept. I doubt if any Semite people has represented to itself its own iden- tity as “semitic.” You may ask, but has any of those peoples rep resented itself as Arab? The answer is yes, the “Arabs” (in the smaller sense of Peninsula Arabs) have always done so. And since they are the fountainhead of all those other peoples, they may legitimately give their name to the whole. I do not know of any geographic, ethnic, linguistic or ideological evidence which relates the Semitic peoples including the Arabs to Canaan, or to F’hoenicia, or to Babylon, or to Judah, so as to furnish as much as a claim that the Arab stream of being is really a Canaani, Phoenician, Babylonian or Jewish stream of being. Only the con- cept “Semite” has laid such a claim, but it has done so on the strength of a modem distension of its denotation by Western scholars. If the Westem scholar may, in the 19th century, pick out a concept (viz. “Semitic”) from the Jewish tradition and give it this all-inclusive sense, why may not I take the concept “Arab” which is far more than a concept and restore to it in the 20th cen- tury the all-inclusive denotation which is its due? 3. The Arab stream of being, if I may now assume its existence, is universal in its significance, not in the sense that it is the only one existent, nor in that it is the only one which has something worth- while to say. The Aryan and Indian and Chinese streams of being arecertainly.7 Al-Faruqi is so taken by the novelty and power of his idea, ‘urubah, that he does not bother to distance himself from the conclusions he draws from it. He moves on to focus on the second moment of Arab consciousness, Christianity. Within the “engrossed tribalism of the Jews” and the chronic pervasion of the Hebrews within the Arab stream, he discovered Christianity as the second moment of Arab consciousness. The message of Jesus was a solution to the Hebrew’s problem. Jesus was a Jew, and as such he was a w m of their spirit and their influences. The Jews saw Jesus as a man with a mission and the mission started with his own people. The Jews, al-Faruqi argues, recognized that their Creator was going to sweep away their Hebrew exclusivism and bring about a new moment of consciousness in the realm of their spirit and ethics, indeed, across their entire system. Therefore, al-Faruqi points out, they “resolved to put an end to Jesus’s activity and life in order to protect, as they thought, the higher interest of that system and spirit.” Jesus and his message focused on humanity, and Jesus was interested in the Jews as they were part of humanity “and to the Siddiqui: Ismail Raji al-Faruqi: From ‘Urubuh to Urnmatic Concerns 7 extent that he was born and lived in their midst and spoke their language.” Jesus preached loyalty to God and that God, above all, should be the crite- rion of all measurement. Jesus was not against the Jews per se, but clearly against the claim that they, above all people, are God‘s chosen children. The message of love thy neighbor was seen by the Hebrews as blasphemy. Love of God for them was love for the God of Israel. The Jewish love of law was seen as a protection against the growing popularity of Jesus’s message. The teachings of Jesus reminded them of their weaknesses. Jesus’s criticism of the Jewish community of his time was direct and hard-hitting, but above all, he confronted the notion that the concept of “the Kingdom of God” was the exclusion domain of the Jewish people. Jesus’s teachings, then, challenged the core concepts and beliefs of Jewish thought. The notion that “a king- dom that exists nowhere and everywhere, in the sense that it has no relation to any space but may exist wherever its constituents, the loving individuals, happen to be” was, al-Faruqi found, unacceptable to the Jews. At this chal- lenging point in history, the creative and reshaping momentum of events had slowly but codidently been Hellenized. With Christianity, al-Faruqi discovers that elements of Jesus’s teachings were already present in Judaic traditions, and in Hanifism in particular. Hanifism, to al-Famqi, “incorporates every noble thought in the Old Testament ... from which sprang Christianity, the religion of the spirit and the interiorized ethic par excellence.” The essence of Christianity, for al- Faruqi, lies in “Amos, and Jeremiah, even before the Exile.” Whether this specific discovery is correct is less important for us than what he sees as Christianity’s entanglement in the history of the Hebrews producing a par- ticular notion of salvation which seems to give a “ p l y ethical virgin birth“ to Christianity itself. Al-Faruqi seems to see himself as the one who has disentangled the concept of a possessive Lord and, in so doing, rein- stated Jesus’s affirmation of the universalism of religion which was in direct opposition to Jewish notions of ethnocentrism. The tern “Hadism” appears quite often in al-Fa~qi’s writings, and this concept of Hanifism plays a crucial role in his expos6 of the region’s reli- gious history. Thus, it may not be out of place here to find out what he means by this. He describes the Hanifs, who upheld the Abrahamic tradi- tion among the Arabs, as distinctly different but present in almost every tribe of Arabia. The Hanif opposition to shirk, their refusal to par&icipate in pagan rituals, their love of knowledge and of maintaining themselves as ethically different, became their hallmark. Since their beliefs and practices 8 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 1 6 3 in daily life were closer to Jewish practices, despite their linguistic differ- ences, they were condescendingly called hampari in Aramaic, meaning “separated.” Hence, they were somewhat neglected, and given less impor- tance in society. Very often they had to take refuge among the desert tribes, and al-Faruqi argues that this in tum became helpful in further preserving the Hanif identity and purity. He suggests that before the advent of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), three attempts were made to reinstate Abrahamic monotheism among the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, and these were made by the prophets Hud, Salih and Shu‘ayb in Hadramaut and Hijaz. All failed because the people refused to accept them as prophets and preferred to persist in shirk or associationism. Al-Faruqi suggests that the different phases of revelation pertain to the stages of the progression of ‘urubuh. He views Judaism as the first moment of Arab consciousness, Christianity as the second, and Islam as the con- temporary moment. But does he expect yet another phase, either now or in the future? Yes, and al-Faruqi describes this phase as that of Islamist asser- tion - a new phase of Islamic consciousness. The requirement of any new value must be unknown, but, in relation to Islam, al-Faruqi finds that this is not so because “no value can be new to Islam as such since this is the col- lective name of all values.” To al-Faruqi, “the Islamicness of value is no more than its value-ness,” and if in ‘urubah new “values [are] to be dis- covered” then the logical conclusion in al-Faruqi’s view is that “the dis- covered values should be Islamic.” Put simply, any “new value” and its relationship with other values has to be worked out and established and “must cohere with [the] legacy of the Ummah.” Al-Faruqi does not see this progression as a casual process in mechanis- tic terns; rather, it is planned, but hUman beings are free to choose their own path and the goals they invent. Therefore, the prophets act as reminders, critics, and reformers in al-Faruqi’s concept of progression. One may find in al-Faruqi’s scheme of progression some influence from Ibn Hazm who looked at the movement of these three religions in a similar fashion, but al-Faruqi detaches himself from any such observation. Muhammad AM& restated Ibn Hazm’s progression theory in an entirely different context, i.e., in the context of science and civilization. He saw the progression of humanity as occupying three stages: “[C]hildhood, when man needed stem discipline as a child, the Law of Moses; adolescence, when man relied on feelings, the age of Christianity; maturity, when man relies on reason and science ... the age of Islam.” Siddiqui: Ismail Raji al-Faruqi: Prom ‘Urubah to Ummatic Concerns 9 In this progression, however, does one religious personality borrow from another? Al-Faruqi opposes such views and especially some Western scholars’ proposition that Islam has borrowed from Judaism and Christianity. He argues that simple coexistence and “identical religious per- sonalities” do not suggest “borrowing.” He emphasizes that it is “repugnant to speak of borrowing between any two movements, an earlier and a later one, when the latter sees itself as a continuation and reform of the earlier.” He finds that the same scholars do not speak of Christianity “bornwing” from Judaism, Buddhism fiom Hinduism, or Protestantism from Catholicism. Yet that is precisely how Islam sees itself regarding Judaism and Christianity, namely, as the very same identity but reformed and purged of accumulated tamperings and changes by leaders and scribes. In &g al-Famqi, one easily detects that in order to establish his pro- gression theory, he has to devise a method, a neutral one, to judge Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The methodology he proposed in Christian Ethics: A Historical and Systematic Analysis of Its Dominant I&as is what he calls “meta-religion,” and here he argues that those believers whose religions are compared should be listened to by the comparer. The search for the tmth is for the most part a self-analysis of enquiry. Here a researcher is more than a mere spectator. In a way, researchers examine the activity of their own spirit in their own interaction with the world around them. There is a need, in al-Faruqi’s comparative religious view, to relate or evaluate, and he strongly believes this provides overall principles that are not “constrained by any religious tradition’’ or through which any religious tradition can be as fol- lows: 1. Being of two realms: ideal and actual. “The ideal and the actu- al rn different kinds of being, they are two.” He elaborates from this standpoint of ethics, arguing: “Fact and value are two orders of being. If this duality were not hue, and fact and value belonged to the same order of being, it would be groundless to judge one fact by another.” judged. He suggests six such principles, which can be summanzed - 2. Ideal being is relevant to actual being. “The ideal realm acts as a principle of classification, of the order and structure of actual being, it provides the standard to judge if the actual is or is not valuable.” 10 3. 4. 5. 6. The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 163 Relevance of the ideal to the actuul is a c o m n d . Al-Faruqi stresses that the “whole realm of ideal being is relevant to the whole realm of actual being.” Actual being has to be judged as what it ought to be. Their relationship is not based on this and the other, rather their relationship is eitherlor. In other words, the relevance of “ideal” is superior and the “actual” has to strive to attain the “ideal.” But judging on this basis, i.e., eitherlor, the actual being can- not become “bad.” Actual being is, as such, good. “The realm of actual,” as al-Faruqi describes it, is this-world. This-world is g d , to enter it, to be in it, is as such valuable. To “value” the world, to mold the world and give a direction, so that it can “embody the structure and content of the ideal, value realization must be possible.” Therefore, actual being is malleable. He states that “man can and does give new direction to the casual, forward push of reality in order to become some- thing else, something other than he would otherwise be.” Pelfection of the cosms is only a hwnan burden. He points out that the importance of man is that he is the only creature who holds the key to the “entrance of the valuational ideal into the actual.” He argues: “Man is the bridge which values must cross if they are to enter the real. He stands at the crossroads of the two realms of being, participating in both, susceptible to both.”8 In the critics’ eyes, al-Faruqi is struggling to convince the reader, not only in what he proposes as meta-religion in the introductory chapter of Christian Ethics, but in his whole critical proposition of Christian Ethics itself. He writes to Stanley Foster on December 9,1961: You may disagree with me that this is carrying the argument of an analysis of Christian ethics too far. My defence is that I have no other fulcrum from which to direct my critique. If my fulcrum were to be internal to Christianity, my critique would be merely another Christianist treatise. If, on the other hand, it were external to Christianity, my critique would be either a copy of an Ibn Hazm’s or other Middle Ages Muslim critic of Christianity or of a Karl Marx or some other Western atheist. My strategy has been to choose a fulcrum Siddiqui: Ismail Raji al-Faruqi: From ‘Urubuh to Urnmatic Concerns 11 which though external to Christianism (credal Christianity) may still be internal to Christianity. Al-Faruqi and Tasawwuf Al-Faruqi visualized tasuwwuf (Sufism) as a giant, created out of an amalgam of a series of chemical mishaps in Muslim history, a giant that while roaming around the city of Islam frequently obstructs the stmight path and occasionally damages the spiritual properties of the city dwellers. Sufism, in al-Famqi’s view, was “the greatest Muslim misunderstanding.” The giant came from outside Islam’s world. In his view, mishaps occurred because there were various streams of thought that nurtured and brought about the Sufi traditions. He locates one stream in the early converts to Islam in their way of life, which was largely ascetic. The converts, who often came from the desert, were an unsettled community compared to the relatively luxurious living and settled life of the urban dwellers. Recitation of the “Qur‘an and its buhghu, Arabic poetry and pietism and invocations” and “adoring love of God, of His Divine presence,” were, in his view, the factors that lead to the path of asceticism. Companions of the Prophet like Abu Dhar al-Ghaffari, and individuals who came later, such as ‘Umar ibn Adwiyyah all contributed in emphasizing the other-worldliness of Muslim Al-Faruqi finds the second influence on Sufism coming from Pythagorean Hellenism and Alexandrian gnosticism that dominated the Near Eastern region and penetrated Judaism and Christianity. Converts from this region brought their own spiritual baggage and e n t e d “the native Arabian stream of ascetic love of God.” A l - F q i identifies two people in this stream, Al-Muhasibi (d. 838) and Dhun al-Nun al-Misri (d. 861). In al-Faruqi‘s view, the first taught “the doctrine of truth by illumina- tion (ishruq),” and the other, the desirability and possibilityof union with God in spirit following an ascent through virtue and contemplation.”1o The third influence al-Faruqi detects is from Asia, where Islam replaced the dominant Buddhist influence. To support his thesis he presents an account of the life of Ibrahim ibn al-Adham (d. 777), a ruling prince of Balkh described by his followers as greatly resembling Buddha. Like Siddhartha, he left his palace and roamed the world, experiencing the pain and suffering of the people and eventually settling into a contemplative life outside the palace. He gave up his throne, left his loved ones, and adopted ‘Abd al-‘AziZ, Hasan al-Basri, Abu Ha~him al-Kufi, and Rab’ah al- thought9 12 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 1 6 3 an ascetic life in a mosque. Again like Siddhartha, he was oblivious of food and the trappings of the world. Al-Faruqi also points out that Abu Yazid Bistami was yet another example of the Hindu-Buddhist influence on Islam, an influence which resulted in development of the concept of buqu, the Nirvana goal of life, andfuna, the life of self-denial. These influences of Hellenism and Buddhism among Muslims al-Faruqi terns “alien imports” and I.aises an accusing finger toward Junayd al-Baghdadi (d. 910) who, al-Faruqi believes, was instrumental in joining them “to the Arab ascetic love-of-God stream and vested them with Islamic, indeed Qur’anic, @m”ll Apart from the sources mentioned above, al-Faruqi finds some Christian and Western biases in promoting Sufism as a possible means to bring Islam and Christianity closer. We will discuss a little later what he means by ‘Western biases,” but first we examine his concept of Sufism. Tuwhid, he believes, is what the Sufis singled out and around which they built a unique system of devotion and theology. In a sense, to al-Faruqi, Sufism is an out- growth of the breakthrough of Islam. In his view, Sufism was ready to ful- fil human ethos and consciousness with God alone. To see Him alone was the sole Sufi purpose - to be vigilant at all times and not to allow others, consciously or unconsciously, to distract one from one’s devotion to God. Al-Faruqi provides a very technological simile: “Sufis insisted from the beginning that man ought to turn his eyes inward. Like a radar antenna for- ever revolving, man’s eye ought to keep scanning the horizons of the soul in order to detect the presence of [a] foreign god. When such is discovered, its duty is to alert the will to rise to its destruction and elimination.”12 To al- Faruqi, this process is a “prerequisite of all Sufkm.” So far he seems to have no problem with the Sufism. As he sees it, however, the Sufis do depart from the true path of Islam, particularly in the way the concept of love of God is understood by them. The basic departure occurs when Sufism’s concept of unity of God turns into union with God. Here he com- pares the view of Paul and Jesus and he points out that John [the Gospel of John 17:21-221, in fact, interprets the “unity” with God in a sense as “union” with God. Al-Faruqi contends that Paul used the notion of “unity with Christ,” Paul, he argues, spoke of the “unity of Jesus with God, and that of the Christians with Jesus, as being the same” - a blasphemy. It is “blasphemy to speak of God, the beloved in this case, of necessarily will- ing what the lover wills. He may do so, but He also may not. The unity in question is, therefore, even less than a union. Certainly, it is one-direction- Siddiqui: Ismail Raji al-Faruqi: From ‘Urubah to Ummatic Concerns 13 al correspondence in which one pole, namely God, remains in the union, its object, its standard and judge, the principle of the union as well as its very end -but utterly free in Himself and regarding the other pole.” In his view, despite the idea of union, “God and the human soul remain utterly and for- ever different, other, and two.”l3 He is critical of Sufism’s denial of the world, which, in his view, prevents human beings from reforming and rebuilding the world. Observing this very point of denial, he finds that it was so “fanatical” in “its Condemna- tion, so emphatic was its great ‘No’ that it left its greatest minds utterly unscrupulous in the matter of how to understand the Qur’an on this point and in what to trust of the sea of rumours and old-wives tales circulated under the sacred name of the Prophet”14 He finds that “[elvery birth, the Sufis thought, is unto death, every construction is unto destruction, every effort unto nought.” Sufis, in his view, are utterly blind [about] death in the cycle of human life. They jumped to the conclusion that the good is to escape from the Al-Faruqi highlights al-Ghazali’s bent of mind in relatien to the value of the world. He contends that al-Ghazali does not say how this world and its created things become an enemy of the world. He picks out al-Ghazali’s Zhyu ‘ulm ul-din, particularly the chapter “Dham al-dunyya” (Evils of the World). In this chapter al-Ghazali compares the world with a beautiful and unchaste woman. She attracts people by her beauty but she has a hidden disease that will destroy anyone who goes near her. If she is good for an hour, she will inflict harm for a year. Al-Ghazali goes on to compare the world with a deceitful, scheming, treacherous woman, ever escaping, always beautiful and appealing, but once she captures your heart she reveals her claws.16 Al-Faruqi is uncomfortable with such an explanation of the world and asks, “Suppose the pleasure of the world were not discontin- uous and the world’s promise of comfort, power, pleasure, etc., was upheld throughout a man’s life, would the world then become good? Or is death, per se, so evil as to transvalue the goodness of all realized values in the life it terminates? He does not find answers in al-Ghazali’s discourse, which to al-Fatuqi, somds more like “a frustrated hedonist’s than a philosopher's dissertation on the value of the world.”17 Al-Faruqi finds the “meta-ethical condemnation” of the world contrary to the Qur’an. In his view, al-Ghazali relies heavily on Hadith and “the apocalyptic literature” to prove his point. This literature, which is commonly called Isruelicit, entered Muslim socie- ty through Jewish and Christian converts. Al-Ghazali, al-Faruqi points out, 14 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 16:3 quotes from such soums and he accuses him of being “completely unmindful of their obvious Sufi, un-Qur’anic, un-Muhammadan spirit”l* Al-Faruqi quotes further from al-Ghazali regarding the status of the world which has no meaning; he cites Qur’anic verses, which in his view, contra- dict al-Ghadi’s argument: “We have not created heaven and earth and all that is in them in spirit; we have not created them but in righeouness, but people know not.” In al-Famqi’s view, al-Ghazali did little to check the authenticity of ahu- dith, which he quotes in support of his argument, what he believes to be an “anti-world” ethic. Further, he finds that some of al-Ghazali’s sources are “patently Christian.” He argues that al-Ghazali quotes biblical sayings as Prophetic ahadith, echoing (indeed, more than echoing; it is almost quot- ing!): “No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the othec or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye can- not serve God and mammon” (Matthew 624, Luke 1613). The question arises, why was al-Faruqi so emphatically against Sufism? There are two possible reasons. First, while al-Faruqi was engaged in ’urubuh or was in search of Arab identity and working toward establishing ‘urubah and its significance in human history, he was heavily influenced and at times fascinated by the movement of Muhammad ibn ‘AM al- Wahhab (d. 1791), whose work he approvingly translated and nxommend- ed. Al-Faruqi considered the Wahhabiyyah movement to have “furnished Arab society with the diagnosis and prescribed the cure. The disease was tusmmqf, otherwise known as Sufism, or Islamic mystici~m.”’~ Second, perhaps while he was working on ‘urubuh and Christian Ethics, he thought that if Muslim society were to survive it would have to avoid the contami- nation that the Jews and Christians had gone through, where exclusionist idealism entered into Judaism, and Hellenism entered into Christianity. Therefore, he looked toward the puritan movement of Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab and saw t u s m u f i n light of what we have mentioned. A Merent side of al-Famqi emerges in his later lie. In his Cultural Atlas of Zslm he is full of praise for a l - G W i and his tone becomes much milder. In the tu smufof al-Ghazali he finds the presence of both “knowl- edge and action.” He also discovers that al-Ghazali rejects the Sufis claim that “in the mystical experience one reaches God through fusion into or unity with the divine Being.” He reads in al-Ghazali rejection of such ideas as “blasphemous.” Al-Ghazali “repudiates those Sufis who preached monkery and mortification, or monobligation to observe the rituals and all . Siddiquk ismail Raji al-Faruqi: From ‘Uru6ah to Ummatic CoMxrns 15 I other laws of the Shar ia l~ ’~ Al-Faruqi’s earlier harsh comments on al- Ghazali reconcile the idea that al-Ghazali “made &zsmwfrespectable and conformant with Shari’ah and the spirit of Islam.” But he reserves most praise for al-Ghazali’s critique of philosophers and briefly m u n t s al- Ghazali’s comments on this subject in his Cultural Atlas of Islam. He argues that al-Ghazali anticipated Decartes’s methodological doubt and “arrived not at any certain cogito but at the phenomenon of yuqin (episte- mological certainty); this “evaluates the data of reality but only after con- sciousness has been illuminakd by the light of i m n , where it drew its ulti- mate postulates; and then gave it the fmxlom to be as critical as it wished.’a1 ‘Urubah to Ummatic Concerns and Da’wah The joumey from ‘urubuh to Ummatic concerns, i.e., from Arab to Muslim concerns, began soon after al-Faruqi joined the Muslim Students Association (MSA) in the UNted States. Taking a leaf out of Jamaluddin al-Afgani’s book, al-Faruqi also formed a p u p called Urwat al-wuthqa. Like Afghani, he focused his thoughts on Mudim unity through this forum. Al-Faruqi approached the subject in two ways. Fmt, he sought to give the non-Muslim audience the zeal to rediscover the Islamic heritage, and he encouraged fellow Muslims to witness (shahadah) Islam by example and good words and so provide a sound refemnce for non-Muslims. In the sec- ondinstance , he sought to restructure the dmadful holes created in the realms of thought and knowledge by the challenges of modernity and c o b niahation. Time and again, al-Faruqi emphasized the imporhnce of ddwah. He saw &wuh as aduty incumbent upon all Muslims -aduty to reachothers. He spoke frequently on this subject in America, h p e , and Asia and wrote two pieces on the issue, “On the Nature of Islamic Du‘wuh” and “Du‘mh in the West Promise and Trial.“ He viewed the instinct to perform ddwah as synonymous with mission and as present in all religions. “NO religion can avoid mission if it has any kind of intekctual backbone.” He said that to “deny mission ... is to deny the need to demand the agmement of others to what is being claimed to be the truth by the religion’”p characteristically, al-Faruqi went even h t h e r than this and demanded agreement, arguing that “not to demand agreement” shows a lack of seri- ousness. Ddwah to him, by its very nature, carries “a necessary corollary of its affirmatioas and denials“ where anybody is fnx to invite others. Yet 16 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 1 6 3 the kernel of da’wuh lies in its integrity “on the part of both caller and called.” In al-Faruqi’s writings, da’wuh is also motivated by the fact that Islam is the most misunderstood religion. He identifies the reasons for this provaca- tively; Islam, he argues, is: the only religion that contended and fought with most of the world religions on their own home ground, whether in the field of ideas, or on the battlefields of history. Islam has been engaged in these wars - whether spiritual or political - even before it was born, before it became autonomous at home, even before it completed its own sys- tem of ideas. And it is still vigorously fighting on all fronts. Moreover, Islam is the only religion that in its interreligious and i n t e r ~ t i o ~ l conflict with Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, SUC- ceedd significanty and in major scale in all the fights it undertook. Equally, it was the only religion that marshalled all its spiritual efforts to fight Western colonialism and imperialism throughout the world when its territory - indeed, its very heartland -was fragmented and practically all its adherents subjected to the colonialist yoke. Finally, and yet more significantly, Islam is still winning today and growing by means of mission and conversion at a greater rate than any other religion. No wonder, then, that it is the religion with the greatest num- ber of enemies and, hence, the religion most misunderstood.” The basic characterstics of da’wuh, in al-Faruqi’s view, lie in its nature. He highlights these important characteristics as freedom, rationality, and universalism. Ddwah without freedom cannot succeed, it can only succeed “with absolute integrity on the part of both caller and called.” This is essen- tial. To him, for “either party to tamper with that integrity” is a “capital crime.” He argues that “invitation,” which is the liteml meaning of da’wah, “can be fulfilled only with the free consent of the called.” He refers to this call as a call toward God. He argues that since “the objective is to convince the called that God is his Creator, Master, Lord and Judge, forced judgment is a contradiction in terms.” Conversion, he highlights, is not a conversion toward Islam but to God. The question remains, however, whether al- Faruqi is content with the conversion of a person who turns and begins to believe in God without believing in Islam in a confessional sense, i.e., can this be regarded as a true conversion or not? Al-Faruqi seems uncomfort- able in answering this question straight away. Rationality demands, al- Faruqi observes, that the judgment to change “should be arrived at only Siddiqui: Ismail Raji al-Faruqi: From ‘Urubuh to Ummatic Concerns 17 after consideration of the alternatives, their comparison and contrast with one another, after the precise, unhurried and objective weighing of evi- dence and counter-evidence with reality.” By asserting the rational aspects of da’wuh, al-Faruqi seems to dismiss any underhanded method of approaching this sensitive issue. He strongly contends what he calls “psy- chopathic expansion” or elsewhere “psychotropic induction.” Al-Faruqi juxtaposes this assertion against the Hebrew concept of “election” or “favoritism.” This universalism of da’wuh in al-Faruqi’s writings somewhat unexpectedly connects other faiths in the sense that God, being the source, means that He has given the truth to those who are not Muslims, not only individually, but also collectively, for truth can be found inside their tradi- tions. This is what al-Faruqi calls a de jure mission simply because the source of the truth is God. If one accepts this argument, the whole outlook of mission and &wuh is changed. It turns, as al-Faruqi puts it, into a “cooperative critique” of the other religion and avoids its invasion by a new truth.” Here it would not be out of place to indicate that to al-Faruqui, “mission” remains a big obstacle for various reasons. We can identify three major areas that he frequently argued need to be reconsidered. One may argue that those reasons may be outdated; however, al-Faruqi considers that its spirit remains alive and they have created tension in the “realm of Muslim aware- ness.” First, he points out that colonialism “attacked the personal integrity of every man in the colonized territory. Through colonialism, Christendom, and not Christianity, robbed the Muslim of his liberty to express his thought, to assemble with his peers, to act in any field, including the edu- cation of himself and his own ~hilclren.’~ He emphasizes further that in this respect the “individual Christian cannot absolve himself of responsibility on the grounds that his religion is personal and politics and governments are the realm of Caesar.’m In the strongest terms, he encourages Christians to dissociate themselves from the mission that is pursued in their name. Second, he highlights that the necessity of mission is m o d y and reli- giously imperative and that Christianity and Islam are both missionary reli- gions. The betrayal that al-Faruqi feels, however, is not the work of Christianity but of its human, fallible, and often gullible representatives. In many instances, Christian missionaries were caught in the workings of the colonial power and were used by the latter to advantage. m e r e they delib- erately cooperated with the colonialist and helped him achieve colonial 18 The American Joumal of Islamic Social Sciences 1 6 3 objectives, they made themselves @ty in the eyes of Christianity as well as Islam. After the colonial temtory won its independence and repulsed the colonialist, the insincere missionary changed his garb and returned as an expert in medicine, education, agriculture, social work, or development planning. He exploited the acute need of the emergent world for such serv- ices, as well as the internal strains, dislocations, and dissensions preceding and/or following national independence. In these cases, the missionary was not “seeking the Face of God.” The divine cause for him was a front, instru- mental to the national politico-economic or c u l d good which he deemed superior.26 The third area, which he highlights in relation to mission, is Christian Orientalism. Here again he emphasizes that “Christianity is innocent of Orientalism, Christendom’s effort to understand Islam and at the same time to undermine it. With the rise of Ewpean universities in the nineteenth century, many Jews, atheists and free-thinkers, men at the farthest remove from Christianity, joined ranks with Christians in the study of the religion and culture of Islam. Orientalism is responsible for many scholarly accom- plishments, especially in the discovery, establishment and editing of classi- cal Islamic texts.’a7 What he is critical of is that as an in tep ter of Islam “Orientalism has only helped destroy the Muslim’s confidence in Christendom.’m He finds that the Orientalists undermined the Prophet Muhammad‘s character and the integrity of the Qur‘an in particular. Orientalism glorified factionalism among Muslims by defending heresies and overemphasizing mysticism in which Islam lost its essence and became indistinguishable from other religi0ns.2~ He criticized mission and missionaries and appreciated them.% He argued that the vigor and enthusiasm a missionary shows for his religion make him oblivious to the values of others. Convenely, a missionary may be well aware of the culture and faith of the people to whom he pmxhes, but stil l have a kind of sarcasm and prejudice against them. Perhaps al- Faruqi had in mind people like Kramer, who had a scholarly knowledge of Islam, lived among Muslims, and worked as a missionary. He was in per- sonal contact with Muslims but expressed the view that “Islam in its con- stitutive elements and apprehensions must be called a superficial reli- g i ~ n . ” ~ ~ Referring to Islam’s concept of God, he remarks that it “cannot efface this fact and retrieve its patent superficiality in regard to the most essential problems of religious life.”= In his view, “Islam might be d e d a religion that has almost no questions and no answers.” He states &- Siddiqui: Ismail Raji al-Fiuuqi: From ‘(lnrboh to Ummatic Concerns 19 Islam deals with absolute “superficiality” and, to him, “it appears from the deeply unsatisfactory way in which Islam deals with the crucial problems of religious and moral life.”33 He regards the Qur‘an as responsible for “an enormous amount of stubborn, ingenious theological thinking.”34 Kramer judged Islamic beliefs and practices on the basis of “Biblical realism,” a term he uses quite often. While al-Famqi seems to challenge this biblical basis of realism and opts for a different approach - a different yardstick ceptable to Kramer. In a preface to al-Famqi’s Christian Ethics he said “I would urgently invite him to reconsider his theory.” Thus measuring reli- gion with a different yardstick, he said: “The crucial question is whether, by judging religion on the basis of rationality, he is doing justice to the spir- it of either Christianity or Islam. Both are based on a revelation of God, dif- ferent as their understanding of revelation may be. As such they establish their own norm, which is God‘s inscrutable, gracious Will. Their self- understanding derives from the content and meaning of this act of God. The response to God‘s act is faith, surrender, and obedience. Rationality as nor- mative standard belongs to science and techniques not to religion, for the truth and value of no religion can be demonstrated by rational reas~ning.”~~ Kramer states that his personal opinion is “that dialogue and communica- tion do not need a preconstructed philosophical common standard of judge- ment, but only sincere desire on the part of men of faith to meet each other, to understand themselves, to enter into each other’s spiritual reality, to give account of their own faith and be witness thereof, to be open to criticism and willing to exercise self-criticism.’M This shows the vast gap between the two. by which to judge all religions, which he calls “meta-religion” - 1s * unac- Move men t far I slarniza tia n of Knowledge The notion of harmony in nature has never been in dispute, either to the Greeks or to the Muslims. While the Enlightenment and its successors per- sistently isolated the Divine, and perhaps one can say proselytized the world to their faith, al-Famqi persistently resisted this and wanted to restate the harmony. He wanted to reconstruct knowledge in the light of the Divine. He was prepared to swim against the tide. It is not out of place to give a general description of Muslim scholar‘s crit- icism of Western thought. Compaiid to al-Famqi’s scholarship, which is relatively firm and deep in its criticism, Muslim scholarship is in many ways simply an abstract protest against Western Like other 20 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 1 6 3 Muslims, he does not detach himself from the subject that he studies: he remains uncompromisingly committed to the faith and the subject. The dif- ference is that, compared to others, he knows what he is criticizing - its nature, history, growth. Others are less organized. Their study, though no doubt since=, is ad hoc and casual. Al-Famqi regards the Muslim thought progress as an organic evolutionary process connected with the concept of tawhid. His approach provides an anchor in turbulent water. Al-Faruqi begins with certainty. As pointed out earlier, he expresses him- self with beliefs within the serene shade of why. To al-Faruqi, this is a pre- condition of all thought. For him, this concept is not simply knowledge and the key of knowledge; it is capable of discovering and exploring universal truth. He is comfortable searching for answers within the parameters of tawhid. One recognizes that, in his urgency to Islamize, al-Famqi is not concerned with whether he will achieve what he wants to achieve -he has no doubt that it is achievable. The reconstruction of Muslim thought preoccupied al-Famqi in his later life. His participation in the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS) in the United States?8 which came into existence in 1971, gave birth to the concept of the Islamization of Knowledge. Initially, the AMSS was seen as an occasional platform for some social scientists to get togeth- er, but al-Faruqi's participation as its president until 1976 soon brought about a change. Bit by bit this forum for social scientists with shared com- mon concerns began to give the Islamization of Knowledge a new agenda. This, in turn, transformed the organization and attracted much attention beyond the initial social scientist framework and extended further than the United States. To al-Faruqi, Islamization was not simply to label, after some laundering, the existing knowledge into Islamic knowledge; rather, he wanted to provoke his fellow social scientists and the Muslim commu- nity living in the West into re-examining and reshaping the social sciences in light of the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Perhaps he saw the contemporary Muslim community in the West as better suited to this task than the Ummah in Muslim countries, whom he found somewhat unwilling or unable. Essentially, the freedom of thought and exchange of ideas that this task required was nonexistent in the Muslim world. Those who seemed to have the skills and were equipped with the classical training of interpretation and explanation were, unfortunately, unaware of the Western mnds in knowl- edge and the rigorous arguments it demands. Al-Faruqi, then, saw himself as something of an hitiator. His contribution lay in his skill to present the Siddiqui: Ismail Raji al-Faruqi: From ‘Urubah to Ummatic Concerns 21 Islamization of Knowledge as a movement and not as a venture limited to just a few individuals. Even in this task, his confrontational posture did not diminish We have an extremely important task ahead of us. How long are we going to content ourselves with the crumbs that the West is throwing at us? It is about time that we made our own original contribution. As social scientists, we have to look back at our training and reshape it in the light of the Qur’an and the Sunnah. This is how our forefathers made their own original contributions to the study of history, law and culture. The West borrowed their heritage and put it in a secular mould. Is it asking for too much that we take knowledge and Islamize it?39 Although al-Faruqi’s immediate audience were his students and col- leagues in various Muslim organizations across the United States, he nonetheless took this task on with a missionary zeal, addmssing audiences well beyond American shores. His eyes were fixed on the heartland of the Muslim world. There, along with a growing number of Muslim intellectu- als in the West, he saw much need for change. In particular, he identified a stagnation in Islamic leaming in the Muslim world, especially in Islamic schools. There, the once vibrant, innovative concept of education had been replaced with a repetitive, inward-looking preoccupation with preservation. He also saw a lack of excellence in modem education. What “modern edu- cation” there was, he argued, was implanted into the Muslim world, remaining, in his view, “sterile and ritualistic with a false aura of progress.” Thus, he was not simply concerned with the colonialization of Muslim ter- ritories but also with the colonization of Muslii minds. Generations of Muslims educated in the West had produced a host of Westem-educated Muslims who “looked up to the Western knowledge” as he put it, “despite its irrelevance, [and] made them dependent on its research and leadership.” He was critical of past refomers like Syed Ahmad Khan and Muhammad Abduh, who, he believed, thought “that Western sciences were value neu- tral and that they would not do any harm to Islamic values.” This he vehe- mently rejected. He saw in their approach an adoption of “alien” methods of inquiry into various social science disciplines. He argued that little “did they know of the fine yet necessary relation which binds the methodologies of these disciplines, their notions of truth and knowledge, to the value sys- tem of an alien world.” Al-Faruqi predicted that any unquestioning adapta- tion of the value of knowledge would ham the Ummah‘s understanding 22 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 1 6 3 and would not produce the much-needed inquiry and missionary mind that the Ummah so urgentIy needed. But al-Faruqi could not preside over the vision he had for long. Even now with a generation having gone through the process of Islamization there is little sign that it will make the si@i- cant mark on the “quality” of scholars that al-Faruqi envisaged. Perhaps this is still far in the future. He argued that, in general, Muslims, including their religious leaders, and particularly those who were Westernized, were dazzled by “Western productivity and power and the Western views of God and man, of life, of nature, of the world, and of time and history.”“’ Thus, a secular system of education was built, which taught Western values and methods and produced graduates ignorant of their Islamic legacy. The Islamization of knowledge process took al-Faruqi to a new height in Towards Islamic English. At first it seems strange. Why does one need Islamic English? Al-Faruqi finds that the use of the English language to express Islamic idioms through translitemtion “is chaotic.” In his view, it “constitutes an intellectual and spiritual disaster of the highest magnitude.” He points out that many Muslim names once transliterated are mutilated beyond recognition. He finds that this may be hilarious and amusing some- times, and therefore it may be insigtllficant but, where the names “include a divine attribute, or the name of a prophet, the incorrect spelling is not only irritating; it can be downright blas~hemous.”~~ He gives some examples of names that when misspelled could give a different meaning than what is intended - ‘AM al-Haqq (Servant of Allah, the Truth) as ‘Abd al-Hakk (servant of scratching). He also points out that there are some words that are “not translatable into English,” for example, salah, which is often trans- lated as “prayer.” Prayer is applicable to any kind of idle thought or situa- tion - in any position or under any condition. To associate salah with prayer, in his view, is a grave injustice and he calls for salah to be called salah because of its unique situation. To give an English translation to words like salah, in his view, “is to reduce, and often to ruin” their mean- ings. To scholars in general al-Faruqi emphasizes that “intellectual loyalty to English fom has no right to assume priority over loyalty to meaning.”42 One may agree with al-Faruqi’s forceful argument and consider using terms like salah, taqwa, huh, dalal, qist, wahy, etc., and not their transla- tion. The question arises, is it reasonable to expect one who has no knowl- edge of Arabic to understand the transliteration? For example, in the name, ‘AM al-Ghafur (Servant of the Forgiver), what difference does the accent mark over make to an English speaking person? The accent marks are Siddiqui: Ismail Raji al-Faruqi: Fmm ‘Urubah to Ummatic Concern 23 meant for those who know Arabic and are litelate enough to transfer the meaning. But to those who do not, these accent marks remain a curiosity and at times an annoyance. Finally, one may conclude by saying that Ismail Raji al-Faruqi came into an intellectual world of his own; shackled by circumstances, he fought to prove his ideas right. He followed the view that not to say things clearly is not to say them at all. EQuipped with an academic training, he sought to prove or disprove those issues that had a bearing upon his time, especially those with regard to religious thought. Islam played a crucial role in al- Faruqi’s life, and especially in later life. He looked at things from an Islamic perspective. This factor was recognized by others, and in response to a let- ter from Professor H.A.R. Gibb, he wmte: “I take your word that you believe I am genuinely concerned for Islam as a way of life and consider your criticism as designed to promote - and wherever necessary to correct and redress - this genuine concern.’M3 This genuine concern was a moti- vating factor throughout al-Faruqi’s life and thus an overwhelming concern of his academic mission. Al-Faruqi was trained as a philosopher and a historian of religion, but his writings do not follow the traditional academic route, which demands a detached view of religion and the people studied. Al-Faruqi looked at reli- gion with keen and critical eyes, examining deeply its unity and source. The heart of his worldview and pattern of thought lay in Islam. His inquiring mind was always challenged by the many facets and traditions that he tried to go beyond, and, in so doing, he challenges our vision and way of under- standing and measuring things. He engages us attentively but does not nec- essarily lead us always to his own conclusions. The d e r is free to accept or reject what he says, but he cannot ignore it. NOTES P 1. 1.R al-Faruqi and L.L. al-Faruqi. The Cultural Atlas of Islam (New Yo& Macmillan, 1986). 50. 2. I.R. al-Faruqi. “Divine Transcendence and Its Expression,“ in Henry 0. Thompson (ed.). The Global Congress of the World’s Religions, Proceedings of1 98- Conference (Washington, Dc: The Global Congress of the World’s Religions, 1982). 267-316. 3. I.R. al-Faruqi, Urubah ond Religion (Amsterdam Djambatm, 1%2), 2-3. 4. Letter dated September 12, 1%1 from Stanley Frost, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, McGill University. 5. Warner Jaeger, Paidcia: The Idea ofGreek Culture, tnmlated by Gilbert Highlet (New Yo& Oxford University Ress. 1944). 6. Letter to Stanley ht, b @ e x 9.1%1. 7. bid 8. AtauUah Siddiqui. Christian-Muslim Dialogue in the Twentieth Centwy (Bmin@okf&m Macrmllan, . New Yo& St. Martin’s Press Inc.. 1997). 88-89. 24 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 163 9. See al-Faruqi. CUI~UTOI Atlas of Islam, 295-297. 10. Ibid,2%. 11. Ibid., 297. Al-Faruqi in one of his earlier atticles remarks that tosawnqf presents 1. KmhJ “agmstic illumination,” was substituted for knowledge. Under t a r n , the Arab world abandoned its commitment to and pursuit of mtional, scientific knowledge for the vision of mystical experience. It forsook the critical weighing and vaification of alternatives for the esoteric, oracular, and authoritarian pronouncements of the Sufi shaykh or leader. 2. Karumat, “little miracles, granted by god to the Sufi as favor,” destroyed the Arab’s respect for naaml causation and taught him to seek results by the methods of spiritualistic conduction. In his mind, the nahual relation of cause to effect, of meaas to objectives, was a shamble. 3. Tawnkbd, the total reliance upon the spiritual factor to pmduce the empirical results, replaced tamkkuf or conviction of the certain eficacy of God‘s inexorable laws in nature and, hence, of the absolute necessity of human intervention into the casual nexus of nature, if the projected ends are to realized 4. Qismaz, the passive acquiescence to what happens as being the action of arbitrary supemahnal forces. replaced t&$ or man’s obligation to reknead, mt, and ranold space-time so as to realize themin the divine pattern. Rather than amanah, or man’s assumption of this divine purpose for space- time as his own pasonal ruison d‘etre, tmmwgtaught a shortcut through dhik or repeated prayers and cultivate the hope for manipulation of the arbitrary supemahd fonx through karumat. 5. Adam, “the unreality, ephemerality, and nonimpor?ance of the world,” replaced wujud, the seri- ousness of man’s existence, his kbilafah or ’vicegerency’ of God on earth -in short, his cosmic sta- tus as the sole Lnidge through which God’s will as moral value can be realized in space and time. Sufism taught that life on earth is but a brief purney to the beyond Against the Islamic principle that the final rcaliplrion of the absolute in space-time is not only a distinct possibility, but the supreme human duty, tamvwzftaught that the world is no such a theatre after all, that such realization belongs to the beyond Following al-(jhazzali, it denigrated the world beyond reason or common sense. * . a 6. T d a M , the deli- giving up of social, political, and economic activity for the sake of total (i.e., all day and all night) worship and the commitment of all energes to dhik or pious devotion, were submitted for ‘ibadah, which demanded (a) perf-, of the institutionalized five pillars of Islam and (b) fulfillment, in every field or endeavor, of man’s Rlrihfaah or vicegerency and of amanah, thedivinclNSL 7. Tdah. absolute. i.e., unquestionable, unreasoned, and totalistic, or ”unization” of God, i.e., the recognition of no lord as Lord but He. Cultivation of the mystical union and the hnl or mystical trance came to replace the Shari’ah or fulfilment of the daily duties and lifelong obligations. ’Lhis. together with tasawwufs pantheistic metaphysics, blurred all of Islam’s ethical notions. ‘The Ideal social order in the Arab World, 1800-1!%8.” A JoWMI qfChwch andstate (Spring 1%9) 11, no. 2 241- 242. LR al-Faruqi, Christian Ethics: A Historical and Systematic Analysis of Its Dominanr Idem (Moatreak McGill University Press, 1%7), 137. 12. Ibid, 139. 13. 1.R al-Faruqi, “On the Raison D’etre of the Ummah,” Islamic Srudies (Karachi) 2, 14. Ibid 15. Ibid. 2.01 [see note no. 911. 16. Ibid 17. Ibid, 187. 18. See al-Faruqi, ‘The Ideal Social order in the Arab World.” 240-241. 19. Al-Fanmqi. Cultural Atlas of Islam, 300. 2.0. Ibid.299. 6 *. 21. Ibid, 187. 22. 1.R al-Faruqi, “Islam,” in Wing-tsit Chan et al. (ed.), The Great A s h Religions 23. 1.R al-Faruqi, Islam and Other Faiths, edited by Atadlah Siddiqui (Lzicester. The seven “deadly symptoms”: no. 2: 83. (London: Macmillan, 1%9), 307. Islamic Foundation; Hemdo= The International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1998). 220. Siddiqui: Ismail Raji al-Faruqi: From ‘Unrbah to Ummatic Concerns 25 24. Ibid..221. 25. Ibid,222. 26. Ibid-,223. 27. Al-Faruqi suggests that the sad history of this inthpretation may be read in the works of Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: The Making o f a n h g e and Islam. and Europe and Empire (both published by the University presS&Eainburgh. 1960 [revised edition was published by oxford: Oneworld publications, 19931 and 1966 respectively). See also A.L. Tibawi, “English Speaking Orientalists: A Critique of Their Approach to Islam and Arab Nationalism,” The Muslim World 53. nos. 3-4 (1%3): 185-204. and 298-313. 28. Al-Faruqi, Islam and Other Faiths. 224. 29. Al-Faruqi refers in particular to Mrs. Bertha Spafford Vester’s effort as an example of mission. He remarks she “ d y gave and f o m t e l y is still giving of her life to the orphans of Jerusalem” [Islam and Other Faiths, 245 1. Mrs Vester remadcs about her arrival in Jerusalem that “I arrived in 1881 from Illinois with my mother and father -with my younger sister Grace - [we] came here seeking peace and solace after a series of numbing personal tragedies.” She wrote. at the age of 86. about her life and work in Jerusalem in National Geographic Magazine. December 1 W . 826-847. 30. H. Kraemer. The Christian Message in a Neo-Christian World (London: The Edinburgh House. 1938). 216-217. 31. Ibid 32. Ibid 33. Ibid. 34. Al-Faruqi, Christian Ethics, IX. 35. Ibid., IX-X. 36. Ibid 37. Al-Faruqi highlights in one of his articles that in response to modemity and Western thought, Muslim thought has moved in two different directions. Both schools accept the necessity of science. “For the lack of a better name,” he suggests. “let us call the first the ‘One-Book School’ and the second the ‘Two-Book School.”’ According to al-Fiuqi, the “One-Book School asserts that Islam, and hence the Qur’an. is the fountainhead of all knowledge, human or divine., scientific or religious, of this world or of the next. The scientific knowledge of the world as well as the achievements of technolo- gy are all there in the Qdan, if not directly expressed. then indirectly through its figures of speech and other allusions.” According to this school, whatever is in the earth or sky and all discoveries are “only writing footnotes of the Holy Book” Al-Faruqi goes on to say, ‘The Two-Book School welcomes science as an avenue to the single reality which is God‘s creation and, hence. to the single truth which is God in as much as He may become the object of human knowledge through His d o n . It regards science as integral to Islam and equivalent to piety.” See 1.R al-Faruqi, “Science and Traditional Values in Islamic Society,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 2, no. 3 (1%7): 238-239. 38. Al-Faruqi was involved in the creation of a number of organizations, including the Association of Muslim Social Scientists. He was the first psident of the American Islamic College in Chicago. He was the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the North American Trust; he established and chaired the Islamic Studies Steering Committee of the American Academy of Religion until 1982. In 1981 he was the founder, president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Virginia. 39. The American Jozunal of Islmnic Social Sciences, 5 , no. 1 (1988): 16. 40. Intemational Institute of Islamic Thought, Islmnization of Knowledge: General Principles and Work Plan, 2nd revised edition (Hemdon, Virgink Author. 1989). 4. 41. 1.R Al-Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (Herndon: Intemational Institute of Islamic Thougth, 1986). 8-9. 42. Ibid, 12. It is intextsting to note that al-Faruqi was concerned about the appropriate use of language. But he was a masterly inventor of words. One interesting note that was exchanged is again with Dr. Stanley B. Frost, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, McGill 26 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 16:3 University (October 30, 1%1) where Dr. Frost remarks, “I said I was ‘pertded and intrigued.’ I have expressed my pertubation and now I want to go on to my ‘intriguement’ - if there is such a word (though I notice that you never hesitate: you make the word you need, on the spot, and I have to translate most of them back into Greek before I can under- stand them in English ’Gnoseological‘ for instance!).” 43. Letter from al-Fanqi to H.A.R. Gibb, November 14,1963.