HURRIYYA VERSUS FREEDOM AND ALLAH VERSUS THE JUDEO- CHRISTIAN GOD

Major twentieth-century scholars of Islam who were devout Christians, such as Father Louis Gardet,¹³² and Sir Hamilton Gibb,¹³³ shared Chambers’s fears of an irreligious West succumbing to Godless materialism, in particular Communism.¹³⁴ Prone to Islamic apologetics, they viewed Allah-fearing Islam, and its pious Muslim votaries, as a potential bulwark against the spread of Communist totalitarianism in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa—but with important caveats.

the liberty for which one dies, that gives life its value and engages the dignity of man made in the image of God.¹³⁶

Moreover, Hamilton Gibb admitted that Islam’s sacralized rejection of equality for non-Muslims aside,

Not even the theoretical equality of all Muslims, though supported by several texts of the Koran, is enough to prove its religious democracy.¹³⁷

Gibb added rather caustically,

The main argument advanced in favor of this claim—the existence of a shura, or consultative council, in the primitive caliphate—no more proves the democracy of Islam than it does of Hitler.¹³⁸

The Orientalist Gustave von Grunebaum, a contemporary of Gardet and Gibb, dutifully interpreted Islam from the perspective of a Westerner steeped in the best of his own civilization. He argued that there was indeed no alternative way of making the study of Islam meaningful for non-Muslims, professional scholars and educated non-specialists alike, than dispassionately measuring it by the most demanding and universally valid Western standards devised for assessing intellectual and ethical worth.¹³⁹ Von Grunebaum provided this lucid and unapologetic warning of how the geostrategic paradigm of “Islam as a bulwark against Communism”¹⁴⁰ would run amok, in his 1955 review of writings by the immensely popular Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Muhammad al- Ghazzali.

We concern ourselves with the compatibility or otherwise of Islam with communism and regardless of the conclusion in which we acquiesce, we are apt to overlook the fact that the Muslim circles most emphatically opposed to communism are at the same time potentially if not actually the most formidable stronghold of hostility to the West. Ghazzali's tirade against American Democracy with its warning “against the spreading American ways,” with its condemnation of “the domestic as well as foreign policy of America” as “actually a systematic violation of every virtue humanity has ever known” should make us aware that the Muslim “extremists” will be with the West not because of any recognized affinity but merely out of momentary political considerations. Ultimately, the self­conscious world of Islam would wish to consolidate into a power center strong enough to set itself up by the side of the Russian and the Western blocks, strong enough to determine for itself what its primary political concerns should be, and strong enough perhaps to be no longer compelled to westernize for the sake of survival. The hot­headed half-truths of Ghazzali must not delude us into considering absurd the aspiration of those who feel that for its revival Islam needs less rather than more gifts of the West.¹⁴¹

Hurriyya, Arabic for “freedom,” and the uniquely Western concept of freedom are completely at odds. Hurriyya “freedom”—as Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) the lionized “Greatest Sufi Master,”¹⁴² expressed it —“being perfect slavery.”¹⁴³ And this conception is not merely confined to the Sufis' metaphorical understanding of the relationship between Allah the “master” and his human “slaves.”¹⁴⁴

The late American scholar of Islam Franz Rosenthal (d. 2003)— analyzed the larger context of hurriyya in Muslim society. He notes the historical absence of hurriyya as “a fundamental political concept that could have served as a rallying cry for great causes.”¹⁴⁶

An individual Muslim

was expected to consider subordination of his own freedom to the beliefs, morality and customs of the group as the only proper course of behavior.¹⁴⁷

Thus politically, Rosenthal concludes,

the individual was not expected to exercise any free choice as to how he wished to be governed..

Bernard Lewis, in his analysis of hurriyya for the venerated Brill Encyclopedia of Islam, discusses this concept in the latter phases of the Ottoman Empire, through the contemporary era.¹⁴⁹ After highlighting a few “cautious” or “conservative” (Lewis's characterization) reformers and their writings, Lewis maintains,

there is still no idea that the subjects have any right to share in the formation or conduct of government—to political freedom, or citizenship, in the sense which underlies the development of political thought in the West. While conservative reformers talked of freedom under law, and some Muslim rulers even experimented with councils and assemblies government was in fact becoming more and not less arbitrary.¹⁵⁰

Lewis also makes the important point that Western colonialism ameliorated this chronic situation:

During the period of British and French domination, individual freedom was never much of an issue. Though often limited and sometimes suspended, it was on the whole more extensive and better protected than either before or after.¹⁵¹

Lewis concludes with a stunning observation, when viewed in light of the present travails of the so-called Arab Spring, and throughout the Muslim world, delusively optimistic assessments notwithstanding: “In the final revulsion against the West, Western democracy too was rejected as a fraud and a delusion, of no value to Muslims.”¹⁵²

Writing in 1979, Hava Lazarus-Yafeh noted (from her essay, “Three Remarks on Islam and Western Political Values”¹⁵³) that the traditional Arabic term to denote people or citizen, which is usually ‘abd (plural ibad), meaning “the slave or servant of God,” was antithetical to the Western democratic worldview.¹⁵⁴ She further described the perverse phenomenon—borne of complete Western rejection—that nevertheless caused an “amalgamation” of Islamic and Western values in the warped political language of Islam's contemporary theocrats—the Muslim Brotherhood, being a prime example—then, and now.¹⁵⁵ Thus,

When calling for an Islamic totalitarian Republic, wherein the ulama hoped to restore God's will in history, they used Western concepts of democracy, liberty, equality etc..

Lazarus-Yafeh's analysis includes this frank Muslim Brotherhood December 1976 articulation (from the Brotherhood publication Al-Dawa) of their timeless vision of Islamic democracy and freedom:

We demand an Islamic nation, living a true Islamic life in politics, society, economics, education, culture and every other sphere of life. Islamic law does not restrict itself to the cutting of hands or flogging criminals. To neglect prayer is also a criminal act, and to eat in public during Ramadan is a criminal act and so is the refraining from giving alms, taking interest, drinking, selling or transporting wine, opening public entertainment places and accepting taxes from these places, broadcasting (secular) songs on the radio and showing cheap exotic movies on the television, letting women dress indecently, and print heretic ideas in books and newspapers.. We shall not be deceived any more. The Muslim people have a clear goal and will not settle for less than complete victory.¹⁵⁷

This is the context in which to understand the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s use of the term Hurriyya (Horeya) in a brief late February 2011 announcement describing the new political party it has created:

Egypt’s largest political opposition the Muslim Brotherhood, has confirmed that it is preparing to establish a political party calling it the Freedom and Justice Party, or Horeya and Adala.¹⁵⁸

As former Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Muhammad Akef recently told the New York Times (in a statement published June 20, 2011):

Our preliminary platform will be shown through the Freedom and Justice Party.

The 1976 Muslim Brotherhood statement quoted by Lazarus-Yafeh, above, articulates that “full platform.”¹⁶⁰

Ultimately, hurriyya is but a requisite extension of Allah's dominion, antithetical to the Western conception of freedom derived from belief in the Judeo- Christian God.

William Gifford Palgrave (d. 1888) journeyed through the Arabian peninsula from 1862 to 1863, disguised as a Muslim physician, recording his detailed observations in a renowned travelogue.¹⁶¹ Palgrave, who developed an intimate understanding of Islam, in both theory and practice, has provided us with a timeless, clear-eyed characterization of Allah, elucidating the origins of the irreconcilable difference between hurriyya and Western freedom.

The sole power, the sole motor, movement, energy and deed is God (i.e., Allah); the rest is downright inertia and mere instrumentality, from the highest archangel down to the simplest atom of creation. Hence in this one sentence, “La ilaha illa Allah” [“There is no god but God”], is summed up a system, for want of a better name, I may be permitted to call the Pantheism of Force [emphasis added] or of Act, thus exclusively assigned to God, who absorbs it all, exercises it all, and to Whom alone it can be ascribed, whether for preserving or for destroying, for relative evil or for equally relative good. I say relative because it is clear in such a theology no place is left for absolute good or evil, reason or extravagance; all is abridged in the autocratical will of the one great Agent..

One might at first sight think that this tremendous Autocrat, this uncontrolled and unsympathizing Power would be far above anything like passions, desires, or inclinations. Yet such is not the case, for He has with respect to His creatures one main feeling and source of action, namely, jealousy of them, lest they should perchance attribute to themselves something of what is His alone, and thus encroach on His all-engrossing kingdom.

.In fact, every phrase of the preceding sentences, every touch in this odious portrait has been taken to the best of my ability, word for word, or at least meaning for meaning, from “the Book” [the Koran], the truest mirror of the mind and scope of its writer. And that such was in reality Mahomet's mind and idea is fully confirmed by the witness-tongue of contemporary tradition [i.e., Islam's other foundational texts, especially the canonical hadith, as well as the most esteemed Koranic commentaries]. Of this we have authentic examples: the Saheeh [the two most important canonical hadith collections by Muslim and Bukhari], the [Koranic] commentaries of Beidhawi, the Mishkat-el-Misabih [another canonical hadith collection] and fifty similar works afford ample testimony on this point.¹⁶²

James Freeman Clarke (d. 1888), America's first, and arguably still one of her greatest, scholars of comparative religion¹⁶³ expounded upon Palgrave's analysis of Allah in his 1871 treatise, “Ten Great Religions—An Essay in Comparative Theology.”¹⁶⁴ Clarke sees in Islam's conception of Allah—“that which makes of God pure will...divorced from reason and love”—a regression from the Judeo-Christian God.¹⁶⁵

Comparing Islam to Judaism, Clarke observes,

Goodness does not consist in obedience to divine will, but in conformity to the divine character. This is the doctrine of the Old Testament and one of its noblest characteristics.. Mohammedanism is a relapse [from Judaism].for it makes God only an arbitrary sovereign whose will is to be obeyed without any reference to its moral character.¹⁶⁶

Moreover, Clarke notes, Islam's Allah was “abstracted from matter, and so not to be represented by pictures and images; God withdrawn out of the world, and above all—in total separation.”¹⁶⁷

In contrast, Judaism conceptualized God as being “with man, by his repeated miraculous coming down in prophets, judges, kings; also with his people, the Jews, mysteriously present in their tabernacle and temple.”¹⁶⁸

Christianity, Clarke maintains, added the notion of the God “in us all,” a strong pantheistic tendency, likely derived from the converted Greeks and Romans, and distinctly evident in Whittaker Chambers's theology.

The New Testament is full of this kind of pantheism,— God in man, as well as God with man. Jesus made the step forward from God with man to God in man,—“I in them, thou in me.” The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is this idea, of God who is not only will and power, not only wisdom and law, but also love; of a God who desires communion and intercourse with his children, so coming and dwelling in them. Mohammed teaches a God above us; Moses teaches a God above us, and yet with us; Jesus teaches God above us, God with us, and God in us.¹⁶⁹

Clarke concludes that Islam's alternate “central idea concerning God”—its conception of Allah—has not been salutary for Muslim societies.

Its governments are not governments.. It makes life barren and empty. It encourages a savage pride and cruelty. It makes men tyrants or slaves, women puppets, religion the submission to an infinite despotism.¹⁷⁰

This uniform tendency toward a steely authoritarianism in Islamic states has long been understood.

Jacob Burckhardt (d. 1897), an iconic figure in the annals of Western historiography, believed it was the solemn duty of Western civilization's heirs to study and acknowledge their own unique cultural inheritance. Moreover, while Burckhardt affirmed the irreducible nature of freedom, and upheld equality before the law, he decried the notion—a pervasive, rigidly enforced dogma at present—that all ways of life, opinions, and beliefs were of equal value. Burckhardt argued that this conceptual reductio ad absurdum would destroy Western culture, heralding a return to barbarism.¹⁷¹ And contra the Western legacy—epitomized by freedom— Burckhardt referred to Islam as a despotic, or in twentieth-century parlance, totalitarian ideology.

All religions are exclusive, but Islam is quite notably so, and immediately it developed into a state which seemed to be all of a piece with the religion. The Koran is its spiritual and secular book of law. Its statutes embrace all areas of life...and remain set and rigid; the very narrow Arab mind imposes this nature on many nationalities and thus remolds them for all time (a profound, extensive spiritual bondage!). This is the power of Islam in itself. At the same time, the form of the world empire as well as of the states gradually detaching themselves from it cannot be anything but a despotic monarchy. The very reason and excuse for existence, the holy war, and the possible world conquest, do not brook any other form.

The strongest proof of real, extremely despotic power in Islam is the fact that it has been able to invalidate, in such large measure, the entire history (customs, religion, previous way of looking at things, earlier imagination) of the peoples converted to it. It accomplished this only by instilling into them a new religious arrogance which was stronger than everything and induced them to be ashamed [emphasis in original] of their past.¹⁷²

Perhaps the initial reference to Islam as a totalitarian system, specifically (Burckhardt had used the most comparable nineteenth-century term despotism), was made in 1937 by Charles R. Watson, the Cairo-born first head of the American University at Cairo.¹⁷³ Watson noted,

In the case of the Mohammedan world, religion has seemingly affected every detail of life with its prescriptions and requirements.. [N]o other religion, as it conquered new territory, has so completely and quickly wiped out even the culture of the conquered people and imposed upon their total life new ways and customs, often a new language, as has the Mohammedan religion.

Islam can truly be described as totalitarian. By a million roots, penetrating every phase of life, all of them with religious significance, it is able to maintain its hold upon the life of the Moslem peoples.¹⁷⁴

Burckhardt's and Watson's conceptions were applied to Ottoman rule by historian Stoyan Pribichevich in his 1939 study of the Balkans, World without End.¹⁷⁵ Pribichevich provides these illustrations, beginning with his characterization of the Ottoman Sultans:

Each was a blood descendant of Osman [d. 1326, founder of the Ottoman dynasty¹⁷⁶]; the commander of all armed forces; the Caliph, the religious chief of all Moslems; the Padishah or King of Kings with the power of life and death over even his own cabinet ministers; the indisputable executor of the Prophet's will—the Shadow of God on Earth. ¹⁷⁷

Although the Sultan had a council composed of ranking dignitaries, headed by an ersatz “Prime Minister,” the grand vizier, who advised him, Pribichevich notes,

But like the Janissaries [military slaves taken from the families of the subjugated Christian populations while adolescents, and forcibly converted to Islam, as part of the Ottoman devshirme levy system] they were Kuls, slaves whose lives and properties belonged to the master. Cases occurred where a Grand Vizier was put to death at a mere whim of the Sultan.¹⁷⁸

Thus Pribichevich concludes, regarding the Ottoman Sultanate, “Of all known dictators the Sultans were the most dictatorial” [emphasis added].¹⁷⁹

And Pribichevich goes on to explain how this dictatorial Ottoman sultanate operated within the overall context of Islam's religio-political totalitarian system:

Then, Islam was a totalitarian religion. [Emphasis added.] The Koran regulated not only the relationship of man to God, but all aspects of political organization, economics, and private conduct. Although the Sultan was the sole legislator, his laws, the sheri [sharia], were expected to conform to the sacred text. Now, for the proper interpretation of the Prophet's phrases, there was a body of learned priests and jurists, the Ulemas. While no born Moslem could become a member of the Janissaries, no ex-Christian was ever allowed to enter the sacred corporation of the Ulemas. These theologians were not the slaves of the Sultan, but their opinions nevertheless were only advisory. So, the whole exotic structure of the Ottoman state can be summed up this way: the Koran was the empire's Constitution; the Sultan, its absolute executor; the Janissaries, the soldiers and administrators; and the thinking Ulemas, a sort of Supreme Court.¹⁸⁰

Subsequently, in 1950, G.-H. Bousquet, one of the preeminent twentieth-century scholars of the sharia (Islamic or Mohammedan law), described Islam as “as a doubly totalitarian system,” which, via the timeless institution of jihad war,

claimed to impose itself on the whole world and it claimed also, by the divinely appointed Mohammedan law...to regulate down to the smallest details the whole life of the Islamic community and of every individual believer.¹⁸¹