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Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Race and Tribe: Difference between revisions
Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Race and Tribe (view source)
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, 24 March→Classical views: Have added some classical views on Arab superiority from an academic source (Michael Cook).
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====Classical views==== | ====Classical views==== | ||
{{Quote|{{citation|author=Ibn Taymiyyah|title=Iqtida Sirat al-Mustaqim|publisher=al-Maktaba al-Shamila|Chapter=The difference between the Arab and non-Arab races|volume=1|pages=419-461|url=https://app.turath.io/book/11620}}|'''The Arabs are more intelligent than those other than themselves and are more capable in delivery and expression''' . . . verily, what the people of the sunnah are upon is the belief (i’tiqaad) that '''the Arab race is better (afdal) than the Non-Arab race'''. Whether (the Non-Arabs) are Hebrews, Aramaic, Romans, Persians and other than them . . . not simply due to the fact the prophet peace be upon him is from them – even though this is [a point] of superiority – but instead, '''they themselves are superior within themselves''' . . . [for] '''Allah the Most High has designated the Arabs and their language with rulings that are peculiar and unique.'''”}}{{Quote|Abu Hanifah quoted in {{citation|author=Muhammad al-Shaybani|title=al-Jami al-Sagheer|pages=140-141}} quoted in {{citation|author=Susan A. Spectorsky|title=Women in Classical Islamic Law|publisher=Brill|page=77|ISBN=978 90 04 17435 1|year=2010}}|'''The Quraysh are each other’s equals, and the Arabs are each other’s equals'''. Among the non-Arabs, whoever has two Muslim parents or grandparents are each other’s equal.}}{{Quote|{{citation|publisher=al-Maktaba al-Shamila|author=[[Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti]]|page=48|url=https://app.turath.io/book/151019|title=Sawn al-Mantiq wal-Kalam an Fanni al-Mantiq wal-Kalam}}|Imam Shafi'i said, "'''People do not become ignorant and do not disagree except due to their leaving the tongue of the Arabs''' and their adoption of the tongue of Aristotle"}}{{Quote|Ahmad ibn Hanbal quoted in {{citation|author=Ibn Hani|title=Masail Ahmad b. Hanbal|page=200|chapter=no. 992}} quoted in {{citation|author=Susan A. Spectorsky|title=Women in Classical Islamic Law|publisher=Brill|page=78|ISBN=978 90 04 17435 1|year=2010}}|'''Arabs are of equal standing with each other, and the Quraysh are of equal standing with each other.'''}}{{Quote|{{citation|author=Ibn Abi Ya'la|volume=1|page=30|title=Tabaqat al-Hanabilah|url=https://app.turath.io/book/9543|publisher=al-Maktaba al-Shamila}}; translated in {{citation|page=32|author=Nimrod Hurvitz|publisher=Routledge|title=The Formation of Hanbalism|year=2002|ISBN=978-0-415-61641-6}}|He '''(Ibn Hanbal) acknowledged the Arab’s due, and their superiority (fadlaha) and their priority (sabiqataha)''' and he loved the . . . he (Ibn Hanbal) did not adhere to the doctrine of '''the Shu’ubiyya [a Persian sect that believed in racial egalitarianism]''' and the contemptible (among) the mawali [non-Arabs] that disliked the Arabs and did not concede to them their [Arabs] superiority. '''He (ascribed to) them (Shu’ubiyya) innovation, hypocrisy and controversy.'''}} | {{Quote|{{citation|author=Ibn Taymiyyah|title=Iqtida Sirat al-Mustaqim|publisher=al-Maktaba al-Shamila|Chapter=The difference between the Arab and non-Arab races|volume=1|pages=419-461|url=https://app.turath.io/book/11620}}|'''The Arabs are more intelligent than those other than themselves and are more capable in delivery and expression''' . . . verily, what the people of the sunnah are upon is the belief (i’tiqaad) that '''the Arab race is better (afdal) than the Non-Arab race'''. Whether (the Non-Arabs) are Hebrews, Aramaic, Romans, Persians and other than them . . . not simply due to the fact the prophet peace be upon him is from them – even though this is [a point] of superiority – but instead, '''they themselves are superior within themselves''' . . . [for] '''Allah the Most High has designated the Arabs and their language with rulings that are peculiar and unique.'''”}}{{Quote|Abu Hanifah quoted in {{citation|author=Muhammad al-Shaybani|title=al-Jami al-Sagheer|pages=140-141}} quoted in {{citation|author=Susan A. Spectorsky|title=Women in Classical Islamic Law|publisher=Brill|page=77|ISBN=978 90 04 17435 1|year=2010}}|'''The Quraysh are each other’s equals, and the Arabs are each other’s equals'''. Among the non-Arabs, whoever has two Muslim parents or grandparents are each other’s equal.}}{{Quote|{{citation|publisher=al-Maktaba al-Shamila|author=[[Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti]]|page=48|url=https://app.turath.io/book/151019|title=Sawn al-Mantiq wal-Kalam an Fanni al-Mantiq wal-Kalam}}|Imam Shafi'i said, "'''People do not become ignorant and do not disagree except due to their leaving the tongue of the Arabs''' and their adoption of the tongue of Aristotle"}}{{Quote|Ahmad ibn Hanbal quoted in {{citation|author=Ibn Hani|title=Masail Ahmad b. Hanbal|page=200|chapter=no. 992}} quoted in {{citation|author=Susan A. Spectorsky|title=Women in Classical Islamic Law|publisher=Brill|page=78|ISBN=978 90 04 17435 1|year=2010}}|'''Arabs are of equal standing with each other, and the Quraysh are of equal standing with each other.'''}}{{Quote|{{citation|author=Ibn Abi Ya'la|volume=1|page=30|title=Tabaqat al-Hanabilah|url=https://app.turath.io/book/9543|publisher=al-Maktaba al-Shamila}}; translated in {{citation|page=32|author=Nimrod Hurvitz|publisher=Routledge|title=The Formation of Hanbalism|year=2002|ISBN=978-0-415-61641-6}}|He '''(Ibn Hanbal) acknowledged the Arab’s due, and their superiority (fadlaha) and their priority (sabiqataha)''' and he loved the . . . he (Ibn Hanbal) did not adhere to the doctrine of '''the Shu’ubiyya [a Persian sect that believed in racial egalitarianism]''' and the contemptible (among) the mawali [non-Arabs] that disliked the Arabs and did not concede to them their [Arabs] superiority. '''He (ascribed to) them (Shu’ubiyya) innovation, hypocrisy and controversy.'''}}Islamic scholar Michael Cook discusses how in early Islamic empires/caliphates, non-Arabs were treated as second class citizens. | ||
{{Quote|1=[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Ancient_Religions_Modern_Politics/F3CYDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover Cook, Michael A.. Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective (pp. 9-10). Princeton University Press.]|2=In the conditions of early Islamic times there was more to this special status of the Arabs than mere sentiment. The empire that emerged from the rise of Islam was conquered and ruled by Arabs. “We Arabs were underdogs (innā maʿshar al-ʿArab kunnā adhilla), people walked all over us while we didn’t do the same to them; then God sent a prophet from among us,” as an Arab emissary informed the Persians in the heart of their country; “he told us things that we found to be just as he said, and among the things he promised us was that we would take possession of all this and prevail over it.” The resulting structure of power was neatly reflected in the way in which non-Arabs converted to Islam. | |||
The key institution here was clientage (walāʾ).Individual non-Arabs who had either voluntarily left their native societies to join the conquerors, or been involuntarily removed from them by enslavement in the course of the conquests, became the clients (mawālī) of individual Arabs and converted to Islam at their hands. <b>The result was to create a social structure through which individual non-Arabs were incorporated into the Muslim community while remaining what we would call second-class citizens—and exposed to no small amount of Arab chauvinism.</b> We are told, for example, that Arabs did not walk side by side with clients, that clients present at a meal were left standing while Arabs sat and ate, and that a client would not be allowed to undertake the prayer at a funeral if an Arab were present. In other words, in this early period non-Arab people could convert to Islam, but non-Arab peoples could not; in that sense the community remained effectively monoethnic. | |||
The linguistic aspect of this is caught in a remark of an early Shīʿite: to establish the fact that people recognize the superiority of Arabic over Persian, he observes that “no Persian who converts to this religion fails to give up the language of his people and adopt the language of the Arabs.”}} | |||
And as the empire/caliphate expanded and they began to lose control over time, this lead to backlash from certain scholars who believed Arabs were granted a special position to rule. | |||
{{Quote|1=[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Ancient_Religions_Modern_Politics/F3CYDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover Cook, Michael A.. Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective (pp. 9-10). Princeton University Press.]|2=One key change was that from the ninth century onwards Arab power was in steep decline. Being an Arab no longer constituted an effective title to participate in ruling the world. This change provoked its share of laments. Thus the great Arab poet Mutanabbī (d. 965) observes that Arabs ruled by non-Arabs do not prosper; a scholiast writing in the next century explains that this is because of mutual distance and ill will, and the difference of natures and language that separates the two groups. Likewise the Egyptian scholar Maqrīzī (d. 1442) complains of the malign role of the Caliph al-Muʿtaṣim (ruled 833–842) <b>in the dispossession of the Arabs: “He removed from the pay-registers the Arabs, the Messenger of God’s people, the race through whose agency God had established the religion of Islam.</b>}} | |||
====Modern views==== | ====Modern views==== | ||