It’s taken me quite a while to get any sort of handle on Islam. As a college student, I was interested in just about all religions and other belief systems, but Islam was a religion I somehow never managed to get my arms around. I wanted to learn more about the philosophy, or cosmology, or whatever that aspect of a religion is called; but I never seemed to come across anything but rules: do this, don’t do that, on and on and on.
It wasn’t until much later in life that I gained a sort of accidental insight into the power of Islam. I was reading something involving European culture--it could have been one of Shakespeare’s plays--when I was struck by the degree to which permitted and non-permitted behavior were determined simply by whoever happened to by the highest-ranking lord of the area in which you found yourself.
My first impression was just a recognition of the difficulties posed to travelers in those days. Then I began to understand the challenges posed to the arts of diplomacy and statesmanship. And then finally, I began to realize what an enormous boost the Islamic revolution had given to these areas.
By codifying roles and responsibilities and setting standards of expected behavior for everyone, Islam replaced an impenetrable thicket of local idiosyncrasies with a truly modular model of the social order.
No wonder the Islamic world’s influence grew so rapidly and exponentially. People from vastly dispersed geographical areas could now act together in a coherent and predictable way. No wonder also that the Islamic world became such a wellspring of intellectual and cultural vitality: when people from all over can interact more satisfactorily with one another, they’re much better able to share ideas.
Having had this light dawn on me, I could also begin to apprehend how maybe I had been expecting the wrong kinds of things from Islam. Maybe I shouldn’t have been looking to be stimulated by cosmology and philosophy in the first place. Wasn’t it enough for a belief system to make the world a more livable place by the ways it taught people to behave?
