ʿIsma
ʿIsma ( Arabic عصمة, DMG ʿiṣma ' hindrance, protection, inviolability') is a technical terminus of Islamic law and Islamic theology with different meanings. While in Islamic law it describes the protection relationship of the wife resulting from the marriage contract on the one hand and the various types of legal protection enjoyed by the Muslim , the Dhimmī and the Musta'min against the Islamic authorities on the other, it is the name in Islamic theology for the sinlessness and infallibility of the imams and prophets . The Turkish first name İsmet is derived from the word .
Pre-Islamic and Koranic use of terms
The concept of ʿIsma comes from pre-Islamic times. Muslim historiographers such as al-Balādhurī and at-Tabarī mention that this term was originally used to denote letters of protection that Meccan traders received from Byzantine, Yemeni and Abyssinian rulers in pre-Islamic times and in which they were promised security for their person and property.
In the Koran ( Sura 60 : 10) the word in the plural form ʿiṣam is related to marriage and here denotes the protective relationship of the wife that results from this.
ʿIsma in Islamic Law
As a legal concept, the ʿIsma was developed in the 12th century by scholars of the Hanafi school of law. According to their teachings, on the territory of Islam, both the Muslim and the Dhimmī and the Mustaʾmin have a status of inviolability, which derives from the protection ( al-iḥrāz ) that the Islamic authorities can afford for their life and property. While for Muslim and Dhimmī this status is an “unlimited inviolability” ( ʿiṣma muʾabbada ), for Mustaʾmin this status is limited in time and is accordingly called “temporary inviolability” ( ʿiṣma muʾaqqata ). The inviolability has the consequence that in the event of damage the amount of damage is determined and this damage is compensated, in the case of killing through a payment of Wergeld to the injured clan. For this reason, this type of ʿIsma is referred to as “inviolability to be paid for with money” ( ʿiṣma muqauwima ).
In the field of war , that is, beyond the reach of the Islamic authorities, only "inviolability that makes a sinner ( ʿiṣma muʾaṯṯima ) applies . According to this principle, a Muslim who does not live on the territory of Islam is protected from attacks by a fellow believer Protected only by the fact that he becomes a sinner through the assault before God. Measures to prosecute the crime on the part of the Muslim authorities, however, are not taken.
The term Isma is also still used in modern Arabic jurisprudence. Here it describes the legal bond "which places a person or thing under the protection of Islamic law and which enables an individual to go to the courts to hold third parties liable or responsible for the damage they have done to him."
ʿIsma in Islamic theology
The concept of ʿIsma as sinlessness and infallibility of persons was developed in the circles of the Imamite Shia in the 8th century . In these circles it was assumed that the imam, as the divinely appointed leader and teacher of the community, had to be protected from sin ( maʿṣūm ) and accordingly had this quality. The dogma of the Imam's ʿIsma was later adopted in both the Twelve Shia and the Ismāʿīlīya .
At the beginning of the 9th century this ʿIsma concept was applied to the prophets for the first time in circles of the Muʿtazila . One Muʿtazilit known to teach the sinlessness of the prophets was an-Nazzām . In the time of Abū l-Hasan al-Ashʿarī , the sinlessness of the prophets was already the common teaching of all Muʿtazilites. This teaching was also adopted by the Twelve Shiites. For example, the Twelve Shi'a al-Sharif al-Murtadā (d. 1044), who wrote a book on the sinlessness of the prophets and imams, said that they were protected from sin both before and after their calling. The Māturīdites also represented this doctrine in a somewhat weakened form . They only allowed minor oversights ( zallāt ) with the prophets .
The teaching of the Isma of the prophets, on the other hand, met with great reservations among all those groups who clung to the literal meaning of the Koran and hadith and accordingly also took the reports of the offenses of prophets in their literal meaning seriously. These included in particular Hanbalites and Karrāmites . The Ashʿarites also met this teaching with great reserve. For example, al-Bāqillānī said that such an ʿIsma could at most mean that the prophets were immune to deliberate lying when conveying the divine message, everything else had no rational basis. His somewhat later contemporary ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī (d. 1037), on the other hand, believed he could already establish a consensus among the Ash Aarites that the prophets were immune to sins after their calling. However, this view has never quite caught on in this school. Ashʿarites like al-Juwainī (d. 1085) and al-Ghazālī continued from the assumption that prophets can commit sins and therefore have to ask God for forgiveness. Even Fachr ad-Din ar-Razi , who in the late 12th century defended the ʿIsma of the prophets with rational arguments in his own treatise, relativized them by allowing major sins before their calling and minor sins after their calling.
literature
- Tor Andrae: The person of Muhammad in the teaching and belief of his community. Stockholm 1918. pp. 124-174.
- Baber Johansen: “The ʿiṣma term in Hanafi law” in La Signification du bas moyen âge dans l'histoire et la culture du monde musulman. Actes du 8e Congrès de l'Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants, Aix en-Provence (1976) . Aix en-Provence: Edisud 1978. pp. 89-108. - Reprinted in Baber Johansen: Contingency in a Sacred Law. Legal and Ethical Norms in the Muslim Fiqh . Suffering u. a. 1999. SS 238-262.
- W. Madelung: Art. "ṢIṣma" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. IV, pp. 182b-184a.