Islāh

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Islāh ( Arabic إصلاح, DMG iṣlāḥ  , reconciliation, repair, improvement ') is a term from the vocabulary of the Koran that has played an important role in the Islamic reform discourse since the late 19th century . The term itself is also mostly translated as "reform", although it has more religious connotations because it is anchored in the Koran . In the 1990s, several Islamic political movements and parties were founded that named themselves according to this principle.

Koranic usage

The Arabic word iṣlāḥ is derived from the root ṣ-l-ḥ , which means "good, right, righteous, honest, useful, suitable, or will be". Iṣlāḥ is the verbal noun of the fourth stem of this root and has the meaning of " bring about a reconciliation ( Sulh )", "bring order", "ensure orderly relationships". Iṣlāḥ in the sense of reconciliation is particularly important in the Koranic marriage law. So the husband who has rejected his wife is allowed in sura 2 : 228 to bring her back within the waiting time if he wants a reconciliation ( iṣlāḥ ). The same meaning is based on Sura 4:35, which describes how to proceed in the event of a falling out between married couples: "If you fear a falling out between the two of you, then appoint a judge of the peace ( hakam ) each from his and her relatives. If both want reconciliation ( iṣlāḥ ), God will allow both to succeed. "

Iṣlāḥ can also denote reconciliation among Muslims. If two groups of them fight each other, then there is a duty of Islam between them ( Sura 49 : 4). This peacemaking duty is especially true because the believers are brothers (Sura 49:10). Islāh between people is considered to be a good deed that should be generously rewarded by God, as it says in Sura 4: 114: "Only he who commands alms or goodness or reconciliation between people ( iṣlāḥ baina n-nās ), and who if it does so in order to obtain God's pleasure, we will give him rich reward "(Translator H. Bobzin).

Iṣlāḥ has a different meaning in Sura 2: 220, where the administration of the property of orphans is dealt with. It is stated here that Islam is better than orphans, but if you partnered with them, you should treat them like brothers. The Muslim exegetes understood this to mean that the believers actually have the duty to manage the orphans' property separately, but God allowed the believers in the form of a concession to form a community of property with them. For the term iṣlāḥ , the meaning of the establishment of ordered relationships arises here.

Islam is something that, according to the Koran, prophets in particular strive for. The Prophet Shu 11aib says in sura 11:88 : "I want nothing but to take care of order as far as I can" ( in urīdu illā l-iṣlāḥa mā staṭiʿtu ). Those who stand up for Islam , the muṣliḥūn , are praised in the Quran (Sura 11: 117; 28:19). They are not to be deprived of their wages ( Sura 7 : 170).

The negative counter-term to iṣlāḥ is ifsād , which has the meaning of "weakening, fundamental direction, mischief creation ". In two places (sura 7:56 and 85) people are urged not to wreak havoc on the earth after it has been put in order "( wa-lā tufsidū fī l-arḍ baʿda iṣlāḥi-hā ). Mischief maker , mufsidūn , According to sura 2: 11-12, especially those people are “who have a disease in their hearts.” If you say to them: “Do not cause harm on earth! ( lā tufsidū fī l-arḍ ), then they said: "It is we who bring about salvation" ( innamā naḥnu muṣliḥūn ). This is countered by the fact that these people are mischief-makers without even realizing it ( inna-hum hum al-mufsidūn wa-lākin lā yašʿurūna ).

Meaning in modern Islam

The first calls to Islāh

As a political-religious slogan, Islāh was taken up for the first time by the Egyptian reform thinker Muhammad Abduh . He used this term in his earliest articles published in the newspaper al-Ahram in 1876 . Islāh only developed into a real key term in the pan-Islamic magazine al-Manār , which ʿAbduh published together with Raschīd Ridā from 1898 onwards. Here it became a "religious and social Islāh" ( iṣlāī dīnī wa-iʿtimāʿī ), an Islāh of textbooks and the teaching method "( iṣlāḥ kutub al-ʿilm wa-ṭarīqat at-taʿlīm ), an Islāh of the Friday sermon ( iṣlḥ alāba ) , the Azhar , the internal affairs of the empire, and even called for an "Islāh of souls" ( iṣlāh an-nufūs ). The term Islāh thus became an Islamic counterpart to the European concept of reform Al-Manār emphasizes that he should participate in the "Islamic reform" ( al-iṣlāḥ al-islāmī ).

Cover of Maschriqī's newspaper al-Islāh with the text of Sura 11:88 as the motto

The basis of all other reforms should be the "reform of the judiciary" ( iṣlāḥ al-qaḍāʾ ). Muhammad ʿAbduh, who was a Mufti of Egypt at the time , called for "reform of the Sharia courts" ( iṣlāḥ al-maḥākim aš-šarʿīya ) in a separate memorandum . Muhammad ʿAbduh's strong reform orientation is evident in the fact that he also understood Islam itself as a means of "reforming the human race" ( iṣlāḥ nauʿ al-insān ).

With his calls to Islam, Muhammad ʿAbduh found many followers in other countries as well. This is how the Islāhī movement arose among the Tatars of the Middle Volga and Urals in 1905, criticizing the madrasah system of the Muslim communities in Russia and calling for a reform of the educational system. In the Persian-speaking countries, three newspapers were founded in the 1920s with Eṣlāḥ in their title, including the most important daily in Kabul . In Algeria, the Islamic reformist ʿAbd al-Hamīd Ibn Bādīs (1889-1940) propagated the idea of ​​Islam in his newspaper asch-Schihāb (1925-1939) and wrote poems about it. In British India in 1934 ʿInāyat Allah Chān Maschriqī, the founder of the egalitarian Chaksār movement, also launched a newspaper called al-Islāh , which drafted a comprehensive program of reform.

The concept at Mutahharī

The concept of Islam again played a very important role in the book "The Islamic Movements in the 14th Century of Hijra " by the Shiite clergyman Murtadā Mutahharī (1920–1979), who is considered one of the pioneers of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. In the book, published posthumously in 1980, Mutahharī stressed the importance of Islam on the social level and said that every Muslim is faced with the task of practicing an Islamic Daʿwa ( daʿwa iṣlāḥīya ). It is the touchstone for the question of whether the principle of dictating the right and forbidding the reprehensible , which is one of the core elements of the social teachings of Islam, is being observed.

On the other hand, Mutahharī criticized the fact that some people overemphasized the importance of social Islam and did not want to recognize any other achievements, even though the work of a doctor who treats the sick from morning to evening, for example, is not Islam, but is nevertheless a very important service to society represent. Social Islāh ( al-iṣlāḥ al-iǧtimāʿī ) always means a social change towards a desired goal. The work of great personalities like the legal scholar Murtadā al-Ansārī and Mulla Sadra is a very great service, but not Islamic work. The same applies to the Qur'an commentary , Majmaʿ al-bayān by at-Tabarsī , from which thousands of people have benefited. He too should be seen as a service, but not as a social Islam.

Mutahharī saw the principle of Islam not only realized in the life of Muhammad and the twelve imams , but expressed the view that Islamic history as a whole was filled with Islamic movements. For at least a thousand years the idea of ​​the renewer of religion who appears at the beginning of every century has been widespread among Muslims . On the basis of this, one could say that Islam, "the elevation directed towards Islam " ( an-nahḍa al-iṣlāḥīya ) and the renewal of religious thought, terms that were coined only later, were already known to Muslims beforehand Melody "( naġma maʿrūfa ).

Mutahharī emphasizes that not all movements that Islam claimed are actually advocating it. While he thinks, for example, that the uprisings of the Alides during the Umayyad and Abbasid times had an Islamic character, he denies this to the movement of Babak Khorramdin . With other movements it is so that they started as an Islamic movement, but later turned away from Islam. One movement that has gone through such a development is the Shuʿūbīya . Another distinction Mutahharī makes is that between Islamic spiritual and social movements. The Nahda al-Ghazālīs, for example, was a "spiritual Nahda" ( nahḍa fikrīya ) because al-Ghazālī was convinced that the Islamic sciences had been damaged and he sought a revival of religious thought. The movements of the Alides and the Sarbadars , who fought against the oppression by the Mongols, on the other hand, he attributes to the social Islamic movements. One movement that, in his view, combined spiritual and social Islam was the movement of the Brothers of Purity . Finally, Mutahharī distinguishes between progressive and reactionary Islamic movements. He attributes the Ashʿarīya , the Achbārīya and the Wahhābīya to the reactionary Islamic movements . The Nahda al-Ghazālīs, however, he sees as ambivalent, because they have both progressive and reactionary features.

Mutahharī sees his own book as a first contribution to the processing of the Islāh movements of the 14th Islamic century, i.e. the period between 1882 and 1979. His opinion is one of the most important personalities who have rendered outstanding services to Islam during this period after Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Afghānī , Muhammad Abduh , ʿAbd ar-Rahmān al-Kawākibī and Muhammad Iqbal . On the Shiite side, he counts the tobacco movement of 1891 and the Constitutional Revolution from 1905 to 1911 to the Islam movements. He placed the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the beginnings of which he still witnessed, in this historical framework and tried to legitimize it in his book.

Establishment of Islamic movements and parties

From the 1990s onwards, the term Islam took on greater importance among Islamist groups on the Arabian Peninsula. In 1990, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood founded the Yemeni Collection for Islāh ( At-Taǧammuʿ al-Yamanī li-l-iṣlāḥ ) in Yemen . Around the mid-1990s, the Islamic idea also played an important role in the Saudi Sahwa movement . In November 1994, shortly before his arrest, Salmān al-ʿAuda spoke in a message to the Saudi public about the task of "reforming the conditions of the people" ( iṣlāḥ auḍāʿ an-nās ), which must also include their conditions in this world. This "reform task" ( muhimmat al-iṣlāḥ ) is not limited to one country or one field, but must aim at reforming the ummah in every place as far as possible and include both scientific and practical aspects. His conception of Islāh at the time was very broad and radical. Saʿd al-Faqīh , another representative of the Sahwa, founded his Islamic Movement for Islāh in 1996 , which worked towards the overthrow of the Saudi royal family. In 1999 , Abdellah Jaballah founded his own National Islamic Movement in Algeria as a split from the Nahda movement .

Salmān al-ʿAuda's criticism of the Islamic movements

Salmān al-ʿAuda changed his view of the Islamic Islāh movements after his release in 1999. He criticized the fact that these movements had a tendency to isolate themselves with their own project. As a result, this behavior leads to a fragmentation and division of society. More important, however, are the union ( al-indimāǧ ), partnership ( aš-šarāka ) and living together ( at-taʿāyuš ) in society. He also emphasized that one should not be too fixated on the political leader ( az-zaʿīm ) in the search for Islāh . In his October 2005 broadcast Hajar az-zāwiya , he said: "We believe that these leaders are responsible for all of our mistakes, and that any improvement ( iṣlāḥ ) we seek must come from this guide whom we seek and expect . This is a mistake." In this way, Al-ʿAuda set himself apart from the propagandists of earlier Islamic movements, whom he accused of handing the responsibility for backwardness to the rulers alone that you then have to deal with constructively. " Overall, it can be seen that after his release, al-udaAudah only understood Islāh as a cultural and intellectual concept.

literature

Arabic sources
  • Murtaḍā al-Muṭahharī : Al-Ḥarakāt al-islāmīya fi l-qarn ar-rābiʿ ʿašar al-hiǧrī. Dirāsa wa-taḥlīl Tehran, approx. 1980. pp. 9-19, 53-66.
Secondary literature
  • A. Merad: Art. "Iṣlāḥ. 1. The Arab World" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Vol. IV, pp. 141a-163b.
  • Asʿad Abu Khalil and Mahmoud Haddad: Art. "Iṣlāḥ" in John L. Esposito (ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. 6 Vols. Oxford 2009. Vol. III, pp. 58b-62b.
  • Turkī ad-Duḫaiyil: Salmān al-ʿAuda ... min as-siǧn ... ilā t-tanwīr . 3rd ed. Madārik Ibdāʿ, Našr, Tarǧama wa-Taʿrīb, Beirut, 2011. pp. 126–147.
  • Nassereddin Parvin: Art. "Eṣlāḥ" in Encyclopædia Iranica Vol. VIII, pp. 624-625. First published in 1998 online version
  • Mariam Popal: “The term“ islah ”as an institution inherent in Islam using the example of ʿAlī Šarīʿatī“ in Islam. Journal of the History and Culture of the Islamic Orient 79 (2002) 316-333.
  • John O. Voll : "Renewal and Reform in Islamic History: Tajdid and Islah " in John L. Esposito (ed.): Voices of Resurgent Islam . Oxford University Press, New York a. Oxford, 1983. pp. 32-47.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Cf. Voll: Renewal and Reform in Islamic History . 1983, p. 33.
  2. ↑ See Rudi Paret: The Koran. Commentary and Concordance . 4th edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, 1989. p. 47.
  3. ↑ a b c d Cf. Merad: Art. "Iṣlāḥ. 1. The Arab World" in EI² Vol. IV. S. 144a.
  4. ↑ See Stéphane Dudoignon: "Echos to al-Manār among the Muslims of the Russian Empire: a preliminary research note on Riza al-Din b. Fakhr al-Din and the Šūrā (1908-1918)" in Stéphane Dudoignon, Komatsu Hisao , Kosugi Yasushi (ed.): Intellectuals in the Modern Islamic World. Transmission, transformation, communication . Routledge, London and New York, 2007. pp. 85-116. Here p. 94.
  5. ↑ See Parvin: Art. "Eṣlāḥ". 1998.
  6. ↑ See Daniel Zakrzewski: "With God and France" Regulations of Algeria in the writings of the Muslim reform theologian Ibn Bādīs at the time of the Popular Front government; (1936-1938) . Schwarz, Berlin, 2012. pp. 125–146.
  7. ↑ Cf. al-Muṭahharī: Al-Ḥarakāt al-islāmīya . 1980, p. 11.
  8. ↑ Cf. al-Muṭahharī: Al-Ḥarakāt al-islāmīya . 1980, p. 11f.
  9. ↑ Cf. al-Muṭahharī: Al-Ḥarakāt al-islāmīya . 1980, p. 16f.
  10. ↑ Cf. al-Muṭahharī: Al-Ḥarakāt al-islāmīya . 1980, p. 17f.
  11. ↑ Cf. al-Muṭahharī: Al-Ḥarakāt al-islāmīya . 1980, p. 18f.
  12. ↑ Cf. al-Muṭahharī: Al-Ḥarakāt al-islāmīya . 1980, pp. 62f.
  13. ↑ See ad-Duḫaiyil: Salmān al-ʿAuda . 2011, p. 136.
  14. ↑ See ad-Duḫaiyil: Salmān al-ʿAuda . 2011, p. 138.
  15. ↑ See ad-Duḫaiyil: Salmān al-ʿAuda . 2011, pp. 140f.
  16. ↑ See ad-Duḫaiyil: Salmān al-ʿAuda . 2011, p. 141.
  17. ↑ a b cf. ad-Duḫaiyil: Salmān al-ʿAuda . 2011, p. 143.
  18. ↑ See ad-Duḫaiyil: Salmān al-ʿAuda . 2011, p. 146.