Modern Muslim interpretations of shirk

Religion (1990) 20, 139-159

MODERN MUSLIM IlWXRPmTAmONS OF SHIm

Elizabeth Sirriyeh

This article seeks to examine some of the attempts made by Muslims in modern times to reinterpret the concept of shirk (‘association’), applying it to changing circumstances. After a short discussion of the concept in the Qur’an and its development before the 18th century, there is an analysis of interpretations by several major influential thinkers from Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Iran, spanning a period from the 18th century Wahhabi movement to the years before the Iranian Revolution. Special attention is given to the views of Muhammad b. ‘Abd al- Wahhab, Muhammad ‘Abduh, Abti’l-A% al-Mawdiidi, Sayyid Qutb, “Ali Sharicati and Muhammad Kamil I$usain.

Shirk, the association of other beings with God, is the greatest sin of all in Islam, violating the central doctrine of the faith, that of tawhid, the belief in God’s unity. At times shirk may be translated as ‘idolatry’ or ‘polytheism’, but the concept of shirk is too wide-ranging to be fully contained in such translations, although they would appear adequate to render its meaning in the earliest period of Islam and for the most traditional understanding of the word. It may be more acceptably rendered as ‘association’ or ‘associa- tionism’. It is a term that has shown itself capable of a considerable degree of flexibility, and this article seeks to examine some of the attempts that have been made at its reinterpretation in modern times.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT OF SHIRK BEFORE THE 18TH CENTURY In the Qur’an shirk is denounced as a mark of ingratitude towards God, and its practitioner, the mushrik, is also shown to be engaged in a futile form of worship, since its objects exist only in his own mind. The false gods are no more than names:

They are mere names that you and your fathers have given them. God has not revealed any authority for them. (53:23)

At the advent of Islam shirk is normally to be understood in a specific and strictly limited sense as meaning the association with God of various deities,

0048-721X/90/020139 + 21$02.00/O 0 1990Academic Press Limited

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and it is principally the belief in the tribal gods of pre-Islamic Arabia that is under attack.

Adherence to Christian trinitarian beliefs is also regarded as shirk, although it has been argued that those attacked in the Qur’gn may be heterodox views prevalent in Arabia at the time rather than orthodox Christian beliefs.’ Mush&% are mentioned in the Qur’Bn as a separate group from People of the Book.

The believers, Jews, Sabaeans, Christians, Magians and polytheists- God will certainly distinguish between them on Resurrection Day. (22:17)

The serious nature of the offence of shirk is stressed in the Qur’Bn:

He who associates anything with God has surely committed a grievous sin. (4:48)

and

Indeed he who associates anything with God, God has forbidden him Paradise and his abode is Hell-fire. (5:72)

While some theologians believed that God would forgive the mushrik, if he sincerely repented, it was widely held that the offender would certainly be punished in Hell and that this was the one sin that God would never forgive.

In certain areas of the Islamic world the early designation of shirk as the ascription to God of other gods as partners proved to be of central importance. In some it is still of major significance. Africa South of the Sahara is a notable case, since syncretism with African traditional religions has been a widespread feature. However, for the central Islamic lands the concept in this limited form was soon to become irrelevant, as the old mushrikzin of the tribal religions died out and the region was deeply Islamised. Yet ‘association’ remained a matter of concern and at times of earnest debate, as it came to be perceived as operating on different levels. The Qur’gnic condemnation of associating anything with God made it possible to advance more varied interpretations alongside the traditional one.

It was a short step to move from the denunciation of worship of lesser deities to the censure of any exaltation of man above his proper status to a point at which he might appear to be worshipped as if he were a deity. Concern over the exaggerated reverence for man may be seen as arising from Qur’gnic strictures on the glorification of Jesus:

They are unbelievers who said, ‘God is the Messiah, son of Mary’. (5:72)

By the ‘Abbgsid age the exalted position of the caliph dismayed pious circles and, with the development of Shicism, Sunni critics were similarly

Interpretations of shirk 141

disturbed by the veneration accorded the imdms. Excessive attachment to &Xi shaikhs was also criticised by medieval theologians, the most famous of the critics being Ibn Taimiyya, mentor of so many modern reformers. He and other Yanbalis were also harsh on exaggerated reverence for the dead, whether prophets or $iifi saints.

Not only was there disapproval of excessive veneration of man, there was also early criticism of similar treatment of anything or any concept, foremost among the critics being the Sunni Mu’tazili theologians of the 8th-9th centuries and the Shi’a who espoused their views. Both rejected the position of those Sunnis who believed in the Qur’an being untreated and eternal and who spoke of God’s names and attributes as though they were indepen- dent of His Essence. The Mu’tazila and ShiCa held that this amounted to shirk, as it involved the exaltation of entities separate from God.

However, all the learned discussions of Sunni and Shi% religious scholars, all their science of God’s unity (‘ilm al-tawhid) proved unsatisfactory to the $5 mystics. They insisted on the need to go beyond belief and assertion of God’s unity, however strict and systematic. Instead they stressed the importance of living and directly experiencing unity through unification with God, substituting gnosis (ma‘rifa) for the scholars’ knowledge. By the later Middle Ages these views found expression in a sophisticated theosophy, especially associated with the name of Ibn al-“Arabi (d.638/1240). His system is succinctly described by Fazlur Rahman:

Briefly, Ibn al-“Arabi taught that the Absolute Reality is transcendent and nameless and its only attribute is self-existence. But this Absolute, by a kind of propulsion or process of ‘descent’ and ‘determination’ develops a state of being wherein it becomes conscious of its attributes, knowledge, power, life, creativity, etc. These attributes of perfection, however, exist only in its mind or consciousness. But it is also these attributes which constitute the stuff from which the world is made. The ‘creation’ of the world is nothing but the projec- tion of these attributes from the Divine Mind outward into ‘real existence’ which is nothing but the existence of the Absolute Himself.2

This monistic vision, termed ‘the unity of existence’ (wahdat al-wujzid), was to dominate philosophical SUfi thinking for centuries. Those who sub- scribed to it saw it as the perfect expression of tawhid, whereas its opponents, including Ibn Taimiyya, were deeply disturbed by the moral implications of pronouncing ‘All is He’. Such beliefs were essentially incompatible with insistence on personal moral accountability under the Holy Law and orthodox theologians feared the encouragement of antinomian tendencies. In their turn the monist Siifis could be accused of shirk in associating all created beings with God.

Thus profound disagreement over the nature of shirk developed from an early date with divergent opinions splitting the Mu’tazila from other Sunni

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theologians, Shica from Sunnis, monist Stilis from orthodox religious scholars and notably Hanbalis. In modern times the trend would be towards ever more disparate views with the older interpretations continuing alongside the new, sometimes peaceably juxtaposed, sometimes in conflict.

THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS OF 18TH-CENTURYJSLAM AND THE EARLY WAHH/iBlS A sense of moral concern over the state of Islam gathered strength during the 18th and 19th centuries, at times expressed on an intellectual level, at others breaking out in violent mass protest. A major feature of the religion of the age to arouse anxiety was Stifism in certain of its late medieval forms.

One aspect of this medieval Siifism to be sharply criticised was Ibn al- ‘Arabi’s speculative theosophy which pervaded the Islamic world, despite the opposition already noted. It began to be undermined from within Siifism by the Indian Naqshbandi Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi (d.1034/1625). Sirhindi argued that Ibn al-cArabi’s spiritual experience of the unity of existence was that achieved in the first stage of mysticism and that, if he had proceeded further, he would have reached a mystical state in which he perceived that God and the world were two. He would have come to appreciate that there is merely an apparent identity of God and creation and that God is far beyond reaching by human reason or by gnosis.3 Other prominent Sfifis, notably the Syrian Naqshbandi Shaikh “Abd al-Ghani al- Nabulusi (d.l144/1731) and the Indian Naqshbandi Shah Wall Allah of Delhi (d.l176/1762) sought to reconcile Ibn aLCArabi’s monism with the pursuit of a moral life in accordance with the Shari’a.

An especially harsh attack was to be launched on those popular forms of Siifism that encouraged the masses to embark on the pursuit of ecstasy and embraced a wide range of beliefs and practices, which were perceived by the critics as unIslamic accretions. The problem was deeply felt in the Indian subcontinent from Sirhindi’s time because of the constant challenge of Hinduism and its marked influence in irregular SX orders, but in all areas of the Islamic world it was seen by reforming spirits as opening the way to association.

The cult of saints, many being living or dead Sctfis, was widespread and enabled an accommodation between Islam and the demands of older cults, remnants of whose. rituals were absorbed in the ceremonies associated with the saints. visits to tombs were performed for many purposes: to seek the saint’s intercession with God on behalf of the worshipper, to benefit from the healing powers at a particular site, in the case of barren women to promote fertility, to ask the saint’s help in paying debts or in other cases of distress, to pray for rain or even for the poor to perform pilgrimage rites as a substitute for the baji. Finally, for SiXi adepts such tomb visits were


undertaken with the object of achieving spiritual development in the holy presence of the saint and sometimes attempting to communicate with the dead saint as a spiritual guide, Generally, the pilgrims made their visits li’l-tabarruk, to gain the saint’s blessing or to partake of his virtuous spiritual powers.4

The Arabian movement of Muhammad b. “Abd al-Wahhab ( 1115-1206/ 1703-92) was vitally concerned with the dangers of shirk arising from these trends in medieval Sufism and popular religious practices more or less closely linked with it. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab had himself received Sub training in Medina and Basra and taught Siifism and he does not express his hostility towards all its forms, but towards those that in his opinion entailed shirk, especially Ibn al-CArabi’s unity of existence and the saint cults. His teachers in Medina included Naqshbandis and it has been suggested that he may have been partly influenced in his reforming efforts by the Naqshbandi reformers. Some such influence is quite likely, but the more apparent and deeper influence is from Ibn Taimiyya and other Hanbalis.

Shirk was of such central concern to the Wahhabis that numerous tracts were written on it by Ibn “Abd al-Wahhab and shaikhs of his family. Those to be considered here were printed in an edition of collected works in 192fL5 The best-known work is Muhammad b. “Abd al-Wahhab’s Kitzb al-tawhid, thought to have been composed after his return from his studies in Basra and before the beginning of his public preaching in Najd. It has often been reprinted and has thus had the broadest impact of any of the tracts. Yet all of them seem designed to reach the widest possible readership and this is reflected in their style and language. Unlike much Arabic writing of the 18th and early 19th centuries, in which stylistic virtuosity predominates over content, the opposite is the case here. Those with a strong sense of duty to reform their society have little time for verbal display. They do not care to be admired for their linguistic skills, but only to convey their message clearly and with all the authority at their command. Consequently,. their style is direct and notably devoid of elaboration and recherche pretensions. The message is obacked by constant reference to the Qur’an as the most indisputably authoritative of texts, and, to a lesser extent, to uadzth. Muhammad b. “Abd al-Wahhab employs some colloquial language in those tracts addressed to the less educated among his followers. This readiness to write directly and simply on occasion in order to educate the masses was to be followed by other reformers, particularly in areas on the fringes of Islam such as in Africa South of the Sahara.

The central message to which the Wahhabi reformers devoted their per- suasive powers concerned the need to struggle against the shirk of their day, but they also have some interesting comments to make on its origins. They stress its beginnings in an excessive regard for men rather than for gods.

144 E. Sirriyeh

Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhlb is of the opinion that association began when men developed an excessive love and veneration for those among them who were righteous. He quotes badiths on the Prophet’s condemnation of the practice of erecting places of worship at the graves of prophets and holy men and adorning them with pictures, cursing the Jews and Christians for indulging in such practices. s Shaikh “Abd AllPh, his son, sees shirk as developing in the first instance from veneration for the dead, when the suppliant would call on the dead person to answer his needs.7 Both Ibn “Abd al-Wahhab and his son see worship at tombs as so serious an evil in their time that they wish to ascribe to it an ancient origin among people without the benefit of revelation, continued by those who have received revelation, Jews and Christians, but have gone astray from the straight path.

By way of contrast Ibn “Abd al-WahhHb asserts at the beginning of his Kitiib kashf al-shubahzt (‘Disclosure of Errors’)8 that tawhid was the religion of all the prophets from Noah to Muhammad and that it was they who broke the images of the holy men set up by the erring generations. By the time of the Prophet Muhammad the people of Mecca were already believing in God and worshipping Him, but interposing created things between themselves and God, saying that they only wanted to approach God through them and that they sought their intercession with God. So God sent Muhammad in order to restore the religion of Abraham and to inform the people that their way of approaching God was wrong. They claimed that they were worshipping God without any partner and that He alone was the creator and giver and taker of life and organizer of the universe. Yet, adds Ibn “Abd al-Wahhab, despite all this, they were judged to be guilty of shirk and the Prophet fought against them, insisting that all types of worship, whether supplication or sacrifice or vows, must be for God alone. Enemies were sent against all the prophets and many books and arguments created to oppose taw@d. In this argument the Shaikh’s purpose behind the refer- ences to the Prophet Muhammad’s experience and that of earlier prophets is to give authority to the Wahhabis for their struggle against manifestations of shirk and unbelief in their own day. Thus the Qur’gn and Sunna give them encouragement for theirjihad against evil in much the same way as mention in the Qur’Hn of the hardships and struggle of earlier prophets afforded comfort to the Prophet Muhammad in times of difficulty.

Ibn “Abd al-Wahh2b actually sees the shirk of his day as being more serious than that of the ancients. He writes in a short epistle:

The idolaters of our own time are worse in their idolatry than the ancients because the ancients were worshipping God in times of afffiction and associating others with Him in times of prosperity, but the idolaters of our own time are always guilty of associating others with God whether in prosperity or af%liction.g

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Elsewhere he amplifies this statement by explaining more fully his reasons for regarding the association mentioned in the Qur’an and that against which the Prophet fought as being less serious than that of his own day. First, he notes, as above, that the ancients recognised God alone, when they called on Him in distress. It was only when they had an easy life that they associated with Him, angels or holy men or idols. Second, he remarks that those beings the ancients associated with God were those close to Him, such as angels or prophets, or inanimate objects such as stones and trees that were obedient to God. However, the idolaters of his own day associated with God men of bad reputation who led an immoral life, engaging in adultery and theft and neglecting prayer. He argues-that it is the lesser evil to associate with God those who are righteous or wood and stone that is not disobedient. Such people may be held less blameworthy than those who believe in sinful and corrupt men, who are not even ashamed of their faults, but proclaim them openly.” This appears to be part of his general attack on corrupt forms of SiXism. His argument that the shirk of his own day was more serious than that of the Prophet’s time seeks to magnify the importance of the struggle in which he and his followers are engaged. They have to convince themselves and others of the righteousness of their cause and the wickedness of their enemies, even if the enemies claim to be Muslims.

The dangers of following and venerating men, especially evil men, are discussed further in a classification of forms of shirk by a grandson of Ibn “Abd al-Wahhab, Shaikh “Abd al-Rahman b. Hasan.” He divides serious shirk into four types, of which the first is the most obvious, being the worship or supplication of any being other than God, including requests for intercession with God, making sacrifices and votive offerings. The second is the sin of the man who seeks the things of this world, while practising his spiritual duties. He thus interposes his worldly desires between himself and God. The third type is the practice of obeying men who summon others to wickedness. Examples of these are temporal princes whose commands run contrary to the Shari’s, lawgivers who change God’s laws and those who implement laws other than the Holy Law, practitioners of the magic arts and idolaters who take pleasure in the worship of other than God. According to Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhab, all these are to be linked with Satan in leading men astray.‘* Finally, the fourth type lies at the core of shirk, for it is the sin of loving anything as much as or more than God. Shaikh “Abd Allah, son of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, described the state of association rampant in Najd before the destruction of its sites by his father and wrote that the guilty parties claimed that those supplicated ‘were saints unsullied by sin and they venerated them more than they venerated God’.t3 He remarks that they underwent a spiritual experience in their practices at graves such as none of them enjoyed in legitimate worship in God’s

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mosques. ‘* They were in awe of the dead beneath the dome of the mausoleum more than of the Creator of the heavens and earth. Thus they made the dead into a god and the living shaikh into a prophet.15 The essential sin decried is the attachment in the heart of man rather than his outward acts. These concepts of shirk were to pave the way for wider and more revolutionary interpretations by future thinkers.

MU@AMMAD “ABDUH However, it was to be a long time before any substantial change in interpretation occurred. Some 19th-century thought on the subject proceeded along similar lines to that of the WahhHbis, while in the fringe areas of Islam reformers also related their own situation to that of the early Muslims faced with the pre-Islamic forms of shirk.

Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849-1905), prominent Egyptian scholar of Islam and mufti of Egypt, appears to be a key figure in setting in motion new trends. Like Muhammad b. “Abd al-Wahhab, “Abduh became deeply concerned over the ossification of the faith in the hands of tradition-bound scholars and denounced the blind imitation of medieval authorities which had destroyed the creative vitality of Muslims. His dislike of this unthinking acceptance emerged from his youth, when he temporarily ran away from his studies at the mosque of Tan@ due to his dissatisfaction with the traditional methods of rote learning of commentaries on a few standard texts. At the time his experience was limited to the peasant Egyptian society which surrounded him, although at a later date he would be affected by various outside influences, including the Wahhabis, but especially by his close friendship with the pan-Islamic activist Jam51 al-din al-Afghani (1839- 1897) and his contacts with the West through the British occupation of Egypt from 1882 and his travels in Europe during his exile in the 1880s for his part in the Egyptian nationalist resistance. His attitude towards the West remained ambivalent. On the one hand, he saw in it the unbelieving enemy threatening to undermine Islam. On the other, it inspired his reform efforts and gave him hope that he would see a reinvigorated Islam able to adjust more readily than Christianity to modern scientific progress.

“Abduh’s thought about shirk is not without its ambiguities and appears to have shifted very considerably during his life, reflecting the different stages of development of his religious thought. In his youth he embraced with enthusiasm what he viewed as true mysticism, although he came to share with the Wahhabis a harshness towards those forms of $ifism that he perceived as decadent and corrupt. In 1874 he wrote his first work from a $iX perspective, entitled RisZlat al-w&id& (‘Mystic Inspirations’).” Here he follows Ibn al-“Arabi in expressing his belief in the unity of existence, a view that he denounced in later life when, in supervising the publication of


a series of classical Arabic writings, he refused to print Ibn al-“Arabi’s al- F&&it al-makkiyya (‘Meccan Revelations’).

In his early mystical stage he owed much to his father’s uncle, a Shadhili - _

shaikh, and later even more to the teachings of al-Afgham. Indeed his relationship with al-Afghani might well have been rebuked by Wahhabis as embodying that type of shirk in which the heart is too deeply attached to a being other than God. The language of a letter in which ‘Abduh in exile at Beirut addresses his master in Paris would lay him open to such censure. It is adulatory in the extreme, that of a SiXi disciple to his shaikh. He writes:

You have made us with your hands, invested our matter with its perfect form [and created us in the best shape]. Through you have we known ourselves, through you have we known you, through you have we known the whole universe . . . from you have we issued and to you, to you do we return.17

Such phrases, with their Qur’anic echoes, would in the eyes of most Muslims be deemed appropriate only if addressed to God. There is more in the same manner, an apparent veneration of man in the place of God. It is possible to understand it as an expression of his monist SUfi belief in the world as a manifestation of a single divine Reality, presented in microcosm by the perfect man, here al-Afghani. But this does nothing to lessen the difficulties, for during this same period in Beirut ‘Abduh was delivering his lectures which were to constitute in revised form his Risilat al-tawhid (‘The Theology of Unity’), in which it is reason and the compatibility of modern science with Islam that is exalted, not any medieval concept of the perfect man. In this most accessible of his theological works ‘Abduh would appear to have moved away completely from monist Sufism. Consequently, we may suppose either that he had not actually made such a move or, more probably, that he had done so, but that his Siifi training still influenced his style in addressing his old master.

After his rejection of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s theosophy, “Abduh presents a varied approach to shirk, on occasion routine and unexceptional, elsewhere fresh and controversial. Thus, in his Qur’an commentary he discusses the words

Do not associate with Him anything.” (4:36)

First, he notes the existence of shirk among the pre-Islamic Arabs as con- sisting of the worship of idols and seeking their intercession. He then pro- ceeds to criticise the Christians as being guilty of worshipping the Messiah and some of them of worshipping Mary. In his final comments he laments the current state of affairs in Egypt, deploring attachment to popular saints in tones clearly reminiscent of the Wahhabis. His condemnation is stringent, but there is not much depth of analysis or amplification.

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However, in his R&at al-tar&d “Abduh embarks on an original interpretation of shirk in line with his advocacy of a regenerated progressive and scientific Muslim stance. He states:

It is the belief that any other than God has a superior causation to that which God by his gift has set in the manifest causes and that there can be a greater force than that arising from the created order. It is the belief of those who exalt other than God to Divine authority and who presume to dispense with the means that He has given, such as military forces, as the condition of victories in war or the use of medicines given by God for the purpose of healing sicknesses, or the paths and precepts He has ordained whereby happiness might be ours in this world and the next.lg

On one level this appears to be a veiled rebuke to those who sought the intercession of saints to alter the natural course of events, to bring them success and cure illnesses and probably also to the practitioners of magic arts. On another level it forms part of “Abduh’s general drive to demonstrate that the benefits of modern science are God-given and that it is a form of shirk to reject them and deliberately refuse progress, thus effectively not allowing God to be God by manifesting Himself through the scientific means He has provided. Kenneth Cragg in the preface to his translation argues that this view seems to rule out any criticism of the current state of such ‘givens’ and would thus impede further scientific and technological development and he notes that man may be tempted as the user of these God- given means to believe himself omnicompetent.” However, there is no real indication that “Abduh is claiming that future advances should not be made or that they would not also be God’s gifts. Probably the reverse is true, in- asmuch as he wishes to encourage progress in these directions. Certainly if man were to be lulled into feeling himself omnicompetent through the employment of science, then he would be drawn into a very serious form of shirk, but it would presuppose an essentially wrong attitude in the Muslim recipient of the gifts.

Finally, “Abduh’s stress on the importance of the use of modern weaponry and its being given by God for the achievement of victory may be more readily understood in the context of his relationship with al-Afghani of whom Nikki Keddie remarks:

It is hard to escape the impression that what really appealed to him both in early Islam and in the modern West was political strength. His stress on holy war and his attempts to prove that the Koran enjoins the acquisition of the most modern and effective armaments support this idea.”

What seems then to be emerging here is a view in line with that of his master for a need to restore the strength of the Islamic world, when it has suffered terrible humiliation at the hands of European colonialists. Essentially, both


al-Afghani and ‘Abduh share a vision of shirk as equated with superstition and a refusal to open the mind to rational arguments and see it not only as religiously blameworthy, but also as weakening the Muslims in a non- Muslim world that has come to dominate them.

Elsewhere, however, “Abduh does not seem to regard shirk as a particularly heinous offence by comparison with such evils as injustice, untruthfulness, insincerity and minds closed to reason. Thus, commenting on Siira 3: 117 on the punishment of unbelievers in Hell, he remarks ‘that God will not destroy a nation on account of its idolatry, if otherwise it does justice and observes the rules of progress’.** It seems characteristic of “Abduh’s thought that he emphasises the need for progress to the point that it can actually displace concern with what is usually accepted as the most grievous sin. On the whole, it could be said that condemnation of shirk is not of central concern to ‘Abduh and does not provide a major theme in his thought, although he does make use of it at times to belabour those whom he regards as holding back the Islamic countries, the superstitious and the traditionalists who refuse to see the light of reason.

In general, the climate of modernism in the late 19th and earlier part of the 20th century often made shirk appear an outmoded problem, even an embarrassment to those Muslim thinkers who sought some accommodation with other faiths. In India a desire to achieve a reconciliation with the Hindu community led some Muslims to dissociate themselves from the old denunciations of Hindu ‘idolatry’ or simply to play down its sinful nature. Muhammad Iqbal (1876-1938) expressed this mood in verse:

And if the Brahmin, preacher, biddeth us, Bow down to idols, furrow not thy brow. Our God Himself who shaped an idol fair Bade Cherubim before an idol bow.23

ISLAMIC REVIVALISTS: ABl?‘L-A”Lii AL-MA WDi?Df AND SA Y YZD QUTB From the 1930s onwards new-style Islamic revivalists restored the problem of shirk to the centre of debate. The pioneering spirit of .this’ venture may be seen in a vigorous form in the person of Abii’l-A’% al-Mawdiidi (1903- 1979), founder in 1941 of JamScat-i Islami, an Indian Islamic party orig- inally intended to resist the formation of the new state of Pakistan. He held that Pakistan would not be a real Islamic state, since its Westernized leaders had no idea of the true nature of Islam and could not conceive of anything beyond a nation-state with a Muslim population. They were thus deeply implicated in shirk, since they worshipped the Western man-made ideology of nationalism.24 Mawdudi was later to change his mind in favour of Paki- stan, believing that it could foster a proper Islamic society.

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Mawdiidi was born in Aurangabad in central India, the son of a lawyer, with a long family tradition of siifi piety, which he was personally to reject. His father taught him Arabic and Persian and this enabled him to have direct access to Islamic sources, but, on his father’s death in 1918, he had to abandon formal studies. Thus he received neither the training of a religious scholar nor a Western-style education, but began work as a journalist at an early age and continued to educate himself, mainly in the Islamic tradition. The originality of his thought is probably owing in part to this self- education. He was a prolific writer and his ideas gained a widespread influence within Sunni Islam far beyond the Indian subcontinent.

Mawdiidi’s early writings show a deep and acknowledged debt to Ibn Taimiyya and Muhammad b. “Abd al-Wahhab in his condemnation of the excesses of $ifism and saint cults and also in his criticisms of the failings of the religious scholars. In this he also has much in common with ‘Abduh, whom he censures, however, for compromising Islam by opening the way for it to be judged by Western standards.

Yet, despite these influences, his view of shirk goes far beyond that of the Wahhabis or of ‘Abduh and beyond his detestation of Hindu ‘idolatry’, a righteous intolerance far removed from Iqbal’s attempts at reconciliation. He is deeply troubled by what he perceives as the threat to Islamic countries from Western ideologies and life-styles and this leads him to embark on fresh, adventurous interpretation of shirk.

Mawdiidi’s vision stems from his insistence on the very demanding role required of man as a Muslim in his relationship to God. He sees man as called upon not simply to worship God alone, but to submit himself totally in service to Him to the exclusion of anyone or anything else and this leads him to include all the modern ideologies that draw man away from the service of God. Thus two of his interpreters, Khurshid Ahmad and Zafar Ishaq Ansari, remark:

All the ‘isms’ which have arisen in the present age, despite their mutual dis- agreements, have arisen from the same basic philosophy- that man rather than God has the right to prescribe the goal of human life and the norms for human conduct.‘”

Mawdudi decries this state of affairs, in which man, under the influence of modern Western thought, arrogates supreme authority to himself instead of to God. He sees all the man-made doctrines as false gods luring modern materialistic civilisation to its destruction. They spring from a corrupt tree, whose food is sweet, but poisonous, and one corruption leads to another. He writes:

The people rooted out capitalism and Communism grew up in its place. They put an end to democracy and Fascism sprung up in its place. They tried to


solve social problems and feminism and the movement for birth control emerged.26

In Mawdiidi’s opinion, the only hope for mankind is therefore to turn to Islam as the healthy tree, acknowledging God’s authority alone and shunning the shirk inherent in subscribing to man’s ideologies.

In connection with this world-view, he develops the idea of the ‘Modern Jihiliyya’ . In conventional Islamic thought the JZhiliyya is understood as referring to the age of ignorance or barbarism in Arabia before the emergence of Islam. But in Mawdudi’s vision theJchiliyya is not limited to any given time or place, but is to be found at any time and anywhere when man refuses God’s sovereignty and fails to live by divinely ordained laws. He uses this innovative concept primarily to attack the societies of Western Europe, America and the Communist countries and to warn his own society against the dangers from them. Although he may see symptoms of their sickness intruding into Pakistan and other Islamic countries, he does not regard them as being corrupted by shirk to the point of becoming jahili societies.

In 1950, a disciple of Mawdudi, Abii’l-Hasan ‘Ali Nadvi, later to become rector of the Islamic Academy of Lucknow, published in Arabic a book entitled ‘What Did the World Lose Due to the Decline of Islam?‘, in which he presented Mawdfidi’s vision of the modern Jlhiliyya. This work and the subsequent translations of a number of Mawdudi’s books into Arabic in the 1950s helped to popularise the Pakistani thinker’s ideas among the Arabs.27

In Egypt Mawdudi’s ideas were to have a dramatic impact on a radical ideologue of the Muslim Brothers in the 1950s and 60s Sayyyid Qutb (1906- 1966). Qutb was only three years younger than Mawdudr and, like him, he was not trained as a religious scholar, although he did receive more formal education by attending the modern liberal arts college of Dar al- ‘Ulum in Cairo, in which Muhammad ‘Abduh had lectured in the 1870s soon after its establishment. Qutb spent many years as a teacher, then as a school inspector, but also had literary aspirations, producing novels and short stories, and, like Mawdiidi, was active as a journalist. From 1948- 1950 he was sent to the States to study the American education system, an experience that left him profoundly disillusioned with Western civilisation and led effectively to his rebirth in Islam. On his return to Egypt, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation bearing similarities to Mawdiidi’s Jama’at-i Islami in Pakistan, having been founded as early as 1928 with the aim of reforming Islamic society through preaching and an energetic pro- gramme of publication, education and social welfare projects. Qutb quickly rose to a prominent position and became editor of the Brothers’ newspaper.

The July Revolution of 1952 which brought Nasser and the Free Officers to power did not at first threaten the Muslim Brotherhood. But, on 26 October

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1954, an assassination attempt on Nasser by one of their number led to swift reprisals. Along with other Brotherhood activists, Sayyid Qufb was arrested and imprisoned. He was sentenced to 25 years’ hard labour, but after much suffering and torture was released in 1964 through the interven- tion of the Iraqi President. It was to be a brief respite, for in 1965 he was re-arrested on charges of organising a conspiracy against the Egyptian state and, on this occasion, sentenced to death. He was hanged on 29 August 1966.

Qutb saw Nasser’s Arab socialist state mainly from prison and he was in no doubt that what he saw was evil. In his last work written in prison, the highly controversial Ma”dim fi’l-tariq (‘Signposts on the Road’), he espoused Mawdiidi’s vision of the modernjZhi&ya. However, he went far beyond Mawdiidi in seeing the whole of Egyptian society, and indeed the whole umma (the Islamic community) as belonging to the jchiliyya which had infiltrated it from the West to the point that Islamic society was now defunct. He saw it as so corrupted by shirk that it was the duty of really dedicated Muslims to wage a jihd to rid it of all its modern idols, all the ‘isms’, to replace them with a true Islamic system, in which men would be governed by the ShariGa. In the eyes of the public prosecutor at his trial all this was evidence of his guilt in conspiring against the Egyptian rtgime.28

Sayyid Qutb’s brother, Muhammad, took up the same theme in his popular book, JGhilzj_yat al-qarn al-“ishrin (‘The JZhiliyya of the 20th Century’), published in 1964, the same year as ‘Signposts’. In the introduction he noted that the signs of the jihilzjya are not ‘naive shirk and primitive idolatry’, as many good people suppose, nor does the condition of jdhili_yya mean ignorance of science, civilisation and material progress.

Jchilzjya-as the Qur’gn intended it and defined it-is a psychological state refusing to be guided by God’s guidance and an organisational set-up refusing to be regulated by God’s revelation.”

This situation can occur however civilised and technologically advanced the society may be, when men are not guided by God, but by their own whims and desires. He sees the present age as the worst, sunk deeper in shirk than that of the pre-Islamic Arabs or of any age in history. Men are lost in the worship of false gods. The false god may be an individual, sect, group, custom or tradition or any power that seeks men’s worship. No false god likes men to worship God and it is always the enemy of true belief: Muhammad Qufb is less open than his brother in asserting that the false gods were present in the form of Nasser, the Egyptian socialist regime and the ideas of nationalism, secularism and socialism, but the implications would appear to be the same.

Not all Muslim Brothers agreed with Sayyid Qutb in his diagnosis of contemporary Islamic society as being unIslamic andjtihiliand even Muhammad


Qutb was later moved to write that his ideas were open to wrong interpretations by extremists and were misunderstood. The religious scholarly establishment in Egypt denounced Sayyid Qutb as a deviant (munharz$) and the second Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood, &Iasan al-Hudaibi, wrote a critique of Mawdfidi’s ideas, which were taken as a denunciation of those of the Qutbs. Essentially he maintained that it was wrong to regard modern Egypt as a jc?hili society, although ignorant individuals were in need of preaching to bring them to true Islam. However, Sayyid Qutb’s ideas in particular made a deep impression on some radical elements, despite the divisions as to how they were to be interpreted. For example, in the 1970s the Society of Muslims, also known as al-Takfir wa’l-IIijra, withdrew into exclusivity to wage theirjihad against the corruption that they regarded as surrounding them, until they, like Sayyid Qutb, were destroyed by the state.

Mawdiidi’s and the Qutbs’ interpretations have awakened far wider circles than those of their immediate followers to an awareness of forms of shirk in the modern world other than those recognised in earlier Islamic thought. An example of popular thinking in this line may be seen in an article in a Jordanian newspaper in 1987 entitled ‘Z~dauxijzjyat al-‘-aqidu awsaC abwtib al-shirk’ which may be freely translated as ‘A double set of beliefs leads most directly to shirk’.30 Here the author warns against the dangers of neglecting study of the Qur’an and Sunna, while being attracted to contemporary Western- thought and shallow culture. He remarks that secularism and atheism become sacred to the secularist and atheist and points to the danger of attaching oneself to any party, system or viewpoint not sanctioned by Qur’an and Sunna. Yet he combines this with a warning against traditional forms of ihirk such as seeking the favour of holy men, seeking benefit from that which cannot help or harm such as trees, stones and amulets, and consulting fortune-tellers. He concludes that’all the mushrikzin will end in Hell, the Westernised secularist with the superstitious amulet-bearer. Thus those aspects of shirk which troubled Ibn “Abd al- Wahhab continue to be relevant alongside those of more recent origin.

A CONTEMPORARY SHpI ZNTERPRETATZOIV: ‘ALf SHARpAT Most Shi”a have understandably had little time for Wahhabi views of shirk, although they have shared the Sunni concern with the dangers of Western man-made ideologies. Ayat Allah Khumaini showed a notable hostility towards the Wahhabis, described by him as ‘camel-herding savages’ from whom Iranians needed no guidance for progress. Pilgrimage visits to Shi’i shrines and graves have remained a central feature of religious practice and Khumaini’s approach was to argue that, if worship is intended by such visits, then they constitute shirk, but, if no more is intended than respect

154 E. Sirriyeh

for the ImZms and holy persons, then they are acceptable and may have a positive effect in fortifying the pilgrim’s faith.31

However, there have been more philosophical currents in ShiCi thought on shirk and an interesting example is provided by ‘Ali Shari’ati (1933- 1977), proponent of a revolutionary Islamic socialism. Born in a village near Mashhad in north-east Iran, the son of a religious scholar, he received religious instruction from his father, but also a Western-style secondary and university education before going abroad in 1960 to study for a doctorate in Paris. Insufficient is known about his stay in France where he is popularly supposed to have studied sociology, but actually wrote a thesis on medieval Iranian philology. However, it appears to be at this time that he developed his interest in sociology and radicalism, probably through his connections with radical Iranian students rather than through formal studies. On his return to the Shah’s Iran, he was arrested, but later allowed to teach, at first in school, then at Mashhad University until his appointment was ter- minated, seemingly because his radical teaching proved too popular. He sub- sequently moved to teach at a new institution in Tehran, the Ijusainiyya-i Irshad, until its closure and his arrest in 1973. After two years in prison he was freed to a period of exile from the capital, but was later allowed to travel to England where he died suddenly in 1977, ostensibly of a heart attack, although it was also suggested that he might have been murdered by the Shah’s secret police.

In a lecture entitled ‘The World-View of Tauhid’ ShariCati declares that his concept of tawbid goes beyond the simple statement of the oneness of God expressed by all monotheists.32 It is a wo rld-view which regards the whole universe as a unity, ‘a total, harmonious, living and self-aware system’, a single, indivisible organism. He terms it tawbid-i wujid and is anxious that it should not be confused with the wajzdat al-wuj6d of the Sitfis, Ibn al-CArabi’s unity of existence, to which it appears to bear some superficial resemblance. Shari’ati protests that his vision is closer to modern science than to Siifism. For those who would be critical of medieval Siifi theosophy, it presents similar difficulties. Shari’ati’s tawbid-i wujzid seems to go at least as far in breaking down the barriers between the divine and the human, seeing them as deriving from a single source, moving and living with only one will and intelligence. His attempt to overcome this difficulty by speaking at the same time of three separate elements, God, nature and man is not really satisfactory and clearly inconsistent with his speaking of existence as a living being, ‘just like a vast and absolute man’, containing presumably unwitting echoes of Indian religious tradition on the cosmic man.33 For many Muslims his position would appear perilously close to shirk, raising the human and indeed the animal and inanimate world to the level of the Godhead.

In opposition to the world-view of tar&id, Sharicati places his own vision

Znterjretations of shirk 155

of the world-view of shirk, which sees the universe as ‘a discordant assem- blage full of disunity, contradiction and heterogeneity’. Thus social, political and economic divisions, class and racial discrimination arise from shirk. Belief in a number of gods in disagreement with one another leads the mushrik to see the contradictions that exist among men as natural and godlike. To combat shirk and maintain tawhid man is driven into a revolutionary struggle against ‘all lying powers’ who would keep society in a state of discord and humiliate their fellow men. The implications of the message derived from this view of shirk seem much the same as those to be derived from Sayyid Qutb. The true believers are bound to struggle against the Shah’s regime which is seen as involved in shirk, just as Qufb had counselled them to struggle against thejghilt regime of Nasser. Both views were warmly embraced by young people, especially those from traditional Muslim back- grounds but exposed to Westernised education.

Some problems arise with regard to the relationship between the two world-views of tawhid and shirk. Tawhid-i wujiid becomes only a theoretical possibility, given the constant existence of shirk and the struggle against it for the establishment of tawhid must involve the continued disruption of the harmonious unity until divisions and strife can be brought to an end. Shari’ati makes no reference in this context to the coming of the Mahdi, but elsewhere he appears to believe that virtuous struggle by the revolutionary masses will usher in the longed for age when the Twelfth Imam can emerge from occulta- tion. Sharicati’s concept of shirk is just recognisable as associating other beings with God in that in his scheme it seems to disrupt the divine unity of existence and create a multiple universe, but it is very far removed from the traditional understanding of shirk and even from that of the most adventurous thinkers of modern Sunni Islam.

MUHAMMAD KAMIL HUSAIN New interpretations of shirk have generally been promoted by those anxious to effect radical change in their society. However, the final analysis to be considered here is by a man who may well be seen as a respected establishment figure in Egypt, Muhammad K5mil Husain (1901-1977). His interests were wide-ranging and won him official recognition. He held senior academic posts as Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery in Cairo University and Rector of ‘Ain Shams University, and he was also awarded the State Prize for Literature and the State Prize for Science. Unlike Mawdudi, Qutb and Sharicat& his concern was with the individual and the human conscience rather than with purifying society as a whole, a task he believed to be hopeless, since he saw all human societies as wrong-doing and men in any community as more prone to do evil collectively than individually. It is a point that he frequently laboured, for example as follows:

156 E. Sirnjeh

The conscience of the individual does not forbid society from committing the greatest of crimes, so long as they are committed in the name of society. Conscience is the only factor restraining men from evil and societies have no conscience.34

Hence his outlook is essentially more negative and pessimistic than that of any of the modern reformers, for there is no point in advocating a revolutionary struggle, if society can never be reformed.

Like Sayyid Qutb, Husain was writing in Nasser’s Egypt in the 1950s and 6Os, but, unlike him was appreciated and honoured instead of being persecuted by it. Questions may be raised as to whether his criticisms of all societies are fully intended or whether they are meant to be understood as criticisms primarily of his own society in language which would escape censorship and retribution from the authorities. His best-known work is a novel entitled Qarya &%ma (‘City of Wrong’), a study of the crucifixion of Jesus, which on its first publication attracted considerable enthusiasm from some Christians who saw it as a serious Muslim effort to understand the Cross. But it is not only an enquiry into what happened at the Cross. It seems to be a more general study of man’s capacity for evil and of the psychological effects on men of participating in wrong action. But it may be that the subject of the novel was chosen not solely because of the author’s special interest in the crucifixion or in the problem of evil in society, but partly at least as a non-sensitive setting that could be used to address Arabs and Muslims of his own day without risking the censure that he might well have faced, had he chosen an Arab and/or Islamic society as a setting for the same discussion. His book was published in Cairo in 1954, the year which saw the assassination attempt on Nasser by a Muslim Brother and the suppression of the Brotherhood. It was also a time of heightened nationalism, arrangements for the British military withdrawal from Egypt and prepara- tions for rearmament. In February 1955 there would be confrontation with Israel in Gaza and in 1956 the Suez crisis. In this climate some of his remarks, such as those condemning war even in defence of one’s country, could have been extremely unpopular. Put into the mouth of his novel’s characters or turned into comments of a general nature, he could distance himself from controversial sentiments, should they arouse any hostile re- action.

In both Qarya &ilima and more guardedly in his personal philosophy of religion entitled al- WCdf al-Muqaddas (‘The Hallowed ValIey’) Husain discusses the problem of shirk in some detail.3’ In the novel one of the Magi delivers a lecture to arouse the disciples from their despair and encourage them in their mission and it is in this context that he speaks of shirk as one of the major sources of evil in men along with unruly passions and lack of love. In both works Husain stresses that there will be little danger in


the future from the obvious forms of shirk, the worship of idols of stone and wood, since this primitive kind of worship will soon pass away of itself, as men become civilised. The real danger, as he sees it, lies in hidden shirk, the idolatry which people do not recognise as such, but which may lie concealed in the most lofty principles. These may be fine in themselves and achieve virtue, but lead men astray from the true path. He lists among such idols national prestige, nationalism, loyalty, freedom, obedience to authority and the law. Even a concern for the general good of society and religion itself can be made into such idols, when man disregards his conscience and harms his fellow men in the name of promoting the general welfare or de- fending the faith. Men, he says, have been commanded to love their fellow men and he who violates this commandment by persecuting or injuring others, believing himself to be obedient to God, is actually setting up another god in God’s place. God is never pleased with evil, whatever the end to be sought. Principles are important, but they should not be worshipped to the point that one is drawn into wrong action by them.

Most modern interpreters of shirk, from the time of Muhammad b. “Abd al-Wahhab onwards, have been concerned with the ills of Islamic society in their day and region and have viewed it as a manifestation of those ills. Thus for the Wahhabis the central problem in late 18th- and early 19th- century Arabia was that of saint worship and Siifi excesses, which led to their attacks on exaggerated veneration of men in the place of God. For “Abduh the immediate need was for a struggle against those who turned to superstition and tradition rather than allowing God to be Himself by accepting His gifts of science and technology to meet the Western challenge and opening themselves to God-given reason. For Mawdiidi, the Qutbs and their followers the invasion of Western civilisation and ideas presented even more of a challenge with its intrusions into their society, implanting its false gods of modern man-made ideologies. For Shari’ati the situation in the Shah’s Iran demonstrated to him the necessity of fighting against the shirk of a multiple, divisive world in order to achieve an egalitarian society. By contrast with all the others, Muhammad Kamil I;Iusain appears to be concerned not with reforming a society led astray by shirk, but merely with an appeal to individuals so that they may guard against its evil. Ridding society of shirk is a task that he does not expect to see accomplished.

It may be noted from this discussion that modern interpretations of shirk have come a long way from the Qur’anic understanding of the term and have generally been adapted to the changing circumstances of Islamic societies. The concept of shirk is one that has shown a remarkable adapt- ability in different circumstances and that may yet be developed in new directions.

158 E. Sir@eh

NOTES 1

2 3

4

5 6 7

8 9

10 11

12 13 14 15 16

17 18

19

20 21

22

23 24

25 26 27

28

Geoffrey Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur’an, New York, 1977, pp. 133-141 on evidence that the Qur’an is not criticizing orthodox Christian doctrine. Fazlur Rahman, Islam, 2nd edn, Chicago, 1979, pp. 145-146. On Sirhindi’s criticism of Ibn al-“Arabi see, e.g. Burhan Ahmad Faruqi, The Mujaddid’s Conception of Tawhid, Lahore, 1940, pp. 96-117. On saint cults see I. Goldziher, ‘Veneration of Saints in Islam’ in Muslim Studies, vol. II, London, 1971, pp. 255-341. “Uthman b. Bishr ed., Majm2at al-rasc’il wa’l-masz’il al-najdeya, Cairo, 1928. Kitab al-tawhid in Majmri’at, i, 26-33. ‘Abd Allah b. Muhammad b. “Abd al-WahhHb, al-Kalimcit al-n@a ji?-mukjrcit al-wdqica in MajmZat, i, 247. Muhammad b. “Abd al-WahhHb, Kitdb kashf al-shubahdt in Majmri’at, i, 74-75. Idem, al-R&la al-rabi’a in Majmu’at, i, 117-l 18. Idem, Kita6 kashf al-shubahdt in Majmu’at, i, 83-84. Qadi of Riyad in the 1820s. This classification is contained in a short tract entitled Fi anwci‘ al-tam&d wa-anwa’ al-shirk in Majmri’at, i, 156-160. Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-WahhHb, al-Risala al-scibica in Majmti’at, i, 123. al-Kalimdt al-na$Ya ibid., i, 263. Ibid., i, 268. Ibid., i, 270-271. Risalat al-w&id& Cairo, 1874, reprinted in Ta’rikh al-Ustadh al-Imdm al-Shaikh M. “Abduh, Cairo, 1908, ii, l-25. English translation by Elie Kedourie, Afghani and “Abduh, London, 1966, p. 66. See Muhammad ‘Abduh, al-A”mal al-kamila, vol. 5 Fi Tafsir al-Q&in, M. ‘Amara ed., Beirut, 1973, pp. 214-216. English translation by Is&q MusaCad and Kenneth Cragg of M. ‘Abduh, The Theology of Unity, London, 1966, p. 64. Ibid., p. 19. Nikki R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism, Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1968, p. 41. Al-Mar&, ix, 56. Quoted in Charles C. Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt, London, 1933, p. 141. The Tulip and the Rose, trans. by A. J. Arberry, London, 1947, stanza 118. On Mawdudi and nationalism see Eran Let-man, ‘Mawdiidi’s Concept of Islam’, Middle Eastern Studies 17: 4 (October 1981), pp. 495, 498-501. K. Ahmad & 2. I. Ansari, eds, Islamic Perspectives, Leicester, 1979, p. 369. Abii’l-Ala al-Mawdudi, Nahmi wa’l-Hadara al-Gharbiyya, Damascus, nd,, p. 32. On Mawdtidi and the impact of his ideas in Egypt see Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam, New Haven & London, 1985, pp. 21-28. On Sayyid Qutb and modern jchili_yya see Gilles Kepel, The Prophet and Pharaoh, London, 1985, pp. 36-67; Ibrahim Abu Rabi, ‘Sayyid Qutb: From Religious Realism to Radical Social Criticism’, Islamic Quarter& 28: 2 (1984), pp. 103- 126; Emmanuel Sivan, op. cit., pp. 23-27. On the proceedings of Sayyid Qutb’s trial see Fouad Ajami, ‘In the Pharaoh’s Shadow: Religion and Authority in Egypt’ in James P. Piscatori, ed., Islam in the Political Process, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 23-27.

29 Muhammad Qutb, Jcihiliyyat al-qarn al-‘ishrin, Cairo, 1964, p. 9. 30 By Shaikh Muhammad Ibrahim Shaqra in al-Dustrir, 1 May 1987. 31 Khumaini’s views expressed in his Kashf al-as&, Tehran, 1941, quoted by

Interpetations of shirk 159

Michael M. J. Fischer, Iran from Religious Dispute to Revolution, Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, 1980, p. 131.

32 See Hamid Algar’s translation of this lecture in “Ali Shari’ati, On the Sociology of Islam, Berkeley, 1979, pp. 82-87.

33 Some of the logical problems in Shari’ati’s view of tuwhid are discussed by Shahrough Akhavi, ‘Sharicati’s Social Thought’ in N. Keddie, ed., Religion and Politics in Iran, New Haven & London, 1983, pp. 127-131.

34 English trans. by K. Cragg, City of Wrong, Amsterdam, 1959, p. 20. 35 Ibid., pp. 198-200; al-WZdc al-Muqaddas, Cairo, 1968, pp. 87-95; English trans.

by K. Cragg, The Hallowed Valley, Cairo, 1977, pp. 50-54.

ELIZABETH SIRRIYEH obtained an M.A. in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Edinburgh University and a Ph.D. at Manchester University. She has taught in religious studies departments at Aberdeen University and the College of St. Paul and St. Mary, Cheltenham and at Yarmouk University, Jordan.

University College Annexe, Staverton Road, Oxford OX2 6XL, U.K.

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Modern Muslim interpretations of shirk