Daily Excerpt: The Rise and Fall of Muslim Civil Society (Imady) - Muslim Traditional Society: Forerunner of Muslim Civil Society - The Severe Trial
The Severe Trial
During the ninth century, the Abbasid khalifah1 al-Mamun (r. 813-833) set out to convert ahl al-sunnah, or the traditionalists who emphasized the authority of the Qur’an and Prophetic traditions, to a theological doctrine held by the Muc tazilah, or the rationalists who emphasized the authority of reason and philosophical principles. Traditionalist scholars were forced to recant their belief in the non-created nature of the Qur’an in favor of the rationalist doctrine which held that the Qur’an was a creation of God. Those who refused were tortured and, at times, executed. In 848, fifteen years after the beginning of the government sponsored inquisition, termed al-Mihnah, or the Severe Trial, by Muslim historians, al-Mutawakkil (r. 847-861) ordered the end of all government sponsored attempts to enforce the rationalist doctrine. Al-Mutawakkil’s decision reflected his awareness that the inquisition had simply not succeeded and that its continuation might well inspire a popular revolt.
Prior to the Severe Trial, religious learning among the traditionalists was largely informal. In order to ensure that such a crisis would not reoccur, the traditionalists: “formed themselves into guilds, created institutions of learning and clothed themselves with the protective mantle of legal perpetuity.” At the core of the madhahib (guilds of law) created by the traditionalists was the madrasah (religious college). While traditionalist scholars constituted the administrative force of the religious college, waqf (charitable religious trust) constituted its financial base. In institutionalizing their victory, traditionalist scholars ensured that the laws they derived from the Qur’an and Prophetic traditions, including those regulating the religious college, would not be altered by government authority. Furthermore, in presiding over the administration of the religious college, traditionalist scholars ensured that heterodoxy, i.e. rationalism, would infiltrate neither its curriculum nor its faculty, at least not directly. Finally, in basing the religious college on the charitable religious trust, traditionalists ensured that it would remain private, and thus autonomous, from the state. Inspired by traditionalist scholars, shuyukh al-turuq al-sufiyyah (Masters of the spiritual orders) created a parallel system, known as the tariqah (spiritual order). As was the case with the religious college, the charitable religious trust financed the zawaya (spiritual retreats/centers) of the spiritual orders, thereby further ensuring their autonomy from the state. Contrary to their popular image, the vast majority of spiritual centers were not in conflict with traditionalism. As stipulated by the regulations of the charitable religious trust, many spiritual centers taught law, the traditionalist science par excellence.
With the emergence of the guilds of law and spiritual orders and the merger of the latter with the futuwwah (chivalrous brotherhoods) and the tawa’if (the guilds of merchants and artisans), the emergence of the institutions of traditional Muslim community was completed. On the eve of the Mongols’ devastating invasion of the central lands of Islam in the thirteenth century, these institutions had matured to such an extent that they would not only survive th, le catastrophe but would also serve: “as the pattern on which the damaged tissues of Islamic life were slowly reconstructed.”
In the thirteenth century, however, the political appointment of a mufti (Muslim jurist) in Damascus became an important development in the relationship between the government and the culama’, or religious scholars. The subsequent regulations introduced by the Ottomans, particularly the creation of a hierarchy of jurists led by Shaikh al-Islam (The Grand Mufti) of Istanbul, significantly facilitated government control over religious scholars. The Ottoman regulations created a system within which the strength of a fatwa (religious legal verdict) was a function not of its own merits or popularity, but, rather, of the status of its articulator in the hierarchy of jurists. Indeed, a religious legal verdict from the Grand Mufti provided the Ottoman Sultan with all the religious legitimacy he needed to implement a certain act, e.g., a declaration of war, legal reform, etc.
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