“What is Islam?

A conceptual framework for understanding Religion and Islam

Seth Ward

University of Wyoming

This lecture is based in part on issues raised in my courses, especially in virtual courses. The issues were
much less apparent in the traditional classroom approach. I believe that a large part of the difference has
to do with different levels of reliance on internet sources; classroom dynamics also plays a role. It may also
be that communicating something about how to understand Religion is better done in the classroom than
online; the classroom facilitates many informal interactions, including spontaneous ways in which
discussants relate to various issues and questions that come up.

I’ve revised this statement all too often, so some observations reflect ideas I would probably not stress in
the classroom today. For example, I am pretty sure I refer to ways in which religious traditions shape
identity, and compare religious notions with aspects of Cowboy football or political rituals, but I also do
not recall using the alliterative terms exactly as I do here. Also, I’m sure some of the edits have added
clarity but others have not been salutary, rendering various points redundant or mutually contradictory, or
introducing language that is more precise yet but more confusing.

The original form was a general introduction to discussing religion; one of the edits was to tie these
comments specifically to Islam. Although the comments are now made with specific reference to Islam, I
would maintain that in most cases they could be readily adapted to any religion, or for that matter, to many
studies of cultures or ideologies.

I generally present much of this material interactively in the traditional classroom. Computer teaching
sometimes requires a lecture approach in spots where the classroom allows for a more natural interactive
approach. In either case, I think raising these issues is best when students have done already wrestled with
these issues, including some reading, web-trawling and thinking, and have written out a first draft
responding to “What is Religion? but before students actually try to finalize their answers. So here is the
lecture.

A. What is Religion?

Perhaps we should start with defining what religion is, or for that matter, what ideological movements are.
I will not attempt a detailed discussion of a basic definition of “religion” but I will offer a few observations.
“Religion” is used in a number of ways. Most frequently, we might use the term to refer to

(a) a set of principles and beliefs about understanding essential and ultimate puzzles of our world, such
as the Highest Power or Powers or about the Absolute Good;

(b) a set of narratives, discourses and practices: stories or texts, symbolic acts, and ethical practices
which articulate the central ideas about the Ultimate, and attempt to “bridge the gap” between our limited
and finite selves and the transcendent issues of the universe; and
(c) a set of approaches to forming a community of Believers.

These can be called (a) ethos, (b) ethics and (c) ethnos, or (a) believing, (b) behaving and (c) belonging.
Neither of these sets of terms are mine: believing, behaving and belonging apparently comes from Justin
Martyr; in Jewish circles it was popularized by students of Mordechai Kaplan, who invariably note that
Kaplan felt belonging was the most important. (It’s not clear, by the way, the Kaplan used this precise
formulation in his publications). The other was popularized by Jacob Neusner (who apparently ascribed it
to Geertz). Both are handy rubrics, and I think they pertain to almost any ideology, nationalism, or group
with a strong sense of identity. Although some of these groups would not have ideas about the Divinity—
they would still have ideas about ultimate values.

It is simplistic to assign simple associations to these three topics. For Judaism, both systems correspond
well with “God, Torah (or better: Torah and Commandments) and Israel.”

What do you think represent believing, behaving and belonging in the religion, if any, that you grew up in?
in American nationalism? In the University?

Here is a pattern for Islam:

Believing GOD
Behaving, and QUR’AN / MUHAMMAD /
Islamic Law
belonging. UMMA (“Community of
believers”)
But you must think about these pairs not as equivalents but as points for discussion, between which various
lines can be drawn (in other words, you should not only think of the pair “Belief”/”God,” but about how
“God” relates to behaving and belonging as well). The sense of belonging to the Community of Believers—
the Umma—is a powerful guarantee of Islamic attitudes—but so are the various beliefs in Angels and
Revelation and the Last Day and behaviors such as Prayer and Charity. The text of the Qur’an and story
and practices of Muhammad also provide a strong guide for behavior.

B. What is the subject matter to be discussed when trying to understand “What is Islam”?

Religion and History: We can talk about the subject matter—to the extent that it is different—of “Islamic
History” or “Islamic Religion.” The topics of “Religion” include beliefs and practices, the various
subgroups when organized by their beliefs about Islamic issues, and other such topics. Such topics as “who
should rule” or “is socialism better than religion?” are political questions that play a role in recent and not-
so-recent Muslim history. They have religious ramifications and could be—and in some cases need to be—
part of an overall introduction to Islamic Religion. Even in a course not cross-listed with History, we would
have to develop at least a working sense of the 1400 years of Islam—the rise and fall of the caliphate,
periods of scientific and philosophic endeavor, the empires and events. This history resonates in popular
memories of contemporary Muslim leaders and the people they address, shaping how they understand their
religion.

A familiarity with the books in which the tradition is articulated is crucial, as crucial as the practices and
ethics which articulate aspirations towards the transcendent. The sacred texts and religious literature define
and provide a basis for individuals to seek their own good and the good of society.
So we have: religion—beliefs, practices, sects and subdivisions; history; Sacred books and text; Ethics,
Islamic law, and other topics. Obviously, it would be ideal to do all these topics, but one also has to make
choices.

In my teaching, I have gravitated more and more to giving stress to working on the Qur’an, sometimes at
the very real cost of a complete explanation such important topics as Sufism—Islamic mysticism—
or Kalam—certain trends in Islamic theology.

Islamic Law and Islamic Ethos: Islam is often seen in terms of being “orthoprax.” This term has been
popularized, inter alia, by Fred Denny, recently retired professor at Univ. of Colorado in Boulder and a
good colleague, and the author of one of the best textbooks on Islam. I do not disagree with the term, but
recent events have come to underline that there is really an ethos—a way of looking at the world—which
goes far beyond the praxis. Students of Islam can easily forget this while immersed in the endeavor of
understanding the Qur’an and Hadith (traditions of Muhammad), the technicalities of pilgrimage and
prayer, the various heresies and approaches of Shiis, Kharijis, Sufis, and so forth. The same individuals,
when looking at the newspapers, are reminded that Islam, like any religion or ideology, has developed a
strong sense of identity, and is the source of important ideas which inform of the sensibilities of Muslims
around the globe—often the ideas and identities are just as distinct as are the actions or communities which
have shaped them.

Summary: So a course on Islam has to teach about beliefs and practices (both symbolic and ethical), about
the books and history, about the schisms and the politics. It must lead you to understand the details, and
some of the conclusions (such as the importance of practice in defining Islam), but remind you not to lose
track of the importance of the most basic idea, the “ethos” promoted by the religion.

C. Religion as Ideology and Identity: intense, identity-forming ideas shaping issues and imperatives.

Religion as ideology: Religion is a set of principles that connect a human community to a set of ideas. In
this sense, Islam is like other religions, but it is also like being an American, or the Boy Scouts, or upholding
capitalism or socialism. The traditional college experience—and even the online experience—is also
something of the same type of experience: a set of behaviors, a sense of community, and a set of ideas about
the world, about the need for analysis and rational thinking about issues: an “ethos” with attendant rituals
and discourse that (ideally) are designed to serve it.

The ideas that motivate much of our lives do not necessarily themselves have to be highly rational. Indeed,
for the most part our ideas are symbolic of our aspirations and conditioned by our history and education:
they are hardly what philosophers would call “necessary” in the sense that the specific symbols and ideas
could be deduced by rational principles. I am not saying that we should behave irrationally. I am, however,
suggesting that our rational behavior is most often conditioned by systems of ideas—religion, nationalism,
political or economic movements (such as the Republican Party or Liberty or Socialism or whatever). Even
the idea—common to the university, to the ancient Greek philosophers, to many of us—that all issues must
be approached rationally—ultimately reflects values we have chosen: we can not forget that other
individuals may reject the idea of rational analysis of all ideas, or may come to very different conclusions
about the ways in which reason must be applied to a subject. Another way of saying this is that at the very
best, rational analysis is always based on postulates and axioms that may be self-evident to us, but not to
others, and shape our rational analysis.

The symbols and some of the choices made for symbolic practices are easily seen as arbitrary—again, in
the sense that other choices could have been made. Consider, for example, symbols of the United States—
the flag could have been very different. Part of the symbolic power of the United States is conditioned by
poetic lines written after a chance occurrence: Francis Scott Key witnessed a battle in Baltimore and wrote
verses which became the national anthem. He saw the flag there and wrote verses which touched the
American public, giving words to express its aspirations: “The land of the free and the home of the brave.”
Whether or not this was particularly true of the United States in 1814 is not as important as the fact that the
words shaped much of our discourse, and shaped how Americans perceive the American aspiration.

My point: Symbols and statements have absolute, intrinsic meaning, but also must be seen within their
context, and understood as marking the central ideas a society either embraces or wants to embrace.

The ideas expounded by a religion express rational notions, but they may also symbolize ways of
comprehending the world and our very human search for the ultimate good.

It is very simplistic to suggest that this can be reduced to a set of “I”s but useful nevertheless:

Idea Ideas can be very powerful.

Intensity Intensity of commitment, and the intrinsic intensity of the idea, are important in
assessing its power.
Imagination Many ideas do not capture the imagination very long, and lack anyone who
applies the idea in imaginative ways.
Infrastructure A powerful idea requires an infrastructure to be realized. The infrastructure is
often a very mundane affair.
Identity Ideas are most powerful when they shape an identity.

It is trivializing to say that religion is simply a sense of identity. It is or can be much more than that. But it
is important to remember that religion is a powerful conveyer of identity for the reasons I just indicated: it
is or can be an intense idea, an idea about the most important goals anyone can have; these ideas have been
imaginatively elaborated, and infrastructures have been developed. (Indeed, more than one infrastructure:
both a human infrastructure of delivering the teaching, and the “religion infrastructure” of beliefs, practice
and study). In the end, Religion still can be a powerful component of identity even when many of the
precepts are no longer quite strongly believed, as we have seen in secular countries such as Iraq and former
Yugoslavia, and is very much the case with many in the United States, even if they are not particularly
religious and if religiosity plays no role in their lives.

Finally two more “I’s”—Issues and imperatives. Identity, ideas and ideology shape the way people
frame issues, and the imperatives for action that are seen to arise from them.

D. WHAT IS ISLAM—A TYPOLOGY OF ANSWERS.

1. Identity and Answers

What was most striking to me in reviewing the answers students brought to this question in Spring, 2003,
was the degree to which identity of the responders—the students who responded and the persons whose
definitions they quoted—played a role in the nature of the answers. We saw several types of answers:

Various approaches comparing Islam to deeply held Christian views:

I am a Christian, and Islam represents views I reject.

I am a Christian, but Islam represents views I respect.

I am a Christian, and Islam represents the same views.

Some students expressed surprise when they realized that Muslims are not Christians. To be sure, this is
not the way the students articulated it—but having expressed views about the essential identity of Muslim
and Christian beliefs, they then expressed surprise about such things as Islamic rejection of Jesus’ divinity
and so forth. We must recognize that which unites Muslims and non-Muslims, but we cannot fully
understand a community or ideology if we refuse to respect its distinctness: what makes it different, as well
as what makes it the same.

Islam and Christianity have not only different practices but different answers to some of the basic
questions—about life, about our role in the world, about values.

In some cases, the definitions offered by students talked about how the views of Islam impacted on the
student’s sense of identity. In some cases, the identity of the student was “projected” onto the identity of
Islam—in other words, Islam was seen through a prism molded by the identity of the viewer. We all do
this, of course, and we do this all the time; try as we might, we only see with our own eyes, not with anyone
else’s. Our goal in examining a subject, however, is to adjust the prisms we use to be fair, and to give us
the biggest and clearest picture.

I am not suggesting that students—or anyone else—can ever escape this conundrum; I am, however,
suggesting that one must be aware of it.

In the academy, one would expect neutral language in most contexts. It is important to remember that we
approach all issues, including religion, from our unique standpoints—shaped by our academic training, by
our values and indeed by our religion. In some contexts, it would be expected that self-reference be excluded
from the statements above beginning “I am a Christian.” Perhaps the first should be restated as “Islam
represents views rejected by Christianity” or “Islam represents views rejected by most Christians.” In other
words, the self-reference is replaced by a denominational reference. Thus: “The Qur’an is the uncreated,
eternal word of God” or “Jesus is truly God and truly Man” are statements of belief, and subject to a different
kind of discourse than saying that in general, Islam teaches the one and Christianity the other. Probably
even better is to note that “the position that became dominant in Islam is that the uncreated, eternal word
of God” or “The Council of Chalcedon (451) asserted—in response to teachings it considered heretical—
that Jesus is truly God and truly Man, which position became dominant in Western Christianity and Greek
Orthodoxy.” These are academic assessments, conclusions about a process. Use of neutral language may
lessen our awareness of various ways of expressing certain statements defining religions or key components
of religions—we may, for example, forget that a defining statement considered axiomatic today actually
resulted from a process. One more comment on this discourse: ultimately, Islam or Christianity are not
“actors:” “Islam asserts that…” is shorthand for “some (or most, or many) Muslims assert that…” Neutral
language is not always a given. For example, some theologians may take issue with limiting a fundamental
truth to a statement of belief or a hypothesis to be tested or the result of a process. For them, “Christianity
teaches that Jesus is Lord and Son of God” might be uncomfortable with portraying the Lordship
and Sonship of Jesus merely as a belief professed by Christians. Although religious neutrality and
awareness of the process of development are important, these often are at odds with at least some
understandings internal to these traditions.

2. Various approaches coming from Islamic websites or pronouncements.

Many “definitions” of Islam are very useful indicators of how Muslims answer the question “What is
Islam,” while not always useful for our discussion at this stage.

Others are useless as definitions—as useless (as definitions) as if they came from enemies of Islam only
interested in misrepresenting and trampling on the religion. They are responses to perceived sentiments
about Islam or about Muslims, and often take a small part of the religion and bring it to the forefront to
defend the honor of Islam.

In our times, among the most popular of these is that “Islam is the religion of Peace.” This is not a definition
one will find in classic Islamic sources. “Peace is a name of God” is found, to be sure. So is the notion
equating the Abode of Islam with the Abode of Peace, and the symbolic names of Dar es-Salm “House of
Peace” (capital of Tanzania) and Madînat Al-Salm “City of Peace”—the name given to Baghdad by the
‘Abbasid Caliph who built it.

One can talk about the role of peace in Islam and make it the major part of Islam, the major goal. But those
who read or hear such lectures or web sites should compare what one finds with classic formulations of the
answer within Islam. How does “World Peace” figure in the temporal sense? In Islam, Peace is a name of
God—but the religion is called Islam “submission” rather than Salām “peace.”

Similar statements are made about Islam as the religion of jihad “holy war.” The centrality of jihad to
Muslim sensibilities should be clear. Jihad means “struggle” and clearly includes concepts beyond that of
Holy War. Jihad is not only struggle of arms, but also struggle of the intellect. But just as clearly, much of
Islamic tradition supports war to bring new parts of the world into the abode of peace, i.e., what most non-
Muslims might call wars of Islamic expansionism. Moreover, the Islamic world today must be more
forthright in claiming—as Muslims must if Islam is “the religion of peace”—that groups which call
themselves by such names as “Islamic jihad” are neither Muslim nor do they practice the true jihad.

A third type of definition made by Muslims seeks to define Islam by how it fits into society, representing
not so much defensive posturing, but use of this issue to help redefine their place in the world. Definition
of a religion by its social role or social benefits is within the scope of the believing/ behaving/ belonging
structure, and has a long tradition in Islam, especially in Islamic philosophy.

3. Scholarly definitions

We can lump into this category a number of statements made both by Muslims and by non-Muslims, which
attempt to define Islam in academic and descriptive terms. Neutrality and analytic thinking are important,
as is the attempt to find justification in classic Islamic sources.

Definitions from within tradition: Study of a religion or ideology needs to address the definitions offered
within its own tradition. I do not think that those who speak for it today are necessarily the only arbiters or
even the best arbiters of what is authentic. This is true of Islam and it is true for Judaism or Christianity,
American nationalism or Democracy. Think for a moment of American nationalism. Adopting a definition
of what it means to be an American based on one modern sentiment—whether offered by George Bush,
Rush Limbaugh or Hillary Clinton—would probably be viewed by many of us as partisan and limited;
“Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” may be seen by many as corny and wrong, but most would
also agree that its symbolic power has been enduring.
In this I disagree somewhat with an important trend in the study of interfaith religious dialogue, one of the
“Dialogue Decalogue” points offered by Leonard Swidler. I agree strongly that the presentation of a religion
has to be recognizable to those who come from within the tradition, and I also agree that persons from
within the tradition must be trusted to say what they feel is important about it. But all too often, the
statements of contemporary believers have important contemporary contexts. They might be polemics
against perceived enemies outside the faith, or against a group within the faith with whom the speaker
disagrees. Or they might be “apologetics” designed more to strengthen the belief or practices of believers
or of one group of believers than to convey useful and meaningful analysis. Moreover, the definitions
coming from within the tradition often work differently from the ones coming from the academic world. A
Muslim might, for example, refer to Islam simply as din “religion” or iman “belief” and use the Arabic
termislam “surrender” to refer specifically to “acts of worship,” such as prayer and alms, often discussed
as the “five pillars.” The term in traditional Jewish sources that is most similar in meaning to “Judaism” is
probably Torah—meaning, in its broadest sense, all of the teachings and practices encompassed by that
tradition. (The modern term yahadut “Judaism” is not found in classical sources).

Definitions based on traditional texts that have stood the test of time may be best. They are not necessarily
meant to be definitions but they give us a sense as to what the tradition itself says about its most important
points. We see one such definition, not so much of “Islam” but of “Religion”—in the Hadith of Gabriel. It
is a highly detailed definition, with fully articulated lists of what at least two of the subsections of the
definition require. If you look through the Qur’an you will see a quite different definition reiterated
frequently. It is not inconsistent with the Hadith of Gabriel but it is not the same either.

4. So, What is Islam? and What do we learn from this discussion?

I need to end this with a working definition—one that addresses the categories mentioned in this lecture,
and one that might be useful as a model for presenting other religions and systems of ideas and values:

Islam is a set of ideas and approaches held in varying ways by over one billion people. It includes beliefs
and practices and ideas that Muslims associate with submission to the One God, faith in God, and
commitment to human accountability. Islam encompasses a sense of shared scriptures, customs, history,
and fate among those who identify as Muslims. It is reflected in the “five pillars” and “six beliefs.” Muslims
hold the Qur’an to be God’s Eternal word and Muhammad to be the Seal of the Prophets, whose practice is
guidance alongside God’s word. Islam sees two processes motivating world history: (1) God guides
individual humans towards promoting good and avoiding evil, earning Paradise on the Day of Judgment.
(2) There is the related process, in the political and social sphere, of creating and expanding the promotion
of good and avoidance of evil, in which Divine revelation and not human foibles guide political institutions
and social mores within Dar al-Islam.

What we learn from the discussion of Islamic definitions is the great need to be aware of the biases we
bring to reading any text, and the biases that the authors of that text bring to presenting their materials. We
learn to consider worldview, ethical and ritual practices, and group consciousness. And we should also learn
that this is a question which is discussed by Muslims and non-Muslims, a question which has answers
offered up by Islamic tradition, but also many and very varied answers offered by many individuals and in
different contexts.

My essay on teaching religion uses Islam as an example. The ideas were meant to apply to teaching
about Judaism and Christianity, or to teaching about Moses Jesus and Muhammad. Any comments are
welcome.
Seth Ward

Religious Studies

University of Wyoming