The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Shabbateans imagined Shabbetai living his double life in anguish, but in reality he seemed quite content with his Muslim persona. He spent his days studying the Shariah, the sacred law of Islam, and teaching the sultan’s spiritual adviser about Judaism. He was permitted visitors, and held court, receiving delegations of Jews from all over the world. They spoke of his great piety. Shabbetai was often to be seen in his home, sitting cradling the Torah scroll in his arms and singing hymns; people marveled at his devotion and his wonderful ability to enter sympathetically into other people’s feelings.58 The ideas in Shabbetai’s circle were quite different from those of Nathan’s, and far more positive toward gentiles. Shabbetai seems to have seen all faiths as valid; he saw himself as a bridge between Judaism and Islam, and was also fascinated by Christianity and Jesus. Guests reported that sometimes he behaved like a Muslim, sometimes like a rabbi. The Ottomans permitted him to observe the Jewish festivals, and Shabbetai was frequently to be seen with a Koran in one hand and a Torah scroll in the other.59 In the synagogues, Shabbetai tried to persuade Jews to convert to Islam; only then, he told them, would they return to the Holy Land. In one letter, written in 1669, Shabbetai vehemently denied that he had converted to Islam only under duress; the religion of Islam, he declared, was “the very truth,” and he had been sent as the Messiah to the gentiles as well as to the Jews.60

Shabbetai’s death on September 17, 1676, was a severe blow to Shabbateans, since it seemed to preclude all hope of redemption. Nevertheless, the sect continued its underground existence, showing that the messianic outburst had not been a freak occurrence, but had touched something fundamental in the Jewish experience. For some, this religious movement seems to have been a bridge that would enable them, later, to make the difficult transition to rational modernity. The alacrity with which so many had been ready to jettison the Torah, and the persistence of Shabbateans in dreaming of a new Law, demonstrated that they were ready to envisage change and reform.61 Gershom Scholem, who has written the definitive study of Shabbetai and Shabbateanism, has argued that many of these closet Shabbateans would become pioneers of the Jewish Enlightenment or of the Reform movement. He points to Joseph Wehte in Prague, who spread the ideas of the Enlightenment in Eastern Europe during the early nineteenth century and had once been a Shabbatean; Aron Chovin, who introduced the Reform movement in Hungary, was also a Shabbatean in his youth.62 Scholem’s theory has been disputed, and cannot be proved definitively one way or the other, but it is generally acknowledged that Shabbateanism did much to undermine traditional rabbinic authority and that it enabled Jews to envisage a change that would once have seemed taboo and impossible.

After Shabbetai’s death, two radical Shabbatean movements led to the mass conversion of Jews into the dominant faith. In 1683, about 200 families in Ottoman Turkey converted to Islam. This sect of donmeh (“converts”) had their own secret synagogues, but also prayed in the mosques. At its peak, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the sect numbered some 115,000 souls.63 It started to disintegrate in the early nineteenth century, when members began to receive a modern, secular education and no longer felt the need for any religion. Some donmeh youth became active in the secularist Young Turk rebellion of 1908. The second of these movements was more sinister and showed the nihilism that can result from a literal translation of myth into practical action. Jacob Frank (1726–91) was initiated into Shabbateanism while visiting the Balkans. When he returned to his native Poland, he formed an underground sect whose members observed Jewish law in public but in secret indulged in forbidden sexual practices. When he was excommunicated in 1756, Frank converted first to Islam (during a visit to Turkey) and then to Catholicism, taking his flock with him.

Frank did not simply cast off the restrictions of the Torah, but positively embraced immorality. In his view, the Torah was not merely outmoded but dangerous and useless. The commandments were the laws of death and must be discarded. Sin and shamelessness were the only ways to achieve redemption and to find God. Frank had come not to build but “only to destroy and annihilate.”64 His followers were engaged in a war against all religious rules: “I say to you that all who would be warriors must be without religion, which means that they must reach freedom under their own power.”65 Like many radical secularists today, Frank regarded all religion as harmful. As the movement progressed, Frankists turned to politics, dreaming of a great revolution that would sweep away the past and save the world. They saw the French Revolution as a sign that their vision was true and that God had intervened on their behalf.66

Jews had anticipated many of the postures of the modern period. Their painful brush with the aggressively modernizing society of Europe had led them into secularism, skepticism, atheism, rationalism, nihilism, pluralism, and the privatization of faith. For most Jews, the path to the new world that was developing in the West led through religion, but this religion was very different from the kind of faith we are used to in the twentieth century. It was more mythically based; it did not read the Scriptures literally, and was perfectly prepared to come up with new solutions, some of which seemed shocking in their search for something fresh. To understand the role of religion in premodern society we should turn to the Muslim world, which was undergoing its own upheavals during this early modern period and evolving different forms of spirituality that would continue to influence Muslims well into the modern period.

2. Muslims: The Conservative Spirit

(1492–1799)

IN 1492 the Jews had been one of the first casualties of the new order that was slowly coming to birth in the West. The other victims of that momentous year had been the Muslims of Spain, who had lost their last foothold in Europe. But Islam was by no means a spent force. During the sixteenth century it was still the greatest global power. Even though the Sung dynasty (960–1260) had raised China to a far higher degree of social complexity and might than Islamdom, and the Italian Renaissance had initiated a cultural florescence that would eventually enable the West to pull ahead, the Muslims were at first easily able to contain these challenges and they remained at a political and economic peak. Muslims comprised only about a third of the planet’s population, but they were so widely and strategically located throughout the Middle East, Asia, and Africa that at this moment, Islamdom could be seen as a microcosm of world history, expressing the preoccupations of most areas of the civilized world in the early modern period. This was also an exciting and innovative time for Muslims; three new Islamic empires were founded during the early sixteenth century: the Ottoman empire in Asia Minor, Anatolia, Iraq, Syria, and North Africa; the Safavid empire in Iran; and the Moghul empire in the Indian subcontinent. Each reflected a different facet of Islamic spirituality. The Moghul empire represented the tolerant, universalist philosophical rationalism known as Falsafah; the Safavid shahs made Shiism, hitherto the faith of an elite minority, the religion of their state; and the Ottoman Turks, who remained fiercely loyal to Sunni Islam, created a polity based on the Shariah, sacred Muslim law.

These three empires were a new departure. All three were early modern institutions, governed systematically and with bureaucratic and rational precision. In its early years, the Ottoman state was far more efficient and powerful than any kingdom in Europe. Under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–66), it reached its apogee. Suleiman expanded westward, through Greece, the Balkans, and Hungary, and his advance into Europe was checked only by his failure to take Vienna in 1529. In Safavid Iran, the shahs built roads and caravansaries, rationalized the economy, and put the country in the forefront of international trade. All three empires enjoyed a cultural renewal on a par with the Italian Renaissance. The sixteenth century was the great period of Ottoman architecture, Safavid painting, and the Taj Mahal.

And yet, while these were all modernizing societies, they did not implement radical change. They did not share the revolutionary ethos that would become characteristic of Western culture during the eighteenth century. Instead the three empires expressed what the American scholar Marshall G. S. Hodgson has called “the conservative spirit,” which was the hallmark of all premodern society, including that of Europe.1 Indeed, the empires were the last great political expression of the conservative spirit and, since they were also the most advanced states of the early modern period, they can be said to represent its culmination.2 Today, conservative society is in trouble. Either it has been effectively taken over by the modern Western ethos, or it is undergoing the difficult transition from the conservative to the modern spirit. Much of fundamentalism is a response to this painful transformation. It is, therefore, important to examine the conservative spirit at its peak in these Muslim empires, so that we can understand its appeal and strengths, as well as its inherent limitations.

Until the West introduced a wholly new kind of civilization (based on a constant reinvestment of capital and technical improvement), which did not come into its own until the nineteenth century, all cultures depended economically upon a surplus of agricultural produce. This meant that there was a limit to the expansion and success of any agrarian-based society, since it would eventually outrun its resources and obligations. There was a limit to the amount of capital available for investment. Any innovation that needed large capital outlay was usually ruled out, since people lacked the means that would enable them to tear everything down, retrain their personnel, and start again. No culture before our own could afford the constant innovation we take for granted in the West today. We now expect to know more than our parents’ generation, and are confident that our societies will become ever more technologically advanced. We are future-oriented; our governments and institutions have to look ahead and make detailed plans that will affect the next generation. It will be obvious that this society of ours is the achievement of sustained, single-minded rational thought. It is the child of logos, which is always looking forward, seeking to know more and to extend our areas of competence and control of the environment. But no amount of rational thinking could create this aggressively innovative society without a modern economy. It is not impossible for Western societies to keep changing the infrastructure to make new inventions possible, since, by constantly reinvesting capital, we can increase our basic resources so that they keep pace with our technological progress. But this was not feasible in an agrarian economy, where people channeled their energies into preserving what had already been achieved. Hence the “conservative” bent of premodern society did not spring from any fundamental timidity but represented a realistic appraisal of the limitations of this type of culture. Education, for example, consisted largely of rote learning and did not encourage originality. Students were not taught to conceive radically new ideas, because the society could generally not accommodate them; such notions could, therefore, be socially disruptive and endanger a community. In a conservative society, social stability and order were considered more important than freedom of expression.

Instead of looking forward to the future, like moderns, premodern societies turned for inspiration to the past. Instead of expecting continuous improvement, it was assumed that the next generation could easily regress. Instead of advancing to new heights of achievement, societies were believed to have declined from a primordial perfection. This putative Golden Age was held up as a model for governments and individuals. It was by approximating to this past ideal that a society would fulfill its potential. Civilization was experienced as inherently precarious. Everyone knew that a whole society could easily lapse into barbarism, as Western Europe had done after the collapse of the Roman empire there in the fifth century. During the early modern period in the Islamic world, the memory of the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century had still not faded. The massacres, the vast uprooting as whole peoples had fled before the approaching hordes, and the destruction of one great Islamic city after another were still recalled with horror. Libraries and institutions of learning had also been destroyed, and with them centuries of painstakingly acquired knowledge had been lost. Muslims had recovered; the Sufi mystics had led a spiritual revival, which had proved to be as healing as Lurianic Kabbalah, and the three new empires were a sign of that recovery. The Ottoman and Safavid dynasties both had their roots in the massive displacement of the Mongol era; both had originated in militant ghazu states, led by a chieftain warrior and often linked to a Sufi order, which had sprung up in the wake of the devastation. The power and beauty of these empires and their culture were a reassertion of Islamic values and a proud statement that Muslim history was back on track.

But after such a catastrophe, the natural conservatism of premodern society was likely to become more pronounced. People concentrated on recovering slowly and painfully what had been lost rather than on striking out for something new. In Sunni Islam, for example—the version of the faith practiced by most Muslims and the established religion of the Ottoman empire—it was agreed that “the gates of ijtihad (“independent reasoning”) had closed.3 Hitherto, Muslim jurists had been allowed to exercise their own judgment in order to resolve questions that arose in relation to theology and law for which neither the Koran nor established tradition had an explicit answer. But by the early modern period, in an attempt to conserve a tradition that had almost been destroyed, Sunni Muslims believed that there was no need for further independent thought. The answers were all in place; the Shariah was a fixed blueprint for society, and ijtihad was neither necessary nor desirable. Instead, Muslims must imitate (taqlid) the past. Instead of seeking new solutions, they should submit to the rulings found in the established legal manuals. Innovation (bidah) in matters of law and practice was considered as disruptive and dangerous in Sunni Islamdom during the early modern period as was heresy in doctrinal matters in the Christian West.

It would be difficult to imagine an attitude more at odds with the thrusting, iconoclastic spirit of the modern West. The idea of putting a deliberate curb on our reasoning powers is now anathema. As we shall see in the next chapter, modern culture developed only when people began to throw off this type of restraint. If Western modernity is the product of logos, it is easy to see how congenial mythos was to the conservative spirit of the premodern world. Mythological thinking looks backward, not forward. It directs attention to the sacred beginnings, to a primordial event, or to the foundations of human life. Instead of looking for something fresh, myth focuses on what is constant. It does not bring us “news,” but tells us what has always been; everything important has already been achieved and thought. We live on what was said by our ancestors, especially in the sacred texts which tell us everything we need to know. This was the spirituality of the conservative period. The cult, ritual practices, and mythical narratives not only gave individuals a sense of meaning that resonated with their deepest unconscious being, but also reinforced the attitude that was essential for the survival of the agrarian economy and its built-in limitations. As the Shabbetai Zevi fiasco showed so clearly, myth is not meant to initiate practical change. It creates a cast of mind that adapts and conforms to the way things are. This was essential in a society that could not sustain untrammeled innovation.

Just as it is difficult—even impossible—for people living in Western society, which has institutionalized change, to appreciate fully the role of mythology, so too it is extremely difficult—perhaps impossible—for people deeply and powerfully shaped by conservative spirituality to accept the forward-looking dynamic of modern culture. It is also supremely difficult for the modernist to understand people who are still nourished by traditional mythical values. In the Islamic world today, as we shall see, some Muslims are very concerned about two things. First, they abhor the secularism of Western society, which separates religion from politics, church from state. Second, many Muslims would like to see their societies governed according to the Shariah, the sacred law of Islam. This is deeply perplexing to people formed in the modern spirit, who, with reason, fear that a clerical establishment would put a brake on the constant progress that they see as essential to a healthy society. They have experienced the separation of church and state as liberating and shudder at the thought of an inquisitorial body closing the “gates of ijtihad.” In the same way, the idea of a divinely revealed law is profoundly incompatible with the modern ethos. Modern secularists regard the notion of an unalterable law imposed on humanity by a superhuman being as repellent. They regard law not as the product of mythos but of logos; it is rational and pragmatic, and must be changed from time to time to meet current conditions. A gulf, therefore, separates the modernist from the Muslim fundamentalist on these key issues.

In its heyday, however, the idea of a Shariah state was deeply satisfying. This was the achievement of the Ottoman empire, which drew legitimacy from its fidelity to Islamic law. The sultan was honored for his defense of the Shariah. Even though the sultan and the governors of the various provinces had their divans, the audience-chambers where justice was administered, it was the qadis who presided over the Shariah courts (which the Ottomans were the first to organize systematically) who were regarded as the real judges. Qadis, their consultants the muftis, and the scholars who taught Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) in the madrasahs were all state officials in the Ottoman empire. They were as essential to the government as the military and administrative personnel. The inhabitants of the Arab provinces could accept the hegemony of the Turks because the sultan’s authority was mediated through the ulema, the religious scholars, who had the sacred authority of Islamic law behind them. The ulema were thus an important link between the sultan and his subjects, between Istanbul and the distant provinces. They could bring grievances to the sultan’s attention and had the power to call even him to order if he violated Islamic norms. The ulema could, therefore, feel that the Ottoman state was their state, and the sultans for the most part accepted the constraints put upon them by the clergy because the partnership enhanced their authority.4 Never before had the Shariah played such a prominent role in the daily affairs of state as it did in the Ottoman empire, and the success of the Ottomans during the sixteenth century showed that their fidelity to Islamic law had indeed put them on the right path. They were in tune with the fundamental principles of existence.

All conservative societies (as already noted) looked back to a Golden Age, and for the Sunni Muslims of the Ottoman empire this was the period of the Prophet Muhammad (c. 570–632 CE) and the four rashidun (“rightly guided”) caliphs who immediately succeeded him. They had governed society according to Islamic law. There had been no separation of religion and the state. Muhammad had been both prophet and political head of the community. The Koran, the revealed scripture that he brought to the Arabs in the early years of the seventh century, insisted that a Muslim’s first duty was to create a just, egalitarian society, where poor and vulnerable people were treated with respect. This demanded a jihad (a word that should be translated as “struggle” or “effort” rather than as “holy war,” as Westerners often assume) on all fronts: spiritual, political, social, personal, military, and economic. By ordering the whole of life so that God was given priority and his plans for humanity were fully implemented, Muslims would achieve a personal and societal integration that would give them intimations of the unity which was God. To fence off one area of life and declare it to be off-limits to this religious “effort” would be a shocking violation of this principle of unification (tawhid), which is the cardinal Islamic virtue. It would be tantamount to a denial of God himself. Hence, for a devout Muslim, politics is what Christians would call a sacrament. It is an activity that must be sacralized so that it becomes a channel of the divine.

Concern for the ummah, the Muslim community, is deeply inscribed in the “pillars” (rukn), the five essential practices of Islam, binding on every Muslim, Sunni and Shii alike. Where Christians have come to identify orthodoxy with correct belief, Muslims, like Jews, require orthopraxy, a uniformity of religious practice, and see belief as a secondary issue. The five “pillars” require each Muslim to make the shehadah (a brief declaration of faith in the unity of God and the prophethood of Muhammad), to pray five times daily, to pay a tax (zakat) to ensure a fair distribution of wealth in the community, to observe the fast of Ramadan as a reminder of the privations suffered by the poor, and to make the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, if circumstances allow. The political health of the ummah is clearly central to zakat and the Ramadan fast, but it is also strongly present in the hajj, an essentially communal event, during which pilgrims wear a uniform white garment to underline the unity of the ummah and to obviate the differences between rich and poor.

The focus of the hajj is the cube-shaped shrine of the Kabah, situated in the heart of Mecca in the Arabian Hijaz. The Kabah was of extreme antiquity even in Muhammad’s day and may originally have been dedicated to Al-Lah, the High God of the Arabian pagan pantheon. Muhammad Islamized the ancient rites of the annual pilgrimage to the Kabah and gave them a monotheistic significance, and the hajj to this day gives Muslims a powerful experience of community. The structure of the Kabah conforms to the geometric pattern found by psychologist C. G. Jung (1875–1961) to have archetypal significance. At the heart of most ancient cities, a shrine established a link with the sacred which was regarded as essential to their survival. It brought the primal, more potent reality of the divine world into the fragile and insecure urban communities of mortal men and women. The shrine was described by such classical authors as Plutarch, Ovid, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus as either round or square, and was thought to reproduce the essential structure of the universe. It was a paradigm of the order that had brought the cosmos out of chaos and, by making it viable, had given it reality. Jung believed that it was not necessary to choose between the square and the circle; the geometric figure representing this cosmic order, the foundation of all reality, was, he believed, a square inserted into a circle.5 The rituals performed at this shrine reminded the worshippers of their duty to bring this divine order into their world of potential chaos and disaster, submitting themselves to the fundamental laws and principles of the universe in order to keep their civilization in being and prevent it from falling prey to illusion. The Kabah in Mecca conformed exactly to this archetype. Pilgrims run in seven ritual circles around the granite cube, whose four corners represent the corners of the world, following the course of the sun around the earth. Only by making an existential surrender (islam) of his or her whole being to the basic rhythms of life can a muslim (one who makes this submission) live as an authentic human being in the community.