Cultural İdentity in Islam and Christianity

OS MA NL1 ARAŞT 1RM ALAR 1 VII-VIII l~DITORS İSMAİL OF ~'HIS E . ERONSAL - SPECI AL JSSUE Ca::RISTOPHER FERRARD Ca::RISTINE WOODHEAD :. THE JOURNAL OF OTTOMAN STUDIES VII-VIU ı ı ı ir · İstanbul - 1988 CUL'IURAL IDENTITY IN ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY: .· Ev~nts iri tqe last few years have led. to a groWini ~terest in the relations between Islam and Western cq.lture,. and in. th;is.. c<;>nnection it may be useful to look.. at the interp.lay.of culq:İre 'a nd gion in two .earlier peı:iods, namely, that wh.en Islam ..burst out of Arabia.' and largely replaced Christianity· in Egypt, Syria ane( Ir~q.. and that when Islam had a foothold in Spa~ and Sicily and greatly influenced western Europe. · ·· reli- The Replacement 9/ Christianity in tl~ Fertile Cresc'ent. . . . . .. '. . . '\ . ." . An expansion of Greek culture e?stwards ·into Aşia .came ab out in the wıike of the 'c onquests of Ale~ander. )t' was chiefly the_ ruİing elites of the various regions wp.ich were helleniied, that is,' the dYnas:ties whi ch inherited ·~ections . of Alexander' empire and those: other groups assÔcfate.d '\--rith thein i~ 't he wÔrk of 'adniinistratioıi aiıd sufficientİy ~lose tô warit to imit~te them. For the most p~~ the)ower classes were little affected by Greek culture, except' perhap~· ın· some of the cities. A well-known piece of . evidence .h ere is the series of attempts by the Seleucids of Antioch to impose Henenistic ·c ustoms on- the J ews of Palestine - attempts; whi ch·. were · fiercely resisted uıider the leadership of th.e Maccabee~. The Pharisees of the ·~ew Testament· period ·were to ·some e]ttent lıeirs ·of the Macc.ş.bees, foi. . . they had adopted forms· and practices which kept them and their religion free from the defilement of H~llenism. Elsewhere, however, the resistance to Hellenism was less · organized, and most of the wealthier· city-dwellers seem. to have acquired at least a ·veneer of Greek culture. Th~ inclusion of the lands of the Eastern Mediterranean in the Roman eriıpire did.nothing t~ ·halt the expansion s ___ - 72 of Greek culture, but rather encouraged it. Even among the Jews the party of the Sadducees and the family of Herod had in their various ways compromised with the dominant culture... The influence of Hellenism, of course, was never restricted to the Roman empire, but was strong, for example, in Iraq. · The relationship of Christianity to Greek culture is complex. Paul, the great missionary to the Roman empire, had received a Greek education in Tarsu.S· as well as a J eWish education in Jerusalem, and as a result of his efforts Christianity spread among nonJewish Greek-spea:king city-dweller.s , especially in the eastern half of the einpire. ·Jıi Greece itself and in much of Asia Miıior these Greek-speakers were also essentially-: Greek in culture, but in citl.es - )n Iike Alexandria and Antioch the lower classes, though of ten fluent ~ in Greek, had Coptic or Syriac as their nativeIangu'age, and were stili deeply rooted in a I'ıon-Greek culture. In particular ·three sıib cultures can be distingılished in the Fertile Crescent, each marked off ôy the possession of a literary language. Some of the views propounded by the theologians belonging to these sub-cultures were regarded as heretical by the Greek-speaking majority iİı the ecumenical councils, presuma:bly because, even when expressed in Greek, certain of their ideas were foreign to the Greek outlook. The Coptic) ~ ~ ~\ speakers and one branch of. Syriac~spea'kers were bra.D:ded. as M~ no~ physites and the othe·r main branch of S:Yriac-spea:kers as Nestori- ~..,."-'"- ~ ans.' To the ~ort~ of the ·F ertile Crescent the Armenian-speakers si:' milarly developed their own so-called «Gregöz:ian» form of the Monophysite heresy., ,,~ ,\=t- M-'~\ . - :-ı~ -.,.... ( '!'he c~se~Egypt may be looked at in more detail. Among the first thlıigs which spring to mind when ancient Egypt is men~- tioned are pyramids and· mummies; and these express above all an J - intense desire . for a bodily immortality. When we turn to the - tı writings, albeit in Greek, of an ·Egyptian theologian like .At-hanasius, we find among ·h is deep ·motivations this same intense desire for immortality, corporeally eonceived. In sharp contrast . to çt?tlıis is the teaching of Origen who, though h7 lived in Egypt, seems \" to ·have been of Greek descent. For him the essential man was the ' -rational soul wlıiob existed ·b efore it had a body ·a ttached to it and whicb. suffeııed this attacbment as a k\D-d of punishm.ent. Far from if 73 t wanting a ·corporeal immortality, Or1gen regarded that· as abhorrent, .and would at most admit that in the life to come there would be «spiritual ·bodies ·of extreme ·fineness». This shows ·how dif~ ferently men of different eultures could interpret Christianity. It is also an indication- that there was coming into existence a new ' type of intellectual, represented by Athanasius, who did not belong to the u pp er class with . its Greek culture but had emerged from the masses with their Coptic (or Syriac) culture. ·. In the ruling elite and upper class of Roman impe~ial society there wer~ to begin with few Christi~ns. The. situation . changed, however, whe!l _Cons~antine adopted Çhristianity and made use of it in the administration ·of tbe empire. Ecumeiıical couricils were not pureiy eccıesiasticaı affairs, but served as instrume'nts of imperial policy. The result of this · was that ·in the eastern empire the leadership of the Christian Church came to be identified with the ruling elite and thus with Greek culture. For a · time there were universally acknowledged bishops who c~e from the sub-cultures mentioned, but long ·b efore the middle of the seventh century the theologians associated with these cultures ·had been declared heretical, and most of the Christians speaking Coptic and Syriac .had been excluded from the Great Church. This was an important feature of the world into which the Arabs burst in the· years just before 650. Islam in i ts origins ·was aloof ·from ·Greelc culture. Mu]Jammad and his Meccan contemporades preSl!Jllably admire~ the Byzantine and Persian ~ınpires for their wealth aJ?.d power, and had some idea of the part played by religioiı_ in the life of each. Commercial interests, however, dictated neutrality between the two gia:nts; and ne~trality was hardly coınpa~ible with aphesion to either Christ~ anity or Judaism, for the one was tJ;ıe religion of the Byza~tines and the other had some obscure but close connection with the Persian empire. Isİain, by i ts claim to be the on!y . piıre conte~ porary expressian of ·the religion of AQra:b:am, at once asserted an affinity to Judaism and Christianity and 'a ffirmed its indepe'ndence and distinct identity. It was paraUel to the «original» forms of these two religions but separate from them. Moreover it had to defend itself against them. In Mul)ammad's lifetime he had to meet the 74 criticis (...truncated)