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Lecture notes, cheat sheets
History of world religions. History of Islam and Islamic culture (lecture notes)
Directory / Lecture notes, cheat sheets Table of contents (expand) LECTURE No. 8. History of Islam and Islamic culture 1. The Qur'an: the uncreated Book sent down from Heaven Islam, the youngest of the world religions, developed under the strong influence of the religions of neighboring peoples - Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism. Like these traditions, Islam belongs to the religions of Scripture. At the same time, the features inherent in the religions of Scripture, and, above all, the non-conventional interpretation of the linguistic sign (literalism in the interpretation or translation of the sign; conservative and protective attitude towards the sacred text; fundamental indistinguishability of some signs and what they denote), are expressed in Islam with the greatest fullness and strength. This originality of Islam is manifested in various events in its history, as well as in a number of dogmas and special regulations regarding the practice of using the Koran in worship, its translation, interpretation, study at school, etc. The Koran is from the Arabic kuran - literally - "reading what is read, pronounced." The Qur'an is also called the words mushaf, kitab (in Arabic "book", remember that the word Bible is also translated from Greek as "book"); in the Qur'an itself, the Qur'an also uses the word dhikr, i.e. "warning, reminder." In the sacred books of different religions, the actual word of God, his direct appeal to the prophet or the people, is presented in different ways. For example, in the "Tanakh" (the Jewish "Old Testament") Yahweh's direct speech (his appeals "from the 1st person" to Noah, Abraham, Jacob, as well as the Ten Commandments and the laws given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai) is only relatively small fragments in the general body of the Old Testament (Gen 9, 1-17; Gen 15, 1-21; Gen 32, 29; Ex 19-25, Lev 17-26). The bulk of the "Avesta" consists of Zoroaster's hymns, glorifying Mazla and minor gods, as well as sermons, prayers, incantations and reflections of Zoroaster. The direct speech of God Mazda sounds in the "Avesta" in his relatively rare dialogues with the prophet. The picture in the Qur'an is different: its entire text is the direct speech of Allah (from the 1st person), addressed to the prophet Muhammad or (more often) through the prophet to people. I. Yu. Krachkovsky characterized the ratio of the voices and roles of God and the prophet in the Qur'an: "Allah speaks himself, a person completely retreats or acts on orders: say!". In this communicative originality of the Koran lies, according to Krachkovsky, its "unheard of innovation compared to the Torah and the Gospel" (where God's speeches are only quotations, interspersed in the speech of a prophet or chronicler). "Deity in the first person" is the "main effect" of the style of the Qur'an and the secret of its inspiring power. It is clear that the degree of sacredness of the direct word of God is higher than the holiness of the "indirect" (i.e., "from the 3rd person", and in this sense "foreign") narrative about God or the holiness of the retelling of the words of God by the prophet, even if inspired God ("inspired"). This is one of the communicative circumstances that led to the fact that of all the religions of the Scriptures, it is in Islam that the cult of the Holy Scriptures has received the maximum development. If the Revelation of Yahweh to Moses takes place in conditions close to geological cataclysms, then Muhammad, the prophet of Allah and the founder of Islam, "a nervous and rebellious nature, a soul always seized with mysterious confusion" (Masse), at the moments of Revelation he himself experiences an ecstatic shock, similar in symptoms with mystical trance or epilepsy. In written В. S. Solovyov (1896) biographies of Muhammad his fortune on that night of the month of Ramadan 610 when the angel Jibril (for Christians it is the archangel Gabriel) on behalf of Allah began to send down the Koran to him, recreated as follows. Mohammed is in a cave, weary of long and fruitless reflections during his annual retreat. “Suddenly I felt in a dream that someone approached me and said: Read, I answered: no! Then he squeezed me so that I thought I was dying, and repeated: read! I heard the words: Read in the name of your Lord, who creates a man from a blood clot Read: Your Lord - He is merciful - makes known through a writing stick, makes known what he did not know (Sura, 96, 1-6). I read, the phenomenon receded from me, and I woke up. And I felt that these words were written in my heart. Everything he heard ("written in the heart") that night and in many subsequent days and nights for almost 20 years, Muhammad repeated word for word to his fellow tribesmen, preserving the "direct speech" of the Revelation of Allah (i.e., the forms of the 1st person in all when God speaks about himself). The "broadcasting" of Allah from Heaven and the "broadcasting" of his words by the prophet to the people continued from 610 by 632 first in Mecca, then in Medina. Faith in the Revelation of Allah, Muhammad, "thanks to his sincere piety, marvelous gift of eloquence and perseverance, inspired, in the end, everyone who surrounded him." 2. Koran - "completed prophecy" Islamic teaching regards the Qur'an as a "complete prophecy" and sees in this its superiority over the holy books of the Jews and Christians. According to the Koran, Jews and Christians believe in the same God as Muslims, this is the ancient faith of the forefather of Arabs and Jews, Abraham (Arabic Ibrahim), and God has already sent people his prophets and Revelation: Jews - Moses (Arabic Musa) and the Torah , Christians - Jesus (Arabic Isu) and the Sermon on the Mount. However, both Jews and Christians broke the Covenant, distorted and forgot God's word, and thus became unfaithful. (All the same, Jews and Christians, according to Islam, occupy a special place in the non-Muslim world (i.e., among the infidels): these are the people of the Book (ahl al-kitab). They, unlike pagans, can live in an Islamic state and under it patronage, without the obligatory conversion to Islam). Then God, in his last attempt to guide people on the righteous path, sent them his best prophet - the "seal of the prophets" Muhammad - and through him passed on his Testament in the most complete and complete form - the Koran. Thus, according to Islamic doctrine, the Koran is the final word of God addressed to people, Muslims are a special people chosen by God for the last Testament, and Islam, which goes back to the ancient faith of the forefathers and at the same time contains a "completed prophecy", occupies an exceptional position. within the religions of the world. The heightened cult of Scripture in Islam was clearly manifested in the dogmatic dispute about the creation or non-creation of the Koran. According to the original and orthodox concept, the Quran was not created: it, as well as the Arabic letters with which it was written, every word of Allah, the book of the Quran itself as a physical body (the prototype of earthly books, the mother of the book, as it is said in the 13th sura ) - always existed, from eternity and were kept in the seventh heaven in anticipation of the arrival of the one who would be most worthy to receive the word of God. This man was Muhammad, the prophet of Allah. Rationally minded opponents of the dogma of the uncreated Koran, who first declared themselves at the turn of the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries. denied the thesis of uncreation under the banner of defending monotheism. The assumption of eternity and uncreatedness of the Koran, they taught, is tantamount to endowing this book with the properties of God, that is, in other words, recognizing, along with Allah, the second God - the book; At the same time, they ironically called the defenders of the dogma of the uncreated Koran "bitheists". The debate about the nature of the Koran was not a narrowly theological discussion among learned scholastics. In the 846th-XNUMXth centuries. it worried wide circles of Muslims and often became so acute that it caused imprisonment, corporal punishment and even an armed rebellion (in XNUMX). In Persia, one could meet porters on the street arguing among themselves whether the Koran was created or not. In the end, orthodoxy won: the dogma of the uncreated Koran. The reproach of “ditheism” was neutralized by the thesis according to which the Koran “before the Creator is not a created thing.” Those who disagreed with the uncreated Koran were brutally persecuted. 3. "Collector of the Koran" Osman (856) The first records of individual speeches of the prophet were made during his lifetime. Their complete set was compiled in 655, that is, less than a quarter of a century after the death of the founder of the religion. However, several different and contradictory lists circulated, "so that they referred not to the Koran in general, but to the Koran of such and such" (Barthold), which in the conditions of a young Muslim society threatened with religious and political instability. The final consolidated text of the Koran was established in 856 after studying and selecting a number of lists on the orders of Osman, the son-in-law of Muhammad, chronologically the third caliph of the prophet (Arabic caliph - successor, deputy), who entered the history of Islam as the "collector of the Koran." Osman's edition was sent in several lists to the main cities, and all previous lists were ordered to be burned. The "Osman Koran" has become the official text adopted in Islam even today. There are no non-canonical lists of the Qur'an, and information about their features is extremely scarce. Nevertheless, Muslims also had problems for several centuries related to the canonicity of Scripture, or rather, its sound embodiment. The Ottoman edition codified the composition and sequence of suras and their lexical-semantic plan. However, serious discrepancies in the reading of the Qur'an persisted (due to the inaccuracy of the Arabic script, in which short vowels did not have a letter expression). These discrepancies caused more and more anxiety among believers. Finally, in the X century. seven most authoritative theologians, each of whom was assigned two experienced readers of the Koran, recognized seven ways of reading the Koran as canonical. Of these seven options, only two are currently in practical use. Note that difficulties with the canonical reading of the Qur'an stimulated the early and successful development of phonetic knowledge among the Arabs. 4. "Sunnah" of the Prophet Muhammad and Hadith For Muslims, in the role of Holy Tradition, designed to supplement and explain the Koran, is the "Sunnah" - the biography of the creator of religion. The doctrinal primary source of the Qur'an, being a record of Allah's monologue, as if broadcast through Muhammad, contains almost no objective ("epic", transmitted by an external observer), information about the prophet-creator of religion (unlike the Tanakh, Avesta or the New Testament). Echoes of events from the life of Muhammad in the Qur'an, however, are only fragmentary hints, the real background of which can only be understood on the basis of a vast body of historical data that is not included in the text of the Qur'an. In some cases, these "hints" are closest to an agitated subjective-lyrical "stream of consciousness" or to inner speech - convoluted, indifferent to coherence and logical sequence, associative and impetuous. In the later, calmer suras, an excited commentary on events ("facts") gives way to legal or ethical traditions dictated by Allah in connection with certain events, but the events themselves ("facts") still remain behind the text of the Qur'an. Here is an example of a historically reliable “fact” and its echoes in the Koran. It is known that upon returning from one campaign, Muhammad’s beloved wife, Aisha, “left behind the column and was then brought by a young Muslim, gave food to slander. After hesitation, which lasted several days, Muhammad, through revelation, proved the innocence of his young wife” (Masse) . In the 24th sura of the Koran, this episode from the life of the prophet was reflected in the revelation of Allah about how adultery should be punished and how guilt or innocence in adultery is established: “The adulterer and the adulteress - beat each of them with a hundred blows. Do not let pity for you overwhelm you.” him in the religion of Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Hereafter. And let a group of believers be present during their punishment... And those who throw accusations at chaste people, and then do not bring four witnesses, beat them with eight to ten blows and Never accept evidence from them; they are libertines, except those who later turned and reformed. For, verily, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful! " Thus, in the Quran there is no story about Mohammed comparable in biographical content to the information in the Torah about Moses or the Gospels about Christ. Meanwhile, it is the life of Muhammad that could constitute a kind of Islamic sacred history and at the same time serve as an example of a righteous life and the struggle for Islam. This text became the "Sunnah of the Prophet". In functional terms, the "Sunnah" is a doctrinal source of the "second order" (like the Talmud in Judaism or patristic writings in Christianity), moreover, in terms of content, it is a biography of the prophet. Biographism brings the "Sunnah" closer not only to doctrinal sources of the "first order" (with historical narratives in the Tanakh, with stories about Zoroaster in the Avesta, or with biographical episodes in the Gospels), but also with later religious writings (primarily with Christian lives of saints). ). The Arabic word sunna, which has become the designation of the biography of Muhammad and the Islamic Holy Tradition, literally means "path, example, model." The Sunnah contains stories about the actions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. The religious and ethical norms approved by the "Sunnah" reflect the customs and rules of the Arab urban community, supplemented by the norms of Muslim orthodoxy. This is the second (after the Koran) basis of Islamic law. The expression to observe the Sunnah means to imitate Muhammad, to lead a correct Muslim life. There was also a stable formula In the name of the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of his prophet - a kind of initiatory prayer among Muslims. In Islam, there are almost no known conflicts related to differences in understanding the opposition "Holy Scripture (Koran) - Holy Tradition (Sunnah of the Prophet)". In the IX-X centuries. "Sunnah" is beginning to be read almost on a par with the Koran. The "Sunnah of the Prophet" very early was called upon to supplement the word of Allah, and regardless of whether it was consistent with the Koran or introduced new provisions. It was recognized and declared that if the "Sunnah" can do without the Qur'an, then the Qur'an cannot do without the "Sunnah" (Masse). As a sign of reverence for the "Sunnah," legitimate Muslims began to call themselves Ahl Assunnah, that is, "people of the Sunnah, or Sunnis." However, the Shiite currents and sects opposing the Sunnis also revere the "Sunnah of the Prophet" along with the Koran. Initially, the "Sunnah", like the stories about the prophets among the Jews, or about Jesus among the Christians, was transmitted orally and served as an addition to the written law - the Koran. The first distributors of the "Sunnah" were the companions of Muhammad, who, in various conflicting or difficult cases of life, as an argument in a dispute, began to recall the actions of the prophet, his words, and even silence, which could serve as an example. Such legends began to be called hadiths (Arabic for "message, story"). Early oral hadiths date back to the second half of the XNUMXth and the beginning of the XNUMXth centuries. In the Vni-IX centuries. Hadith began to be written down. The "Sunnah" as a whole took shape by the XNUMXth century. From the middle of the XNUMXth century thematic collections of hadiths and collections that combined together hadiths from one transmitter were compiled. Thousands of hadiths are known, but not all traditions are equally authoritative. In Islam, it is customary to single out six main collections of hadiths, many secondary and several insufficiently reliable (the latter are a kind of Muslim apocrypha). The first and main difference between the "main" collections of hadiths and the "non-main" ones is the degree of authority of the narrator. The hadiths of the main collections seem unconditionally and completely reliable, since they go back to the testimony of the closest companions of Muhammad, eyewitnesses of the events described in the hadith. It is easy to see that this is still the same principle "ipse dixit" ("he said himself"), which served as the main criterion in the formation of the book canon of Christianity: the writings of the apostles or the closest disciples of the apostles were recognized as canonical, and the books of less authoritative persons or books of dubious attribution were recognized as apocrypha, albeit inscribed with an authoritative name. However, in Islam the principle of "ipse dixit" manifested itself more strongly than in Judaism and Christianity. In this regard, the Islamic category of isnad is especially characteristic and indicative - continuity in the receipt and transmission of information (knowledge, messages, establishments). The term isnad also denotes one of the most significant manifestations of the principle of continuity: isnad is a chain of references to storytellers in collections of legends about the Prophet Muhammad and in other Muslim treatises (historical, legal). A chain of links introduces messages and phrases attributed to some authority figure. For example: “A told me from the words of B that C said that D heard the prophet Muhammad say...”. Isnad precedes all hadiths as evidence of the authenticity of the message. In Muslim science, a special research discipline has developed - identifying the degree of reliability of hadiths by criticizing the reliability of isnads. Specific criteria and terms were developed, mainly related to the biography of the transmitter and the history of the creation and transmission of his story. As a result, a rather complex classification of hadiths was developed according to the degree of their reliability, taking into account the reliability of the transmitters from whose words they were recorded. Thus, the principle of isnad not only determined the composition of hadiths and differences in authority, but also formed a whole direction of textual research in Islamic literature. In the history of Islam, disputes arose more than once about the extent to which this or that narrator is trustworthy and, therefore, the religious, legal or ethical establishment that the hadith associated with the name of this transmitter prescribes. The older the testimony (i.e., the closer in time to the life of the prophet), the more authority such a narrator and his hadith had. How important the principle of antiquity and the chronology of isnad is is evidenced by the fact that the two main trends in Islam - Sunnism and Shiism - differ from each other in the antiquity of the hadiths they recognize as sacred and, therefore, canonical sources of law. Shiites (from Arabic shia - "group, party, supporters") recognize only those hadiths that go back to the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad Caliph Ali and his two sons. According to these hadiths, only the direct descendants of Muhammad can continue the work of the prophet, protect religion and manage worldly affairs. For Sunnis the circle of sacred collections of hadiths is much wider, and they recognize not only Ali, but also some other caliphs as the legitimate successors of Muhammad. The principle of isnad is an important feature of the Muslim system of education. Isnad involves the consistent transmission of religious knowledge personally from teacher to student over the centuries. M. B. Piotrovsky emphasized the special role of isnad in Muslim mysticism (namely, in Sufism), where the authority of a mystic largely depends on the presence of a reliable isnad - a chain along which mystical knowledge (which cannot be transmitted "merely in words"), passes from the first teacher to today's adept. Isnad in Islamic literature, even more than the Pythagorean-Christian "ipse dixit" ("he said") in European culture, brought up the Muslim theologian or lawyer in a constant eye on authorities. A Muslim who took up a pen became an author only if he reproduced the tradition in his work and joined it as a junior and obedient student. From the pages of hadith filled with lists of the keepers of the tradition, the pathos of isnad spread to all Islamic literature. Hence the endless references to authorities, designed to convince of the truthfulness of the legend and the correctness of the judgment; constant concern about whether those hadiths and their isnads referred to by the writer are authoritative enough; finally, the absolute necessity of every new thought to be in agreement with the judgments of the authorities of Islam. In general, the isnad testifies that the features characteristic of the religions of Scripture are inherent in Islam to a greater extent than in Judaism and Christianity. The manifestations and consequences of isnad is one of the powerful factors of traditionalism in Islamic culture. 5. "Spiritual armor" of Islamic theology Islam is often written about as a simple religion, inheriting the mentality of a clan or a neighboring community and accessible to the masses of ordinary people. Indeed, in Islam there are no such supernatural paradoxes as the Virgin Mother of God and the Immaculate Conception, the God-man or God the Son as the sent down Word of God the Father. Therefore, it is natural that many of the problems that worried Christian theologians for centuries and the essence of which boiled down to the need to rationally comprehend the super-rationality of Scripture simply did not arise in Islam. However, Islamic theology had its own problems, complex in their own way, often in aspects and collisions that were unexpected for Christianity. The fact is that Islam is not only faith and religion. Islam is a way of life, the Qur'an is an "Arabic law book", and it is this "interlacing" of Islam in everyday and responsible life situations that creates the fundamental originality of Islam and explains the main collisions of Islamic theology. In comparison with Islam, Christian theology appears as an extremely speculative and abstract, intellectual "art for art's sake" far from life. In turn, Islamic theology, in comparison with Christian, seems to be much more concerned with jurisprudence and daily rituals in everyday life than disputes about the attributes of Allah, the uncreated Koran or the Divine predestination of human destiny. In addition, the extreme and radical monotheism inherent in Islam immediately ruled out the very possibility of Muslim analogues in relation to such a central and heresy-laden topic of Christian theology as the Holy Trinity. The main theoretical problems of Muslim theology are close to the disputes that agitated Christian theology: about the nature of Allah; about the relationship between faith and reason; about the free will of man and God's predestination of his fate; about the posthumous judgment of the deceased and his afterlife; about the relationship between the Koran and the "Sunnah" (i.e., Scripture and Tradition); on the principles of interpretation of sacred texts; on the relationship between religion and society (in development of the principle of fusion of religious and political communities, proclaimed by Muhammad). Specifically, Muslim dogmatic problems are connected with the question of the creation or non-creation of the Koran. After a century and a half of discussions, the fundamentalist opinion about uncreatedness won: the Qur'an "before the creator is not created." The originality of Muslim theology is sometimes seen in a certain semantic disintegration of the picture of the world, in the predominance of an occasionalist worldview and atomic thinking in Islam. For example, popular Muslim doctrine considers time to be a discrete (discontinuous) sequence of time atoms. "God recreates the world in each of the atoms of time, but only for the moment of the duration of this atom. Such occasionalism was intended to affirm the absolute power of God in the sense of his complete independence from laws and obligations, including from his own institutions" (Gruenebaum). Occasionalism (from Latin occasio - occasion, occasion) - a philosophical view according to which any events and phenomena of the world are not interconnected accidents (and not even a “chain of accidents”, but a “random accumulation of accidents”). Occasionalism and discrete worldview find a variety of expressions in Islam. For example, faith is defined as the sum of good works. A person is considered to consist of atoms and accidents (stable, but independent of substance characteristics)... In the discreteness and occasionality of the Muslim picture of the world, culturologists and Islamic scholars see a factor that creates the originality of Islamic art literature. The tendency to view the world as discontinuous, on the one hand, and to concentrate on details and individual episodes, rather than on the coherence and completeness of the composition, on the other, is generated by the very essence of Islam. There is a mutual affinity between literature and the philosophical and theological doctrine of Islam. These features of literature can be interpreted as a “specifically Islamic phenomenon.” Theology has always occupied an exceptionally prestigious place in Islamic civilization. Muslims saw in it not only high wisdom, but also practically important knowledge, the key to the Revelation of Allah and the "Sunnah" of the Prophet, to Islamic Sharia law. At the same time, the high prestige of knowledge or occupation, as a rule, does not get along with its mass character and accessibility. This circumstance, as well as the conservative-protective tendencies essential for Islam as a religion of the Scriptures and for the early Muslim society as a whole, all this strengthened the features of the closed and authoritarian system of "Islam's spiritual armor" in Islamic theology. The desire to narrow the circle of theologians and hinder access to theological information already in 892 caused a special decree of the caliph in Baghdad banning booksellers from selling books on dogmatics, dialectics and philosophy. The dogma of Islam is concentrated in one verse of the Qur'an "O you who believed! Believe in Allah and His messenger, the scripture that He sent down to His messenger, and the scripture that He sent down before. Whoever does not believe in Allah and His angels, and His scriptures, and His messengers, and on the last day, he went astray in a far way" The words “...the scripture which He sent down before” indicate the Holy Scriptures of the Jews and Christians. According to Islamic dogma, God, even since Muhammad, sent Revelation to people through the prophets, but people did not heed the prophet and retreated from the covenants of God. And only Muhammad, the “seal of the prophets,” that is, the last and main prophet of the true faith, was able to lead the believers out of error. Thus, in Islam, the regulation of theology was achieved, firstly, by restricting access to information and, secondly, by early and rigid dogmatization of the main doctrinal truths. The nature of control over theological knowledge finds a correspondence in the main trends in the management of all religious information in Islam. The rapid codification of the Scriptures, the radical elimination of non-canonical (apocryphal) versions of the Koran (by order of the caliph: burn), the informational power of tradition, constantly reproduced in the isnad, all combined with radical regulation and dogmatization of theology characterizes Islam as the most rigidly organized religion of Scripture. 6. How Islam is accepted The Islamic full creed is called akida (Arabic "faith, dogma"). The Sunnis have several sets of dogmas: the most popular is attributed to Abu Hanifa (USh c.), then the set of the XNUMXth c. and the end of the XNUMXth century. There is also an abbreviated Creed - "Shahada" (from Arabic shahida - testify). According to V.V. Bartold, "Shahada" arose as a prayerful and distinctive exclamation, which among the first Muslims served as a sign of distinction from non-Muslims, primarily pagans. "Shahada", like the Christian Symbol, begins with a verb in the 1st person singular, translated as "I testify." Such a beginning is close enough to the first word of the Christian Symbol - church. - glory. I believe or lat. Credo. The Islamic Symbol contains a concise summary of the two main tenets of Islam. 1. There is one, only, eternal and almighty God - Allah. 2. Allah chose an Arab from Mecca, Mohammed, as his messenger. Every Muslim knows the Arabic sound and meaning of the Symbol of the religion of Islam: La ilaha illallah wa Muhammadun rasulullah - "I testify that there is no deity but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah." The threefold pronunciation of this formula in the presence of an official, and not necessarily in the temple, constitutes the ritual of accepting Islam. There is no catechesis: the convert to Islam is not required to undergo prior training in the basics of faith. (Muslims do not have a clergy as an estate with special grace; there is no church that serves as an intermediary between a person and Allah. In the activities of "people of religion" (imams "leaders of prayer", ministers of mosques, preachers, experts in Islamic law and hadith, teachers of theology) functions of spiritual and secular power are practically inseparable). In addition to the "Shahada", various verbal formulas are used in everyday Muslim life, which are regarded as symbolic signs of loyalty to Allah. For example, the exclamation "Allahu Akbar" - "Allah is the greatest" - is the battle cry of Muslim warriors, and everyday exclamation, and a common inscription on buildings. A cliché is also widely used, which can be translated as "I rely on Allah for everything." All Muslim texts and official speeches begin with the phrase "In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful" - because this is how each new sura begins in the Qur'an. The briefest summary of the main dogma of Islam is contained in the 112th sura of the Koran, which is called “Purification (of Faith)”: “In the name of Allah, the merciful, the merciful! Say: “He - Allah - is one, Allah is eternal; neither begat nor was begotten, nor was any one equal to Him!” The main tenets of Islam are also stated in the first sura of the Qur'an "Fatih" (literally "opening"). It consists of only 7 verses and is included in the obligatory prayer of a Muslim, which is read at least 10 times a day. 7. Prayer canon of Islam In comparison with Christianity and especially Orthodoxy, Muslim worship may seem almost ascetically simple and monotonous. It is strictly regulated, there are no sacraments, chants, music in it. One of the five most important ritual duties of every Muslim is the canonical prayer-worship - salat (Arabic), or in Persian - prayer. Salat is performed five times a day, at certain hours (according to the sun). At the appointed time, a special minister of the mosque - muezzin (literally - "inviting, announcing") from the tower of the minaret or just a hillock calls the faithful to obligatory prayer. The call consists of several formulas, repeated without change. A Muslim can pray not only in a mosque, but also in a house, in a field, in general, in any ritually clean place and on a special rug (or mat). Prayer must necessarily be preceded by ritual ablution, for which special small pools are arranged near the mosque. Prayer is led by an imam - the primate at prayer, the spiritual leader, the head of the Muslim community. He reads prayers, the mullah says a sermon. However, strictly speaking, neither the muezzin, nor the mullah, nor the imam are clerics: in Islamic dogmatics there are no analogues of the Christian category of priesthood as a special grace, God's gift. In the ritual prayer of a Muslim, there are no requests, even such general ones as "Lord, have mercy! or Lord, save!" Salat (prayer) expresses and confirms loyalty and obedience to Allah. When they talk about salat (prayer), it is more appropriate to perform verbs, create, rather than pronounce or whisper. A Muslim cannot pray lying in bed, walking or galloping - in Islam it is impossible to pray by the way. Salat is a separate, independent act of the soul and will, completely dedicated to God. Ritual body movements are very important here, therefore, not only the body movements and gestures themselves are strictly defined, as if canonized, but also what verbal formula they should coincide with. First, standing and raising his hands to shoulder level, a Muslim pronounces the formula of praise "Allahu Akbar!" ("Allah is almighty!"). Then, continuing to stand and putting his left hand into his right, the worshiper reads the Fatiha, the first sura of the Koran, in 7 verses of which the main tenets of Islam are contained. Then the worshiper bends down so that the palms touch the knees. Then he straightens up and raises his hands, saying: "Allah listens to the one who gives him praise." Then he kneels down and puts his palms on the ground. Then comes the climax of the ritual: the worshiper is prone on the floor (on the rug), and so that the nose touches the ground. Then the worshiper sits down without getting up from his knees, after which he again prostrates himself on the floor. This is one cycle (rakat), while each of the 5 daily obligatory salats (prayers) consists of several such cycles. Salats performed at different times of the day differ in the number of such cycles, but not in their structure and content. Only the Koran is read in mosques; Friday is the day of obligatory joint prayer, on the same day a sermon is heard in mosques. The Qur'an is recited somewhat in a singsong voice and usually from memory (professionals must know the Qur'an by heart). Orthodox Muslims are prescribed to pray five times a day, and not necessarily in the mosque (you can also at home, in the field, on the road). However, once a week, on Fridays, Muslims must pray in the mosque, and then the main weekly sermon (preceding the prayer) is delivered - the khutba. Friday, as well as the holiday sermon, is delivered by a special clergyman - khatib; often he is also the imam of the mosque. The sermon is largely ritualized: it is delivered in special clothes, a state of ritual purity is required at the khatib, and the performance is close to recitation. Unlike Christianity, Islamic preaching does not interpret or discuss Scripture. The commentary on the Qur'an is not so much an area of ethics and didactics as of law and politics. Therefore, commenting on the Koran (tafsir) is addressed to a greater extent to professional connoisseurs of the Koran - theologians and lawyers, than to all believers. Nowadays, in a number of Islamic states, the content of the Friday sermon is controlled by secular authorities; sometimes it is made up directly by government officials. 8. "Arabic law book" Koran and hadiths In the 13th sura of the Qur'an (ayat 37) Allah says about the Qur'an: "And so We sent it down as an Arabic legal code." Indeed, suras 2, 4 and 5 (these are more than 500 verses, about a tenth of the Koran) contain prescriptions for religious, civil and criminal cases. The second primary source of Islamic law is hadiths, i.e. stories preceded by isnad about the actions and statements of the prophet Muhammad and his companions. At the same time, just as the "Torah" had to be supplemented by the Oral Law, the legal commentary of the "Mishnah" once again commented on in the Talmud, in order to become a "Jewish lawman", so the Koran and hadiths needed legal interpretation. The holy books of Islam do not contain a consistent set of laws, and Muslims have never conducted legal proceedings according to the Qur'an of Allah or the Sunnah of his prophet. Those legal norms that are expressed in the Qur'an and hadith "should be seen more as a symbol of Muslim identity and a force that binds all Muslims than as a practical tool in everyday legal practice: it is not difficult to see here an analogy of one of the functions of classical Jewish law" (Gruenebaum). The main difficulties in the legal use of Islamic Scripture (Quran) and Tradition (Sunnah of the Prophet, i.e. Hadith) were as follows. At first, the suras of the Koran, heard by the prophet at different times (and Muhammad, as is known, heard the Revelation of Allah and “broadcast” it to people for more than 20 years), often contradict each other, not only in metaphysics, but also in specific legal or ritual questions. The contradiction was resolved taking into account the time of the “sending down” of the suras, and this principle was consecrated in the Koran: “Allah erases what He wills and confirms; with Him is the mother of the book” (13, 39). Muhammad himself began to take into account the chronology of the “sent down” when he justified the contradictions between different suras with references to the changed will of Allah. “It is believed that a verse revealed later cancels the previous one. In Muslim theology, a special discipline arose - naskha - the science of the canceling and the abolished, exploring the relationship of conflicting verses” (Piotrovsky). Secondly, turning to hadiths as a source of law (for example, as a collection of legal precedents and authoritative recommendations) was complicated by the fact that the degree of reliability of different hadiths was different and, most importantly, not generally accepted. There was a need for textual examination of hadiths, for an authoritative assessment of the antiquity and reliability of their isnads. Thirdly, the direct use of the Koran as an “Arab law book” was hampered by the fact that legal norms in it were often formulated too abstractly and concisely, as if in a collapsed form, and over time the difficulties of understanding such texts increased. Their detailed interpretations, a kind of translations into a generally understandable language, were required. For example, the verses about divorce: “For those who swear about their wives, waiting for four months. And if they return, then, verily, Allah is forgiving, merciful! And if they decide to divorce, then, verily, Allah is Hearing, Knowing! And the divorced wait with themselves three periods, and it is not allowed for them to hide what Allah has created in their wombs, if they believe in Allah and the last day. And it is more worthy for their husbands to return them at the same time, if they want appeasement. And for them - the same as for them, according to the accepted. Husbands over them - a degree. Indeed, Allah is great, wise! Divorce is twofold: after it, either keep, according to custom, or let go with good deed. And you are not allowed to take anything from what you have given them. Unless they are both afraid of not fulfilling the restrictions of Allah. And if you are afraid that they will not fulfill the restrictions of Allah, then there will be no sin on them in what she redeems herself. These are the boundaries of Allah, do not transgress them, and whoever transgresses the boundaries of Allah, they are unrighteous. And when you divorce your wives and they have reached their limit, then keep them according to what is accepted or release them according to what is accepted, but do not keep them by force, transgressing: if anyone does this, he is unjust to himself. And do not turn the signs of Allah into mockery <...>". Comprehensive commentary and development of the legislative guidelines of the Koran and Hadith became the main content of Islamic theology. There are two main types of legal interpretation of sacred books: tafsir and fiqh. Tafsir, which was already widespread in VIII-IX centuries., is a special scientific interpretation that uses, on the one hand, methods of purely religious reasoning, and on the other, all kinds of data on the chronology and history of sacred texts. Tafsir stimulated the historical and textual study of the sources of Islamic law. It was here, when studying the chronology of the Koran, that a special genre of scholarly treatises on the “reasons of revelation” emerged, devoted to the circumstances and time of the appearance of different parts of the Koran. Here, methods were developed to verify the authenticity of hadiths, and biographical information about their transmitters was collected. Fiqh (Arabic faqiha - understand, know) is more practical. This is Muslim canon law, including the theory of Islamic law. Fiqh deals with the direct legal interpretation of the Koran and hadiths, their interpretation in relation to the practical life of the Muslim society. Since the Law is understood as the main content of the Koran and the Sunnah, the term fiqh is sometimes broadly used to refer to the entire set of religious disciplines, sometimes to refer to Muslim theology in general. "Fiqh is also a theoretical justification and understanding of Sharia - the correct way of life for a Muslim; therefore, the terms Sharia and fiqh often replace each other." Sharia (from Arabic Sharia - the right way, the road - a set of legal norms, principles and rules of conduct, religious life and actions of a Muslim; in reality, Sharia is embodied in works on fiqh and in the practice of Muslim (Sharia) courts). The main task of Sharia was to evaluate the various circumstances of life from the point of view of religion. Fiqh complemented Sharia in purely legal aspects. According to M. B. Piotrovsky, works on fiqh constitute the most numerous group of medieval Arabic manuscripts. "Fiqh has always been an obligatory subject of teaching in the family and school, the subject of learned and semi-learned conversations and disputes, so characteristic of the life of the inhabitants of Muslim urban areas" (Islam, 1983, 18). Fiqh is known to ordinary Muslims much more than the Koran and dogmatics. In the modern world of Islam, only collections of fiqh have the force of law, while the Koran and hadiths are books primarily for edifying reading, hard-to-understand primary sources of law and morality. So, by the will of fate, the main books of the two religions of Scripture "Torah" and "Talmud" in Judaism and the Koran and Hadith in Islam turned out to be those books in which the fundamental legal principles of the Jewish and Muslim civilizations, respectively, were recorded. At the same time, both in Judaism and Islam, the "law-summing" nature of the sacred books was recognized as the main content of life. At the same time, the connection of sacred books with life practice became possible due to the fact that in both theocratic civilizations, commentary traditions developed and were strengthened over the centuries, while the main object of commentary was precisely the legal content of sacred books. A comprehensive interpretation - theological, moral, historical-textological, logical-semantic - made it possible to fully reveal, supplement, develop those basic legal principles that were laid down in the sacred books. 9. Arab religious philosophy Arab religious philosophy developed in parallel with the development of early scholasticism. However, its development was different. At first, the Arabs adopted from the Greeks mainly the ideas of Plato and the Neoplatonists, but gradually they began to pay more and more attention to the ideas of Aristotle, whose works (in particular, metaphysical, logical and physical treatises) were carefully studied and commented on. At the same time, special emphasis was placed on metaphysics and formal logic. Aristotelianism was not cultivated here in its pure form, it was intertwined with elements of Neoplatonism, since Platonism, more than the ideas of Aristotle, was in the interests of theology. The main meaning of Arab philosophy was to protect Islam and its church dogmas, therefore, in its main features and starting points, it coincides with scholastic philosophy. At the beginning of Islamic philosophy there are two great thinkers. The first of these is the Arab adherent of the ideas of Aristotle al-Kindi (800 - c. 870), a contemporary of Eriugena, translator and commentator of Aristotle. Subsequently, however, he departs from pure Aristotelianism and moves on to Neoplatonism. A steadfast follower of Aristotle in the 870th century was al-Farabi (950-900), who lived and worked in Baghdad, Aleppo and Damascus in 950-XNUMX. However, he also begins to interpret Aristotle's system in the spirit of the Neoplatonists, taking from Aristotle a clear and logical division of reality into separate areas of scientific interest. The picture of the spiritual world of this period is given by the so-called "Treatises of Pure Brothers" - about fifty essays on religion, philosophy and natural sciences, written by representatives of the "Brothers of Purity and Sincerity" sect, which arose in the XNUMXth century and, among other things, strove to unite Islam with Hellenistic philosophy. Here, too, the Neoplatonic idea dominated: the world comes from God and returns to him. In relation to Christian scholasticism, the work of the great Aristotelians of Arab philosophy is of great importance: in the East it was Avicenna, in the West - Averroes. Avicenna (Arab. Ibn Sina, 980-1037) came from Turkestan Bukhara. He had an encyclopedic education. The main philosophical work of Avicenna was the encyclopedic treatise "The Book of Healing", containing the foundations of logic, physics, mathematics and metaphysics; in addition, he wrote commentaries on Aristotle and many other books, of which the treatise "Canon of Medicine" gained great recognition. Avicenna's philosophy was theocentric, however, in a different sense than Christian. He understood the world as a product of the divine mind, but in no case of God's will. The world was created from matter, not from nothing; matter is eternal. The material world has the character of a concrete possibility and exists in time. Like Aristotle, Avicenna's god is an immovable mover, a form of all forms, an eternal creative condition. The world in its real multiplicity was not created once and directly by God, but arose gradually. The understanding of universals also testifies to the parallel development of Arabic and Christian philosophy. Avicenna comes to similar results as Abelard, but earlier in time. In agreement with other Arab philosophers, he teaches that universals can be spoken of in three ways: - they exist before singular things in the divine mind (ante res); - they exist in real things as their embodied essence (in rebus); - they exist after things in the minds of people as concepts formed by them (post res). Avicenna's philosophy was characterized by rationalism with materialistic tendencies that stem from his natural science orientation. He is the founder of Arab peripatetism, his teaching combines elements of the philosophy of Aristotle with the religion of Islam. If Avicenna was the king of Arabic philosophy in the East, then the king of the Arab West, who significantly influenced European philosophy, was Averroes (Arab. Ibn Rushd, 1126-1196). He came from Spanish Cordoba. Known as a theologian, lawyer, doctor, mathematician and, above all, a philosopher. He is the author of famous commentaries on Aristotle, whom he considered the greatest of men, a true philosopher. He held high positions, performed important state functions, but during the reign of Caliph al-Mansur he was sent into exile. His treatises, which were rejected by Islamic theologians, survived only thanks to the Spanish Jews. According to Averroes, the material world is eternal, infinite, but limited in space. God is also eternal, like nature, but he did not create the world out of nothing, as religion proclaims. The Aristotelian interpretation of the origin of nature, according to which matter as such is not a reality, but a possibility, that a form must act on it in order for nature to arise, Averroes interpreted in such a way that forms do not come to matter from the outside, but in eternal matter all forms are potentially contained and gradually crystallize during development. He adopted the concept of universal gradation and hierarchy of beings between God and man from Avicenna. Such a concept, of course, was much more removed from the belief in the divine creation of nature from nothing, which was preached by Christianity and Judaism. However, this is not the only issue on which Averroes argued with Islamic dogma. He also denied the immortality of the individual soul; At the same time, he proceeded from the idea of Aristotle, according to which the soul is connected with the body, as a form with matter, in each specific being. The individual soul dies with the body, because with the death of the body, the specific sensory representations and memory inherent in each individual person disintegrate. Averroes distinguishes between passive and active mind. The passive mind is associated with the individual sensory representations of a person, the active mind has the character of a universal, individual intellect, which is eternal. Only the common mind of the entire human race in its historical development is immortal. Individual souls (the mind of the individual) participate in it, contain it, but it itself is transpersonal and in its essence is similar to the divine mind. This is the universal active intellect of the earthly sphere. Thus, Averroes ontologized the highest theoretical ability of the human spirit. The religious idea of the immortality of the individual soul is meaningless. Averroes sees the highest moral value in the doctrine that educates a person so that he himself does good, and not in that which conditions human behavior with the expectation of reward and punishment in the next world. His ethics contrast sharply with the teachings of Muhammad, which, on the one hand, describes hellish torments in vivid colors, and on the other hand, promises heavenly joys and bliss in the form of a soft bed, wine and black-haired girls with big eyes waiting for believers. Averroes understood the relationship between religion and philosophy as follows: the highest and pure truth, which the philosopher knows, in religion is manifested in sensual images, which can be useful for the intellect of simple, uneducated people. Religious ideas in the interpretation of philosophers, ordinary people understand differently, which is the content of the starting point of the doctrine of the so-called dual truth, one of the creators of which was Averroes. However, there is only one complete truth - this is philosophical truth. The meaning of the theory of "dual truth" consisted in the desire to make science and philosophy independent, to save them from church guardianship. It is not surprising that the philosophy of Averroes (as well as the philosophy of Avicenna) was sharply condemned by Islamic orthodoxy, and his treatises were ordered to be burned, which, however, in no way weakened their influence and did not prevent their further influence, as happened in other similar cases. . Skeptical mysticism. The development of Arab philosophy is comparable to the development of Christian scholasticism in that, as a reaction to the intellectualization of religion under the influence of Aristotelianism, a mystical direction is also formed here. Its representative was an intellectual skeptic, a follower of Sufi mysticism and asceticism al-Gazage (lat. Algazel, 1059-1111), a contemporary of Anselm, a generation older than Bernard of Clairvaux, who had similar views to al-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali's main interest was focused on faith, which he sharply contrasted with science and philosophy. He demonstrated his skeptical approach in the treatise “Refutation of the Philosophers,” which Averroes energetically opposed. In this treatise, al-Ghazali shows the influence of Aristotelian views on science and philosophy that is harmful to faith. He also rejected the principle of causality, which manifests itself in the world naturally. Fire cannot be the cause of fire, for it is a dead body which cannot do anything; God caused the fire, and the fire was only a temporary remedy, not a cause. Philosophy should contribute to religion. Orientation to mysticism runs through all his works. In cognition, according to his ideas, mystical merging with God and revelation is positive. He considered the denial of the creation of the world by God, his omnipotence and justice, divine providence, to be the worst delusions of philosophers. Author: Pankin S.F. << Back: Христианство (The structure of Revelation in the Holy Scriptures of Christians. Canonization of Christian texts. Holy Fathers of the Church and Patristics. Scripture or Tradition. Christian theological thought and dogmatic theology. What every Christian should know. The cycle of readings in the Christian church. Missal, Typikon, Menaion, Breviary." Sermon on the Mount" and early Christian homilies. The fate of church eloquence. Christian exegesis and hermeneutics. Explanatory gospels and psalms. The fate of canon law in Christianity. The dogma of the Holy Trinity and the "Arian heresy") >> Forward: Modern religious movements. Fundamentalism and modernism (The dominance of official atheism in Soviet Russia. Internal and external spiritual freedom. The modern civilizational crisis. The search for ways to overcome the crisis of modern civilization. Features of Russian spirituality. Russian spiritual renaissance of the late XIX - early XX centuries and its significance for overcoming the modern spiritual crisis)
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