The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog

Although for many centuries Western societies mostly ignored the Islamic world, sociopolitical events since 1979 have put the Islamic worldview into a high profile. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, made it clear that “the worldview of Islam could no longer be ignored” (235). Unfortunately, popular media characterizations of Islam are frequently “driven by polemics,” and thus it is necessary to “provide a careful discussion” (235).

This is especially necessary because there is more than one type of theism; there are distinctive matters of “heritage and environment” that color the Islamic brand of theism and make it different from the Christian theism treated in Chapter 2, or from Jewish theism.

In Islamic theism, the prime reality is God (Allah), who is described as “monotheistic, infinite, personal, transcendent, immanent, omniscient, sovereign, and good” (236). From the start, Islam—which originated in the revelations to the prophet Mohammed as recorded in the Qur’an—defined itself against other competing religious systems. The Qur’an contains many passages proclaiming the superiority and greater truth of Islam compared to these other religions, and the Islamic phrase Allahu Akbar (“God is the greatest”) encapsulates this sense of Islam as the definitive revelation.

Corduan writes that, in Islam, God is the transcendent creator of the cosmos and he is all-powerful, meaning that “nothing happens in the world outside of his divine decrees” (244). This includes human actions, which have free will “only insofar as Allah permits it according to his inscrutable will” (247).

Islamic theism, then, emphasizes the transcendence of God—the infinite distance between him and creatures—insisting on “an absolute metaphysical separation of transcendent from the spatiotemporal” (239). This is in contrast to Christian theism, in which human beings have the capacity for “an intimate relationship with God” (240).

For Islamic theism, there is a wider gap of separation between God and humanity, making the notion of an incarnation, for example, impossible. Assurances in the Qur’an of God’s closeness to humanity, says Corduan, are usually placed in the context of injunctions to obedience or condemnations of those who fail to believe in God.

Although human freedom depends on God’s will, human beings are still “the pinnacle of God’s creation” (247), higher even than the angels. Contrary to Christian theism, Islamic theism holds that human beings are born innocent and not corrupted by the original sin of Adam and Eve. Because of their “high standing,” there is a corresponding “responsibility to live up to God’s standards” (247), which includes spreading Islam far and wide. After death, the Muslim believer will be judged by God on the basis of all his or her actions, called “the Book of Deeds” (250).

According to Corduan, Islamic theism affirms that God reveals truth through reason and the senses, with the Qur’an as the “self-authenticating” culmination of divine revelation. However, accepting or rejecting the truth of the Qur’an ultimately depends on God’s will, thus implying predestination. Because all depends on God’s will, all human beings can do is “accept whatever he sends our way […] ‘without asking why’” in a spirit of resignation to the divine will (257).

For Islamic theism, principles of ethics and morality are enunciated in the Qur’an and the hadiths, or collections of Muhammed’s sayings. The “five pillars” define the Muslim’s daily religious duties, which are “strictly regulated” and interwoven with life. The goal of history, for Islamic theism, is to “subsume the entire world under the umma, the Islamic community” (259), and thus, adds Corduan, setting up Islamic governments is mandatory.

In the context of discussing Islamic core commitments, Corduan states his argument that Islam closed itself off to outside influences too early in its development and thus remained a closed, “uneven” worldview, albeit one that has provided “stability” for many people. He adds that, in addition to “standard” Islam, there also exists in many places a “folk Islam.” This is form of popular religiosity that aims to make the religion more relevant on an individual level, thus tempering the traditional Islamic emphasis on transcendence. Traditions of folk Islam often adapt themselves to surrounding non-Muslim cultures in a syncretistic way.