Suchergebnisse

The task confronting the person who seeks to survey the current state of the literature dealing with Islam as a religion is both enormous and complex. Since Muslims have traditionally considered themselves to be a religious commonwealth whose very identity is fixed by a shared religious commitment, it follows that virtually every writing on any subject whatsoever having to do with Muslims might be considered to fall within the field of religion. Even if one restricts his attention, as we propose to do here, to a more narrow view of religion, the task is still formidable. Muslims have been no less prolific than other major religious communities in producing dissident opinions from within their own fold. The history of Islamic sects, each with its own peculiar thought system and religious practice, is a field of study in itself and one that might well challenge the most energetic scholar. Far from being monolithic, as many of the scholarly cliches about Islam presuppose (e.g. Islam is a religion of Law, Islam is a religion of the Book, etc.), the religious experience of Muslims is diverse and multiform, defying the most sophisticated attempts to reduce it to order and system. No informed approach to the religiousness of Muslims can deal solely with a narrowly marked out "normative Islam". The deviations from the norm are also part of the reality of historic Islamic experience and cannot be set aside in favor of what one may prefer as religiously or conceptually pure. It quickly becomes clear to the perceptive inquirer that the meaning of Islam is an historical phenomenon cannot be stated in terms of a unified doctrinal system, a universally accepted set of rites, or common institutions.

One of the more interesting phenomena in Islamic religious history is the development of the schools of law. This phenomenon has seldom failed to arouse ourinterest, though it has consistently eluded our understanding. The difficulty in grasping the significance of the schools of law is evidenced by vacillation in translating the termmadhhab. This term was first translated as 'sect,' then as 'rite' or 'school.' But a Sunni madhhab could not be a sect, since the term 'sect' is applied to a dissenting religious body, one that is heretical in the eyes of other members within the same communion. That is not the case with the Sunni madhhabs, all of which are regarded equally as orthodox. Nor is the term 'rite' an adequate one, since it applies to a division of the Christian church as determined by liturgy; and, unlike a transfer from one rite to another in Christianity, a transfer requiring certain formalities, the transfer in Islam is made from one madhhab to another without any formalities whatsoever. The term 'school,' for lack of a better term, is the most acceptable; it is the one that offers the least difficulty.

Throughout the history of Iran, a country where religion has been a predominant element in the life of its inhabitants, spiritual restlessness and social malaise expressed themselves in various revolts which were religious in character. From pre–Islamic Iran to nineteenth–century Babism a series of radical sects, considered as heretical and consequently ruthlessly suppressed by the ruling authorities, came into being.

From earliest times, religion has always been one of the most important factors in social cohesion and at the same time a major cause of urban factionalism and strife. The existence of opposing sects in the same city has invariably provided a breeding ground for economic, social, and political differences in the guise of sectarian disputes.The basic elements of urban organization in the Islamic period were local government (ḥukūmat), religious solidarity (ummat), professional associations (the craft guilds, aṣnāf), and the city wards or quarters (maḥallāt). Occasionally, other social organizations rose to prominence such as esoteric fraternities, mystical and dervish orders, and chivalrous and paramilitary associations (futuvvat, Cayyārān); these too formed part of the overall social life of the city. The wards or city quarters were the centers of group activity based on kinship, or ethnic or sectarian affiliation. Iranian cities during the Islamic period saw political and social activities by the followers of the four rites of the Sunna--Shāfiᶜī, Ḥanbalī, Ḥanafī, and Mālikī--and by Shi'ite and other dissident sects such as the Zaydīs, Carmathians, Mu'tazilites, and Ismāᶜīlīs.

Islamic society is ever intriguing. Across broad territories and over millenia of
time, it maintains a constant identity; yet it is always elusive, varied, and
changing. The study of Islamic urbanism, like so many Islamic topics, oscillates
between attempts to define what is fundamental and universal in Islamic city
life, and what is ineffably individual about each locality; the contradictory
perspectives seem equally valid. While topography, culture, and history have
given each locality a unique identity, by the middle ages, Middle Eastern towns
between the Nile and the Jaxartes—the core area of Islamic
society—shared common features of social organization. Small communities,
such as families, neighborhood quarters, and fraternities were the fundamental
units of society. Town populations were gathered into loosely organized
religious bodies, such as schools of law, Shirite sects, and Sufi brotherhoods,
who were dominated by ethnically alien elites organized into slave armies and
slave-maintained governments, and who garrisoned and extracted revenues from the
towns while remaining separate from local community life. Characteristically,
then, Middle Eastern Muslim cities operated on three levels-parochial groups,
religious communities, and imperial regimes. Organized urban life depended on
the relationships between person and groups within this three-tiered
institutional pattern.

The aim of this essay is to explore the possibility, remote as it is or might be, of dramatists employing their trade and using their skill to transmit political messages. In Arabic culture, there is enough ground to suspect that such an endeavor is possible, forthe culture is known to have used the medium of drama to support religiopolitical ideas. I am referring to the well-known fact that the Shī'a sect of Islam, perhaps as early as the time of Yazīd (late A.D. seventh century) has been mourning the martyrdom of Husayn at Karbalā in dramalike fashion. We may well pause to contemplate the ultimate sociopolitical reason for the performance of this ancient Arabo-Islamic passion play.