How does Islam shape
the way Muslims live? The religion's formal requirements are the narrow
base for a far wider structure of patterns that extend the formal rules
of Islam, stretching them in unexpected and unplanned ways. A few
examples:
The Quran strictly bans the
consumption of pork, leading to the virtual disappearance of
domesticated pigs in Muslim-majority areas, then their replacement by
sheep and goats. These latter overgrazed the land, which led, as the geographer Xavier de Planhol observes, to "a catastrophic deforestation that
in turn "is one of the basic reasons for the sparse landscape
particularly evident in the Mediterranean districts of Islamic
countries." Note the progression from Quranic dietary injunction to the
desertification of vast tracts of land. The scriptural command was not
intended to cause ecological damage, but it did.
Islam's unattainably
high standards for governmental behavior meant historically that
existing leaders, with their many faults, alienated Muslim subjects, who
responded by refusing to serve those leaders in administrative and
military service, thereby compelling rulers to seek personnel elsewhere.
This led to their systematically deploying slaves as soldiers and administrators, thereby creating a key institution that lasted a millennium from the eighth century.
Islamic doctrine
ingrains a sense of Muslim superiority, a disdain for the faith and
civilization of others, which has had two vast implications in modern
times: making Muslims the most rebellious subjects against colonial rule
and obstructing Muslims from learning from the West to modernize.
Those scriptures also
imbue a hostility toward non-Muslims which in turn generates an
assumption about non-Muslims harboring a like hostility toward Muslims.
In modern times, this projection has created a susceptibility to conspiracy theories which
have had many practical consequences: for example, because only Muslims
worry that anti-polio vaccinations secretly render their children
infertile, polio has effectively become a Muslim-only scourge in 26 countries.
The annual pilgrimage
to Mecca, the Islamic hajj, began in the seventh century as a local
custom that then became an international meeting that facilitated the
transfer of everything from Islamist ideas and
political movements (the Idrisis of Libya) to luxury goods (ivory),
plants (rubber to Southeast Asia, rice to Europe), and diseases (meningococci, skin infections, infectious diarrheal and blood-borne diseases, and respiratory tract infections, including perhaps the brand-new MERS-CoV.
Other Islamic
injunctions also have unintended, negative health implications. The
imperative for modesty has led some Muslim women to wear full head and
body coverings (niqabs and burqas)
which cause vitamin D deficiency, discourage exercise, and are
implicated in a host of medical problems, including rashes, respiratory
disease, rickets, osteomalacia, and multiple sclerosis.
The daytime fast during Ramadan often
leads observant Muslims to exercise less and to "tend to overeat upon
breaking their fast, and usually the meal involves heavy, fatty foods
that are high in calories," notes the head of the Emirates Diabetes
Society. One survey in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, found 60 percent of respondents reporting excessive weight gain after Ramadan.
A preference for
first-cousin marriages, which harks back to pre-Islamic tribal practices
(to keep wealth in the family and to benefit from daughters' fertility)
over approximately fifty generations has led to widespread inbreeding with negative consequences, including about twice the incidence rate of such genetic disorders as thalassemia, sickle cell anemia, spinal muscular atrophy, diabetes, deafness, muteness, and autism.
With regard to women,
injunctions about mahram protection by male relatives, and a vastly
lower social and legal status combined to create such inadvertent
patterns as physical seclusion], obsession with virginity, honor killings, female genital mutilation, and (Saudi-style) gender apartheid. Polygamy creates permanent anxiety in wives.
Although orphans enjoy
an honored status in Islamic law (kafala), that honor is tied to a
tribal structure incompatible with modern society, resulting in Muslim
orphans today persistently discriminated against.
Islam's scriptures have
provided the base from which many other patterns evolved, including:
the establishment of dynasties through conquest, not by internal
overthrow; recurrent problems with dynastic succession; power leading to
wealth, not the reverse; the near absence of municipal governments;
inadequate regulation of cities; laws arising from ad hoc decisions, not
formal legislation, reliance on hawalas for money transfers, and the
practice of suicide terrorism.
Inadvertent patterns, sometimes called Islamicate,
change over time, with some (slave soldiers) becoming defunct and
others (polio) starting only recently. These patterns remain as powerful
today as in premodern times and are key to understanding Islam and
Muslim life.
Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum.
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