The alchemy of domination? Some Ash⊂arite responses to Mu⊂tazilite ethics

International Journal of Middle East Studies

Volumn 31, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 185-201

  Jackson, Sherman A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

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EID: 0347808612     PISSN: 00207438     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743800054015     Document Type: Article

References (73)

1. Roberto Unger, Knowledge and Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1975).
2. ⊂i judge, for example, annuls a Maliki marriage contracted in the absence of witnesses, this is not necessarily an instance of domination. Indeed, few rules in any legal system are the object of unanimous consensus. But when in addition to having this marriage overturned. Malikis are condemned as heretics and the clearly plausible basis of their position is denied all recognition, this constitutes an attempt to dominate. So is it the case when historically and geographically bound scriptural extrapolations are reified and passed off as objective truths that are binding on all generations to come. Or, where clearly subjective biases are disguised, defended and imposed as rational, as, for example, in the ban on polygyny in the United States (see R. A. Posner, Sex and Reason [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992], 253-60, esp. 259 n. 40, where, following a list of ostensibly "rational" critiques of the institution, the subjective basis of the ban is admitted: "but the taboo against polygamy runs too deep to make the suggestion to permit it a feasible one in any state of the U.S."). In short, domination as I use it refers to the unjustified denial to members within an interpretive community of the right to believe in their own minds, their own senses, and their own experiences. Its instruments can range anywhere from reason to tradition to the imposition of false criteria (e.g., the claim that a man must be an M.D. in order to know that he has a fever).
3. Hobbes was by no means the originator of the idea. As far back as ancient Greece, the post-Socratic thinker Aristippus (before Plato) claimed (following Protagorus) that we can know nothing of things without us except their impressions on us. See H. Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1939), 32. It was Hobbes, however, and the responses he elicited that rendered this the dominant perspective from which modern thinkers have yet to retreat.
4. Unger, Knowledge, 32.
5. Ibid., 43.
6. See, for example, G. Hourani, "Two Theories of Value in Medieval Islam," The Muslim World 50 (1960): 269.
7. A. Kevin Reinhart, Before Revelation: The Boundaries of Muslim Moral Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 162.
8. Ibid.
9. ⊂arism can no more be said to have stifled the development of political thinking in Islam than Hobbes and his successors stifled political thought in the West.
10. ⊂arism can no more be said to have stifled the development of political thinking in Islam than Hobbes and his successors stifled political thought in the West.
11. ⊂tazilites. See his Before Revelation, 180, 183. and passim.
12. ⊂ as "appetitive self," as opposed to "human nature" or "human disposition," because in most instances it is used in such a way that any universal dimension is weak or absent. In most instances, what is referred to is not a general proclivity in human beings, but rather the particular idiosyncrasies and predilections we possess as individuals. See, however, the exception with al-Razi's use of the term (see n. 37).
13. ⊂illah) underlying scriptural rulings is more often than not a matter of conjecture based on what is perceived to promote personal or group interest.
14. ⊂Abd al-Jabbar; see Reinhart, Before Revelation, 161.
15. ⊂d (Cairo: Maktabat Kullīyāt al-Azhar, 1393/1973), 89.
16. ⊂d (Cairo: Maktabat Kullīyāt al-Azhar, 1393/1973), 89.
17. al-Mustasfā, 1:56.
18. Ibid.
19. See 194 ff.
20. al-Mustasfā, 1:56.
21. Ibid., 1:56-57.
22. Ibid., 1:57.
23. ⊃assasat al-Risālah. 1312/1992), 1:138.
24. ⊃assasat al-Risālah. 1312/1992), 1:138.
25. al-Mustasfā, 1:57.
26. Ibid., 1:57-58.
27. ⊂ would not constitute any proof. See ibid., 1:58.
28. These include: (1) the mixing of subjective with objective judgments, whereby a person projects personal interests onto objects in the world and then attributes these to the objects in question as intrinsic attributes; (2) failure to note exceptions to what is commonly preferred, whereby just because a person prefers a thing most of the time, he fails to note those instances in which that thing would not be preferable (which would undermine the notion of the positive attribute being intrinsic): (3) identification of things that are preferred or disliked with other things that are associated with them - for example, a beautiful woman might be judged to be ugly simply because she has a Jewish name. See ibid., 1:58-60.
29. Ibid., 1:60. Al-Ghazali's position is echoed in Sidgwick's anticipation of the rationalist reaction to Hobbes's psychological egoism: "Let us grant that there is as much intellectual absurdity in acting unjustly as in denying that two and two make four; still, if a man has to choose between absurdity and unhappiness, he will naturally prefer the former"; Sidgwick, Outlines, 184.
30. Ibid., 1:60. Al-Ghazali's position is echoed in Sidgwick's anticipation of the rationalist reaction to Hobbes's psychological egoism: "Let us grant that there is as much intellectual absurdity in acting unjustly as in denying that two and two make four; still, if a man has to choose between absurdity and unhappiness, he will naturally prefer the former"; Sidgwick, Outlines, 184.
31. "Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts, and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to things desired: All Stedines of the mind's motion, and all quickness of the same, proceeding from thence": from Hobbes' Leviathan, cited in Unger, Knowledge, 38.
32. al-Muslasfā, 1:61.
33. ⊂Abd al-Hamīd (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanjī, 1369/1950), 258, 265 ff.
34. Reinhart, Before Revelation, 25.
35. al-Mahsūl, 1:124-26.
36. al-Mughnī, 6:7.
37. ⊂tazilite rejection of taklīf mā lā yulāq - that is, "placing upon humans a responsibility they cannot fulfill": see ibid., 1:127.
38. ⊂tazilite rejection of taklīf mā lā yulāq - that is, "placing upon humans a responsibility they cannot fulfill": see ibid., 1:127.
39. See, for example, W. M. Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973), 192-93; M. Swartz, "Acquisition" (Kasb) in Early Kalām," Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition, ed. S. M. Stern, A. Hourani, and V. Brown (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), 364 and passim.
40. See, for example, W. M. Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973), 192-93; M. Swartz, "Acquisition" (Kasb) in Early Kalām," Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition, ed. S. M. Stern, A. Hourani, and V. Brown (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), 364 and passim.
41. al-Mahsūl, 1:132ff.
42. ⊂a, however, is the correct reading, this would significantly change the implications of al-Razi's statement in that it would eliminate any element of attraction or appeal between the action (akhdh al-māl) and the actor.
43. ⊂, given its group affiliation, might be translated as "human nature."
44. ⊂, given its group affiliation, might be translated as "human nature."
45. al-Mahsul, 1:129.
46. Ibid., 1:139.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., 1:131.
49. Ibid.
50. ⊂Iyād al-Sulamī.
51. Sharh, 88.
52. Ibid., 89.
53. See n. 13.
54. See Shark, 90.
55. The phrase "Clash of Civilizations" was actually coined by Bernard Lewis in his 1989 Jefferson Lecture, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and later published in the Atlantic Monthly (September 1990) under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." It was Samuel P. Huntington's essay, however, that transformed the phrase into an intellectually grounded tool for analyzing the world.
56. ⊃an itself appears to allude to this at 5:101: "O you who believe; do not ask about things which if made known to you will cause you difficulty." Right down to modern times, this view has found its way into popular works on Islamic law, based on a hadith attributed to the Prophet: "God has imposed certain duties upon you, so do not be remiss about fulfilling them; and He has prescribed limits for you, so do not violate them; and He has remained silent about certain matters out of mercy for you, not out of forgetfulness, so do not ask about them"; see, for example, Sayyid Sābiq, Fiqh al-Sunnah, 3 vols. (Cairo: Dar al-Rayyān li al-Turāth, 1411/1990), 1:12.
57. Reinhart has pointed out that a number of early thinkers recognized that the legal category mubāh (neutral), under which an activity such as wearing a wristwatch would fall, can either refer to things that fall outside the scope of revelation or to things that occupy a medial position (between forbidden and obligatory) within the scope of revelation. In other words, mubāh can refer either to acts in which revelation is disinterested or to acts that are without consequence but regarding whose performance revelation grants positive permission: see Reinhart, Before Revelation, 128 ff.
58. Ibid., 16.
59. ⊂tazilites also indulged a view of revelation that restricted its scope; ibid., 173.
60. Ibid., 16.
61. ⊂Abd Allāh Drāz, 4 vols. (Cairo: al-Maktabah al-Tijārīyah al-Kubrā). 1:109 ff. Ibn Rushd (the Grandson), on the other hand, flatly rejected the notion that the mubāh was medial and within the scope of commanded acts. This seems not to have been unrelated, however, to the fact that al-Ghazali, of whom he is quite critical, held the opposite view; see Talkhīs al-mustasfā, ed. Jamal Eddine Alaoui (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1994), 47-48.
62. ⊂Abd Allāh Drāz, 4 vols. (Cairo: al-Maktabah al-Tijārīyah al-Kubrā). 1:109 ff. Ibn Rushd (the Grandson), on the other hand, flatly rejected the notion that the mubāh was medial and within the scope of commanded acts. This seems not to have been unrelated, however, to the fact that al-Ghazali, of whom he is quite critical, held the opposite view; see Talkhīs al-mustasfā, ed. Jamal Eddine Alaoui (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1994), 47-48.
63. ⊂arism did support this type of scriptural determinism and that it was precisely this to which al-Qarafi was reacting.
64. See 185-86.
65. See, for example, Hourani, "Two Theories," 273.
66. See Jackson, State, 53-56.
67. See ibid., 113-41. It will be noticed that al-Qarafi devotes a very short portion of Sharh to the issue at hand. This raises the question of whether I have misrepresented him by giving the false impression that his redefinition of hasan and qabīh played a major role in his thought. My point in the present essay, however, is not that this issue per se played a major role in al-Qarafi's thought but that al-Qarafi was concerned about the issue of domination (which my Islamic Law and the State deals with in detail), and that his approach to the question of hasan and qabīh is consistent with such a concern.
68. Sharh, 90.
69. Ibid.
70. ⊂Abd al-Jabbar, for example, was known to have put forth the same thesis, at least in form - that is, that everything the law did not prohibit was good. See, for example, G. Hourani, Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 101 ff.; M. Fakhry, Ethical Theories in Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991), 35. But, as I have shown, the substance of this definition in al-Qarafi is fundamentally different.
71. ⊂Abd al-Jabbar, for example, was known to have put forth the same thesis, at least in form - that is, that everything the law did not prohibit was good. See, for example, G. Hourani, Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 101 ff.; M. Fakhry, Ethical Theories in Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991), 35. But, as I have shown, the substance of this definition in al-Qarafi is fundamentally different.
72. Al-Qarafi had in fact noted a theological advantage to his definition. On the traditional view (that hasan was what God commanded and qabīh what he forbade), the actions of God could not be deemed hasan, because God could not be subject to any command. According to al-Qarafi's definition, meanwhile, all divine actions are rendered hasan by virtue of their not being prohibited: see Sharh, 90.
73. Ibid.