An Islamic Philosophy of Virtuous Religions: Introducing Alfarabi

Four. Alfarabi on Jih

55 Heraclitus ascribed a significant place to war in human life.1 To my knowledge , however, Plato’s Athenian Stranger was the first to claim that human beings desire “to have things happen in accordance with the commands of [their] own soul—preferably all things, but if not that, then at least the human things” (Laws 687c1–7). We have already seen just such a desire surfacing in Glaucon in the previous chapters. The significance of this claim is less that it implies the necessity of a war of every man against every man2 than that it implies something akin to a natural human desire for world rule. This far grander claim may give the reader pause, but reflection on the history of empire building throughout the world suggests the presence of such a desire. Of course, this does not mean that every human being is likely to manifest such a desire. Yet it does imply that one is likely to find evidence of it in the most politically ambitious members of any, especially premodern, society.3 In the Laws, the Athenian Stranger engages in a subtle critique of this desire. As has been shown elsewhere, Alfarabi offers a somewhat less subtle critique of it in his Summary of Plato’s “Laws.”4 This entire work has been written with that critique in mind. Although such a desire was present even among the Greeks with their small poleis (cities), not to mention the Romans, this desire seems to have taken on a new life and different character in the monotheistic world of Judaism , Christianity, and Islam. Although I will seek to add nuance in what follows, especially to his account of Islam, Majid Khadduri has captured in at least a preliminary way the difference between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as follows: Four Alfarabi on Jihâd 56 An Islamic Philosophy of Virtuous Religions To begin with, there is the universal element in Islam which made it the duty of every able-bodied Muslim to contribute to its spread. In this Islam combined elements from Judaism and Christianity to create something which was not in either: a divine nomocratic state on an imperialistic basis. Judaism was not a missionary religion, for the Jews were God’s chosen people ; a holy war was, accordingly, for the defense of their religion, not for its spread. Christianity on the other hand was a redemptive and, at the outset, a non-state religion. . . . Islam was radically different from both. It combined the dualism of [sic] a universal religion and a universal state.5 Polytheists tend to view religion more as a means to political ends; monotheists view politics more as a means to religious ends.6 When one combines a natural desire for world rule with monotheism and a far more intense focus on religious ends, the mixture is likely to result in an unprecedented seriousness about world rule. In contrast to monotheistic aspirants to world rule, neither Alexander nor any pagan Roman emperor sought to spread paganism. As the very name Pax Romana suggests, the main Roman purpose was to reduce war, not to spread the religion of the Romans. Rather than demanding belief in their own gods, pagans usually appropriate the gods of those they conquer. Aside from conflicts with other empires such as the Carthaginian, the most intense conflict Rome faced may have been with monotheistic communities that would not allow the appropriation of the one God into Roman religion—not to mention the worship of other gods in monotheist holy places. From the Roman viewpoint, the monotheist refusal to recognize Roman gods was important for political, not religious, reasons. It implied a divided allegiance in the conquered between their God and Roman political authority. Of course, world rule suggests primarily political power. Consequently , monotheistic traditions such as Christianity that tend to deemphasize politics can come to view even the use of political means to achieve their religious objectives as suspect, as Christians have come to view it in the modern period. Yet the history of the Middle Ages, beginning with the Emperor Constantine, indicates just how little the frequently anti-political animus of Christian Scripture was to affect ambitious Christian princes. That anti-political animus has no doubt facilitated the modern separation of religion from politics in the West. It must be remembered, however, that Christianity abandoned the pursuit of religious ends by political means in the modern period only after centuries of barely endurable religious...