ISLAM AND CULTURE

Islam is a great unique religion. It is held by an absolute majority of the peoplein some 40 nation states, and of the 900 million Muslims liying today only 17% or so are Arabs. It is estimated that Islam will be the religion of one quarter of the earth’s population by the beginning of the 21st century. All these people have a religion with a set of beliefs and a set of rules covering a goodly part of what one might call a way of life (Adams, 1976; Aydich, 1979). Islam is an uncompromisingly monotheistic religion that requires total submission to the will of Allah. It puts great emphasis on rightoeusness of thought and of action, and promises rewards in the hereafter, but not in this world, for those who believeand practice as they should.

Islam is a revealed religion, and its holy book, the Qur’an, is literally the word of God. Based on strong evidences, it should be believed absolutely and its rules are to be followed without exception. The Qur’an, by its example, establishes  the logic of how one compares goals and values to other goals, and from rules to other rules. There is in Islam a large body of rules covering a very wide range of human behavior based on the Qur’an, and on the sayings, decisions, and action of the Prophet. Islam is a major part of Muslim’s culture, and overrides much of what he may have received from outside his religion, whether it’s from Berber culture, or Mongol culture, or any other culture. This religion is very much the same among all people. The Muslim believes that all Muslims form a community bonded by shared beliefs and values, and common rules that govern behavior (von Grunebaum, 1962; Hitti, 1986; Adams, 1976; Braibanti, 1985). It is the sameness and communality that allow one to speak of Islamic culture and to generalize about all of them.

Factual statements in the Qur’an are absolute truths to the believer. This is not to say that all statements are literraly true, but that their meanings are absolutely true,. Islam means submission, both to its facts, and its rules. All other facts are true at some lower order, and all other rules are binding at some lower level. Thus, the truths of all statementsof fact not inthe Qur’an are of a lower order than those in it. In Islam something is either true or not true. As in standard western views of truth, it is a dichotomous concept. This has nothing to do with knowing the truth, but only with a view of reality that allows meaningful statements about it to be of only two types. Reality is such or it is not, in which case it is not reality. Reality can never be such and not such, and it cannot be neither such or not such. Concept of something being neither so not not so may be meaningful in quantum physics but not in Islam or normal Aristotelian and Cartesian systems of meaning.

This notion of absoluteness of truth has logical consequences in values and decision rules. The values given in the Qur’an and any ordering of these are to be accepted as exactly that by the faithful. The highest values are the total submission and service to God, follwed by others, such as the importance of charity, and of fulfillment of business contracts. Logic is a highly developed branch of knowledge in Islamic culture. Muslim philosophers learned Aristotelian logic. Improvements had been made to the system, and it was used in religious explanation, law, medicine, and so on. The logic used in Islam is based on the dichotomous concept of truth, and logical operations are elaborate  and rigorous.