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| The Hindu Phenomenon |
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RETREAT AND RAGE |
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begin with there was a lot of free debate in Islam. The presence of
Mtazilites and Kharijites, 4 the
rise of major philosophers such as Ibn Sina of Sufi orders should
help clinch the issue. As a result of Greek, Persian and Indian
influences and the consequent growth of philosophy and sciences,
early Islam, in fact, produced and sustained an intelligentsia
which, in the exercise of free thought, took little account of the
literal interpretation of the Koran. Sunni orthodoxy, though
formulated early in the Islamic enterprise, took centuries to
prevail. But once it did, in the thirteenth- fourteenth centuries
partly as a result of the work of Ibn Tamiyya, it has reigned
supreme.
Surprising though it may seem, the
Western impact on Muslim societies has only strengthened the hold of
orthodox Islam. In order to appreciate this point, it is necessary
to recall that under the cover of a single terminology, two distinct
religious styles have persisted among Muslims. As the well-known
sociologist and Islamicist, Ernest Gellner, has put it : "Islam
traditionally was divided into a high form,-the
urban- based, strict,unitarian, nomocratic, puritan and
scripturalist islam of the scholars; and a lower
form, the cult of the personality addicted, ecstatic, ritualistic,
questionably literate, unpuritanical and rustic Islam of the
dervishes and the marabouts." 5 |
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