Despite loosing their European foothold, the Muslims were still in 1492 the greatest global power and about 1/3 the population. 3 divisions. 3 styles of Islam:

1. The Ottoman empire extended from Africa to Asia Minor. Were Sunni. Had also been forced from Europe. Suleiman had extended Ottoman control as far as Hungary and was stopped in Vienna in 1529.

2. The Safavid empire centred in Iran. Adopted Shiism.

3. The Mogul empire centred in India. Practiced Falsafah, a more tolerant, universalist rationalist tradition.

All 3 were early modern with centralized bureaucratic government. All three had great art and architecture. They were neither radical, nor revolutionary. They epitomized the conservative spirit, and were the last great expression of that perspective. To understand the present we need to explore this pinnacle of conservative society and achievement.

Modern times have invented a capitalist and technical society with constant surplus and reinvestment. With steady innovation and always looking forward, always asking, always questing.

But society til then, had been based on an agrarian economy with natural limits of production. The only source of wealth was re-distribution of a limited surplus. The rich were rich at the expense of the poor. Expansion had limits. Society could not easily afford change and innovation was not encouraged. Society was considered to have declined from a Golden Age, or a Primordial Perfection.

Civilization was precarious and known to decline to chaos. Stability was a paramount goal. The Mongol invasions of the 13^th century were still remembered with horror. After the great destruction of the Mongols, Muslim society had to rebuild. The Sufi mystics led a spiritual revival as healing as Lurianic Kabbalah. People concentrated on slowly rebuilding what was lost rather than striking out for something new.

For example, the Sunnis agreed that “the gates of “ijtihad” (independent reasoning) were closed and there was no further need for new ideas. The Shariah was a sufficient blueprint for society. Individuals should submit. Innovation was tantamount to heresy.

These two perspectives are about as opposite as it is possible to attain. Neither understands the other. So the Christian West and the Muslim East face each other. People of a conservative spirituality find it difficult to accept the forward-looking dynamic of the modern spirit. And moderns find it difficult to appreciate the role of mythology in society.

Muslims today are concerned about the secularism that separates religion and politics. They desire governance under the Shariah. Of course both these concerns are mirror opposite for people raised in the modern spirit.

Shariah law was the great achievement of the Ottomans. It was a balancing of authority and leadership in society that managed well for its time, the practice of politics and the ideal of the Koran. Islam requires jihad (struggle) towards a just and charitable society, on all fronts: spiritual, political, social, personal, military, and economic. This embodies the idea of tawhid or unification. (no separation of church and state here – though this has changed back and forth over time). The sultan's authority was mediated through the ulema (the religious scholars).

Christian religion is based on orthodox belief. Jewish and Muslim religion is based on orthodox practice. For a Muslim the 5 “Arcan” (pillars) of practice are:

1. Shehadah – a declaration of faith in God and the prophet Muhammed.

2. Salah - Daily Prayer – 5 times.

3. Zakat – the communal tax (tithe) for fair wealth distribution.

4. Sawm – Ramadan, month of fasting from sunrise to sunset, to remind one of the poor.

5. Hajj – pilgrimage to Mecca.

Muhammed Islamized the Arabian custom and religion. For example the Kabah was ancient in Mohammed's day. Muslim tradition has it that Adam (the first “prophet”) built it and Abraham and Ishmael restored it. For a week each year about 2 million people visit Mecca and in circling about the Kabah as the sun and planets do the earth, they have a powerful experience of their proper place in community, and of the mythos of their faith. Their experience grounds them. It is so “fundamental”, there is nothing deeper. As the Koran says, there is no new truth, only an ancient truth to be revealed. It is the prophets that have revealed God and told us to submit to God. (“Islam” is submission. “Muslim” is one who submits.) Muhammed was the prophet given to the Arab peoples.

Over the years the person of Muhammed became more than the historical person. He had performed the perfect “Islam” or submission to God and had this made him into the perfect exemplar. Hadith are the collections of his teachings and behaviours. Sunnah is the official record of Hadith. In the conservative tradition behaviour was modeled on past perfection.

Europeans were also ruled by conservative ethos until replaced by future-oriented rationalism. In neither case was society static however. Society opens to radical change and revolution especially during times of disaster.

In Islam, some of this change was esoteric, or secret from the general public and their Shariah piety. 3 forms which will be discussed later in detail:

• Sufism – whose mystics felt they re-experienced Muhammed's ecstatic revelations,

• Falsafah – those who applied to Islam the timeless truths of Greek philosophy,

• Shiah – those whose passion was for the social justice of the Koran.

Egypt and Iran are the two countries of focus of Islamic development. We know little of Egypt before the Ottoman empire subdued the Mamluks there in 1517. The Egyptian people's acceptance of foreign rule depended on the ulema – the Islamic teachers and scholars – and so the ulema became very powerful. They controlled the schools and the courts.

By the late 18^th century, the superb efficiency of the Ottomans had given way to incompetence just when European military power had become paramount. Their attempts to copy the west were inadequate, because they educated and provided for an elite, never understanding that European development had depended upon the change of an entire population and this over 300 years, not a generation.

Reaction was of course religious in nature. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab was an aggressive reformer who felt the society of his time to be apostate in every way and that only a return to the 7^th century Sunnah could solve the crisis. The 20^th century would see these ideas develop into the Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia and much of the Muslim world today.

In Morocco, Sufi reformer Ahmad ibn Idris believed education not force was the answer and founded a grass roots movement to teach the people. This populist theme bypassed the ulema, and returned to simple basics. A neo-Sufi reform followed which went further saying people had no need of clerical authority at all and like the prophet could discover the will of God for their lives by themselves. Again the perfect model for present difficulty was to be found in the past.

Iran has a better historical record than Egypt at this time. When the Safavids conquered Iran in the 16^th century, they made Shiism the state religion. Where Sunni Islam is rather optimistic, as it modeled upon Muhammed's life, Shii vision was more tragic, as it modeled upon the lives of his descendants. To understand their perspective where the wicked always seemed to have the upper hand in the struggles between good and evil, we need to look at Shii history. This is especially necessary for understanding the Khomeini revolution of 1978.

Muhammed died in 632 without providing for his succession. The ummah elected his friend Abu Bakr to the caliphate. Others felt the prophet's son-in-law Ali (he had only one daughter Fatima), should have been the caliph. He was in fact elected as the 4^th caliph, though Shiis regard him as the first Imam (Leader). He was assassinated in 661. Muawiyyah seized power founding the Umayyad dynasty of Damascus. Ali's first son Hasan is regarded by the Shii as the second Imam. Ali's second son Husain was promoted by the people to be 3^rd Imam, but Yazid, the new Umayyad caliph, tried to kill Husain. Husain decided to stand up to this threat, and set out with his family and 50 followers to meet Yazid. He believed this defiance would persuade the ummah of his just cause against a corrupt ruler. But on the plain of Kerbala, Yazid's troops murdered Husain and his party. This tragedy became a principle myth in Shii belief and practice. Yazid became the emblem of tyranny and injustice. Shiis mourn Husain every year on the anniversary of this slaughter. They parade, and weep in major spectacle. This cult keeps alive a passionate yearning for social justice at the core of Shii vision, and attention to the ceaseless struggle between good and evil.

The Umayyads ended in 750. And Shiah-i-Ali (the party of Ali) took charge. There was an infusion of Christian and Zoroastrian ideas into Shii Islam at this time also. The Shiah developed a lofty ideal that was unsuitable for politics, and their control of the caliphate turned typically tyranical. A solution to this turn of events came with the insight of the 6^th Imam Jafar as-Sadiq. He declared as the prophet's descendant, that his role was to be the spiritual leader and scripture the source of new insight. He separated religion from politics.

Nevertheless the Caliphs felt they could not tolerate the Imams. In 848 the Imam was put into isolated house arrest. When the 11^th Imam died, there was no news about succession. It was believed that a son had gone into hiding to save his life. This “hidden Imam” gave advice and judgment through an agent. However when enough time had passed that this hidden 12^th Imam should have died, speculation began again. In 934 the current agent, Ali ibn Muhammad as-Samarri brought the message that the Imam had not died but had been concealed by God to return before the Last Judgment and begin a Reign of Justice. There would be no more direct contact. This is called the “Occultation of the Hidden Imam”.

Of course this has no rational explanation, but makes great sense mythologically. People did not interpret religion literally then. This expresses a sense of the sacred as elusive and absent – divine discontent. This Occultation completed the separation of religion and politics. Practically, all the Imams had been killed or eliminated by the caliphs. Governments were to be tolerated. Authority rested with the ulema because of their learning, their spirituality and mastery of the divine law of the Koran.

A most important difference between the Shii and the Sunni became that while the Sunni held that the gates of ijtihad were closed, and nothing new was possible, the Shii ulema had necessarily become the interpreters of the law in the absence of the Imam, and consequently open to change.

During the 16^th century the Shii and the Sunni were as much in opposition as the Catholics and Protestants of Europe, though later they became more civil.

When the Safavids made Shiah the state religion, the ulema found themselves not quite as aloof from government, and took over the educational and legal systems of Iran. The Shahs made the ulema financially independent and this strengthened their voice and their power. But power corrupts. Muhammad Baqir Majlisi rejected and persecuted mysticism and philosophy to such a degree, that even today Iranians mistrust these. He shifted Shiah focus to fiqh (jurisprudence). He also shifted the reverence of Husain from example to patron. Rather than Husain's death reminding the masses about justice, they were brought to see lamenting his death as a required spiritual devotion. So politics destroys religion.

Majlisi was not entirely able to suppress the earlier Shiah mystical tradition. 2 Sufi philosophers, Mir Dimad and Mulla Sadra criticized the ulema for these changes. Sadra's work would later have great influence. Their mystical school of Isfahan “insisted that truth was not simply that which was logically, publicly and legally perceived, but had an interior dimension that could not be apprehended by our normal waking consciousness.”

While exiled from Isfahan to near Qum for 10 years, Sadra began serious explorations of the mysteries and wrote a seminal book “The Four Journeys of the Soul”. He wrote that,

1. One must first journey from humanity to God.

2. When one encounters God one is transformed and given new insight.

3. One then travels back to humanity and sees everything differently.

4. Lastly one must find ways of realizing divine law in society.

This vision fused again the politics and spirituality that had been earlier separated. This would have a profound influence later in our own time. Mullah Sadra believed that all Shiis could work out their spirituality for themselves through the prayer and ritual, without the need for official direction.

Iran entered into a time of chaos and decline at the end of the 17^th century until the 20^th. During this time the ulema retreated to Iraq to the holy cities of Najaf (shrine of Ali) and Kerbala (shrine of Husain). But this retreat strengthened them. They became an alternative establishment at a safe distance.

But Europe was growing in strength and was looking east. The British were in India. Napoleon landed in Egypt with troops and scholars. Secular culture had invaded the Muslim world and things would never be the same.