all Muslims they profess faith in one God. Some, however, still maintain that God has become incarnate seven times, the last being in the form of Ali himself. Needless to say, at this juncture Alawis and mainstream Muslims part company. Among other beliefs and practices, Alawis make unique theological associations between Husayn and Christ and celebrate various Christian feasts, with special attention to John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene; and some even celebrate Mass, but feature Ali as the divine illumination shone forth in the wine offered by Christ at the Last Supper. Some Alawis are still known by the name Nusayri.
Are the Druze people related to Islam in any way?
During the early eleventh century a ruler, al-Hakim (d. 1021), of the Fatimid dynasty—a type of Sevener Shi’ites—did not argue when his followers began to claim that he was divine. Among al-Hakim’s supporters was a Turk named Darazi. Even after Darazi died and his former arch-rival claimed that he himself was the true spokesman of al-Hakim, the name of Darazi would live on in the word “Druze.” Fatimid Ismaili doctrine had long shown very esoteric tendencies in interpreting the role of its seven imams, and a similar esoterism remains a hallmark of Druze teaching. A collection of letters attributed to al-Hakim form the core sacred literature of the very closed and secretive communities, which now, for the most part, inhabit Lebanon, Syria, and the northern occupied West Bank of Palestine. Their esoteric teachings about al-Hakim, along with notions of reincarnation and other decidedly non-Islamic themes, leave them very much outside the fold of Islam.
A group of Druze men from Majdal Shams, Israel, are seen in this photo from 2009. The number of Druze people worldwide exceeds one million, with the vast majority residing in the Middle East.
While those of the Baha’i faith are said to have historical connections with Islam, is it true members don’t consider themselves Muslims?
In mid-nineteenth century Persia, a faction called the Babis (followers of the Bab, “Gateway”) broke away from Twelver Shi’ism. The Bab had prophesied the coming of a promised messiah-like figure, a role claimed by a man who called himself Baha’ Allah and claimed the office of prophet. Upon his death in 1892, a follower took up the claim, as did others. According to mainstream Muslim belief, there can be no prophet after Muhammad, so Baha’is are considered non-Muslims.
What about the small community called the Ahmadiya—are they Muslims?
Around the time the Baha’i movement was getting started in Iran, a group formed around a Punjabi named Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), who claimed to be both the Mahdi and Jesus’s Second Coming. Around 1909 the Ahmadiyya (followers of Ahmad) split into two main factions. One faction claimed its founder was a prophet, thus meriting an official condemnation from Islamic authorities. The other Ahmadiyya faction insisted that Ahmad was only a religious reformer. Between half a million and a million members live in west Africa and Pakistan. Most Muslims today consider Baha’is and Ah-madiyyas non-Muslims.
Is Sufism considered a cult among Muslims?
Muslims have historically expressed a variety of opinions about the phenomenon known as Sufism. Those who have taken a dim view have generally fallen into two general groups. On the one hand, some have accused Sufis and their organizations of lax observance of Muslim law and tradition at best and outright antinomianism and heresy at worst. On the other hand, some have regarded Sufism as anti-intellectual and dismissive of the ancient Islamic regard for knowledge and learning. As for the first criticism, the historical record suggests that Sufism is not simply an idiosyncratic, aberrant sidetrack to “mainstream” Islamic tradition. Virtually all of the great Sufis who built the foundations of Sufi spirituality were explicitly aligned with one (or more) of the major law schools, and in no way did they play down the need for all Muslims to express their faith through the Five Pillars. Recent research clearly indicates that Sufism arose as a distinctive way of studying, interiorizing, and communicating that tradition that situated Sufis not as “spirit-filled radicals,” but as “fierce upholders of the emerging moral and legal order.” In other words, though many of the Sufi orders did indeed foster a distinct approach to community life, they were nothing like what contemporary Americans might identify as “cults.”
INTERSECTION OF THEOLOGY AND POLITICS: A MAJOR HISTORICAL EXAMPLE
What is an example of the interaction between religion and politics during the Abbasid caliphate?
The late eighth-/early ninth-century Caliph Harun ar-Rashid (r. 786–809) and his two warring sons, al-Amin (r. 809–813) and al-Mamun (r. 813–833) stand out as seminal figures in the Abbasid history. Harun fostered a cosmopolitan atmosphere at court and an intellectual climate that welcomed novelty and exotic thinking. Most famous as a highly romanticized bon-vivant from One Thousand and One Nights, the Harun of the “historical” sources appears to have been another sort altogether. Later chroniclers make much of the ruler’s religious devotion, and “traditionalist” interests prevailed in recasting the caliph as ascetically inclined and theologically mainstream. Out with the high-roller, in with the spiritual twin to the Prophet himself, a ruler easily moved to compassion and perfectly comfortable with taking advice from the religious scholars. These and other manifestations of religio-ideological spin are key elements of a traditionalist reconstruction of history that took place in the aftermath of the “inquisition” (mihna) sponsored by Harun’s second successor, al-Mamun.
What was the outcome of the struggle between Harun’s two sons as contenders for the title of caliph?
Harun’s son al-Amin lost out to sibling al-Mamun, under whom especially the Abbasids vigorously supported the Mutazilite school of philosophical theologians, whose “theology-from-below” had the great political advantage of investing the caliph with enormous religious authority. By arguing that the Quran was created, rather than uncreated and co-eternal with God, the Mutazilites were theologically defending the divine unity while politically allowing the caliph, to whom God had entrusted the administration of all things created, final say in interpreting the Quran. Historical sources attempt to explain how the intemperate, impious, and politically inept al-Amin was an exception to the rule in the Abbasid line in order to justify his murder at the hands of his own brother. At the same time, a kind of hagiographic theme of “sympathy for al-Amin” persists in other accounts that suggests striking parallels between the murders of al-Amin two earlier caliphs, Uthman, the second of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and the Umayyad al-Walid II, all of which are examples of religio-historiographical struggle around the enormity of regicide.
What was Caliph al-Mamun’s role in the evolution of Islamic thought?
Abbasid Caliph al-Mamun’s Mutazilite theology was a major point of contention in the history of Islamic political thought. He argued that caliphs are heirs to the prophets in that they possess knowledge based on reason that corroborates revelation. A defining characteristic of his caliphate was al-Mamun’s concern for reconciling Muslim factions, but his critical mistake was using a form of “inquisition” to secure uniformity. The caliph’s otherwise puzzling appointment of the eighth Shi’i imam, Ali ar-Rida, as heir apparent also arose out of his drive for unity. Perhaps as close to the classic “liberal” as one can find in medieval Islamic history, al-Mamun sought to smooth over divisions among the various schools and factions but ended up disastrously widening the gap between himself and an emerging and increasingly potent “proto-Sunni” consensus. Biographical sources on al-Mamun generally accepted his caliphate but rejected his claims to the imamate—in other words, even as early as the mid-ninth century, Muslim thinkers distinguished between civil and religious authority. They acknowledged al-Mamun as the legitimate political leader virtually by default and judged him as lacking the requisite knowledge to qualify as true spiritual leader (imam) and thus as authentic
