The Vision of Islam By Sachiko Murata and William C. Chittick. New York: Paragon House, 1994, xii+ 368 pp.

Abstract

The Vision of Islam forms part of a series, entitled Visions of Reality,
designed to focus on religions as worldviews. According to the statement of the
editorial board on the flyleaf, each religion studied in the series will be presented
in the context of its own inner dynamic or ethos using a methodology
appropriate to itself. Murata and Chittick have succeeded admirably in living
up to this commiunent by allowing Islam to speak through abundant quotations
from the Qur'an and the hadith.
The outgrowth of an introductory course on Islam taught by the authors at
the State University of New York at Stony Brook for more than a decade, Vision
is organized in an innovative manner. After a brief introduction to the Qur'an,
its translations, and the life of the Prophet, the authors recount the "hadith of
Gabriel" transmitted by both al-Buk:haf1 and Muslim on the authority of 'Umar
ibn al-Kha.t.tab. According to this repon, the Prophet was questioned by an
unknown stranger about the significance of submission (islam), faith (iman),
and doing what is beautiful (Ihsan ). After explaining these concepts, the Prophet
then identified this mysterious individual as the angel Gabriel, the being through
whom God revealed the Qur'an. The remainder of the book is structured around
these three elements or dimensions, as the authors term them.
Dealing first with the several senses of submission, acceptance, or commitment,
Part I describes the essential practices of Islam: the five pillars. An often
misunderstood sixth pillar, jihad or struggle, is also discussed cogently. The
authors then explain the historical articulation of these practices in the formation
of the Sunni and Shi'i schools (madhahib), the Shari'ah, and Islamic jurisprudence.
Here and elsewhere, variations among the schools are noted.
Part II, dealing with imiin, accounts for more than two-thirds of the book,
an indication of the relative weight the authors give this dimension. The three
fundamental principles of faith-divine unity, prophecy, and eschatology-are
the major topics of this section. The nature of God's absolute unity and transcendence
is explored through a discussion of His signs, attributes, and acts (as
manifested in creation), and Islamic angelology. Here, the text is infused with
the metaphysics of illuminationist philosophy. Notions such as good and evil,
human free will and determinism, are linked convincingly with the concepts of
divine unity and the hierarchy of creation. This argument, in tum, leads logically
to an account of the role of prophecy and humanity's acceptance of ...