The Islamic Notion of Mercy
By: William C. Chittick
Acquaintances of mine who have participated in recent dialogues between Christian and Muslim theologians, such as those organized by A Common Word, report that one of the biggest misunderstandings shown by Christian theologians is the notion that Islam has little or nothing to say about love.
One of the several reasons for this mistaken view is that the early Orientalists -- those who first studied Islamic thought in the modern West -- imagined that a school of thought known as "Kalam" played the same role in Islam as "theology" does in Christianity. In fact, Kalam has been one of several approaches to knowledge of God, and certainly not the most influential.
Kalam was closely allied with Islamic jurisprudence and typically depicted God as the supreme law-giver. When it mentioned love, it claimed that God loves human beings by issuing commandments, and human beings love God by obeying him. Those who obey go to heaven, and those who disobey go to hell. God deals with human beings strictly in terms of carrots and sticks -- forget about love in any normal meaning of the word.
Despite the fact that more recent scholarship has done a much better job of describing the diverse theological approaches of Islamic thought, this has had relatively little effect on the prejudices that Christian theologians picked up years ago in seminary. Pope John Paul II, with all his remarkable accomplishments, provides a good example. In Crossing the Threshold of Hope, he wrote, "The God of the Koran ... is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us."
Even a cursory glance at the Quran should lead a reader to wonder why, if God is so majestic, does practically every chapter begin with the formula of consecration: "In the name of God, the All-merciful, the Ever-merciful." In the text itself, divine names and attributes associated with mercy and kindness are far more common than those associated with magnificence and majesty. Many verses say things like, "He is with you wherever you are" (57:4) -- whether before your creation, during your brief stay in this world, or after death. This divine "witness" is tightly bound up with the notion of love and mercy.
The formula of consecration contains the two names "All-merciful" (rahmān) and "Ever-merciful" (rahīm). Both are derived from the word rahma, which is variously translated as mercy, compassion, and benevolence. Rahma is an abstract noun derived from the concrete noun rahim, "womb." Mercy is the mother's attitude toward the fruit of her womb. When God says in the Quran, "My mercy embraces everything" (7:156), this means that God has mercy on the entire universe. Basing themselves on this sort of verse and on the very notion of mercy, some theologians referred to the realm of nature -- that is, the universe in its entirety -- as the divine womb.
The close connection between mercy and motherhood is obvious in many sayings of the Prophet. For example, he said that when God created mercy, he created it in one hundred parts. He kept ninety-nine parts with himself and sent one part into the world. Mothers are devoted to their children and wild animals nurture their young because of this one part. On the day of resurrection, the Prophet added, God will rejoin this one part with the ninety-nine parts -- all for the benefit of those who dwell in the posthumous realms, whether paradise or hell. Among the several points embedded in this saying is the typical stress on tawhīd, the assertion of the uniqueness of the divine reality that is the foundation of Islamic thought: What we experience as mercy, compassion, and love can only be a pale reflection of a tiny fraction of the real thing.
http://www.islamicity.com/articles/Articles.asp?ref=HP1012-4393
Mon Jun 13, 2011 3:23 am