Islamic Philosophy and Theology, VI: Free Will versus Predestination

Of the fissures that arose within the Muslim community by the time of the Umayyads, the one I've read about so far in Watt—the Khārijites, the Shī`ites, the Murji'ites—all seem to be largely political in origin. They do make theological claims, of course, but it seems to me at least that the origins of these fissures were political. 

Watt argues that this overlapping of political and theological claims is part of the Muslim community from the days of the Prophet's Hijra in AD 622, since it was from that point on that membership in the religious community of Muslims began to have political meanings regarding one's opinion of the Quraysh tribe, the role of the Prophet in governing the community, and so on. He writes:

"Until about the tenth century, all the Islamic sects are religio-political. Even when arguments appear to be hair-splitting theological subtleties, such as whether the Qur'ān is the created or uncreated speech of God, there are political implications." (p. 30)

If I remember right, it's around the tenth century that the `Abbāsid caliphate ends as an effective political entity, with power shifting to the hands of the Seljuq Turks and the various smaller kingdoms to the east and west of Baghdad. So once the actuality of a single united Islamic world state falls away, it's possible that the political implications of theological claims are also weakened. Interesting thought, but for now, let's turn to the next fissure that Watt explores, one that is primarily theological, but whose answers have definite political consequences: does free will exist, or is everything pre-ordained? 

I should add at this point that I have found two other sources to draw upon: The Philosophy of the Kalam, by Harry Austryn Wolfson (Harvard University Press, 1976), and Islamic Philosophy, by M. Saeed Sheikh (Octagon Press, 1982). These two books, particularly Wolfson's, are heavily focused on the theological minutiae, and thus offer a good contrast to Watt's account, which is interested in the broader historical narrative. For reasons related to my own technical competence and to my desire for continuity, I am going to continue with the same system of transliteration I've followed so far, since Wolfson's and Sheikh's systems are similar neither to one another nor to Watt's. I trust I'm making fair use of all these materials, and I certainly have no commercial interests in mind. My only goal is to achieve greater clarity of thought for myself, and these posts are meant to function essentially as my notes to capture my thoughts as I progress through Watt's beautiful book. Hope nobody minds or is offended.

Pre-Islamic Arab Notions

Anyway, back to work. Watt asks this question within the historical context of Arab beliefs. Before the advent of Islam, the desert-dwelling Arabs had a fatalistic idea of of destiny or time (zamān), seeing Time as governing the outcomes of human actions, although not necessarily the actions themselves. It was believed that the vagaries of Time determined human sustenance (rizq), and that the hour of a man's death was pre-determined. Watt writes poetically that 

"to cultivate the attitude of accepting with equanimity what 'the days' bring was probably the best hope of making a success of one's life in the harsh conditions of the desert." (p. 26)

Wolfson notes that the Qur'ān upends this view of the world by subordinating time and fate to God, that "there is a marked distinction between [the Qur'ān's] statements about the power of God over what happens in the world, including what happens to human beings, and its statements about God's power over the actions of human beings." (Wolfson, p. 601) Whereas it is clear that God's power over the former is absolute, with the length of life, birth, death, and all natural phenomena entirely controlled by God's will, the Qur'ān's attitude towards the latter is more complex. It states that a man's life, his fortunes, his sustenance—all are at the mercy of God, who alone decides when someone lives and when someone dies. There are some statements that either unambiguously affirm or hint at absolute predestination (he cites 10:100 and 7:29–30 as examples); there are also statements that thoroughly affirm or imply complete free will (including 20:84).

Political Implications

Under the Umayyads, this idea of God as Supreme Sustainer (al-Razzāq) was extended to mean that the caliphate itself had been bestowed upon them by divine decree. It was thus in their best interests to attribute all actions and all outcomes to God's own will—they claimed divinely backed authority for themselves that would justify their actions if they went right, but they could also absolve themselves of responsibility for unpopular acts by arguing that "God had willed it so". Not surprisingly, the theological question of free will turned into an act of political defiance.

The rise of the Qadarites

Confusingly, those who denied the absolute supremacy of God's qadar or power to govern that which will be have come to be known as the Qadarites. Beginning with a letter traditionally attributed to al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, the Qadarites also quoted the Qur'ān in favor of their own position. al-Ḥasan argued that "when the Qur'ān is considered as a whole, the determination of human activity by God follows on some act of human choice and is a recompense for it." (p. 27) According to him,

"God created only good, and … men's evil acts are from themselves or from Satan; but … God's 'guidance' of men contained an element of 'succour' or 'grace' (tawfīq)." (p. 27)

This meant that al-Ḥasan could oppose actions carried out by the Umayyads, since he believed that the evil rising from the action was due to the defects of the Umayyads, and not part of a divine decree of some sort. The theological question of free will was distinct from the question of the succession of Caliphs, and thus there were Khārijite Qadarites and Murji'ite Qadarites who opposed the Umayyads. According to Watt,

"Most of the Qadarites and other members of the general religious movement accepted that part of the Khārijite views which insisted that the activity of the state should be based on Islamic principles. It was when Umayyad policies went against Islamic principles that men in the general movement questioned the Umayyad claim that their acts were 'determined' by God."(p. 30)

The anti-Qadarite Position

Once the Umayyads were overthrown by the `Abbāsids, who came to power on the crest of a wave of Shī`ite-backed resentment, the Qadarites were no longer a necessarily political movement, and their ideas were largely taken over by the Mu`talizite rationalist theologians (who thoroughly fascinate me). Sheikh, whose book begins directly with the Mu`tazilites, claims that the early Mu`tazilites were called both Qadarites and `Adlites (from `adl, "justice"), since "justice of God can be vouchsafed only by holding man responsible for his actions." (Sheikh, p. 2)

Watt claims, interestingly, that the mainstream followers of al-Ḥasan's moderate Qadarite position gradually drifted into an anti-Qadarite position after the fall of the Umayyads. The burden of the textual argument to support or attack this position also shifted away from the Qur'ān (whose verses were interpreted by both sides to support their own positions) towards some of the Ḥadīth, which leaned towards a more predestinarian position. [Watt does not state this anywhere, but I wonder if the difference in position on this issue between the Qur'ān and the Ḥadīth (assuming there is one) is partially because the earliest Muslims were Arabs who held a fairly strict predestinarian view of life. This of course brings up the whole question of Arab non-religious custom versus Muslim custom, about which I know nothing and which Watt does not talk about in this context.]

The supporters of an anti-Qadarite position were termed Jabrites or Mujbirites (from jabr, or "compulsion"), and their positions varied. Watt notes at least two positions: according to the first, supported by Abū Ḥanīfa (of the Ḥanafite school of fiqh), "what reaches you (of evil) could not possibly have missed you, and what missed you could not possibly have reached you" (Watt, p. 29); according to the second, more extreme position, absolutely everything, including human responses to actions, are predestined by God. Two ḥadīth often in favor of this extreme Jabrite position were Muḥammad's statement about God's pen that has written down everything that will ever happen, and another that an individual's position in heaven or hell were predetermined at his / her birth. 

Wolfson adds that Jahm ibn Ṣafwān argued strenuously in favor of this extreme position, believing that "there is no difference between things that happen in the world in general and the actions of human beings." (Wolfson, p. 606) For ibn Ṣafwān, even though man is different from inanimate objects in that he has power (quwwa), will (irāda), and choice (ikhtiyār) when acting, it is nevertheless God who creates and maintains these qualities in man, and he is thus majbūr to act according to God's qadar. Thus, he argues that "reward and punishment, like human action, are subject to compulsion (jabr)" and "if compulsion is to be maintained, religious obligation must also be subject to compulsion." (Wolfson, p. 606)

Ultimate Consequences

Eventually, as any practicing Muslim reading this can guess, the Jabrites won and the Qadarite position was abandoned as heretical. Salvaged by the Mu`tazilite theologians, it was essentially lost to the religious mainstream. In Watt's words,

"The main stream of Islamic thought finally rejected Qadarism, even in a moderate version, and accepted one or other of these forms of predestinarian belief, though responsible theologians always found a place in their theories for moral effort. To this extent, Qadarism, unlike the belief in 'postponement', made little contribution to the final position of Sunnite Islam" (p. 29)

With this comes to an end the Umayyad Era. Next stop: the `Abbāsids, under whom Aristotle is reborn in Islamic guise to battle with both rational theologians and scholars of jurisprudence—the golden age of Islamic philosophy and theology.

Hanging stones and cathedrals' floor plans

Sunny days have been rare this summer in the UK, and Carpe Diem isn't mere sloganeering if you want to get any real sightseeing done here. Yesterday being one of those days when the cloud cover was predicted to stay under 40% for at least two hours, we decided to make the most of it by driving down southwest to Wiltshire, home to some of the oldest and most famous Neolithic sites in England, centered around Stonehenge.

The Journey

The ride down was gorgeous. We were greeted by vast expanses of clouds advancing inexorably across the sky towards the southwest, and it was a sight that I will never be able to forget. The cloud formations began hardly a few hundred feet off the ground, with small white wisps that looked for all the world like cotton candy scattered along the sky road, and rose and rose vertically until they towered thousands of feet above the ground. Bands of white and grey alternated, and competed with one another in getting to their destination as the winds nudged them along at different speeds depending on their heights. To steal a conventional description from Sanskrit mahākāvya, it did indeed look like a vast army of snow-white horses and mountain-like grey elephants on the march, the swift cavalry galloping along the side of the formation with the elephants trundling majestically through the center, as if parting the blue sea of the sky. Mountains, clouds, elephants—all merged into one poetic image of such power and vitality that it concealed a more ordinary meteorological message: we were driving straight into rainy weather. Oh well.

The southwestern English countryside is mostly beautiful chalky downlands, with gentle chalk hills interspersed with small vales. Most of the fields seemed to be covered in grass, with lots of bales of hay scattered everywhere, although we saw no cattle or sheep anywhere. And finally, after a long but satisfying drive, just as the sun's rays were beginning to pierce the vast cloud army and scatter its troops everywhere, we came atop a hill and saw, motionless in a distant green field, the monument of Stonehenge.

Stonehenge

The word "Stonehenge" is a modernized version of what may once have been the Old English words for "stone-hinge" or "stone-hang" (a more poetic translation perhaps being something like "hanging stones"), both references to the massive stone lintels that are found at the monument. Although the monument itself is quite sizable (the single tallest stone must be over 20 feet tall), it is actually only one among many, many henges and barrows and burial sites and whatnot scattered all over this part of the Salisbury Plain. Whoever lived here, over five thousand years ago, clearly ascribed great importance to these sites, whether for religious or ceremonial or astronomical purposes. A quick 360-degree scan of the landscape near Stonehenge reveals a number of barrows within plain view, plus the giant earthen work known as the Cursus which is even older than Stonehenge. Who these people were, and why they built these sites, and even how they pulled it off, is still a mystery. The sands of time have effaced their last camp sites of the mind so effectively than even a Bedouin poet-warrior would be unable to find the merest tracings upon which to base his lament.

But back to the monument. The earliest parts of Stonehenge were set up in 3000 BCE, but it remained an active site of a living culture for at least another fifteen hundred years before all signs are lost. Since then it has suffered the mindless scarring of the elements as well as the equally brainless damage effected by religious zealots and business-minded construction crews and posterity-minded tourists, as a result of which perhaps less than half of the original stones remain intact. Nowadays tourists aren't allowed to get any closer than twenty paces to the structure, so what I say about the insides comes from the audio guides we were issued and not my own eyewitness account. 

The innermost "ring" consisted of a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of so-called "bluestones" probably brought in from Wales. Already at this time the site was built so as to capture the summer solstice sunrise. Subsequent generations rearranged the patterns of the bluestones, and also finally began hauling in the giant sarsen stones that are considered so typical of Stonehenge today. Archaeological evidence seems to suggest that the original plan of the structure was to form a complete ring of giant sarsens supporting lintel stones, the vertical "doorposts" being so shaped as to maintain perspective (like Greek columns), and the lintels being worked to create a perfect, smooth circle. Between this stone circle and the bluestone horseshoe were erected the super-sized trilithons that would probably have reached 25 feet skywards. Nothing like the stone ring remains today, although paintings from the seventeenth century suggest even then a more complete circle of vertical sarsens than we have today. The sheer muscle power it would have taken to haul these stones any distance, then bury them up to seven feet into the ground (yes, what we see is only two-thirds of the height of the actual stones), then erect them, then hoist the lintels onto them, is unbelievable.

Old Sarum

After wondering at the superhuman achievements of these Neolithic people, it was time to move on. We'd heard some talk about an old fort used by William the Conqueror nearby, and it was off to find Old Sarum. The drive down to Old Sarum, within hailing distance of the town of Salisbury, was even greener than our drive to Stonehenge. Thick hedges and tall trees grew on both sides of the single-lane road, at times growing so extensively as to form a green canopy over our heads. And when we finally emerged, we could immediately see why Old Sarum had been used as a fort for thousands of years.

The castle, palace, and cathedral built by William the Conqueror must have stood magnificently on top of this great hill that dominates the plains all around it. It had been used by Neolithic peoples, the Celts, and the Saxons in turn before it fell into William's hands, and in the process had developed excellent fortifications. The hill's slope is decently steep, and into it are gashed two deep, concentric moats, each perhaps fifteen or twenty feet deep and virtually impassable without a drawbridge. The cathedral, and what town there must have been at some point, was built in the annulus between the moats, but the actual castle stood with its once-great walls inside the second moat. 

Of course, virtually nothing remains of castle, palace, or cathedral now. The site was abandoned nearly five hundred years ago, and royal permission was given for all the structures to be dismantled and their building materials salvaged. All that remain today of the castle are the entrance passage by the drawbridge, some ten feet tall and probably thirty feet deep, the faintest remains of its thick outerwalls, and perhaps a story or so of the great keep that must have stood here at some point. The formidable walls of the base of the keep still stand, their smooth casing stones concealing the rough flint cores that made the wall so impervious to attack. 

Oh, and the Royal Lavatory survived too: a deep, stone-lined pit whose top would have been covered by wooden toilet seats to support the royal posterior. There was no flush or drainage: the only way to clean it was to lower some poor sod into it to haul out organic material by hand. The grass at the bottom of the pit seemed a lot greener than the grass on the hill; was it the fertility of the soil, or was it just my fertile imagination?

The views afforded by the remains of the castle walls are spectacular: in every direction visibility extends for miles, and there is not a single approach to the hill or to the castle that can be concealed. And far in the distance, one can descry the single soaring spire of Salisbury Cathedral, although this was built a good while after the castle itself was built. In those days another cathedral stood on the hill itself, clearly visible from the king's private quarters. As with the castle though, every usable stone was carted away in the fifteenth century, leaving behind nothing but the pebbled remains of the building's original construction: a veritable cathedral diagram made of stone, in which just about every major feature of the structure can be recognized: the aisles, the choir, the apse, the eastern end, the library, everything. The building must have been enormous in its day, but today ... Sic transit gloria mundi.

By this point the great cloud-army had reassembled after withstanding the assault of the sun, and was preparing to storm the erstwhile palace of William the Conqueror, which, now that its walls and roofs had been stripped away, presented a soft target to a foe who would simply vertically envelop the moats and drawbridge. As strong winds buffeted the hilltop and the sky changed color to match the grey stones and the clouds obscured the fields and spires in the distance, I realized how desolate this place must have been, even during its heyday: windswept, lonely, exposed to the elements, its foundations standing higher than some of the clouds. 

Pompous Sermonizing

It struck me then that the most important ally one needs when visiting a monument is imagination: the ability to see the sad ruins of a place and re-cognize it into its own place in time, among the people who gave birth to it, among those who saw it as it once was, a living structure integrated into a culture, and not as a monument, an ossified reminder of a time long gone by. The greatest monuments, then, are those that have the power to fire that imagination in their visitors—sites like the Taj Mahal or the Pyramids or Stonehenge—but the smaller and less significant the structure, the greater the sensitivity and imagination needed to truly appreciate it.

Islamic Philosophy and Theology, V: The Umayyad-era General Religious Movement

The "General Religious Movement"

As I'd mentioned earlier, Watt points out the difficulty of precisely analyzing the components of the early Muslim mainstream, while acknowledging that this does not mean there was no such thing. Indeed, he notes that from the earliest times groups of pious Muslims (invariably men) would get together in mosques to discuss "legal matters, ascetic and mystical practices, the interpretation of the Qur'ān and occasionally theological doctrine." (p. 20) It's easy to imagine the first schools of jurisprudence arising out of these discussions.

Watt notes that most of these pious Muslims, although not necessarily politically active, often held particular religious or theological beliefs which naturally, in a society where "politics was closely linked with piety" (p. 20), had political consequences. These mosques formed fora where Khārijites and Shī`ites and Ibn al-Zubayrites and Umayyad apologists who could tolerate one another—in other words, a moderate cross-section of the major Muslim political / theological positions—could all come together to discuss a variety of issues. It was this moderate mainstream that in later times comes to be called the Sunnite position, although such a title is not used at this point in Muslim history.

These discussions led to the rise of two very important phenomena. First, the idea of the ḥadīth. Watt presents three different positions on the reasons for, and the method of, collecting the ḥadīth. The traditional picture offered by Muslim scholars is that the Companions of the Prophet handed down these anecdotes, which were passed down from generation to generation along with an isnād, a chain of transmission without which the anecdote was considered unreliable. The modern skeptical position is known as the Goldziher-Schacht view, according to which the ḥadīth were handed down through most of the Umayyad period without any isnād, and that most of the chains of transmission were a later fabrication. A more recent, more moderate position has been put forward by Fuad Sezgin, which argues that not only were early Muslim scholars aware of the many problems associated with certifying a ḥadīth's isnād, but that they had also developed a complex system of trying to determine its validity. However, modern scholarship tends towards the position that "it would appear that a complete isnād was not de rigueur until about the year 800" (p. 20), that is, only into the `Abbāsid period.

The second important phenomenon growing out of the mosque-as-forum was the political / theological idea of irjā' ("postponement"), a belief that the only way to heal the deep rifts that had appeared within the Muslim community at this point was to accept the picking Abū Bakr and `Umar as the first two caliphs, and to "postpone" judgement on the righteousness of the first fitna ("civil war" or "schism") among `Uthmān, `Alī, and al Zubayr. This belief was a calculated way for moderate Muslims to distance themselves from both the anti-Umayyad Khārijite position and the pro-`Alī Shī`ite position, without forcing them to either blindly support or oppose the Umayyads. This political meaning of irjā' is sometimes conflated with a different theological idea, that the fate of the grave sinner is "postponed" to be decided by God and not by the community; in this sense, this is an anti-Azraqite position, but is similar in some ways to the Wāqifite position taken by the moderate urban Khārijites. Whatever the meaning of the word irjā', it's clear that it is not a complete theological position and that one could be (as Watt claims some heresiographers wrote) a member of a variety of sects while still believing in irjā'. Opponents of postponement lumped all "postponers" into one group, the so-called Murji'ites.

But the second meaning of irjā' introduces a new complication into Islamic thinking. The extreme Khārijite position has the advantage of offering a clear, if extremely restrictive, definition of a Muslim: one who joins their tribe and does not commit any sin. As the idea of irjā' caught on though, it became more and more important to come up with a good working positive definition of who a Muslim is; in other words, a way to identify a Muslim by what s/he thinks and does, not by what s/he does not. To answer this arose the concept of īmān, loosely translated as "faith" but in this context referring to something very specific. The "postponers" all agreed on three intellectual components of īmān (although there were probably a number of additional beliefs and practices that many would have wanted): ma`rifa (the knowledge of God and his Messenger), taṣdīq (the belief that this knowledge was true), and iqrār (the confession of this belief with the tongue). All three components are encapsulated in the shahāda. The most prominent supporter of a purely intellectual understanding of īmān was Abū Ḥanīfa, after whom the Ḥanafi school of jurisprudence was named. Although the general idea of irjā' and the major components of īmān—in other words, that `Uthmān was the third caliph and was unjustly murdered, that `Alī was the fourth caliph, that the fate of the grave sinner can only be determined by God, and that Muslim identity is determined by īmān—were all accepted by the Islamic mainstream, Abū Ḥanīfa's purely intellectual definition of īmān was expanded by other Sunnite theological schools to include elements of practice. As a consequence, modern scholars like Reza Aslan can now argue (link to iTunes) that the Islamic mainstream today is more of an orthopraxy than an orthodoxy, since it is in fact actual engagement in particular practices that determines whether someone is a "good" Muslim or not (and of course, the final decision is in God's hands and nobody else's).

Islamic Philosophy and Theology, IV: The Umayyad-era Shī`ites

The Shī`ites during Umayyad Rule

As can be imagined, the Shī`ites would have been very unhappy under Umayyad rule, first with Mu`āwīya himself (since they blamed him for `Alī's death), and then with Yazīd for the slaughter of Ḥusayn at Karbala. Watt presents a sad picture of the movement at this point, but claims that at this early stage the later theologies of the Imām had not developed. At this point in history, he says, the Shī`ites were a movement of deeply dissatisfied Muslims who were extremely unhappy with the existing Caliphate and were in search of a charismatic leader who could lead them out of this situation. Interestingly, Watt argues that

"there was no particular recognition that the imāms later acknowledged by the Imāmite and Ismā`īlite branches of Shī`ism, the descendants of al-Ḥusayn, son of `Alī, had any special status or special gifts. The tendency was rather to consider that the charismata requisite for the position of imām belonged potentially to all members of Muḥammad's clan of Hāshim, whether descended from Muḥammad through Fāṭima or not." (p. 16)

As evidence for this, he offers the statements made by the leaders of some of the early Shī`ite revolts who often claim descent from Muḥammad not through Fāṭima.

Watt also brings out a very interesting social dimension to the Shī`ite movement at this point. At this point in the history of Islam, there existed a sharp divide between Muslims who were Arabs and Muslims who were from the conquered populations—native `Irāqis, Persians, and the like. The initial solution was to establish an unequal relationship between the Arabs and the native populations wherein the non-Arab Muslims were taken as mawālis or "clients" of the Arabs, under their protection. This undoubtedly protected the earliest converts from repercussions from their societies (and indeed this may have been the original goal, but Watt does not elaborate), but at the same time it introduced a power dynamic that was not to the benefit of the mawālis. As it turns out, one of the earliest Shī`ite rebellions, that of al-Mukhtār in Kufa from AD 685 to 687, was supported by a number of mawālis, and although this rebellion failed it gave both Shī`ites and mawālis reason to work more closely with each other. It's possible that the ethnic tension between Arabs and non-Arabs was mapped onto the tensions between "protector" and "client", "pro-Umayyad" and "anti-Umayyad", "mainstream" and "Shī`ite". None of these divisions was probably deep enough on its own—the majority of the population of Persian stock, who would have converted en masse to Shī`ism very early on had this been true, remained part of the mainstream moderate movement until the Safavids—, but when two or more faultlines coincided, it probably caused the conflict to escalate. The relationship between Shī`ism and the suppressed underclasses remained fairly strong, and I hypothesize that this is one reason the Iranian Islamic Revolution succeeded in tying together many Marxist and Islamic elements (at least so far as I can tell from my cursory readings).

Of the many Shī`ite rebellions at this point, one led by Zayd, the great-grandson of the Prophet, in 740 is important because it gives rise to the Zaydites (or Zaidis, I suppose). What was interesting about this revolt was that Zayd wanted to offer a viable alternative to the Umayyad regime, and to do so, made a few major theological points: first, that the Imām would declare himself openly and be able to back up his words on the battlefield, if necessary; second, that "though `Alī was the rightful imām after the Prophet and superior to Abū Bakr and `Umar, the 'imamate of the inferior' (imāmat al-mafḍūl) was permissible." (p. 17) These were both major differences from the general Shī`ite consensus at this point, and possibly cost Zayd support among more "thorough-going Shī`ites".

And what about the `Abbāsids? Watt presents them as coming to power atop the crest of a popular wave of discontent astutely channeled by the leaders to accomplish their goals. The `Abbāsid rebels appealed to all major discontents in the populace—the Shī`ites, by claiming they "called for support for 'him of the family of the Prophet who shall be chosen," (p. 18), a statement both clearly Shī`ite and yet vague enough to be politically useful; the Zaydites, by claiming that they meant to revenge themselves on the regime for shedding Zayd's blood; and the mawālis, by claiming they were fighting for the weak and downtrodden. Watt notes that the leading military commander of the `Abbāsid rebel forces was a mawāli by the name Abū Muslim; Katherine Babayan studies him and the medieval romance in his name, the Abūmuslimnāma, in greater detail in her book Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran, and notes the convergence of Shī`ite and Zoroastrian rebellion in the mythicized figure of Abū Muslim. Alas, Watt does not mention that after the `Abbāsids came to power, Abū Muslim was murdered. Still, Watt observes that "the volume of support for the `Abbāsids from the clients meant that, when they achieved control over the caliphate, clients, especially Persians and persianized Aramaeans, received a due share of power, and the inferior status of the non-Arab Muslims gradually disappears." (p. 18)

Watt does not have a great opinion of the position of the Shī`ite movement at this point in history, particularly from a theological perspective. He comments:

"The Shī`ism of the Umayyad period was thus vaguer and more indefinite than later Shī`ism, and lacked any semblance of a coherent theory. It was the manifestation of a deep unconscious need—a feeling in men's hearts that they would be happier and more satisfied spiritually if they had a charismatic leader to follow. The imām of whom the Shī`ites dreamed is precisely what is meant by such a charismatic leader … Most of those accepted as imām belied the hopes set on them; and yet the quest went on. The persistence of the quest shows the depth of the feeling involved." (pp. 16–17)

Watt does not try to answer why the Khārijites were quicker to develop something like a fairly clear theology than the Umayyad-era Shī`ites, but I wonder if the size of the respective groups and their attitudes towards authority have something to do with it. Going with Watt's account, I posit that most of the Khārijites were concentrated in fairly small bands, particularly among the extreme Azraqites. A small, ideologically committed group that has already carried out acts of violence that separate it from the mainstream is probably more likely to develop a coherent argument to justify its raison d'être than a diffuse, multivocal movement like the Shī`ites. Further, the attitude of the Khārijites that any Muslim regardless of background or tribal affiliation could become the leader based on personal purity and excellence was probably quite helpful in legitimizing the voices of their leaders even if they only had direct command over a small territory; in contrast, the Shī`ite quest for the genuine Imām probably made it harder for "lay" members of the movement to sketch out even a tentative theology. Of course, all of this is mere speculation on my part.

Islamic Philosophy and Theology, III: The Khārijites

The Khārijites

This chapter begins with a brief history of the Umayyad caliphate. After `Alī's assassination by a Khārijite, Mu`āwīya of the Banu 'Umayya became Caliph as recognized by the majority of Muslims, although the Shī`ites believed the Caliphate should have been transferred to `Alī's son Ḥasan. After Mu`āwīya, his son Yazīd became Caliph, although a number of people who had accepted Mu`āwīya's rule rejected him. It was during Yazīd's rule that Ḥasan's brother Ḥusayn was assassinated at Karbala, the tragic incident that finally gave the Shī`ite movement a center to hold on to. It was also during Yazīd's rule that Ibn al Zubayr rebelled and established his own kingdom, covered the Ḥijaz, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt at its height. Only under the Marwanid branch of the Umayyads was the empire re-united and a new phase of expansion initiated, all of which ended in AD 750 when the black banners of the `Abbāsids overthrew the Umayyads Caliphate.

Ibn al Zubayr's rule was supported by two branches of the Khārijites because of his rebellion against the perceived injustice of the Umayyads. Watt argues that their theological ideas played an important indirect role in the history of Islam.

The Azraqites, led by Nafī` ibn al Azraq, initially controlled Basra, but fled to the eastern mountains and opposed Ibn al Zubayr once he captured the city. They took the Khārijite position to its logical extreme. Since, they held, they were the only group of true Muslims who had adhered thoroughly to the core of the message of the Qur'an by not committing any sin, therefore any Muslim who did not make the hijra to their own camp was thus denying his / her own membership in the community of Muslims, and was thus a legitimate target of violence. The Azraqites were thus known for their violent acts of terror.

The Najdites were from central Arabia and helped Ibn al Zubayr capture Mecca. Unlike the Azraqites who were a free-roaming group spreading violence, they remained in charge of a vast portion of Arabia until their suppression by the Umayyads. Their interpretation of the central Khārijite doctrine was not as unyielding or absolute as the Azraqites', perhaps due to the difficulties of strictly applying Khārijite doctrine while governing a large territory. While they believed, just as the Azraqites did, that the community of Muslims was a common brotherhood that ought to be governed according to Islamic rules, they differed from the hardline Azraqites in that:

(1) they permitted Khārijites living in non-Khārijite territory to practice taqiyya

(2) they regarded Muslims who chose not to join them as hypocrites (munāfiqūn), but did not deny their Muslimhood the way the Azraqites did

(3) they made a novel distinction between those actions that were fundamental to the practice of Islam and those that were not, and only expelled those individuals from the community who had persisted in violating the fundamental practices.

The Najdite interpretation of the basic Khārijite doctrine thus gave them some flexibility in administering a large community.

In addition to these two groups, there was a community of politically neutral Khārijites living in non-Khārijite Basra. Living among people whom they considered non-Muslims, these Khārijites practiced taqiyya, but also gradually softened their rigid distinction between the 'people of Paradise' (defined initially as membership within the Khārijite community) and the 'people of Hell'. This softening happened in two ways: First, the initially unforgiving Khārijite position on social immorality was slackened, meaning that people were not cast out of the community for isolated acts seen as sinful. Second, a new group within the Khārijites arose, known as the Wāqifites, who chose to "suspend judgement" on whether Muslim non-Khārijites were wrongdoers who deserved to be excluded from the community. Watt argues that the Khārijites, and the Wāqifites in particular, had taken the pre-Islamic Arab notion of tribal membership and communitarian responsibility and extended it to the entire Muslim community; in effect, they had unified the Muslim Arabs into a single tribe, while shifting away to some extent from the Qur'ānic attitude of individual responsibility. In effect, the individual's responsibility was towards actions sanctioned by the Qur'ān as right, and his / her practice of such actions would guarantee salvation because they guaranteed membership within the community of Muslims.

Watt also has this to say about the Khārijites:

"Perhaps the most important contribution of the Khārijites to the development of Islamic thought and Islamic civilization was their insistence that the life of the community and the decisions of its rulers must be based on the Qur'ān. Presumably many Muslims agreed with this in theory, but the Khārijites were prepared to stand up to the government authorities in defence of their view. Had they not felt so strongly about this, the empire might well have gone back to pre-Islamic principles and developed into a secular Arab state. The point was eventually accepted by the whole community in the form of the doctrine that all social and political life must be based on the Sharī`a or revealed divine law." (p. 12)

The Khārijites eventually faded out, leaving behind a few fragmentary communities in Oman based on the Ibāḍite doctrine (not that Watt discusses this doctrine in any detail). These groups reject the name "Khārijite", perhaps due to the associations it has with rebellion and violence, and prefer to describe themselves simply as Ibāḍites.

Islamic Philosophy and Theology, II: The First Caliphs

Part I: The Umayyads

I'm missing a few pages at the very beginning of the book, which is frustrating because I'm missing a lot of the details about the early debates and struggles during the earliest Caliphates. This is one part where I really need more information to fill in the gaps, so please help me out. What I've been able to piece together so far is that after the passing of the Prophet Muḥammad, the Caliphate passed on to Abū Bakr, `Umar, `Uthmān, and `Alī in succession, and not without much debate that eventually had unfortunate, violent consequences.

The book begins by noting, not the mainstream of Islamic belief and practice, but the rise of different sects. The author justifies this later when he actually gets down to the "general religious movement" as he calls it, by noting:

(1) that the term "orthodox" is inaccurate when applied to Islamic practice at this early stage, because after the Prophet there was no single authority to turn to in order to determine the "orthodox" from the "heretical"; this, he feels, would be imposing a Christian understanding of religion onto Islamic history. What Islam has instead, he says, is "the main or central body of opinion in the various schools or sections of the community." (p. 19)

(2) that the study of the central movement of moderate opinion during the Umayyad period is difficult to document because it was, and generally has been, the practice of Muslim historians and heresiographers to note down heresies, better termed as "innovations" (bid'a). In other words,

"Muslims of the centre were quite happy to write about the divergent views of the sects; but when it came to the views of their own party they considered that these were in essence identical with those of Muḥammad and his Companions, and therefore they tended to hide any changes and developments or pass them over in silence. There is thus no material for the direct study of this central body, but only large masses of semi-relevant material in biographical dictionaries and similar works." (p. 19)

This doesn't mean that there was no central movement, of course, but merely that to determine what it was and what it thought at that early stage is a fairly difficult task.

I understand that the selection of the Caliphs after the Prophet was not uncontroversial, and that the selection and consequent governance of the Caliph `Uthmān was particularly thorny. Watt dates the rise of the first sectarian tensions to this period, both rooted in opposition to `Uthmān's caliphate.

The Shī`ites were of course the party in support of `Alī, who were unwavering in their belief in him and who believed that "a leader or imam such as `Alī could make no mistakes and do no wrong." (p. 2) Whether this was the absolute belief of every single member of this movement at this point in history or the opinion of the most fervent is unclear. Watt seems to imply that at this very early point, within`Alī's lifetime, the Shī`ite movement is not a full-blown political and theological movement but rather a collection of Muslims who believe that he ought to have been made Caliph first.

The other sect that arises in opposition to `Uthmān is that of the Khārijites. Unlike the Shī`ites, they believed that `Alī had actually erred "because he was not sufficiently definite in his support of those responsible for the murder of `Uthmān." (p. 2) In other words, they considered `Uthmān's actions unjust (precisely what he did, I don't know since the pages are missing!), and believed that as a result of this injustice he had forfeited his membership of the entire community of Muslims, and hence it was justified, even required, to assassinate him. According to them,

"judgement was to be given in accordance with the Qur'ān. This further implied that all who had committed a grave sin were destined for Hell and belonged to the 'people of Hell', since in the Khārijite view this was clearly stated in the Qur'ān." (p. 8)

This picture of the Khārijites that Watt draws definitely seems to be an extreme version of their belief, but it does seem to explain why the Khārijites mounted so many rebellions against `Uthmān, then `Alī, and then Mu`āwīya.

At this early point, the two sects are not yet theologically well defined positions, but are probably better understood as social or political movements seeking a form of justice that was regarded by the mainstream as unusual or unacceptable. To account for the rise of these two disaffected groups, Watt seeks out differences in social structure that may have helped assuage the concerns of Muslims at the time. He argues that since the period was marked by major social upheavals, men sought succor in traditional sources of comfort. To some, this was offered by the promise of following a divinely inspired, infallible, and charismatic leader; to others, this was acquired through membership in a divinely inspired community of fellow believers. Both of these beliefs, he argues, were present in one way or another in pre-Islamic Arab society. Further, he asserts that the majority of the very first Shī`ites came mostly from southern Arabian tribes, which had a fairly long history of civilization relying on semi-divine kingship, while most of the Khārijites were from northern nomadic tribes that expressed a more "democratic" nature within the tribe in combination with sharp divides between tribes; hypothetically, these old cultural differences may have risen anew to create the new sects.

While the idea that the tribes' pre-Islamic cultures may have influenced their understanding and their practice of Islam is certainly interesting and well within the realms of possibility, I find the general set-up of his explanation a little far-fetched. For if that were the case, then shouldn't the tribes have defected en masse to the new sectarian movements? If one argues that only those who were more deeply attached to their old tribal ways of thinking followed this path, then that naturally raises the question of why these particular individuals were more deeply attached, and why they demonstrated (whether consciously or unconsciously) their affinities by adopting such positions with regard to Islam. Furthermore, it does nothing to answer why it was `Alī in particular who became the focus of one of the sects. I think it is more likely that in the Shī`ite case, individuals were prompted to support `Alī by the perceived injustice meted out to him or by his personal charisma. As for the Khārijites, Watt notes that most of their uprisings against both `Alī and Mu`āwīya were carried out by very small groups of men—an average of two hundred or so. A group this small can coalesce fairly easy (particularly if it has a few strong personalities) based on a perceived common injustice or fraternal bond; and with groups this small I can see Watt's tribal psychology playing its part in convincing them to narrow the limits of the Muslim community down to their own membership. (I'm still not fully satisfied with his explanation though!)

Yes, I'm this ignorant of pop culture

While growing up, my musical tastes were very simple: Carnatic music first, Hindustani music next, old Bollywood, then new Bollywood, and finally, towards the end of high school, Santana. Dire Straits was a bad situation to be in, Led Zeppelin was an unworkable flying contraption, Nirvana was a state that Buddhists aspired to, and Boyzone was not a place I wanted to be. Even my mom knew more about the Western music of her time—the Beatles, the Ventures, the Beegees, even Abba. I found pop music fluffy and not enjoyable at all, and I regarded most rock music as noise.

Well, this summer, I've been trying to change that. I've started listening to a couple of rock music channels to try to get a handle on this entire world of music I've not been exposed to. I want to keep a record of how my tastes evolve, and also to be able to get feedback on what groups or songs to check out. If you're not me and you're reading this, please don't kill yourself laughing at my ignorance; take pity instead and try to enlighten me. As they said during Vedic times (in a wholly different context, but we'll ignore that): tamaso mā jyotir gamaya. 

Bands / Songs I've (not dis)liked so far

1. Dire Straits
   
2. "Losing My Religion", R.E.M., and most other songs by them
3. just about all the unplugged Nirvana clips on Youtube
   
4. "Even Flow" and "Jeremy", Pearl Jam
5. "Rockstar", Nickelback 
   
6. All of the album "Final Straw" by Snow Patrol (I need to listen to this on repeat to really pick out the songs I like)
7. "Here Without You", Three Doors Down
8. Almost everything I've heard from Led Zeppelin so far, even though some songs sound a bit dated! "Kashmir" is great though.

Bands / Songs I've disliked so far

1. everything (i.e., two songs) I've heard by Limp Bizkit
2. everything other than "Rockstar" by Nickelback

Okay, more later. 

A lament for the halcyon days ...

... when it actually used to be an even contest between bat and ball. And now we have this article from Cricinfo to prove that batting in the fourth innings of a Test is no longer a test of anything other than the fielding side's endurance. I'm not in the mood to think deeply about this issue, but throughout my cricket viewing days I've seen the balance of the game tip inexorably towards the batsman and away from the bowler. Virtually any variable you can think of works in favor of the batsman: heavier bats, shortened boundaries, free hits, utterly lifeless pitches, harsh legside wide rules, restrictions on bouncers and intimidatory bowling, mandatory ball changes just as the ball starts reverse swinging / spinning, the throw-the-kitchen-sink-at-it approach driven by Twenty20 … the list is endless. Now some of these developments (I'm thinking particularly of new, innovative batting techniques) are the result of changes in the culture of the game, and are healthy because they force both batting and bowling sides to be more creative. But most of the other developments are idiotic, foolish changes mandated by cricket's governing bodies to encourage stupid inanities like hitting sixes (pardon me, DLF maximums (and shouldn't that be "maxima"?) ) that suit nobody other than the advertisers. 

I'm seething with rage and not entirely coherent right now, so I'm going to end this post, but I beseech the ICC to please, for the love of all that is good and holy, redress the balance between bat and ball and to give bowlers some ability to bite back. Oh what would I not give to watch Holding and Marshall splay Ponting's and Hussey's and Pietersen's stumps!

<UPDATE>

Looks like Cricinfo heard my cry of anguish and decided to offer Allan Donald a platform to argue that ball tampering should be made legal to try to redress the balance between bat and ball. I'm not yet certain how I feel about this, but one thing is for sure: if this is allowed, we're going to see a heck of a lot more batsmen hopping around the crease looking uncomfortable. I haven't had my morning cuppa yet and so all arguments below are automatically suspect, but (a) this is a piece of legislation which is hard to push through for political reasons, but which will have an immediate effect in strengthening the bowler's hand against the batsman; (b) this will quickly weed out the not-so-deserving batsmen who've entered Test cricket recently on the basis of heavy bats and bat speed in Twenty20 and nothing else; (c) this will eliminate one old source of Anglo-Australian whining whenever they've been done in by a superlative Pakistani bowling performance; (d) any change that will have the effect of showing Dravid's worth to the world is a good one.

</UPDATE>

Islamic Philosophy and Theology, I

I recently got my hands on a copy of W. Montgomery Watt's Islamic Philosophy and Theology: An Extended Survey and am planning to work my way through it before summer ends. This will be my first systematic exposure to Islamic philosophy and theology, and consequently I want to take notes on this book as I'm reading it to be able to refer to them as I learn more. Why take notes online? Well, since I'm just starting off, I'd greatly appreciate being pointed to new sources that will give me more details on what puzzles me and what may be controversial. I don't even know if this is the best introductory source available, for instance! The other great advantage of posting notes online is that it forces me to keep my notes (decently) clear, (relatively) coherent, and (somewhat) systematic, in the fear that some poor soul with too much free time on their hands may actually want to read it.

I'm going to keep updating this post adding new posts as I get further through the book. All quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the 1985 Edinburgh University Press edition of the book.

First, a little bit on the organization of the book. Its overall organization is chronological and not thematic or sectarian. This approach has its problems—most importantly, it makes it a little more difficult to explore the gradual shifting of the contours of a particular school of thought or ideology. However, it has the virtue of framing philosophical developments within a particular social, historical, and political context, and this is probably a good thing in an introduction. Consequently, the notes I take on particular sects or terms may appear to be incomplete or inaccurate; if such is the case, then it's likely that it is an effect of the chronological organization of the book.

On spellings, part two

Having looked at one particular Hindi example last time, it may be helpful to begin from a bird's eye view this time by looking at what spelling does in general. Before proceeding any further, let me attest to my complete ignorance of the various East Asian / CJK writing systems; I have no idea how much of what I'm going to try to sketch out here applies to those systems. (Needless to say, cuneiform, hieroglyphs, Mayan glyphs, Germanic runes, and a whole host of other writing systems also fall into the category of writing-system-of-which-I'm-woefully-ignorant, but they're different from CJK in that they fall into the subcategory of writing-system-of-which-I'm-woefully-ignorant-and-of-which-any-unfortunate-reader-of-this-blog-is-also-likely-to-be-ignorant while the CJK systems belong to the writing-system-of-which-I'm-woefully-ignorant-but-with-which-some-particular-unfortunate-reader-of-this-blog-may-perchance-be-familiar subcategory.)

Okay, with that giant caveat out of the way, let's begin. A system of writing for a language is a way of committing linguistic elements to a material less ethereal than air—whether this be sand or stone is immaterial. It should be recognized off the bat that the basic elements of the writing system, the "graphemes", so to speak, need not necessarily exist in injective correspondence with any of the language's basic units, whether they be morphemes or phonemes or tonemes or whatever. (The best example of this is the English alphabet: aside from the letters 'a', 'o', and 'i', which correspond to one-letter words, no letter necessarily or uniquely represents a basic phonetic or grammatical element of the English language. I could be overlooking something big here, so please correct me.) The point of noting this is to acknowledge that the relation between the writing system and the language is fundamentally conventional: the written entity is but a signifier that signifies a particular linguistic entity, just as that linguistic entity is itself a signifier for something else. 

At this point I've definitely stepped into a deep and messy dungheap that the philosophy of language attempts to analyze, and I'm not even going to pretend to extricate myself or justify some philosophical position over another. All I'm trying to say here, and I think this is fairly uncontroversial in and of itself, is that the relationship between a writing system and a language is a learned one, and hence this relationship can change over time as the relations among the many signifiers and signifieds evolves over time. Sometimes this can involve a radical shift that forces people to completely relearn these conventions, as happens when an existing writing system is pressed into use for a new language, or when the same language comes to be written in a new writing system. 

What has been said up to this point holds true, I think, for all writing systems, even the CJK systems that I'm trying to avoid. However, I think the concept of spelling makes sense only within a broadly alphabetic system (I'm including syllabaries, abjads, and abugidas into this one, and yes, I realize hiragana and katakana fall into this bucket), although I hypothesize that an analogous concept must exist within the CJK system as well. The reason is this: for the entire graphical system of signs to work as a method of communication, it should be possible for individuals to recognize graphical signifiers created by others. I'm using 'recognize' in two different, possibly chronologically successive, ways here: first, they need to be able to 'recognize' the graphical signifier as a signifier in general, that is as a visual artifact expressly designed to communicate a linguistic idea; second, they need to be able to 'recognize' the particular signified being referred to by the signifier. This may seem absurdly complex, but it should be clear that we need both steps.

Take a simple substitution cipher of the form that I used in order to pass on secret messages to friends when we were in the fifth grade. We treated the English alphabet as the addition group Z / 26 (and no, I had no fricking clue what that meant when I was in the sixth grade; I'm merely using unambiguous terminology that I picked up in college), and applied a simple translation of +1 or -2 or whatever took our fancy. This meant we could pass messages around that looked like "mfu't ejtdvtt ipx up ublf pwfs uif xpsme upebz bu mvodi." To the uninitiated, this may have looked like a garbled assortment of letters spelled out by a maniacal dyslexic monkey hammering away at a typewriter, but we cool kids (or nerds, as we were unfairly maligned) recognized these strings as intelligible messages and responded enthusiastically to them. Of course, once the jocks got wind of what was happening, they realized we were using codes of some sort; at this point they had attained enlightenment of the first order. However, as long as they didn't know precisely what the transformation was, the higher enlightenment eluded their grasp.

So now it should be clear what I'm driving at. Spelling is the arrangement of graphical units in particular sequences agreed upon by convention, and good spelling results in the production of well-formed graphical signs that unambiguously signify linguistic entities as agreed upon by convention. This definition of good spelling is vague, but should pass empirical tests. For instance, take one of the many bugbears of internet comments: the word "definately". Now this is indeed a well-formed graphical sign, for it's unlikely that someone will pass over it as a meaningless jumble of letters; and it certainly unambiguously refers to a linguistic concept of certainty. It falls short of achieving the status of "good spelling", however, as it fails to be recognized as one by convention. Take a different common error, this time the infuriating substitution of "you're" by "your", and vice versa. Now, this may be better described as a grammatical mistake; however there are certainly occasions when even individuals who are aware of the major grammatical distinction between the two words unintentionally substitute them, perhaps while typing in a rush. In such a situation, this substitution may be better understood as a spelling error, for while it passes the first and third requirements, it fails the unambiguity requirement because it unintentionally refers to a different concept while being intended for another. (I will confess that I haven't fully fleshed out the lack of ambiguity idea in my head, for there are situations where a language permits homographs and this definition in its current form would classify them as misspellings. Perhaps we ought to allow some room for intention here, or perhaps we should allow convention to override the lack of ambiguity requirement. In either case, I don't think this forms an insurmountable obstacle to the bigger picture of spelling that I'm trying to create.)

Great, now we have an idea of what good spelling is. But the next question is, how does good spelling arise? More precisely, what forces influence the conventions that define good spelling? Since it's true (or so we suppose) that the relationship between the graphical signifier and the linguistic signified is arbitrary, it is possible in theory to pick totally arbitrary symbols for every single possible signifier, and then to memorize the relation between signifier and signified. This is true to some extent of CJK ideograms (only as a partial and inaccurate oversimplification of the whole picture, I know, I know), and perhaps to a somewhat greater extent of Egyptian hieroglyphs. But unless you want to memorize a very large number of arbitrary symbols that lack even the structure and composition of CJK ideograms, this is not a great system. The alternative is to capture some approximation of the pronunciation of a linguistic entity, and not its semantic field. After all, if the graphical signifier reproduces the pronunciation of the linguistic entity, then any linguistic entity can be adequately represented in the writing system in a manner acceptable to all speakers / readers, right?

And with that, we're back to where we left off with the previous post. A purely pronunciation-based spelling is highly limited by spatial, ethnic, class, and temporal variations in pronunciation, and is also likely to conceal morphological structures within the language. Case in point: modern Turkish spelling. Because Turkish is governed by vowel harmony, its grammatical suffixes occur in a variety of "shapes" that are governed by the phonetic environments they occur in. The most complex example I'm aware of is the enclitic -dir, which functions as the third person copula. This copula takes no less than eight different shapes: voicing or devoicing the initial 'd', and then choosing among four vowel harmonizing variations of 'i'. Under modern Turkish spelling rules, there are thus eight different ways of writing this same suffix—even though the choice of variant is governed by two incredibly simple and entirely predictable phonological rules. Thus, it is easy for the learner to read Turkish, but to recognize that -tür and -dir are in fact the same grammatical suffix is slightly trickier. I wonder if it would not be more logical, in some sense, to use the same spelling for the suffix everywhere when it is a truth universally acknowledged (among native Turkish speakers anyway) that the pronunciation of this suffix must change in a certain entirely regular way.

Thus, even within one single dialect of a language arbitrarily chosen as the standard of pronunciation and good spelling, a strict pronunciation-based spelling pattern can obscure existing, meaningful morphological patterns within the language. And as the pronunciation of that dialect evolves over time, its readers face two difficult choices: either to change spellings over time, and thus to violate the initial conventions of good speech; or to retain spellings according to the older pronunciation, thus preserving valuable morphological and etymological information, but drifting away from contemporary pronunciation. Urdu is a prime example of this. Its Perso-Arabic script is gorgeous to look at, and far more suited to elegant calligraphy than staid Devanagari. Yet learning to read the language using the Perso-Arabic abjad (particularly in nasta`līq) is a nightmare, thanks to the script's inability to deal with the complex vowels and consonant clusters strewn throughout Hindustani / Urdu (the line between these two is indiscernible at times, and a bleeding gash at others). Devanagari, unsuited as it is to Hindustani, comes out far ahead in this race. As far as pronunciation goes, the script is a terrible choice. But when it comes to words of Persian or, even better, Arabic origin, the Perso-Arabic script beats Devanagari hollow. Possessing all the consonantal symbols needed to represent these words, the Perso-Arabic script faithfully reproduces the exact shape of the word as it was in the original, preserving a vast amount of information on the Semitic roots and stems that is utterly lost in modern (and probably medieval too) pronunciation, and that is simply unrepresentable in Devanagari in any meaningful way. Try writing فعل مضارع in Devanagari :D

This brings to mind a weird idea I held for the longest time as a kid. A certain word pronounced tĕh-kī-kāt in India and spelled tah kī kāt or tahkīkāt is the normal word used to refer to investigations, usually carried out by the police. I always thought of it as three different words that meant "the kāt of a tĕh", whatever those two words meant separately (since I could never find them in even the best dictionaries). I was utterly shocked, totally blown away, when I realized, perhaps seven or eight years later, that the word was in fact the Arabic word تحقيقات which had undergone some, uh, alterations in pronunciation in India. On the one hand the Devanagari script did a good job of representing the actual pronunciation of the word as it normally is in India (although there are diacritics used in Devanagari that can in theory represent the 'q' sound); on the other hand it wasn't merely useless but actually actively retarded my efforts to understand the word's meaning.

I've expended over three thousand words on this topic so far, but I'm still nowhere near proposing a flawless substitute to our existing problems of spelling when using alphabetic systems. The mathematician in me is willing to accept an infinite stream of arbitrary graphical symbols as representations of actual semantic content, thus allowing us to actually bypass linguistic structure (although I can already hear poststructuralists baying for my blood); the Sanskritist in me wants to forget the idea that language in all its fluidity can ever be graven in stone, and wants to revert to chains of oral transmission of knowledge. In some ways, I think Sanskrit does get the best deal of them all: a religious faith in the value of accurate recitation of the scriptures combined with exacting morpho-phonological rules (aka sandhi, the bane of all first year Sanskritists) that together do a great job of defining both spelling and pronunciation. On the other hand, this does mean you have to spend twelve years in a forest āśrama studying the language before you can use it for anything. Sigh. There really is no such thing as a free lunch.