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WHEN HAPPINESS FAILS: AN ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2014

Khaled Abou El Fadl
Khaled Abou El Fadl*
Affiliation:
Azmeralda and Omar Alfi Distinguished Professor of Islamic Law, UCLA School of Law
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Abstract

In this article, I set forth conceptions of happiness (sa‘ada) from the Islamic tradition, and against this background, I discuss the failure to attain happiness in the modern age. The cumulative Islamic tradition attests to the importance of happiness to faith in God, and to the importance of faith to happiness. While the themes of knowledge, enlightenment, balance, peace, and knowing the other are central to the Islamic theology of happiness, the failure of happiness is embodied by the idea of jahiliyya (a state of ignorance). I argue that a crucial issue in considering happiness and the failure of happiness is how one understands submission to God, and that submission to God is not simply obedience or servitude to God; rather, submission to God means aspiring to and seeking the goodness of God, and liberating one's soul and being from a state of godlessness, or ignorance (jahiliyya), in order to attain a state of Godliness. To grow into and with God's love is the epitome of fulfillment, goodness, and happiness. However, when submission becomes a formulaic relationship based on generalized stereotypes about history, societies, and people, or on a stereotyped understanding of one's self dealing with a stereotypical understanding of an omnipotent but inaccessible God, unhappiness becomes the norm. Drawing on this analysis, I argue that in the modern age, the modalities of thought in puritanical movements have had a consistently demoralizing and dehumanizing effect that persistently undermines the possibilities for social and moral happiness, and thus, undermines the very purpose of the Islamic faith.

Keywords

Islamic lawethicsmoralityIslamic theologymodernityreligious extremism
Type
SYMPOSIUM: PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS IN INTERRELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVE
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 109 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 2014 

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References

1 See, for example, Q. 22:37; 64:16.

2 Jalal al-Din Suyuti (d. 1505), “al-Qawl al-ashbah fi hadith man arafa nafsahu faqad arafa rabbahu,” Daiber Collection, GAL II 148 nr. 72, Tokyo University. See ‘Arabi, Ibn, Divine Governance of the Human Kingdom: At-Tadbirat al-ilahiyyah fi islah al-mamlakat al-insaniyyafi, trans. Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 1997), 231–54Google Scholar; Murata, Sachiko and Chittick, William C., The Vision of Islam (New York: Paragon House, 1994), 216–21Google Scholar. Translation from Arabic sources are those of the author unless otherwise noted.

3 See Muhammad Ibn Abi Bakr Ibn Qaiyim al-Jauziya, Miftah Dar al-Sa'ada wa Mansur Wilayat al-‘Ilm wa al-Irada, ed. Mahmud Hasan Rabi’ (Alexandria: Maktabat Hamidu, 1399 H.); Abu al-‘Abbas Ibn al-‘Arif, Miftah al-Sa'ada wa Tahqiq Tariq al-Sa'ada (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1993)Google Scholar; Hixon, Lex, The Heart of the Qur'an: An Introduction to Islamic Spirituality, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, Illinois: Quest Books, 2003), 66–67Google Scholar, 163.

4 See Q. 13:28; 5:119; 9:100; 58:22; 98:8.

5 See Q. 57:12; 66:8; 24:40.

6 See Qutb, Sayyid, Maʿalim fi al-Tariq (Misr: Kazi Publications, 1964)Google Scholar. Qutb relied on the same idea of jahiliyya, but for different purposes. Qutb used it to create a dichotomy between Islamic and non-Islamic societies. For Qutb, if Muslims turn away from the path of Islam, they are part of the jahiliyya and are no longer Muslim. See Calvert, John, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Khatab, Sayed, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb: The Theory of Jahiliyyah (London: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar.

7 Q. 22:46.

8 See Qutb, Muhammad, Jahiliyat al-Qarn al-‘Ishrin (Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1995)Google Scholar. This influential book describes what Qutb calls the jahiliyya of the twentieth century.

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10 The Prophet is reported to have said: “I‘tu kulla dhi haqqin haqqahu” (give each possessor of rights his due rights). See Ahmad bin Shu‘ayb Nasa'i, Sunan an-Nasa'i (Beirut: Dar Ibn Hazm, 1999)Google Scholar, 350; Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad bin Isma‘il Bukhari, Jam ʿJawami‘ al-Ahadith wa al-Asanid wa Maknaz al-Sihah wa al-Sunan wa al-Masanid (Vaduz, Liechtenstein: Jami‘yat al-Maknaz al-Islami, 2000)Google Scholar, 1:369.

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14 For verses pertaining to consultation, see Q. 3:159; 42:38. See Rahman, Fazlur, Major Themes of the Qur'an, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 37–64Google Scholar.

15 For verses on enjoining the good and forbidding what is bad or evil, see Q. 3:104, 110; 7:157, 199; 9:71.

16 For a comprehensive study on the original sources on enjoining the good and forbidding the evil, see Cook, Michael, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 This literature is so vast, deep, and numerous that it defies citation, but for a good introduction to some of these concepts, see Murata and Chittick, The Vision of Islam, 267–88; Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an, 17–20, 33–34; Hixon, The Heart of the Qur'an, 185, 202–03.

18 Hilmi, Al-Akhlaq bayn al-Falasifa wa Hukama’ al-Islam, 172–73.

19 Q. 3:79; 5:44. See Abu ‘Abdullah al-Harith Ibn Asad al-Muhasibi, Risala al-Mustarshidin (Cairo: Dar al-Salam, 2000), 245–48Google Scholar; al-Sayyid ‘Abd Allah al-Shubbar, Al-Akhlaq (Beirut: 1991), 301–03Google Scholar.

20 Murata and Chittick, The Vision of Islam, 151–64.

21 See Q. 58:19; 59:19; Ahmad ‘Abd al-Rahman Ibrahim, al-Fada'il al-Khalqiyya fi al-Islam (Cairo: Dar al-Wafa’, 1989), 251–66Google Scholar; Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an, 24–26; Hixon, The Heart of the Qur'an, 190–91.

22 See, e.g., Auden, W. H., The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Habermas, Jürgen, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Lawrence, Frederick G. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

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24 See Murata and Chittick, The Vision of Islam, 267–317; Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an, 106–20.

25 For a historical refutation of the thesis of political quietism, see Abou El Fadl, Khaled, Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There are many Western scholars who consistently portray Muslims as fatalistic and politically quietist, and then usually go on to fault these purported characteristics for what has been described as oriental despotism. But like so many of the arguments of Orientalism, the accusation that Islam is the source of pacifism and quietism is culturally prejudiced and politically driven. It is gross oversimplification to claim that Islamic theology is fatalistic, or that it espouses ethical indeterminacy.

26 For the argument that the whole purpose of religion is the attainment of happiness in this life and in the hereafter, see Hilmi, Al-Akhlaq bayn al-Falasifa wa Hukama’ al-Islam, 190–92.

27 Q. 17:70.

28 For a discussion of the hadith “Tuba liman shaghilahu ‘aybuhu ‘an ‘uyub al-nass,” see Muhasibi, Risalat, 84–85; Lari, Mujtaba Musavi, Risalat al-Akhlaq (Lebanon: Dar al-Islamiyya, 1989), 274–76Google Scholar.

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31 Q. 13:17.

32 Q. 49:9–13.

33 Q. 11:118.

34 See Q. 4:112; 49:12.

35 On this subject, see Hourani, George F., Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Q. 3:108.

37 See my essays in Abou El Fadl, Khaled, Cohen, Joshua, and Lague, Ian, eds., The Place of Tolerance in Islam (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), 3–26Google Scholar, 93–112.

38 Q. 38:87.

39 Q. 7:52, 203; 17:82; 21:107.

40 Q. 12:111.

41 For instance, see Q. 6:54; 27:77; 29:51; 45:20.

42 Q. 4:135.

43 For the piece that inspired the expression “vulgarization of Islam,” see Robert Scott Appleby, “The Quandary of Leadership,” in Abou El Fadl, Cohen, and Lague, The Place of Tolerance in Islam, 85–92.

44 Abou El Fadl, Khaled, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2005)Google Scholar; Abou El Fadl, Khaled, “The Modern Ugly and the Ugly Modern: Reclaiming the Beautiful in Islam,” in Progressive Muslims, ed. Safi, Omid (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003), 33–77Google Scholar.

45 Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft, esp. 62–75.

46 Abou El Fadl, Khaled, “Orphans of Modernity and the Clash of Civilisations,” Global Dialogue 4, no. 2 (2002)Google Scholar.

47 See Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft, 85–110.

48 See, for example, Q. 11:108; 13:28–29; 16:97; 41:34–35; 52:19–21.