10

Heretics and Heterodoxy, Atheism and Freethought, Reason and Revelation

Throughout the history of Islam there have been a number of, what Robertson calls, “rationalizing heresies.” While Islam has shown a remarkable tolerance for these divergent unorthodox opinions—as Goldziher says, “Mutual tolerance coined the hadith formula, traced back to the Prophet: ‘Difference of opinion within my community is a (sign of divine) mercy’; thus all four schools of jurisprudence in Sunni Islam are considered equally valid and orthodox”—it has nonetheless also shown itself to be totally intolerant of unbelief, the penalty for which is death, and of all those it considers extremists among the Shi’ites, Kharijites, Murji’ites, Mu‘tazilites, and even the Sunnis, those, that is, who deny some of the fundamental tenets of orthodox doctrine such as prophecy, and indulge in outrageous fantasies of reincarnation and metempsychosis. In particular anyone who denied the unity of God and cast doubt on the prophethood of Muhammad and the divine origin of the Koran was considered beyond the Muslim pale.

As we shall see, persecutions of heresies and heretics are more common than the modern apologists of Islam are willing to allow.

Under the influence of Greek philosophy, rationalism—the trust and respect for human reason as a means for arriving at truth and as a guide to the way of living—flourished in certain groups and certain courageous individuals. Philosophers and theologians of a rationalistic tendency, and individual skeptics such as al-Ma’arri, often challenged some of the basic assumptions of the orthodox, but in the end orthodox Islam emerged victorious from the encounter with Greek philosophy. Islam rejected the idea that one could attain truth with unaided human reason and settled for the unreflective comforts of the putatively superior truth of divine revelation. Wherever one decides to place the date of this victory of orthodox Islam (perhaps in the ninth century with the conversion of al-Ashari, or in the eleventh century with the works of al-Ghazali), it has been, I believe, an unmitigated disaster for all Muslims, indeed all mankind, a disaster whose full consequences we are now witnessing in the barbarism of “resurgent Islam” in Algeria, Iran, the Sudan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. The consequences of this disaster are also evident in the fact that Islam, in particular political Islam, has totally failed to cope with the modern world and all its attendant problems—social, economic, and philosophical.

Early Years

We know from the Koran itself that there were Arab skeptics in Mecca who did not accept the “fables” recounted by Muhammad—they scoffed at the notion of the resurrection of the body, they doubted the divine origins of his “revelation” and even accused him of plagiarizing the pagan Arab poets. Even now certain verses of the Koran are attributed to the pre-Islamic poet, al-Qays. As Robertson suggests, it is thanks to these Meccan freethinkers that we have so few miracles attributed to Muhammad in the early days of Islam; for these opponents of Muhammad disbelieved in a future life and miracles, and they put to Muhammad challenges that “showed they rationally disbelieved his claim to inspiration. Hence, clearly, the scarcity of miracles in [Muhammad’s] early legend, on the Arab side.” But, as Robertson concludes, “On a people thus partly ‘refined, skeptical, incredulous, ’ whose poetry showed no trace of religion, the triumph of Islam gradually imposed a tyrannous dogma, entailing abundance of primitive superstition under the aegis of monotheistic doctrine.”

Pagan Arabs lacked any deep religious sense; they were not inclined to thank superior powers for their worldly successes. Thus it is not surprising that these pagan attitudes prevailed in the early years of Islam. Arabs converted out of cupidity and hope of booty and success in this world. Thus many outwardly confessed their belief but in fact had no inclination toward Islam and its dogma and ritual. Sprenger estimates that at the death of Muhammad the number who really converted to Muhammad’s doctrine did not exceed a thousand. If things went wrong, the Bedouins were ready to drop Islam as quickly as they had adopted it. The fact that Islam restricted wine drinking and sexual intercourse, “the two delicious things,” did not endear Muhammad to them, either.

The Arabs also resisted the institution of Muslim prayers and ridiculed the movements of the body connected with them. As Goldziher says,

there are countless stories, unmistakably taken from true life, which describe the indifference of the desert Arabs to prayer, their ignorance of the elements of Muslim rites and even their indifference toward the sacred book of God itself and their ignorance of its most important parts. The Arabs always preferred to hear the songs of the heroes of paganism rather than holy utterances of the Koran. It is related that Ubayda b. Hilal, one of the chiefs of the Khawarij, used to ask his men, while they were resting from battle, to come to his tent. Once two warriors came. “What would you prefer,” he asked them, “that I should read to you from the Koran, or that I should recite poems to you?” They replied: “We know the Koran as well as we know you; let us hear poems.” “You godless men,” said Ubayda, “I knew that you would prefer poems to the Koran.”

We have already noted the lack of interest in religion manifested by the early “heroes of Islam,” such as Khalid b. al-Walid, Othman b. Talha and Amr b. al-As. We might here quote a Muslim leader of the early days who is reputed to have said: “If there were a God, I would swear by his name that I did not believe in him.”

The Umayyads (661-750)

The Umayyads have always been considered “godless” by their opponents. The ignorance of Islamic doctrine and ritual continued well into the first Islamic century; indeed, Islam cannot properly be said to have existed in the sense of a fixed set of dogmas until later. We can get a glimpse of the kind of atmosphere that the caliph al-Walid II (ruled 743) grew up in by the verses that he addressed to the Koran, referring to the threats made by the Koran against the stubborn opponents (sura 14.8, 9): “You hurl threats against the stubborn opponent, well then, I am a stubborn opponent myself. When you appear before God at the day of resurrection just say: My Lord, al-Walid has torn me up.”⁴⁹⁰

Walid II is said to have stuck the Koran onto a lance and shot it to pieces with arrows while repeating the preceding verses. Walid II certainly did not abide by the interdictions of the Koran. An intensively cultivated man, he surrounded himself with poets, dancing girls, and musicians and lived a merry life of the libertine, with no interest in religion. The Umayyads were not holy minded or given to piety, yet they still believed that they were serving Islam. But their form of government failed to satisfy the pious who dreamed of a theocratic state.

The Abbasids (In Iraq and Baghdad, 749-1258)

The Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads, “because of their godlessness and opposition to religion.” The conquerers were more rigorous in applying the principles of Islam, but, in doing so, were far more intolerant toward the practice of other religions, and this, as Goldziher remarks, “marks a morally retrogressive step in comparison with the Umayyads.”⁴⁹¹ The Abbasids set about establishing a theocratic state with an ecclesiastical policy, that is, they claimed that ultimate sovereignty belonged to God, but that they were God’s representatives on earth or, as they put it, “God’s shadow on earth,” administering God’s law. In the eyes of the pious, the Abbasids already had legitimacy since they were descended from the Prophet’s uncle al-Abbas.

The Kharijites

The Kharijites may be considered the earliest of the religious sects of Islam and are important for their development of the theory of the caliphate, and their view that works were an integral element in the definition of faith. They are often called the puritans of Islam, as they demanded purity of conscience as an indispensable complement to purity of body for the validity of acts of worship. They were certainly extremists who were ready to brand everyone who did not accept their point of view as unbelievers and outside the law. Their extreme fanaticism became evident as they carried out terrorist actions, murdering even women and children. The Kharijites denied the claims of Ali to the caliphate on the murder of the third Caliph, Uthman in 655; they equally condemned Uthman’s behavior before his murder, which they had no intention of avenging.

Slowly but surely, various fanatical elements rallied to their cause, and Ali was forced to take steps against them. Ali was able to inflict a heavy defeat on the Kharijites at the battle of Nahrawan in 658, when many of the Kharijites were killed. A series of local risings broke out during the following two years, and three years after the battle of Nahrawan, Ali himself was assassinated by a Kharijite (661). Under Mu’awiya, the next caliph and the first of the Umayyad dynasty, there were still a number of Kharijite risings, but they were ruthlessly suppressed, and many of the rebels died. These risings continued into the beginning of the eighth century.

A ferocious subsect of the Kharijites was known as the Azraqites, who held all followers of other doctrines to be infidels and rejected all institutions not laid down in the Koran. They also insisted that all who had committed a grave sin were destined for hell, as this was stated in the Koran. These grave sinners were considered apostates who had to be killed along with their wives and children; for this reason the Azraqites were responsible for numerous appalling massacres. Here we have, as Della Vida says, the principle of religious murder.⁴⁹²

In contrast to their intolerance of other Muslims, the Kharijites were very tolerant of non-Muslims, sometimes even recognizing them as equals to Muslims.

As Goldziher points out, before their beliefs took the form of a fixed, positive system the Kharijite theologians showed rationalist tendencies, and in this they influenced the later rationalist Mu‘tazilites. One of their groups even impugned the reliability of the Koranic text: they held that sura 12, sura Joseph, did not belong in the Koran as its “contents were worldly and frivolous,” an erotic tale with nothing sacred about it, and hence unworthy to be the word of God.

Another Kharijite theologian, Yazid b. Abi Anisa, put forward another idea that was certainly unorthodox. He said that God would reveal a new Koran to a prophet among the Persians and that he would found a new religion for them, a religion divine in the same sense as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This clearly goes against the orthodox doctrine of Islam being the final revelation, and Muhammad being the seal of the Prophets.

Thus Kharijites played an important part in the development of Muslim theology by making the Muslims reflect on their faith in a rational manner.

The Qadarites

According to the scholar Hubert Grimme, the prophet Muhammad’s predestinarian position hardened toward the end of his life, and the “earliest conscious Muslim attitude on the subject seems to have been of an uncompromising fatalism.”⁴⁹³ This tyrannical view of man’s helplessness began to be questioned toward the end of the seventh century, not by freethinkers, but by pious Muslims, influenced by the Christian theological environment. The upholders of the doctrine of free will came to be known as the Qadarites, since they restricted the fixing of fate, qadar; and their opponents as the Jabriya, the people of blind compulsion (jabr).

As Goldziher says,⁴⁹⁴ the Qadarite movement is important for the history of Islam as it was “the first step toward liberation from the dominance of traditional notions.” There are a vast number of hadiths (traditions) denigrating the Qadarites, thus showing that their views met with little sympathy. The Umayyads, in particular, had political reasons for fearing the disruptive effects of the Qadarite doctrine. The Umayyads, as we saw earlier, were considered godless and illegitimate rulers. The belief in predestination was exactly suited to curb the masses who might riot against their rule. It was God’s eternal decree that the Umayyads must rule; all that they do is preordained by God and hence inevitable. The rule of the Umayyads was nothing other than the will of God.

As noted, the Qadarites are important for having taken the first step toward the undermining of simple Islamic orthodoxy.

The Mu‘tazilites and Rationalism

There was a great deal of excitement in nineteenth-century liberal circles in Europe when, in 1865, Heinrich Steiner of Zurich in a study devoted to their ideas of the Mu‘tazilites spoke of them as the “freethinkers of Islam.” Robertson, writing in 1906, still speaks of them as “freethinkers.” However it is clear now that the Mu‘tazilites were first and foremost Muslims, living in the circle of Islamic ideas, and were motivated by religious concerns. There was no sign of absolute liberated thinking, or a desire, as Goldziher puts it, “to throw off chafing shackles, to the detriment of the rigorously orthodox view of life.”

Furthermore, far from being “liberal,” they turned out to be exceedingly intolerant, and were involved in the Mihna, the Muslim Inquisition under the Abbasids.

However, the Mu‘tazilites are important for having introduced Greek philosophical ideas into the discussion of Islamic dogmas. This, in turn, brought with it skepticism, rationalism, and liberating doubt, which could only lead to opposition to current orthodoxy. They were, as Goldziher reminds us,⁴⁹⁵ “the first to expand the sources of religious cognition in Islam so as to include a valuable but previously—in such connection—rigorously avoided element: reason (‘aql).” Some of them even said “the first, necessary condition of knowledge is doubt,” and others “fifty doubts are better than one certainty.” For them, there was a sixth sense besides the usual five, namely, aql, reason.

They raised reason to a touchstone in matters of belief. One of their early representatives, Bishr ibn al-Mu’tamir of Baghdad, wrote a veritable paean to reason, as part of a didactic poem of natural history:

“How excellent is reason as a pilot and companion in good fortune and evil,

As a judge who can pass judgment over the invisible as if he saw it with his own eyes.

... one of its actions is that it distinguishes good and evil,

Through a possessor of powers whom God has singled out with utter sanctification and purity.”

The Mu‘tazilites ruthlessly criticized popular superstitions, especially the mythological elements of eschatology, which they no longer considered a part of Muslim belief. They gave an allegorical explanation of the bridge Sirat (see page 47 for a description of the bridge) that one had to cross to get to the next world. They excised the balance or scales in which the acts of man are weighed and eliminated many other childish fantasies.

The main speculative concerns of the Mu‘tazilites were divine justice and unity, but their philosophy is usually summed up in five principles. The first principle entailed the strictest monotheism and the denial of all resemblance between God and his creatures. The divine attributes are recognized but are seen as being identical with the divine being rather than something added to it. Although the Koran talks of the hand and eyes, etc., of God, these anthropomorphisms are interpreted in an allegorical way. In addition, the first principle involves the denial of the Beatific Vision, the affirmation of a personal God and creator, and the affirmation of the revelation of the Prophet.

The second principle was that God is just. He is not responsible for man’s evil deeds, because all human actions result from man’s free will.

The third principle concerns “practical theology” and discusses problems of belief and unbelief. Sins are divided into grave and petty classes. Belief consists in avoiding grave sins, that is, acts regarding which God has laid down a threat, etc.

The fourth principle concerns the problems of theocracy and the question of whether a Muslim who had committed a grave sin could still be regarded as a Muslim. Wasil, one of the traditional founders of the Mu‘tazilites, replied that the grave sinner must be placed in an intermediary position between infidelity and faith.

The fifth principle involves the injunction of right and the prohibition of wrong, or as Nyberg puts it, “the faith must be spread by the tongue, the hand, and the sword.”⁴⁹⁶

It is precisely in the discussions of the righteousness or justice of God that the Mu‘tazilites’ rationalism comes to the fore.

They are not explicitly regarding Reason as a source of religious truth, but they are assuming the complete validity of their human, rational ideas of justice when applied to God and the complete ability of their finite minds to apprehend eternal Being. When they held that no evil or injustice might be ascribed to God they were thinking of Him as a superior kind of magistrate or administrator. The punishment of evildoers is certainly just, but only where the wrong is the man’s own doing. Thus ideas of sublunary justice led them to deny God’s supreme control of human affairs.

Thus the doctrine of man’s self-determination leads to the rejection of the notion of God’s arbitrary rule; divine omnipotence is limited by the requirements of justice. Particularly in the works of al-Nazzam, one of the more rationalist Mu‘tazilites, we find that reason reigns supreme in the universe: “He attributed to his rational ideas of value such absoluteness that God Himself must bow before them. God must do what is best for men; God must not assign men to Paradise or Hell except in accordance with just principles.”⁴⁹⁷

One of al-Nazzam’s pupils, Ahmed b. Habit, went way beyond his master’s teachings practically into unbelief, as far as the orthodox were concerned. Ibn Habit taught metempsychosis, the divine nature of the Messiah, criticized the prophet Muhammad for his many wives, and found others more virtuous than Muhammad.

The notion that God “must” do something is close enough to blasphemy for most of the orthodox. The Mu‘tazilite insistence on freewill leads to their humanist belief that man’s ultimate destiny depends on himself.

The Mu‘tazilites further limited the arbitrary power of God by their “law of compensation,” whereby those, including animals, who have unjustly suffered on earth must be compensated in the next world. As Goldziher says, the Mu‘tazilites, in the end, “set a free man over against a relatively unfree God.”⁴⁹⁸

What is good and evil? The orthodox had replied: good is what God commands, and evil what He forbids. But the Mu’tazilites believe in the autonomy of ethics and, in arguments reminiscent of Socrates, hold the view that there “is absolute good and absolute evil, and reason is the instrument for ethical value judgments. Reason is the primus, not the divine will. A thing is good not because God has commanded it, but God has commanded it because it is good.” But is this not, asks Goldziher, “tantamount to saying... that God, in decreeing His laws, is bound by the categorical imperative?”⁴⁹⁹

Other aspects of their rationalism may be seen in the way the Mu‘tazilites looked critically at the Koran. Devoutness and the inability to silence the inner voice of reason made many of them doubt the authenticity of certain verses where the Prophet utters curses against his enemies such as Abu Lahab. They also believed, and this was but a logical outcome of their denying eternal qualities to God, that the Koran was created and not eternal, while the traditionists clung to its uncreatedness and eternity. How, asked the Mu‘tazilites, could the words that God had used to address Moses have been eternal and uncreated when Moses was but a creature of time? For the orthodox the Mu‘tazilite view spelled disaster:

If the Koran were allowed to be created, the danger was great that it might next be alleged by those steeped in Neoplatonist thought that God’s Word as revealed to Mohammed through the mediation of the archangel Gabriel shared with all created things the imperfection arising from their association with matter. The “incomparable miracle” of the Koran must be maintained at all costs, if Revelation was not to capitulate to Reason in its very stronghold.⁵⁰⁰

Their critical rationalism led the Mu’tazilites to doubt the inimitability of the literary style of the Koran. They asserted “that there is nothing miraculous in that book [the Koran] in respect to style or composition, ... and that had God left men to their natural liberty, and not restrained them in that particular, the Arabians could have composed something not only equal, but superior to the Koran in eloquence, method, and purity of language.”⁵⁰¹

They also questioned the authenticity of the hadith, where so many of the popular beliefs they were fighting were to be found. They fiercely battled against all forms of anthropomorphism. Finally, to the question, “What is the basis for man’s obligation to know God?” the Mu‘tazilites answered, “Reason.”

THE MIHNA OR THE MUSLIM INQUISITION (A.D. 827-)

The Abbasid Caliph al-Ma‘mun took up the Mu‘tazilite cause and proclaimed the thesis of the creation of the Koran official state dogma throughout the empire. Chief officials in every province had to publicly profess the dogma that the Koran was created. The caliph himself “tested” the leading theological authorities of Baghdad. The governor of Baghdad was enjoined to test all the religious judges under his jurisdiction, who in turn had to test all witnesses and assistants in the matters of law.

One of the most famous officials who refused to assent to the createdness of the Koran was Ahmad b. Hanbal, who was imprisoned for two years, during which period he seems to have been scourged. Hanbal was released because he was popular, and officials feared an uprising.

Al-Ma‘mun’s brother and successor al-Mutasim does not seem to have pursued the Mihna with much conviction or rigor. However his son al-Wathik continued the policy of al-Ma‘mun. Al-Wathik personally tried to behead one theologian who refused to follow the official doctrine. The calilph did not succeed and eventually had to have professional aid to finish the job. Several other prominent men died in prison, many were tortured and harrassed. Under al-Mutawakkil (reigned 847- 861) the Mihna was stopped, and the caliph even forbade the profession of the creation of the Koran on pain of death. Under al-Mutawakkil, who was also an “unappealing bigot,” the persecuted became the persecutors. The Mihna obviously caused irreparable damage to the cause of the Mu’tazilites.

THE INTOLERANCE OF THE MU‘TAZILITES

Goldziher was the first to point out the intolerance of the Mu‘tazilites and would have nothing of the fantasies of those scholars who hypothesized that the success of the Mu‘tazilites would have been salutary to the evolution of Islam. As Goldziher shows many of the Mu‘tazilites were ready to assassinate those who rejected their doctrines and advocated the jihad in all regions in which their dogma did not have the ascendancy. Indeed concludes, Goldziher, “It was truly a piece of good fortune for Islam that state patronage of this mentality was limited to the time of those three caliphs. How far would the Mu‘tazilites have gone if the instruments and power of the state had been longer at the disposal of their intellectual faith!”⁵⁰²

However, pace Goldziher, I am convinced that had the place they had given to reason in their theology been respected by subsequent theologians, then surely Islam would have developed in a different and more salutary direction. It is significant that Gibb, who has a horror of atheism and human reason when it is placed above the word of God, felt that

it was probably to the good of Islam that Mu‘tazilite rationalism [my emphasis] having done its work but not known where to stop, was defeated. Had it been successful, it is doubtful whether the popular movement out of which... the regeneration of Islam was to come, could possibly have been tolerated, much less accommodated, within the framework of orthodoxy. Sooner or later the unity of Islamic culture would have suffered violent disruption and Islam itself might have succumbed under the blows of its enemies.⁵⁰³

The modern scholars Kraus and Gabrieli have pointed out that the “European Enlightenment” style of rationalism of the great Ibn al-Rawandi (to be discussed later) was but “the development taken to their logical conclusion, of certain Mu‘tazilite positions (e.g., on the miracles of the Prophet and the related tradition), and above all the place they had made for reason and rationality in their theology and theodicy.”⁵⁰⁴

Eighteenth-century rationalism is something that Islam badly needs, and it is significant that those modern Arab philosophers who are keen to inaugurate an enlightenment in Islam (e.g., Fouad Zakariya) often refer to the Mu‘tazilites with affection, and wonder what they have missed. Gibb abhors the idea of a rationalist victory because of its consequences; I welcome it for the same reasons.

THE DEFEAT OF THE MU‘TAZILITES

It would be a gross simplification to say that with the defeat of the rationalizing Mu‘tazilites, reason was abandoned, and total irrationality reigned. On the contrary, al-Ashari (d. 935), who is traditionally seen as the theologian who gave the death blow to Mu‘tazilism, was, in the words of Wensinck, “infected by its essence,” i.e., rationalism. His position may justifiably be described as the support of revelation by reason, but this does imply a subordination of reason. Al-Ashari taught that there had to be a return to the Koran and sunna, which must be understood in their literal sense, without asking questions. He has nothing but contempt for the rationalists who “seek figurative explanations for the concrete terms of the holy scriptures.” Some of the disastrous consequences of al-Ashari’s victory were noted by Goldziher: “By his far reaching concessions to popular belief, al-Ashari caused the loss to the Muslims of important Mu‘tazilite achievements. His position left intact the belief in magic and witchcraft, not to speak of the miracles of saints. The Mu‘tazilites had done away with all these.”⁵⁰⁵

In contrast to al-Ashari himself, the Asharite school “followed in several particulars the Mu‘tazilite road.” For example, the Asharite school believed—and this belief was to greatly perturb the conservative theologians—that knowledge supported only by traditional sources was uncertain, only rational proof gave certain knowledge. The Asharites fell between two schools and were despised by the Mu’tazilites and philosophers, on the one hand, and the traditionists on the other. The traditionists had no time for scholastic theology, which, for them, was no different from Aristotelian philosophy—both led to unbelief. The traditionist view ultimately prevailed in Islam, and it consisted in refusing to bend to reason. For the traditionists, reason was not required for religious understanding. Religious truth lay in the Koran and the sunna, both of which had to be accepted without question and doubts. Such an attitude can only lead to a rigid conservatism, and the disastrous consequence has been the inability of the ulama to adapt jurisprudence and theology to the needs of the second half of the twentieth century. In the words of R. A. Nicholson, “About the middle of the tenth century the reactionary spirit assumed a dogmatic shape in the system of Abu ‘I-Hasan al-Ashari, the father of Muhammadan Scholasticism, which is essentially opposed to intellectual freedom and has maintained its petrifying influence almost unimpaired down to the present time.”⁵⁰⁶

Manes (or Manl) (AD. 216-276) and Manichaeism

Since we shall be constantly referring to Manichaeism throughout the remainder of this chapter, in our dicussion of heresy, a brief look at its tenets and history would seem to be appropriate.

Mani, the founder of the religion, was born in Southern Babylonia in about A.D. 216. He was said to be of Persian descent and related to the royal house of Parthia. Mani began teaching in about A.D. 240, but was forced to leave for India by the opposition of the Zoroastrian priests. On his return, two years later, he began teaching again. He was welcomed by Shapur I, for whom Mani wrote a book. The royal patronage lasted for thirty years, but eventually the Zoroastrian priests had him impeached and condemned, and Mani was put to death by being flayed alive.

The main characteristic of Mani’s system, which was an offshoot of the Gnostic traditions of Persia, was a dualism which rejected “any possibility of tracing the origins of good and evil to one and the same source.”⁵⁰⁷ There existed a primeval battle between God and matter, light and darkness, truth and error. The world, including man, was a mixture of good and evil, and the purpose of religion was to separate the two principles and render evil harmless.

To achieve this separation, severe asceticism was practiced, including vegetarianism. “Within the sect there was hierarchy of grades professing different standards of austerity: the Elect were supported by the ‘Hearers’ in their determined missionary endeavors and in an otherworldly state of perfection.”⁵⁰⁸

Mani derived his system from a variety of sources, Christian, Buddhist, and Zoroastrian. Manichaeism spread rapidly, and for a time seriously rivaled Christianity. In North Africa, St. Augustine was briefly one of its adherents.

Zindiqs and Zandaqa—From Dualism to Atheism

In Islam, the term “zindiq” was at first applied to those who secretly held dualist doctrines derived from Iranian religions, such as Manichaeism, while publicly professing Islam. Thus a zindiq was a heretic, guilty of zandaqa, heresy. The term was later extended to mean anyone holding unorthodox or suspect beliefs likely to perturb the social order. Finally, zindiq came to be applied to all kinds of freethinkers, atheists, and materialists. Goldziher admirably sums up the different elements that make up what we call the zindiqs:

Firstly, there are the old Persian families incorporated in Islam who, following the same path as the Shu’ubites, have a national interest in the revival of Persian religious ideas and traditions, and from this point of view react against the Arabian character of the Muhammadan system. Then, on the other hand, there are freethinkers, who oppose in particular the stubborn dogma of Islam, reject positive religion, and acknowledge only the moral law. Amongst the latter there is developed a monkish asceticism extraneous to Islam and ultimately traceable to Buddhistic influences.”⁵⁰⁹

DJAD IBN DIRHAM (executed ca. 742)

The first person to be executed on a charge of heresy, zandaqa, was Djad Ibn Dirham, on the orders of the Umayyad caliph Hisham, in 742 or 743. There is no indication that Djad was a dualist; rather he was probably put to death for holding views that were later associated with the Mu‘tazilites, of the createdness of the Koran and of free will. He is also said to have denied the divine attributes and, as a consequence, held that “God did not speak to Moses, nor take Abraham as His friend.” He is said to have been a materialist, and his followers are said to have accused the prophet Muhammad of lying and to have denied the resurrection.

IBN AL-MUQAFFA (executed A.D. 760)

Serious persecutions of the zindiqs began under the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur (reigned 754-775). Many zindiqs were put to death under his reign, the most famous being Ibn al-Muqaffa. Ibn al-Muqaffa was asked by the caliph Mansur to draw up an amnesty for Mansur’s uncle, but the caliph was not at all pleased at the language used by Ibn al-Muqaffa in the finished document. It is generally held that for this reason Mansur had Ibn al-Muqaffa executed in a most horrific manner—his limbs were cut off one by one and fed into a blazing fire. But it is also very probable that Ibn al-Muqaffa’s unorthodox religious views played an important role in his condemnation.

Gabrielli, Kraus, and others have shown that an anti-Muslim work of a pronounced rationalist tendency was correctly attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffa.The latter, according to Kraus, was the intellectual heir to the rationalist tradition that flourished at the time of the Sassanid king, Chosroes Anusharwan, who is said to have fostered a “veritable hellenistic Aufklarung.” At any rate, from the perspective of the Manichaen faith, Ibn al-Muqaffa attacked Islam, its prophet, its theology and theodicy, and its concept of God. How do we reconcile Ibn al-Muqaffa’s rational skepticism and his adherence to Manichaean dualism? Gabrieli⁵¹⁰ points out that intellectuals like Ibn al-Muqaffa had already given an allegorical interpretation to the Manichaen mythology and interpreted the universe and man’s place in it in Gnostic terms, rational and hellenistic.

Ibn al-Muqaffa is also renowned for his translations from Pehlevi or Middle Persian literature into Arabic. His translation of the Book of Kalila and Dimna, ultimately derived from the Sanskrit Fables of Bidpai, is considered a model of elegant style.

THE GRAND INQUISITOR

Under Mansur’s successors, al-Mahdi (775-785) and al-Hadi (785-786), repression, persecution, and executions were applied with even greater ferocity. Special magistrates were appointed to pursue the heretics, and the whole inquisition was masterminded by the Grand Inquisitor, called the Sahih al-Zanadiqa. It was enough for a simple rumor to be aired for the inquisitor to take immediate steps to incriminate the suspect. Often the zindiqs were arrested in mass, imprisoned, and finally brought before the inquisitor or the ruler, who then questioned them on their beliefs. If the suspects abjured their heretical religion they were released; if they refused, they were beheaded,and their heads displayed on a gibbet. Some were crucified. Al-Hadi seems to have had some strangled also. Their heretical books were cut up with knives.

We have a glimpse of the whole procedure from this comic anecdote about Abu Nuwas, the great lyric poet, (b. 762, d. ca. 806-814), whose twin passions were beautiful boys and wine. One day he entered a mosque drunk as ever, and when the imam recited verse 1 from sura 109: “Say: O! You unbelievers... ,” Abu Nuwas cried out, “Here I am!” Whereupon the faithful whisked him off to the chief of police, declaring that Abu Nuwas was an infidel, on his own admission. The chief of police then took Abu Nuwas to the inquisitor. However, the latter refused to believe that the poet was a zindiq and refused to proceed any further. But the crowd insisted, and to calm a potentially dangerous situation, he brought a portrait of the prophet of the dualists, Mani, and asked Abu Nuwas to spit on it. Abu Nuwas did even better than that. He pushed a finger down his throat and vomited on the picture, whereupon the inquisitor set him free. We know that on another occasion Abu Nuwas was in prison on the charge of zandaqa. Heresy seems to have penetrated even the Hashimite family, the family to which the Prophet had belonged. Several members of the family were executed or died in prison.⁵¹¹

IBN ABI-L-AWJA (executed 772)

Ibn Abi-1-Awja was one of the more interesting zindiqs. Apparently he believed that light had created good, while darkness had created evil. He also taught metempsychosis and the freedom of the will. Before his death, he confessed that he had fabricated more than 4,000 traditions (hadith), in which he forbade Muslims what was in fact permitted, and vice versa, and he made Muslims break the fast when they should have been fasting, and vice versa. He is supposed to have posed the problem of human suffering: “Why,” he asked, “are there catastrophes, epidemics, if God is good?” According to al-Biruni, Ibn Abi-1-Awja was wont to shake the faith of simple people with captious questions about divine justice.

Ibn Abi-1-Awja is said to have had a discussion with the imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, which is recorded and reveals the full extent of his unorthodoxy (if, that is, we can accept the historicity of the dialogue): He believes in the eternity of the world; he denies the existence of a Creator. One day he asked Jafar to justify the institution of pilgrimage and refused to accept the answer that it was ordered by God, since this reply merely pushed the question farther back to someone who was not present. He also cast doubt on the justice of some of the punishments described in the Koran. Ibn Abi-1-Awja also accuses some of the prophets mentioned in the Koran of lying, especially Abraham and Joseph. And like so many zindiqs of the period, he doubts the official dogma of the inimitability of the Koran. Even if we cannot specifically link the above dialogue with the historical figure of Ibn Abi-1-Awja, it gives a true picture of the current zindiq beliefs. He was taken prisoner, and put to death in 772.⁵¹²

BASHSHAR IBN BURD (ca.714/715-killed 784/785)

One of the poets who was eventually seized, charged with zandaqa, beaten, and finally thrown in a swamp was Bashshar b. Burd, who was the descendant of a noble Persian family, though his father was a slave, who became a bricklayer upon being freed. Bashshar had strong national sentiments and did not miss an opportunity to glorify the memories of ancient Iran. He did not have a high opinion of the Arabs. He was born blind and was considered very ugly physically, which may go toward explaining, in part, his celebrated misanthrophy. Bashshar b. Burd excelled as a writer of panegyric, elegy, and satire.

His religious views are difficult to establish with certainty since—opportunist that he was—he often concealed his true opinion. According to Vadja, he belonged to the Shiite sect of the Kamiliyya, and anathematized the entire Muslim community. His charge of zandaqa, stemmed from an allegation that Bashshar did not pray in an orthodox manner. What’s more, he is said to have mocked the call to prayer by parodying it when drunk.

He is also accused of being unrespectful toward the institution of pilgrimage. On one occasion, he left for the pilgrimage, solely to deflect any suspicion that he was a zindiq, but stopped at Zorara, where he spent his time drinking. As the pilgrims were returning he joined them and pretended on his arrival home to have completed the entire pilgrimage.

One of the charges often leveled at the zindiqs, and Bashshar b. Burd, was their continual undermining of the orthodox view of the miraculous nature of the Koran, which the orthodox considered inimitable. No one, in the orthodox view, was capable of reaching the perfection of the Koran. Goldziher gives this example of the zindiqs’ irreverence:

It is reported that at Basra a group of free thinkers, Muslim and non-Muslim heretics used to congregate and that Bashshar b. Burd did not forego characterising the poems submitted to this assembly in these words: “Your poem is better than this or the other verse of the Koran, this line again is better than some other verse of the Koran, etc.” Bashshar did in fact praise one of his own poetic products when he heard it recited by a singing girl in Baghdad as being better than the surat al-Hashr. The way of expression of the Koran was criticised and the similes found wanting. Al-Mubarrad tells of a heretic who ridiculed the parable in sura XXXVII.63 where the fruits of the tree Zakkum in hell are likened to the heads of devils. The critics say: “He compares the visible with the unknown here. We have never seen the heads of devils; what kind of a simile is this?”⁵¹³

Bashshar seems to have denied the resurrection and the last judgment in some of his verses. He may well have believed in metempsychosis, i.e., the transmigration of souls. In some celebrated verses, Bashshar defends Iblis (the devil), being made of fire, for refusing to prostrate himself before Adam, being made of ordinary clay. In another one of his verses, he prayed to the prophet Muhammad to join with him in an attack upon the Deity. He also seems to have held Manichaean beliefs laced with Zoroastrianism.

But, in the words of Blachere, “along with these beliefs there would seem always to have been a profound skepticism mingled with a fatalistic outlook leading Bashshar to pessimism and hedonism.”⁵¹⁴ But out of prudence he was obliged to pay lip service to orthodoxy. This view of Bashshar being a skeptic is endorsed by Vadja who argues that it seems totally out of character for someone as dissolute as he to adhere to a religion as ascetic as Manichaeism.

SALIH B. ABD AL-QUDDUS (executed 783)

Salih was also accused of Manichaeism and executed in 783. However his extant poetry is irreproachable, containing nothing heretical. Salih, according to Nicholson, being of a speculative turn of mind, probably fell victim to the Muslim prejudice that connects “the philosophic mind” with positive unbelief.⁵¹⁵

HAMMAD AJRAD (executed)

Hammad Ajrad belonged to a circle of freethinkers based at Basra. Their reunions, already previously alluded to, were attended by such unorthodox poets as Bashshar, Salih b. Abd al-Quddus, Ibn Sinan of Harran, Ibn Nazir, et al. Hammad was accused of not praying in an orthodox fashion and of preferring some of his verses to those of the Koran. He was accused of the dualist heresy and of composing verses that the zindiqs recited in their prayers. Even if he was not high up in the religious hierarchy of the Manichaeans, Hammad was certainly a sympathizer, to the extent that his religious poetry found its way into the liturgy of the Manichaeans. He was put to death by the governor of Basra.

ABAN B. ABD AL HUMAYD B. LAHIQ AL RAQQASI

Aban was described as another one of the freethinkers of Basra and figures in a satire by Abu Nuwas, partly as a Manichaean dualist, but also as a rationalist:

I sat one day with Aban (plague on him!), when the time for the first prayer came, and the call was duly uttered by a correct and clear-voiced speaker.

We all repeated the call to prayer to the end. Then said Aban: “How could you testify to that [i.e. the Muslim formula of faith] without ocular demonstration? So long as I live I shall never attest anything but what I see with my eyes.” Then I said: “Glory to God”; he said: “Glory to Manes.” Then I said: “Jesus was an Apostle”; he said: “Of Satan.” I continued: “Moses was the interlocutor of the Gracious and Faithful One”; he said: “Then your God must have a tongue and an eye. And did He create Himself, or who created Him?” So I held my tongue before this obstinate blasphemer.⁵¹⁶

It is difficult to know what Aban’s real religious views were since we cannot take Abu Nuwas’s satire at face value. Aban certainly rendered service to posterity by his versification of many Persian and Hindu works.

OTHER FREETHINKERS OF BASRA

In our sources for this group, certain names keep cropping up, but, unfortunately, often we do not have any other details about their views or works. Thus we are told that Qays b. Zubayr was a notorious atheist, that al-Baqili denied the resurrection, that Ibrahim b. Sayyaba was a zindiq and claimed that pederasty was the first law of zandaqa, and so on.

We do know a little more about Muti b. Iyas, who gives every sign of being a zindiq. But the details we have of his life point rather to someone with a skeptical turn of mind with no real profound interest in any religion.

He began his career under the Umayyads, and was devoted to the Caliph Walid b. Yazid, who found in him a fellow after his own heart, “accomplished, dissolute, an agreeable companion and excellent wit, reckless in his effrontery and suspected in his religion.” When the Abbasids came to power Muti attached himself to the Caliph Mansur. Many stories are told of the debauched life which he led in the company of zindiqs, or freethinkers.... His songs of love and wine are distinguished by their lightness and elegance.⁵¹⁷

ABU ‘L ATAHIYA

We are told in one of our sources that Abu ‘1 Atahiya, fearing arrest by the Grand Inquisitor, passed himself off as a seller of cupping glasses and disappeared in the crowds of the city. Unfortunately we are not told why the inquisitor might have wanted to interview our poet. Nonetheless, Abu ‘1 Atahiya was often accused of zandaqa by his contemporaries. He may have secretly held Manichaean views, but there is nothing in his poetry that could offend most orthodox Muslims. However Goldziher does profess to see a reference to the Buddha in the following two lines:

If thou wouldst see the noblest of mankind,

Behold a monarch in a beggar’s garb.

Abu ‘l Atahiya seems to have believed “in One God who formed the universe out of two opposite elements which He created from nothing; and held, further, that everything would be reduced to these same elements before the final destruction of all phenomena. Knowledge, he thought, was acquired naturally (i.e., without Divine Revelation) by means of reflection, deduction, and research.”

It is not obvious that the above views count as heresy, but Nicholson thinks that Atahiya may have fallen out of favor for being too philosophical rather than religious in his poetry. And, concludes Nicholson, “this was enough to convict him of infidelity and atheism in the eyes of devout theologians who looked askance on moral teaching, however pure, that was not cast in the dogmatic mould.”⁵¹⁸

Atahiya was also accused of claiming that some of his verses were superior to those of the Koran. Others reproached him, unjustly, of denying the resurrection.

Nonetheless, there are some poems that contain much orthodox Muslim belief. What finally emerges is a “profound melancholy and hopeless pessimism” and the vanity of worldly pleasures.

ABU ISA MUHAMMAD B. HARUN WARRAK, OR AL-WARRAQ

Al-Warraq was accused of zandaqa, and is important for, among other reasons, being the teacher of the Great Infidel himself, al-Rawandi. Unfortunately, none of Warraq’s literary work survives, and we have tantalizing glimpses of it in the quotations by other Arab scholars. Some of his works are also known from refutations. Al-Warraq started as a Mu‘tazilite theologian but seems to have been excommunicated for holding heterodoxic opinions.

He wrote a remarkable history of religions, where his objectivity, rationalism, and skepticism were given free rein. His critical examination of the three branches of Christianity of his time again reveals his dispassionate tone and rationalism, where there is no question of a dependence on revelation.

Al-Warraq may well have had Shiite sympathies, but it is uncertain whether he was really a Manichaen. However, he does seem to have believed in the two principles, and very certainly in the eternity of the world. Massignon correctly sums him up as an independent thinker and skeptic rather than someone who believed in any fixed system of thought. A victim of the Abbasid persecution, al-Warraq died in exile in 909 in Ahwaz.

ABU TAMMAM (d. 846)

Abu Tamman was born near Damascus in 796 or 804, and is famous as a poet and anthologist. He met with much success at the court of the caliph al-Mutasim, where he wrote many eulogies. But as Margoliouth notes,⁵¹⁹ “Various anecdotes are told of his visits to his provincial patrons: when staying with Ibn Radja in Fars, he gave his patron reason to suspect that he neglected the Muslim religious observances, and when questioned on this matter, expressed doubts as to the effectiveness of those observances, a confession which nearly led to his execution.” Unfortunately, none of his religious doubts is to be found in his poetical works.

AL-MUTANABBI (915-965)

Al-Mutanabbi is considered by many Arabs as the greatest poet in the Arabic language. Born in Kufa and educated in Damascus, al-Mutanabbi modeled himself on the poetry of Abu Tammam and consciously set out to make a name for himself. According to Blachere, al-Mutanabbi was influenced in his religious and philosophical development by a certain Abu ‘1 Fadl of Kufa who was a “complete agnostic,” and an early patron of his works. Under Abu ‘1 Fadl’s influence, al-Mutanabbi “cast off religious dogmas which he regarded as spiritual instruments of oppression. He then adopted a stoic and pessimistic philosophy.... The world is made up of seductions which death destroys; stupidity and evil alone triumph there.”⁵²⁰

Not achieving the fame he dreamed of, and felt he merited, al-Mutanabbi was now determined to dominate by violent means. He began revolutionary propaganda, and then led a rebellion of a politico-religious character, in which he claimed to be a prophet with a new Koran (hence his name “Mutannabi,” in Arabic, “one who pretends to be a prophet,”). He was defeated, captured, and imprisoned for two years in Hims. He was obviously extremely fortunate to be spared his life, since to claim to be a prophet is extreme heresy and, equally, to claim to have a new Koran is against all orthodox belief.

After his release, al-Mutanabbi was lucky enough to find patronage at the court of Saif al-Daula at Aleppo. For nine years, al-Mutanabbi sang the praises of this prince, and the odes he composed for him are considered the “greatest masterpieces of Arabic literature.”

Al-Mutanabbi seems to have quarreled with Saif al-Daula and was obliged to slip away from Aleppo to Egypt where he found patronage with the Ikhshidid ruler, Kafur. He was to quarrel with the latter, as well, and obliged to flee. He was eventually killed by bandits when returning to Baghdad.

Al-Mutanabbi wrote a vast number of odes sometimes praising second rate patrons and, at other times, the great Saif al-Daula. Some of the odes are full of bombast, and some are sublime, but underneath them all we can discern a skepticism, a certain disillusionment with a world kept in chains by ignorance, stupidity, and superstition, from which only death can liberate us. But, as Margoliouth⁵²¹ points out, for many Muslims, al-Mutanabbi’s odes are “defaced by utterances which imply disrespect for the prophets and revealed religion.” His most offensive line for Muslims is one “in which he tells his patron, an Alid, ‘the greatest miracle of the man of Tihamah (i.e., Muhammad, the Prophet) is that he is thy father’; in another he tells a patron that if his sword had hit the head of Lazarus on the battlefield, Jesus would not have been able to restore him to life; and that if the Red Sea had been like his hand, Moses could never have crossed it.”

ABU HAYYAN AL-TAUHIDI (d. ca. 1023)

According to literary tradition, the writers al-Rawandi, al-Ma’ari, and al-Tauhidi were the three great Zanadiqa (or zindiqs) of Islam. Al-Rawandi and al-Ma’ari will be examined in detail in a moment; this leaves us with the third great zindiq, al-Tauhidi. According to Margoliouth, al-Tauhidi’s works were considered more dangerous than those of the others because, whereas the others proclaimed their unbelief, he expressed his in innuendoes. And yet, those of his works that are extant do not seem particularly heretical. In his “Kitab al-Itma,” we find a pessimism reminiscent of al-Mutanabbi, but nothing overtly unorthodox. It is possible that al-Tauhidi’s interest in and knowledge of Greek philosophy and science rendered him suspect in the eyes of the orthodox—any such interest was supposed to lead to atheism.

IBN AL-RAWANDI (al-Rawendi) (born ca. 820-830)

Al-Rawandi started as a Mu‘tazilite but was expelled from their company for heresy. He then began a series of ferocious attacks on the Mu‘tazalites, and thanks to a refutation of his work by al-Khayyat, al-Rawandi’s book against his former colleagues is known in part—the work is known as the Fadihat al-Mu‘tazila, or the Ignominy of the Mu‘tazilites. Al-Rawandi never hesitated in broaching subjects long considered both taboo and dangerous, and it is not surprising that before long he was branded an infidel and a zindiq, both in the narrow sense of someone believing in dualism, and in the wider sense of a freethinker. He was publically accused by the Mu’tazilites and, eventually, because of government persecution had to leave Baghdad. In his attacks on his former friends, al-Rawandi showed up their inconsistencies and even deduced heretical conclusions from their principles.

As Nyberg⁵²² has shown, al-Rawandi was condemned and expelled by the Mu‘tazilites for his aristotelian tendencies that destroyed the central orthodox dogma of the creation ex nihilo and of the Creator. We know that al-Rawandi wrote a book on the eternity of the world; however, this work has not survived.

It is significant that it was often philosophers and doctors who took him seriously, and some even came to his defense. Al-Haitham, for example, showed that the putative refutations of al-Rawandi were plain wrong.

Al-Rawandi undoubtedly taught dualism in one of his books and, for a time, turned toward a Shiism of a moderate kind. He finally cut all intellectual links with the Muslim community and ended his life as an atheist.

The Mu‘tazilites also accused al-Rawandi of attacking the Prophet, the Koran, the hadith, revelation in general—in sum, the whole of the sharia—in such works as the Kitab al-Damigh, Kitab al-Farid, and Kitab al-Zumurrudh. But as Nyberg and others have pointed out, al-Rawandi was only drawing the logical conclusions of the principles held by the Mu‘tazilites themselves.

The unbelief of ibn al-Rawandi could, in effect, be seen as the inexorable consequence of the effort made by Mu‘tazilites to accommodate human reason in the acceptance of revelation.... [In so doing] they had placed their trust in a demanding guide that is not always easy to discard half way.⁵²³

The extracts that we possess of al-Rawandi’s Kitab al-Zumurrudh, show exactly why he was seen as a radical and dangerous heretic. They contain a trenchant criticism of prophecy in general, and of the prophecy of Muhammad in particular. Al-Rawandi maintains that reason is superior to revelation. Either what the so-called prophets say is in accordance with reason, in which case prophets are otiose and not needed, since ordinary human beings are equally endowed with reason, or it does not conform to reason, in which case it must be rejected. For al-Rawandi all religious dogmas are contrary to reason and therefore are to be rejected; “the miracles attributed to the prophets, persons who may reasonably be compared to sorcerers and magicians, are pure invention” (a thesis that reminds one of Morton White’s, that Jesus was a magician). As for the Koran, far from being a miracle and inimitable, it is an inferior work from the literary point of view, since it is neither clear nor comprehensible nor of any practical value, and it is certainly not a revealed book. Besides its putative literary miraculousness “is hardly relevant, as probative evidence, in regard to foreigners to whom Arabic is an alien tongue.”⁵²⁴

AI-Rawandi attacks all religious ritual as futile, and any knowledge acquired by the so-called prophets can be explained in natural and human terms without having to attribute its origin to revelation. According to at least one authority, al-Rawandi rejected the very possibility “of a satisfactory rational answer to the question of God’s existence and the rationality of His ways.”

Al-Rawandi’s other views seem to include the eternity of the world, the superiority of dualism over monotheism, and the vanity of divine wisdom.

Al-Ma’arri, in his Risalatu’l Ghufran, attributes the following lines to al-Rawandi, addressed to God: “Thou didst apportion the means of livelihood to Thy creatures like a drunkard who shows himself churlish. Had a man made such a division, we should have said to him, ‘You have swindled. Let this teach you a lesson.’ ” No wonder al-Ma’arri exclaimed in-horror, “If these two couplets stood erect, they would be taller in sin than the Egyptian pyramids in size.”⁵²⁵