Is Islam a unique religion?
In the previous topic, it was discussed that religions, including Islam, basically deal with concepts that are beyond the ability of human logic, and what conventional wisdom can handle, including politics, is not in the circle of religion; Although it is mentioned in the language of religion temporarily and implicitly. As the multi-thousand years of mankind’s experience shows, man can regulate these affairs with the help of his science and skills. Building a political system is one of the things that people have done in history relying on their abilities, and as their experiences have matured, they have made more and better adjustments in their political structures, and there was not any religion for doing it. Economy, trade, and other conventional duties in our life are also the same. Prophets of some religions may have interfered in politics at some points in human history, but this work was part of the rest of human efforts to organize people’s livelihoods, not an extraordinary work that has metaphysical and supernatural aspects. Prophets, like other human beings, have been sensitive to the political and social conditions around them. In some places, they have reacted to their behavior. In some cases, they have tried to change the political situation.
This is something that every normal person does, and if a prophet did this, there is no proof that this territory became his property and became a part of his religion. It was not intended at all that the dervish prophets should be worldly and have nothing to do with politics and other matters of life, but the fact that a prophet, like any other human being, dealt with the politics of his time does not make politics inherently religious and its nature remains worldly.
Although this statement is self-evident, it is rejected and unacceptable from the fundamentalist’s viewpoint. They say that if this statement is true for other religions, it is not true for Islam. So, Judaism, distorted Christianity or Buddhism, and Hinduism should not be compared with Islam. They say that Islam is a unique religion that has a completely different nature, and talking about its link with politics is not the same as talking about the link between religion and politics in the general sense of the word; so that from their point of view, other religions are incomplete and do not have a solution for different aspects of life, and they should not be put on the same scale as Islam.
Islam is indeed different from other religions. In means that Islam as an independent religion has features that distinguish it from other religions, but this feature is not specific to Islam every other religion has the same rule; because every religion is unique in its essence and no religion can be found that is exactly like other religions. This is just like the story of people, each of them has unique characteristics for themselves, and no two people can be found who are alike in appearance and inwardness; However, this uniqueness does not mean that there are no similarities between them. For example, while being unique, one person has important similarities with other people, and each religion also has its similarities with other religions while being unique.
There is a debate that Islam as a religion is a perfect religion. On the other hand, if we say that other religions are imperfect is another debate. If we accept that other religions, especially Judaism and Christianity, were sent to humans by God through its chosen prophets, then the premise that they are incomplete is not correct; so, if God sends religion to guide his servants, he does not send imperfect guidance. It is against his wisdom and justice to send an incomplete religion to a part of people and a perfect one to another part. Every religion is a perfect religion from its follower’s viewpoint. Like Muslims consider Islam perfect, the other religions’ followers also consider their religions perfect and believe that their religion is the most perfect one on earth. From their perspective, what they expect from religion, is not less.
In terms of comparison between religions, they can be weighed together and it can be claimed that in a certain field this religion has a more specific plan, and in another field that religion has, as in comparative theology, such efforts are made by specialists. Also, in terms of time sequence, it is possible to make a measurement and say, for example, how many percent of this religion has been influenced by that religion and is its continuation or a more advanced version of it. Such research has been carried out and views of this type have been presented, but every religion is complete in terms of being a religion, and if it were not so, it would not have been established as a religion in history.
To know whether religions are complete or incomplete, what criteria do we have? If our criterion is to cover all the issues of this world, no religion addresses all the phenomena of existence or all the issues of the living beings of this world. There are millions of issues in this world that are neither in Islam nor any other religion, from logic, philosophy, art, mathematics, and natural sciences to social and cultural issues that belong to other lands and civilizations. For example, if we talk about scientific issues, there are tens and hundreds of thousands of scientific issues that have been discovered by scientists, both about the earth and about creatures the living in which they live and about the planets, stars, galaxies, and the infinite space, which are not discussed in Islam or any other religion. Also, about the regions on the earth and the people living in these regions and the problems they have had, there is no complete word in Islam, nor in any other religion. For example, in the Quran, people are addressed in a general way, but when the tribes are mentioned, it is mainly about the people of Bani Israel, and then about the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula, mainly the Quraysh people. In the past, only a few tribes are mentioned, for example, Ad and Thamud, whose names were familiar to the inhabitants of Jazeera al-Arab and its surroundings. Beyond this, there is no mention of the Australian people, Far Asia, Northern Europe, Deep Africa, Latin America, etc. While at the time of the Quran revelation, these countries had their civilizations and cultures and had issues and problems that were no less than the Israelites and the people of the Arabian Peninsula. Also, if we take the completeness of the religion in this sense, instead of talking about Moses and the Children of Israel 130 times, and possibly repeatedly, it would be better to talk about the people of Central Asia and the prophets who were sent to them, or about the problems on the way. There has been guidance for the people of Latin America, things were said and mentioned that were made of ancient China and Japan, or something was mentioned about the miseries of the natives of Australia and the Indians of ancient America. If this were the case, a more complete picture of the prophetic dynasty would be given, and it would be a miracle for the people of the future; Because it was reported about something that the Arabs did not know about.But in fact, the criterion of completeness of Islam or any other religion is not to deal with all these issues. The criterion of the completeness of any religion, as mentioned in the previous part of this article and emphasized by the scientists of the science of religions, is the existence of the same structures and elements that make a religion a religion, it means “beliefs, myths, religious rituals, and otherworldly affairs and then Morals, laws, holy scriptures, congregation or ummah, and esoteric and spiritual affairs. By having such elements, any religion and ritual can give meaning to the life of its followers, interpret the existence for them, explain its relationship with the surrounding world, make the purpose of creation understandable for them, and discipline their behavior towards others according to rules and principles. If we go to religions from this point of view, every religion, or most religions, especially the great religions, are perfect and have such a function in the lives of their followers, and for the same reason, millions of people have rested in their shadow and found life meaningful for them in that way.
Some scientists, such as Mustafa Maliakian, have considered the basic contents of religions to be four things: 1) the relationship of man with himself, 2) the relationship of man with other humans, 3) the relationship of man with the universe, 4) the relationship of man with God and the beyond. He then explains that some religions are limited to two axes, such as Buddhism, which completely rejects the relationship between man and man to common sense and silences the relationship between man and God and focuses on the relationship between man and himself and the relationship between man and the world. existence has left. But some religions have addressed all four axes, such as Judaism and Islam, which have detailed rules about human behavior in social arenas. Of course, Buddhism has silenced the relationship between God and man in the sense that we know it, not that it has been completely and fundamentally forgotten. Rather, in Buddhism, God is not considered separate from the universe, and the relationship between man and the world includes the relationship between man and God, but the important gateway for man to enter into the inner world is to focus on oneself and discover the hidden forces of one’s existence and to reconcile with his/her inner human self.
In any case, addressing or not addressing matters that regulate the relationship between humans and humans at the political and social level does not affect the perfection or deficiency of religion. Especially in terms of legal rules, not moral rules. Legislative decrees are those laws and regulations whose executive support is the government force and executive bodies. Moral rules have a different nature, because their support is conscience, not external compulsion, and they exist in general form in all religions. Legal rulings that can only be implemented by relying on government forces have been completely rejected by most religions and many religions that have dealt with this field have not presented anything different from the rulings of common sense. Even if they look somewhat different in shape.
In practice, we can see that a society like Japan, which is mainly Buddhist, has made more important achievements in its political field than most Muslim countries, despite not applying Buddhism to politics, and has one of the most successful systems currently. This practical experience shows that the realm of politics is related to human common sense, and if it is used correctly and religious or non-religious ideological illusions do not prevent it from working properly, it can organize this field well and lead to war and End long-standing conflicts. Also, India has been more successful and has made better progress as most of its people follow Hinduism, which does not consider politics as a part of religion, compared to Pakistan, whose regime is the Islamic Republic and has mixed religion and politics since its establishment. We can show many examples of countries whose politics did not have a religious color, but in the field of governance and providing services to its people, they have had remarkable successes. However, political systems claiming to implement religion in Islamic countries, including those led by political Islamist forces, such as Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan, Mosul, Raqqa, and other places, have not had any special success, which makes them different from other systems in the world and shows superiority.
If it is said, as the fundamentalist groups claim, that Muslim countries do not practice Islam and have not been successful because of this, one should ask when Sudan with more than 30 years of Islamic rule, and Iran with more than 40 years of Islamic rule and Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq, etc., with long years of arguing about the implementation of Sharia, none of them have followed Islam, so what is the criterion for following Islam? Such a claim is not true. In practice, the fundamentalist political groups in these countries not only used all their efforts to adopt Islam in the political and social arenas but also tried to show that they are more Muslim than the Prophet and the Companions and that they are trying more than them to adjust their conditions to the standards of Islam.
In the entire history of early Islam, from the time of the Prophet and the Companions to the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Ottoman periods, there is no example of a non-Muslim woman being forced to wear a hijab in a formal or informal gathering, but the fundamentalist rulers of Iran and Afghanistan even forced non-Muslim women whom Official delegations enter these countries, forcing them to wear hijab. Under the rule of the Righteous Caliphs, women who were slaves had the right to go to the street and market with their heads and arms bare, but under the rule of fundamentalist Muslims, no one has such a right. In the first few centuries of Islamic history, non-Muslim women who were citizens of Islamic territory had the right to dress according to their religious customs and were not forced to dress like Muslim women, but they do not have such a right in the rule of these groups. In Iran, Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian female citizens are forced to wear the clothes of Muslim women, and in Afghanistan, Hindu and Sikh women are forced to dress as Muslim women. Therefore, it cannot be said that these governments have not made an effort to Islamize society. In contrast, they have put all their efforts into this way and have not left any field of social life alone. They even interfere with the stones of toilets, mannequins behind shop windows, photos printed on commercial goods, and the image of women in the media to equate them with Islam. We do not find all these exaggerations and exaggerations in religiousness and religiosity in any period of Islamic history, especially at the beginning of Islam. The fundamentalists show that they are not even satisfied with the Prophet and his Companions being Muslims, and they want to be a few steps ahead of them. But the fact is that despite these efforts, the political system of these countries not only has no advantage over other political systems in the world. Rather, it has suffered from more shortcomings and inefficiencies and has been more ineffective than other regimes.
All the emphasis of these regimes on the application of Sharia law and the revival of external manifestations of religion in political and social life is since, in the main areas of governance, which forms the existential philosophy of the emergence of governments and consists of providing basic services to citizens, there are no significant and different achievements. They do not have other systems. To cover up their failures as a political system, they set up a scandal called Sharia implementation.
During the first Taliban government, their minister of education gave a speech in one of the Herat mosques and said about the benefits of their system and that people should be proud that they are the only country that has an Amir al-Mu’minin and of course, no other country has an Amir al-Mu’minin. People were saying among themselves, should we eat or wear Amir al-Mu’minin? Governments are created to improve people’s living standards, reduce their problems and sufferings, and do something for the development of their countries.
Therefore, whether a religion deals with politics or not, it has no effect on its being a religion, and from this point of view, Islam and other religions are the same, and it is not possible to discuss the uniqueness of Islam in the context of Islam and politics. The proposed claim by Hassan al-Banna and other fundamentalists that because Islam is different from other religions, politics is a part of its teachings, or it should be, is a middle-of-the-road claim, and the failure of this theory has been proven in the field of practical realities.
Mohammad Moheq-Chief-in-Editor, Hasht-e Subh Daily