Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [396]
Rather, it is the volume of the Quran itself which is claimed to be divine in Islam, not the founding figure, as in Christianity. Indeed, the Quran was later claimed to be the Uncreated Word of God, actually an aspect of divinity in the way that Philo’s logos is intradeical (part of God) and extradeical (part of the world) at the same time. So instead of the divine logos being made flesh as in the Gospel of John, in Islam the divine logos is made “Recitation,” Quran. Muḥammad is greatly venerated for being a pious man and the carrier of this revelation, perhaps in an analogous manner to the respect for Moses in Judaism. Even more than the pious biographers of Muḥammad himself, ’Uthman’s edition of the Quran, therefore, is the arbiter of the divine and transcendent in Islam. It is partly for this reason that Muslims have resisted either translating the Quran or subjecting it to historical criticism.
Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that early Islam was based on Judaism and originally indistinguishable from it. This movement, they call “Hagarism.”15 The term expresses the notion that Islam was formulated on the basis of Judaism and Christianity except that it was directed at Arabs and comprised of Arabs. But this portrait is drawn largely from the reports of Jews and Christians. To be sure, early Islamic practice was actually rather close to Judaism in some of its theology and organization, while its zeal for conversion resembled Christianity. It learned much from its older sibling religions. On the other hand, the more radical scholarly reconstructions of Islamic origins, like the Hagarism model, lack complete credibility because early Islam was hardly free from sectarian strife. One would have expected that such radically alternate tellings of the early story, had they existed, would have surfaced both before ’Uthman and afterwards. It is one thing to critique the received story of Islam; it is another to critique it using only reports from outsiders who would naturally see it as a kind of Judaism.16
If Islam is the missionary religion par excellence, it has rarely been guilty of the crime for which it is always indicted in Western culture-conversion by the sword. Islam’s conversion strategy has often been caricatured by its most militant statement: “Convert or die!” Though there have been cases of forced conversion, the Quran is itself a powerful argument against it: “There is no compulsion in religion” is the firm conviction of the Quran right after the famous Throne Verse (ayyat al-kursi, Q 2:255-6). No one should be forced to convert. Islam rarely presented its subject populations with forced conversion by brutality. Rather it designed a system of subtle but effective persuasions.
The fact is that conversion to Islam did not follow immediately upon Muslim conquest. When one looks, for example, at the Islamization of Iran, after its conquest (646 CE), one sees that the movement of the populace to Islam began slowly and only reached rapid growth in 791-864 CE.17 It is a full century and a half after the Muslim conquest. Likewise, as Islam conquered Anatolia in progressive stages, displacing the Byzantine Empire, Islamization followed slowly thereafter, with many interesting cultural combinations.18
Islam is, first and foremost, a code of living for a worldwide community. To say that it emphasized conversion should not imply that it neglects the daily needs of the believer, even at the beginning. Its call to prayer five times a day, its five pillars of pious deeds, its rites of passage, as well as its sophisticated theology mediate the lives of millions of Muslims and have done so since Muḥammad instituted them. After the great period of conquest was over, Islam became primarily the religion of a very large, stable population. So it would not be fair to consider Islam only a religion of conversion. Like every successful