Lessons of freedom from a Muslim past

Anyone visiting some of the Southern areas of Spain cannot help but feel uplifted and humbled. I had the opportunity recently to be uplifted and humbled when I was in Spain for a conference. The fine splendour of Al-Hamra, the majesty of the excavation of Madinah al-Zahra, the overwhelming beauty of the arches of the Great Mosque of Cordoba are all awe-inspiring - despite the ugliness that has been caused to some of these by Spanish rulers over the centuries. For me, one of the less spectacular sights that touched me in a very special way was a life-size statue in one end of Cordoba’s old city.

In what used to be the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, in a small square about 5 metres by 5 metres, is a statue – little more than life size. The statue is of a man whose Hebrew name was Moshe ben Maimon; Arabs referred to him as Abu ‘Imran Musa ibn Maimun; he is known around the world by the name the Greeks gave to him: Moses Maimonides.

Maimonides was a product of the period of Muslim rule in Spain: a Jewish rabbi, scholar, philosopher and political advisor who thrived under Muslim rule and who served and was served by the Muslim culture that he found himself in. A prolific writer, he wrote mostly in Arabic. This includes his famous theological-philosophical work The Guide for the Perplexed and some of his exegeses of the Torah and Talmud, mostly written in Arabic and later translated into Hebrew. His writings and his innovative thought - on issues as diverse as theology and medicine - were produced during the period that Jews refer to as the Golden Age of Jewish Culture - during Muslim rule in Spain. He is regarded as the most influential figure in Medieval Jewish philosophy. He remains the most widely debated and controversial Jewish thinker among modern scholars.

While Maimonides’ writings on philosophy influenced a number of Muslim philosophers, he acknowledged a great debt that he himself owed to Muslim philosophers who were also children of the same period and who spent at least some of their time in the same city – Cordoba – that he is famously linked with: especially Ibn Rushd, Ibn Farabi and Ibn Sina. After Cordoba, Maimonides lived some part of his life in Morocco and then in Egypt, where he became a physician and adviser to Salahuddin Ayyubi. He became known as the greatest physician of his time.

It was a glorious period in history; a period which saw often sharp debate between many luminaries who have shaped how we today view the world, some of whom I have mentioned above. It was a period and a context of intellectual growth, based on an intellectual freedom that was fostered and protected by the Andalusian society and its Muslim rulers, a freedom that was regarded as paramount in the development of civilisations.

Maimonides’ statue is particularly poignant because he, a Jew, is a symbol of a kind of religious and intellectual tolerance that allowed such civilisational growth and fostered such development in human thought and such scholarly endeavour. He is a symbol of an Andalusian society that freed the mind and acknowledged and rewarded those who exercised these minds in the service of knowledge and of people.

How sad, then, that Maimonides and his family were forced to flee their homes in fear of the new rulers, the fundamentalist Almohades (or Al-Muwahhidun), who were intent on converting everyone to Islam. How tragic, that that period of religious and intellectual freedom (and thus growth) which is an example for all civilisations, was followed soon after by a period that we can look back on as one of the worst examples of religious intolerance and persecution – the Christian conquest and the Spanish Inquisition, which resulted in a genocide against Jews, Muslims and Unitarian Christians.

The rule of the Church that followed Muslim rule in Spain saw some of the most horrific human rights abuses that we know of. That period witnessed the unrelenting persecution of religious minorities (including Christian minorities), the brutal suppression of independent intellectual exercise and the fiery attacks against women who dared to think or speak for themselves. It was also a period when - as often with such contexts - words and labels took on different and particularly horrific meanings and implications. Terms like “witches”, “heretics”, and “Moors” were all employed skilfully as part of the agenda to suppress any independent thinking and action.

No Jewish Maimonides could arise in such an environment, no Muslim Ibn Rushd.

Andalusia, during its heyday, presents an important lesson for the world today - especially for Muslims. The critical importance of free thought for the development of Islamic scholarship, the Muslim ummah and humanity more generally, cannot be taken for granted. The fear that often inflicts Muslim thought and debate today - on minor jurisprudential as well as on major philosophical matters - is an unhealthy feature that suppresses our growth and development as individuals and as communities. The fear of being called a feminist or a kafir by fellow Muslims is more characteristic of the Spanish Inquisition than it is of Muslim Andalusia.

For those of us that live in Muslim minority contexts, even the period after the fall of Andalusia - when Muslims there became a minority - presents important lessons. The fatawa that fuqaha of the period gave for the persecuted Muslim minority are fascinating to read as one witnesses their grappling with changing circumstances, with their attempts to relate the shari’ah to an entirely new and previously unheard-of context.

It is this heritage of Andalusia - along with the heritage reflected in Al-Hamra and the Grand Mosque in Cordoba - that has resulted, over the past few decades, in a number of Spanish people questioning their own identities. Their need to reclaim the Muslim heritage of Spain as Spanish heritage has resulted in many of them converting to Islam and seeing in Islam a continuation of the Andalusian tradition. Many other Spaniards who see the same need to reconnect with that tradition, but without becoming Muslims themselves, also play a role today in the reclamation of Spain’s Muslim past and in restoring respect to the period of Muslim rule in Spain