Journal of World History, Vol. 25, Nos. 2 & 3© 2014 by Unive.docx

Journal of World History, Vol. 25, Nos. 2 & 3
© 2014 by University of Hawai‘i Press
397
Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Philosophy
of Religion
sai bhatawadekar
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
It is well known that G. W. F. Hegel sees in Christianity the
greatest achievement of human religious thinking, the epitome
of the con-
cept of religion, and the fulfillment of God himself. In
Christianity,
Hegel argues, the idea of God is perfectly postulated; a real,
tangible
connection is established between divinity and humanity in the
form
of the Son of God; and human consciousness continually strives
to
elevate its finiteness to divine infinity. In Hegel’s scheme,
compared
to Christianity all other world religions are flawed, lacking, and
unso-
phisticated in theory and practice. Islam, for Hegel, is no
exception: It
is a religion of fanaticism. God, indeed, is a universal divine
absolute,
but man has no other function than to be subservient to God, to
be a

believer, and to die for his faith. Unlike Christianity, neither is
a mean-
ingful bond created between God and man, nor is the finite
humanity
truly raised to be one with the divine.
Compared to other religions that Hegel discusses at length and
depth in his works, placing them in the trajectory of
developmental
stages of world religions, Islam gets very little attention from
Hegel. In
his Philosophy of History “Mohametanism” is limited to but a
small sub-
chapter within his discussion of “the Germanic world,” in the
History
of Philosophy “Arabian philosophy” is considered not
contributive at all
to the development of philosophy, and Islam finds a few
scattered men-
tions in the Encyclopedia and in the three parts of Hegel’s
Lectures on
the Philosophy of Religion. That Hegel was Eurocentric is as
clear as day,
and that he called Islam a “fanatic” religion is also not
unknown. To
398 journal of world history, june/september 2014
historians of Europe it is also evident that Hegel’s appraisal of
Islam is
deeply rooted in Europe’s complicated relationship with the
Ottoman
Empire.1 Suzanne Marchand reminds us that early modern
Europeans,

some of whom praised the Prophet, the piety of the Muslims,
and the
nomadic wandering Arabs, still largely lived in immediate fear
of the
Ottoman Empire and, by association, of Islam; criticized its
brutality,
superstition, and polygamy; and had to keep convincing
themselves
of the superiority of Christianity.2 We have comprehensive and
mul-
tifaceted histories of European and specifically German
engagement
with Islam in Franco Cardini’s Europe and Islam, for example,
or Nina
Berman’s German Literature on the Middle East: Discourses and
Prac-
tices, 1000–1989.3 Michael Curtis gives a concise account of
Europe’s
encounter with Muslim forces since the seventh century, a
multifac-
eted history in which the political, military, and economic
aspects were
inseparable from religion. They included territorial and terrible
con-
quests; trade of perfumes and weapons; constant calls for two
centuries
from the popes, culminating in the crusades, to protect
Christians and
the Holy Land from the Muslim “race utterly alienated from
God”;
the glorious feats of the Ottoman Empire and its control of the
Medi-
terranean and beyond; Europe’s internal conflicts; and French
diplo-
matic alliances with Turkey against the Habsburgs, until the
defeats

and retreats of the Ottomans from the end of the seventeenth
century
well into the early nineteenth.4
In his excellent work Ian Almond presents the complexities and
motivations of Hegel’s understanding of Islam in the context of
his
response to Kant, his bourgeois social and academic status,
ideas on
race and religion, and his aesthetic appreciation of Persian
literature
and poetry.5 Hegel’s assertions on everything Islamic were not
monoto-
nously derisive; they oscillated between appreciation and
criticism, and
so did his sources. Almond gives a concise account of Hegel’s
expo-
1 For a glimpse of this relationship, see the chapter “How Did
Islam Make It into
Hegel’s Philosophy of World History?” in Mohammad R.
Salama, Islam, Orientalism, and
Intellectual History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), pp. 103–122.
2 Suzanne Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of
Empire: Religion, Race, and Schol-
arship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 25–
26.
3 Franco Cardini, Europe and Islam, trans. Caroline Beamish
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2001);
Nina Berman, German Literature on the Middle East:
Discourses and Practices, 1000–1989
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011).
4 Michael Curtis, Orientalism and Islam: European Thinkers on

Oriental Despotism in the
Middle East and India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009), pp. 18–30.
5 Ian Almond, History of Islam in German Thought: From
Leibniz to Nietzsche (New York:
Routledge, 2010), pp. 108–134.
Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of
Religion 399
sure to various sources, some of which (Johann Buhle, Edward
Gibbon,
various articles in the Edinburgh Review) described Muslims as
barbaric,
monstrous, and fanatic, but others (Johannes von Müller,
Charles de
Peyssonel) praised Ottoman Turkey as a great illustrious nation
with
spiritual, intelligent, witty, and heroic people. As the editor of
Bam-
berger Zeitung (1807–1808) during the time Turkey was seeking
French
assistance to introduce Western modernizing reforms in the
empire,
Hegel allowed detailed and expansive coverage of the Ottoman
world in
the newspaper, which included both critical and sympathetic
reports.6
Hegel’s selective assessment of Islam, then, is not due to
shortage
of information, but it is also not lacking in philosophical
reflection.

While we should keep the historical backdrop in mind to
understand
Hegel’s famous remarks about Islam’s terrible power and its
eventual
disappearace from the stage of history, we should also
remember the
philosophical battles Hegel was engaged in to understand his
concep-
tual analysis of Islam. He rejected German Romantic
glorification of
the East for mysticism and spiritual rebirth in the same breath
as he
criticized Kant’s limits of knowledge and rational thinking. He
sys-
tematized a philosophy that declared reason as the all-
encompassing
principle and Spirit as the self-determining universality on a
higher,
more self-aware level than religion, but at the same time (in the
wake
of the famous Pantheismusstreit between Jacobi and
Mendelssohn), he
defended speculative thought against charges of pantheism and
atheism.
Hegel refused to reduce God to a mere subjective feeling or
banish him
outside of reason. Thought was infinite and was able to
conceive and
articulate God, and the Christian faith was the only religion of
reason.7
It is often repeated in secondary scholarship that Hegel called
Islam
“fanatic,” and that he described Allah as the pure abstract
oneness.
How he philosophically justified those statements, how the

tenets
of his philosophy of religion provided him the tools and
vocabulary,
and how it dictated his interpretation of Islam are not clearly
parsed.
I place Hegel’s assessment of Islam in the tripartite framework
of his
dialectic as he applies it to the concepts of God and religion. In
Hege-
lian thought, as we all know, triadic dialectics is the necessary
struc-
ture of all concepts and ideas, yes, of reality itself as it
progressively
unfolds in human thought. For God and religion too, Hegel
seeks
6 Almond, History of Islam, pp. 111–117.
7 Walter Jaeschke, “Philosophical Theology and Philosophy of
Religion,” New Perspec-
tives on Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion, ed. David Kolb
(Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1992), pp. 1–18.
three aspects to evaluate their philosophical worth in any
civilization,
namely (1) how the abstract divine concept—God—is
conceived, (2)
how finite human particularity functions, and (3) if and how the
latter
reconciles with the former. Moreover, in the linear, progressive,
and

teleological scheme of history in Hegel’s philosophy, the more
Eastern
and ancient a religion is, the more primitive and flawed it is,
and the
more Western and younger, the more evolved it is, until the
trajec-
tory culminates into the perfection of Christianity. In this
vision, to
put it simply in Goux’s words, Islam is “untimely” and it “puts
Hegel
in a very awkward position.”8 Islam is both Eastern and
modern, and
as such “this could seem like a violent offense to chronology, a
kind
of outrageous anomaly.”9 As it arrives later than Christianity, it
can
potentially qualify for being more evolved than Christianity or,
at least,
somehow instrumental in facilitating the advancement from
Catholi-
cism to Protestantism.10 Either way, this would challenge the
very core
of Hegel’s philosophy of religion. We will see with what
“speculative
sleight of hand” Hegel argues Islam’s imperfections despite its
temporal
placement after Christianity.11
My analysis is not simply, as Almond says, “a vulgarized
version of
Hegel, stuffed full of ‘End of History’ and ‘Thesis-Antithesis-
Synthesis
cliches.’”12 It is an attempt, first, to bring together two sides of
the
interpretive spectrum—Gadamerian hermeneutics and
Orientalist/

postcolonial protest. That is to say, on the one hand, it is an
attempt
in intellectual history to understand (not defend, but clarify)
Hegel’s
philosophical “horizon” that filtered his understanding of Islam,
and,
on the other hand, it is an attempt to reveal how he imposed
criteria
and structure that confined and judged Islam, to expose his
compulsive
repetition of the same criticism, with which he brushed off
Kant, Hin-
duism, Buddhism, Pantheism, and Islam alike!
Second, and most interesting, we will briefly look at two
instances
as an application of Hegelian ideas to Islam: Zizek’s comment
propos-
ing Judaism-Christianity-Islam as a progressive dialectic triad
in its
own right, and John Oliver’s hilarious explanation on The Daily
Show
of the different “ages” of religions and in particular Islam’s
current
8 Jean-Joseph Goux, “Untimely Islam: September 11th and the
Philosophies of His-
tory,” SubStance 115 (2008): 56.
9 Ibid., p. 56.
10 As Marchand briefly states, in the debates between Catholics
and Protestants, Islam
was being praised for its “piety and abstemiousness” in contrast
to the corruption of the
Roman Catholics. Marchand, German Orientalism, p. 25.

11 Goux, “Untimely Islam,” p. 58.
12 Almond, History of Islam, p. 111.
Religion 401
“awkward teenage phase.” These are not just philosophical
musings or
a spicy attempt to connect German idealism with American
popular
culture. It is a demonstration of subversion from within Hegel’s
system
and a new direction in which hermeneutics and critique of
Orientalism
can move forward: It is easy, on the one hand, to fault Hegel’s
Euro-
centrism from today’s perspective or, on the other hand, to
excuse it
with his own hermeneutic horizon, explaining that he could not
have
interpreted Islam any other way given his philosophical and
historical
situatedness. The exciting part is that Zizek and Oliver show
that even
from within his system, using his own paradigm and measures,
Islam
could have a different face in his philosophy that would subvert
his
core and end goal. There is a real encounter here between West
and
East, self and the other: It is not just a simple Orientalist scene,
where
Hegel, the quintessential Western observer, imposes a

derogatory defi-
nition on a passive voiceless East; from within his system,
playing by
his rules, the East has agency here to shake him loose.
Triadic Dialectics
Triadic dialectics is, for Hegel, the fundamental and necessary
struc-
ture of reality as it progressively reveals itself in and through
thought13:
First, thought establishes an entity or a concept (“being,” for
example);
second, it proceeds to posit its negation (“nothing”), without
which
the first entity cannot be comprehended. The contradiction
between
the concept and its negation is sublated or aufgehoben in an
elevated
state of their resolution (“becoming”), which at once includes
and yet
overcomes the difference between the entity and its negation.14
The
dialectical movement is not simply the process of human
consciousness
comprehending a concept, but rather a movement through which
the
13 Lauer explains that for Hegel “it simply was not true that the
locus of concreteness
was in the immediacy of reality’s presence to sensation . . .
reality was more concretely pres-
ent (more real) in thought, in ideas.” Lauer states further that
the “totality of reality” itself
is its “progressively concrete manifestation” into thought.
“[T]his involves a realization that

man will find the very reality of reality only in the awareness of
reality which is at the same
time reality’s progressive self-manifestation.” Lauer
summarizes this correlation of reality
and thought by stating that “Hegel’s system is his Logic, which
penetrates thought and finds
in it the revelation of reality.” Quentin Lauer, Hegel’s Idea of
Philosophy (New York: Fordham
University Press, 1971), pp. 2–3.
14 This process of Hegelian dialectic is often termed as the
progression from thesis to
antithesis to synthesis; however, as Findlay points out, Hegel
himself rarely employs these
terms. Findlay states that these terms are more characteristic of
Fichte than Hegel. J. N.
Findlay, Hegel: A Re-examination (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1978), p. 70.
concept develops itself 15: First it is only a concept, an idea—
abstract
and implicit. It then, in the second moment, has to negate its
abstract-
ness and become concrete in reality, in human thought and life,
in
society and history—that is, it manifests and actualizes itself in
its par-
ticularity. Finally, in the third moment, the concept relates to
itself,
completely cognizes itself in a higher synthesis of its Begriff
(abstract
idea) and its Bestimmtheit (concrete manifestation).16

Hegelian triadic movement is not merely a conceptual dialectic;
it
encompasses the entire temporal dimension—namely, the
entirety of
human history. A concept concretizes and develops itself
through time,
through history, in progressively more self-aware stages,
advancing
toward the concept’s complete fulfillment. The initial implicit
idea,
which is not quite self-aware, actualizes itself first in an
imperfect, con-
fused first draft with many loose ends, then revises itself
several times
in progressively better formulations, until it arrives at a final
draft, in
which the once implicit idea is fully developed and perfectly
stream-
lined. This necessarily implies a linear teleological progress of
history,
suggesting that the earlier stages of history embody the concept
only in
an imperfect and primitive manner, and each next step is more
evolved
than all the previous ones.
In Hegelian philosophy, Spirit is the idea and human
civilizations
are its drafts, its concrete manifestation in various stages.
Through
their phases in history Spirit actualizes itself until it reaches
perfec-
tion and complete self-cognition as Absolute Spirit. Hegel
introduces
a remarkable vision of the world that proposes that the entire

human
history, the development of human thought, its concrete
manifestation
in art, religion, and philosophy are actually the Geist getting to
know
15 Walter Jaeschke, Hegel Handbuch: Leben-Werk-Wirkung
(Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003)
p. 231. Hegel explains that the threefold structure is “immer der
Gang in aller Wissenschaft:
zuerst der Begriff, dann die Bestimmtheit des Begriffs, die
Realität, Objektivität und endlich
dies, daß der erste Begriff sich selbst Gegenstand ist, für sich
selbst ist, sich selbst gegen-
ständlich wird, sich zu sich selbst verhält.” Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen:
Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manuskripte, vol. 5 (Hamburg:
Meiner, 1983–), p. 177.
16 Findlay explains the various “levels” on which Hegelian
dialectic functions: “In Dia-
lectic one-sided abstractions demand to be complemented by
alternative abstractions, which
are often as much antithetical as complementary . . . At higher
stages, however, Dialectic
becomes a reflective shuttling to and fro between notions known
to be interdependent and
correlative, and at a yet higher level it becomes a simple
development of our notions, the
more narrowly abstract merely growing into the more ‘concrete’
or rich in ‘sides.’ In all these
processes contradiction is most evident: it is implicitly present
in the original products of
Understanding, it becomes explicit when these products break
down, and start passing into
their complements, or being referred to their correlatives, or

growing into more ‘concrete’
forms, and it is ‘preserved’ in the result of all such processes.”
Findlay, Re-examination, p. 63.
Religion 403
itself. If one studies a particular civilization—the emodiment of
Spirit
at a given stage—then its social and political institutions and
struc-
ture, its aesthetic, spiritual, and philosophical vision, would
reveal to
what extent they are truly rational and free—that is, to what
extent the
Spirit is self-aware. The world, in other words, is a progressive
teleo-
logically developing actualization of the Spirit’s journey toward
com-
plete self-cognition. Art, religion, and philosophy are modes of
human
consciousness and activity, and they function as vehicles for
Absolute
Spirit’s self-knowledge. Consequently, the history of art,
religion, and
philosophy reveals the progressively more evolved stages in the
Spirit’s
self-development. It follows that the further and earlier into the
past
and history one looks, the more primitive are the concepts,
ideas, theo-
ries, and their manifestations in various civilizations. The later
civili-
zations reveal more sophisticated artistic, religious, and

philosophical
ideas and practices. The earlier religious notions of God and
nature or
philosophical concepts of universality and particularity are
wild, con-
fused, and unorganized. The later ones progressively display
more and
more insight into the true nature of Spirit, until history
culminates into
the fulfillment and complete self-awareness of Absolute Spirit.
An abstract concept, its concretization in reality, and its
fulfilment
in self-awareness (both as the idea and its manifestation) is
really the
all-pervasive core, the distilled essence of Hegelian thought that
per-
meates the content and structure of all his works from
Phenomenology
and Encyclopedia to his political writings. All this informs his
aesthetic,
religio-philosophical, ethical, and political assessment of
civilizations.
For the purpose of this paper, to understand Islam as a religion
in Hege-
lian terms, it is concise to concentrate on his philosophy of
religion.
Triadic Dialectics of God and Religion
Religion and philosophy both are modes of Absolute Spirit’s
self-cogni-
tion; religion is relatively less self-reflexive than philosophy.
However,
both concern themselves with the same content, namely the
absolute.

Philosophy articulates the concept of absolute as Spirit, whereas
reli-
gion conceives it as God.17 Fackenheim explains the common
content
of religion and philosophy and argues for the dependence of the
latter
17 Dickey explains Hegel’s controversial correlation between
religion and philosophy:
“Hegel begins by defining religion as ‘a mode of consciousness’
that seeks to establish the
truth of the relationship between man and God.” Hegel
maintains that this truth has been
expressed in different ways at different times. Speculative
philosophy is trying to articulate
on the former: “It is a central Hegelian doctrine that the true
religion
already is the true ‘content,’ lacking merely the true ‘form’ of
specula-
tive thought; that philosophy could not reach truth unless its
true con-
tent preexisted in religion; that philosophic thought therefore
requires
religion as its basis in life, and that the true philosophy, in
giving the
true religious content its true form of thought, both transfigures
reli-
gion and produces itself.”18
God, then, is simply a religious designation of Spirit. Hence, as
Spirit, God is also subject to triadic dialectical development.

This
implies that God, as the absolute substance, as infinite divine
univer-
sality, is, at first, only implicit, abstract, and indeterminate. The
dialec-
tical movement necessitates that God—this abstract divine
universal
principle—concretizes itself. God concretizes itself by
becoming an
object of human consciousness. Human consciousness knows,
feels, rep-
resents, or thinks about God, thereby giving the abstraction of
divine
universality some concrete determinate form. The implicit
universality
thus particularizes or concretizes itself in human consciousness.
The
third moment of God’s dialectical movement is achieved when
human
consciousness elevates itself to God, thereby sublating the
opposition
between human finiteness and divine infinity, human
particularity and
divine universality.19
However, this third moment is not simply a process of human
con-
sciousness comprehending God; it is a process of God knowing
him-
self.20 Hegelian dialectic is a self-movement of concept toward
com-
plete self-cognition. As Schlitt explains, “In Hegel’s philosophy
God is
a dynamic movement of inclusive divine subjectivity.”21 This
suggests

this truth in a way that suits the advanced consciousness of the
modern world. Dickey adds
that Hegel complained that Protestant demagogues in Berlin
should not stigmatize phi-
losophy, because it told the same truth in a nonreligious
philosophical language. Laurence
Dickey, “Hegel on Religion and Philosophy,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Hegel, ed.
Frederick Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993), p. 309.
18 Emil L. Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s
Thought (Bloomington: Indi-
ana University Press, 1967), p. 23.
19 G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion I,
ed. Peter C. Hodgson (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, Clarendon, 2007). As the lectures have
three volumes—I. The
Concept of Religion, II. Determinate Religion, and III. The
Consummate Religion—henceforth
they will be identified with their volume name and number.
20 Taylor quotes Hegel to explain the necessary dialectic
development of God toward
self-knowledge: “God is God only insofar as he knows himself;
his self-knowledge of himself
is moreover his self-consciousness in man, it is man’s
knowledge of God that goes on to
become the self-knowledge of man in God.” Charles Taylor,
Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1975), p. 481.

Religion 405
that God is not an object merely reflected upon by man; God is
not
passive; it is an active subject acting on its own account,
determining
its own dialectic development. Second, as Schlitt suggests in the
above
quote, God is an inclusive subjectivity: In the third moment of
self-
cognition God contains within himself the sublation of
particularity
and universality, of finiteness and infinity. Third, the concept of
God
is a movement: It is not an abstract static entity; it is a dynamic
self-
determining dialectical movement.
Hegel, as he revises his own philosophy of religion, applies his
tri-
partite structure not only to the concept of God, but also to
religion.22
Religion is also a concept, which itself is subject to its own
triadic
dialectical self-movement, which involves the concept itself,
then its
concretization, and finally its fulfillment in complete self-
cognition.
Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion thus also
display the triadic
structure, which corresponds to the three stages of the dialectic
devel-
opment of a concept. His work is divided into three component
parts:
(1) “Der Begriff der Religion,” which explains “religion” as a
concept;

(2) “Die bestimmte Religion,” which examines the
concretization of
the concept in actual determinate world religions from Chinese
reli-
gions, Hinduism, and Buddhism to Greek, Jewish, and Roman
ideas
and practice, and places them in historical and conceptual
progression;
and (3) “Die vollendete Religion,” which argues for Christianity
as the
consummate religion embodying the fulfillment of the concept
and its
actualization in reality.
The first part—“Der Begriff der Religion”—explores religion as
an
implicit abstract concept, as an embodiment of the process of
God’s
development toward self-cognition.23 According to Hegel,
given the
dialectic development of God, the concept of religion also
necessar-
ily displays three aspects: (1) the concept of God—that is, an
implicit
abstract notion of divine absolute universality; (2) the
knowledge or
concretization of God—that is, a theoretical way in which
human con-
21 Dale Schlitt, Divine Subjectivity: Understanding Hegel’s
Philosophy of Religion (Scran-
ton, N.Y.: University of Scranton Press, 1990), p. xiv.
22 Initially, in his 1821 lectures Hegel formulates the concept
of religion in a more
dyadic form, as objective and subjective, arguing that religion

is the unity of the object or
God and the finite subject who is conscious of the object.
Schlitt, Divine Subjectivity, p. 104.
23 Since God, as Spirit, is determined to go through the
dialectic process and come to
complete self-cognition, Hegel rejects the Romantic notion of
the unknowability of God.
Hegel did not agree with Romantic spirituality, which focused
on the devotee or the wor-
shiper, made religion completely subjective and accepted “the
conclusions of Enlighten-
ment epistemology that nothing can be known about God . . .
but that he is.” Taylor, Hegel,
p. 481.
sciousness represents God in some form and envisions its own
relation-
ship and worth vis-à-vis the absolute universality; (3) cultus—
that is, a
practical way in which human consciousness elevates itself to
infinite
divinity, sublating their difference in “the knowing of myself
within
God and of God within me.”24
The second part—“Die bestimmte Religion”—explains the con-
cept’s particularization and concretization in actual world
religions. For
Hegel, every determinate religion of the world, Eastern or
Western,
ancient or modern, must be investigated for the extent to which

it
accomplishes the above-mentioned triadic dialectical structure.
How-
ever, the religions are not to be examined in isolation,
disregarding
their chronological and other connections. This is because the
second
moment of concretization in Hegel’s dialectic development
necessar-
ily entails a teleological progress of a concept toward self-
fulfillment.
Therefore, the determinate or bestimmte religions of the world
embody
the historical developmental stages of the concept of religion
itself,
until it reaches its perfection in the consummate or vollendete
religion
of Christianity. Hence, all of the religions except Christianity
are only
imperfect and flawed stages of the journey, within which the
concept
has not yet reached perfection. They attempt to display the
concept of
religion and the triadic development of God—universal divinity,
its
concretization, and cultus—but they reveal this structure with
more or
fewer imperfections, depending upon where a particular religion
stands
in time within the development of the concept of religion. Hegel
pro-
poses that the conceptual or philosophical development of
religion
coincides with the historical progression of religions. He
proposes that
the philosophical analysis of a religion’s triadic structure can

locate
a given religion within a particular stage of historical
development.
Conversely, as the philosophical examination reveals a
religion’s his-
torical placement, the historical placement of a religion
indicates its
philosophical worth.
This necessarily implies that the more ancient (and, for Hegel,
also
the more Eastern) the religion, the less evolved it is. Eastern
religions,
including Chinese religions, Hinduism, and Buddhism are, for
Hegel,
the earliest and therefore the least advanced and most primitive
reli-
gions, which he labels unmittelbare or “immediate” religions.
Their
primitiveness consists primarily in the inconcretness of their
divine
principle. From here the concept of religion moves through
Persian
24 Hegel, Philosophy of Religion I, p. 443.
Religion 407
and Egyptian religions and advances to more developed stages
of Greek
and Jewish religion, in which the concept of God becomes
progres-
sively more concrete. Finally, the Roman religion enables the

transi-
tion into the consummate religion of Christianity. The third part
of
Hegel’s philosophy of religion—“Die vollendete Religion”—
discusses
Christianity as the consummate religion. For Hegel, the defining
aspects of Christianity consist in God creating the world and
creating
man in his own image, the fall of man from paradise, God
begetting
his son, the son’s death, resurrection and ascension, and finally
the
Holy Ghost enabling humans to elevate their finitude to a
spiritual
union with divine infinity. These aspects, according to Hegel,
perfectly
embody and fulfill the dialectical development of the self-
determining
God: the abstract universal divine concept—God—begets a son
and
thus concretizes himself in humanity, and through man sublates
the
opposition of human finitude and divine infinity, thereby
reconciling
with himself. In Christianity both the concept of God and the
concept
of religion find their fulfillment and perfection.
Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Islam
The leading features of Mahometanism involve this—that in
actual
existence nothing can become fixed, but that everything is
destined
to expand itself in activity and life in the boundless amplitude
of the

world, so that the worship of the One remains the only bond by
which
the whole is capable of uniting. In this expansion, this active
energy,
all limits, all national and caste distinctions vanish; no
particular race,
political claim of birth or possession is regarded—only man as a
believer.
To adore the One, to believe in him, to fast—to remove the
sense of
speciality and consequent separation from the Infinite, arising
from
corporeal limitation—and to give alms—that is, to get rid of
particular
private possession—these are the essence of Mahometan
injunctions;
but the highest need is to die for the Faith. He who perishes for
it in
battle is sure of Paradise.25
This paragraph stems from Hegel’s subchapter “Mahometanism”
in his
Philosophy of History, in which he dedicates but five pages to
Islam. In
History of Philosophy, too, “Arabian philosophy” earns a few
paragraphs
and a kinship with Oriental pantheism but not enough worth to
claim
25 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree
(Kitchener, Ont.: Batoche
Books, 2001), p. 374.

to have contributed much to the development of philosophy. The
Encyclopedia has isolated references to Islam; in his Philosophy
of Reli-
gion, too, unlike he does with other religions, Hegel does not
dedicate a
specific section, category, or extensive attention to Islam; his
references
to Islam are strewn in all three volumes of the work. These
scattered
assertions need to be understood in the framework and
background of
Hegel’s dialectical tripartite structure. As with any other
religion, he
also evaluates (1) how Islam defines God—that is, the divine
abstrac-
tion; (2) how Islam envisions human concreteness; and (3)
whether a
true sublation takes place between the two.26 Understanding
Hegel’s
view of Islam in this context makes his remarks
comprehensible, to say
the least, but it also helps us realize that they are not just a side
note
or his contemplative musings outside of the core of his
philosophi-
cal doctrine. As he claims that his philosophy is an all-
encompassing
system, he is compelled to show how Islam fits in it or in the
least
argue how it is an anomaly. In that sense, Hegel’s tripartite
evaluation
of Islam also reveals the loopholes that can threaten its
teleological
vision in his supposedly tightly wound system. After all, Islam
emerged

temporally later than Christianity, and, by Hegel’s trajectory, it
should
qualify for being more evolved than it. However, in order to
escape the
awkward predicament of throwing Christianity off its throne,
Hegel
applies to Islam his often repeated bullet points of criticism that
he
uses for Hinduism and other religions to discredit Islam’s vision
of God
and the place and function of man vis-à-vis the divine absolute.
As we
shall see, he deems the God of Islam so abstract that it does not
have
any concrete content or self-determinacy to be in charge of its
own
conceptual development, and criticizes that in Islam human life
and
26 I found this interesting yet problematic statement, which,
although at the end would
like to surpass Hegel for better understanding of different
religions, in some ways promotes
Hegel’s methodology of analyzing religions under specific
standardized philosophical cat-
egories: “If we shift the focus from a larger rubric,
‘Christianity,’ to the specific features that
constitute its consummateness, we can begin to examine
particular religious communities
with a more fine-grained lens, appreciating precisely what self-
conception and conception
of others are produced by that cultus. In this respect, Hegel’s
philosophy of religion gener-
ates a research agenda, studying religions specifically for the
self-understandings they incul-
cate in participants. For such queries, our categories will need

to be much more specific than
‘Christianity,’ or ‘Islam’ attending closely to differences within
these two larger categories,
for instance. Doing so may enable us to perceive—much more
clearly than Hegel could—a
wider range of doctrines and practices that cultivate the self-
conceptions he finds uniquely
instantiated in Protestantism.” Thomas A. Lewis, “Finite
Representation, Spontaneous
Thought, and the Politics of an Open-ended Consummation,” in
Hegel and the Infinite:
Religion, Politics, and Dialectic, ed. Slavoj Zizek et al. (New
York: Columbia University Press,
2011), p. 213.
Religion 409
existence have no real grounding or worth as it is obliterated in
the
service of the One divine abstraction. Since he criticizes the
very core
philosophy of Islam as flawed, as rather a regression from the
Christian
God, who concretizes himself in human form, consciousness,
and his-
tory, Islam cannot even play the role of the facilitator religion,
which
can be instrumental in Christianity’s own evolution from
Catholicism
to Protestantism. The self-determining God and conceptual core
of
Christianity itself make it possible.

Divine Universality: God as “the One” Divine Universal
Absolute Being
To be sure, Hegel is impressed with the idea that Allah is truly
“the
One” absolute divine universality. For him, it is certainly an
advance-
ment over Judaism, which restricts the divine principle to a
chosen
community; Islam acquires that principle and extends it to the
entirety
of humanity. The concept of God in Islam is not a privilege
enjoyed
by birth or nationality, and access to it is not hierarchically
bestowed
by caste or any other social order. There may be hierarchies in
society,
clearly, but everyone, kings and slaves alike, are equally
included in
the service of God: “from any people, who fears God is pleasing
to
him, and human beings have value only to the extent that they
take
as their truth the knowledge that this is the One, the essence.
The
determination of subjects according to their station in life or
class is
sublated; there may be classes, there may even be slaves, but
this is
merely accidental.”27
God in Islam is truly a pure universality, without any
representation,
in anthropomorphic or otherwise forms. Consciousness of “the
One,”
thus, is an attempt to grasp a sheer abstraction, without any

tangible
embodiment, image, or even link or mediation. Even
“Mahomet,” the
prophet, is still a man, and hence does not embody divinity in
the
same sense as Christ does. Islam makes “the abstract One the
absolute
object of attention and devotion, and to the same extent, pure
subjec-
tive consciousness—the Knowledge of this One alone—the only
aim
of reality; making the Unconditioned [das Verhaeltnisslose] the
condition
[Verhaelt-niss] of existence.”28
Describing Allah as the unconditioned, pure, divine universality
that includes the entirety of humanity seems like high praise
coming
from Hegel. He even goes so far as to say, “This One has
indeed, the
27 Hegel, Consummate Religion III, pp. 242–243.
28 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 372.
quality of Spirit,”29 and elsewhere adds, “In it Christianity
finds its
antithesis because it occupies a sphere equivalent to that of the
Chris-
tian religion.”30 High praise indeed, almost to the point of
jeopardizing
his system: If the universal divine absolute in Islam has the
quality of

Spirit, it has the potential to compete with Christianity for the
top
spot. However, Hegel immediately resorts to applying the same
criti-
cism to the universal concept that he simultaneously uses to
evaluate
Kant and even Hinduism and Buddhism—religions temporally
and
conceptually as far away from Islam as possible. The criticism
is that
the universal concept is so abstract that it does not have any
concrete-
ness. “God has no content and is not concrete.”31 For Hegel,
Kant’s
Ding an sich is unknowable, unreachable, and only beyond and
nega-
tive of representation. Likewise, nothing can be said about the
Hindu
brahman; it is such a pure abstraction that it is empty, devoid of
all con-
tent, and functions only as the opposite of everthing concrete,
which
must dissolve itself to become one with brahman. And the
Buddhist
nirvana, by definition, is the extinguishing of all things; it is
pure nega-
tion, emptiness. It is this “epistemological renunciation” that
frustrates
Hegel.32 For him, complete abstractness, while being a pure
Oneness,
is unfit to ground human existence in a meaningful way or to
ensure
a true sublation between human particularity and divine
universality.
True dialectic between two opposite concepts is achieved only
when

they both have equal status in defining the other, and only when
they
are both at once preserved and overcome in the third moment. If
one
of them has to dissolve itself completely in order to unite with
the
other, then real sublation in the Hegelian sense is not
accomplished.
So to become one with the One if human existence has to
obliterate
its concreteness into divine abstractness, then it is a clear sign
that the
concept of religion has not fulfilled itself.
“This One has indeed, the quality of Spirit,” says Hegel and
adds,
“yet because subjectivity suffers itself to be absorbed in the
object, this
One is deprived of every concrete predicate; so that neither does
sub-
jectivity become on its part spiritually free, nor on the other
hand is the
object of its veneration concrete.” 33 “Subjectivity” in this
quote refers
to human consciousness, which has for its object of veneration
“the
One.” However, due to the complete abstract conceptualization
of the
29 Ibid., p. 373.
30 Hegel, Consummate Religion III, pp. 242–243.
31 Ibid., p. 244.

Religion 411
One, subjectivity fails to meaningfully function as its
concretization,
and in seeking union with it, it is completely absorbed and
erased.
Human Concreteness: Its Status, Function, and Relationship
with the Divine Absolute
“The relationship [is that] of the servant to a Lord; the fear of
the Lord
is what defines it. In any religion, such as Judaism or Islam,
where God
is comprehended only under the abstract category of the One,
this
human lack of freedom is the real basis, and humanity’s
relationship to
God takes the form of a heavy yoke, of onerous service.”34
In Islam, then, God is the Lord, and the only occupation of
human-
ity is to serve him. There is an undeniable hierarchical
relationship
here, in which human consciousness is not given the status and
free-
dom to be the vehicle through which God can know himself.
God
remains an isolated entity outside of humanity, and it is the
latter’s
obligation to fear him, submit to him, remain under his
authority, and
give itself up in his service. “The worship of the One (Allah) is
the

only final aim of Mahometanism, and subjectivity has this
worship as
the sole occupation of its activity, combined with the design to
subju-
gate secular existence to the One.”35 Ivan Kalmar’s words in
this regard
are absolutely crucial:
All Abrahamic faiths—Christianity and Judaism as much as
Islam—
demand devotion to a sublime power broaching no opposition
and
needing no counselors. But they couple obedience to that power
with
faith in its benevolence . . . The conception of a sublime power
ruling
the universe (or the state) brings with it the anxiety that this
power is,
in fact, unloving and uncaring . . . Christians who vilify
Muslims . . .
are afraid to recognize this monster as a common Abrahamic
inven-
tion . . . they project it—have always projected it onto the
Muslims
as if it were the downside of Islam alone (and maybe of Judaism
as
well) and not of Christianity. This perverse process of
projection . . .
explains—more than the relevant facts—the persistent picture in
the
Christian West of Muslims as slaves, soldiers, and terrorists of
Allah:
fanatical devotees of a remote and terrifying sublime power.36
34 Hegel, Determinate Religion II, p. 156.

36 Ivan D. Kalmar, Early Orientalism: Imagined Islam and the
Notion of Sublime Power,
Islamic Studies Series (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 1–2.
“Now the fear of the Lord,” says Hegel in his Logic, “is,
doubtless,
the beginning, but only the beginning, of wisdom. To look at
God in
this light, as the Lord, and the Lord alone, is especially
characteristic of
Judaism and also of Mohammedanism. The defect of these
religions lies
in their scant recognition of the finite, which, be it as natural
things or
as finite phases of mind, it is characteristic of the heathen and
(as they
also for that reason are) polytheistic religions to maintain
intact.” 37
Since God as the “unconditioned” One is the condition of all
concrete
existence, and yet it itself is a complete and utter abstraction,
concrete
human existence lacks any substantial anchoring in that
concept. This
again is the same criticism Hegel applies to pantheistic notions
of God,
in which the all-encompassing divine concept is too universal to
pro-
vide a grounding for any concreteness for human activity. In
such a
philosophical insecurity, concrete human existence is either

rejected as
a dream, an illusion, or an existence only to be escaped and
overcome,
as Hegel sees in some Indian schools of thought, or here in the
case
of Islam, it is totally arbitrary, aimless and wandering, flaky,
unfixed,
and subject to utter instability like the Arabian sand in the
wind. In
“Arabian Philosophy,” in which Hegel puts Jewish and Muslim
think-
ers together, he refers to the Medabberim who believe
Everything may just as well be something else as what it is, and
there is
no reason at all why anything should be one way rather than
another.
They term it a mere habit that the earth revolves round a centre-
point,
that fire moves upward and that it is hot; it is just as possible,
they say,
that fire should be cold. We thus see an utter inconstancy of
every-
thing; and this whirl of all things is essentially Oriental . . .
which
allows of nothing definite. God is in Himself the perfectly
undefined,
His activity is altogether abstract, and hence the particulars
produced
thereby are perfectly contingent; if we speak of the necessity of
things,
the term is meaningless and incomprehensible, and no attempt
should
be made to comprehend it. The activity of God is thus
represented as
perfectly devoid of reason.38

The religious analysis is conceptually connected to a society’s
morality and ethics, its state structure and political activities.
For
37 G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Logic, trans. William Wallace, p.
264, available at Marx-
ists Internet Archive,
http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/admin/books/hegels-
logic/Hegels
-Logic.pdf, accessed 3 November 2013.
38 G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of
History, available at Marxists In-
ternet Archive,
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpara
bian.htm,
accessed 3 November 2013.
Religion 413
Hegel, the unsophisticated “idea” of Islam manifests itself in a
socio-
politically and ethically erratic and tentative society, and,
conversely,
the sociopolitical and ethical instability gives an insight into
what the
“idea” of Islam must be. In Muslim states and societies, says
Hegel,
excess and extravagance in either direction—love or cruelty—
com-
pletely overtake any notion of virtue or morality: A king
abandons his

scepter and throne for the love of his slave just as easily as in a
stroke
of anger and vengeance he would have their heads cut off.
Dynasties
come and go; human life has no worth; the sphere of human
activity is
boundless but has no aim or direction. Hegel mentions Islam’s
religious
and political expansion from Syria to Persia and Asia Minor and
from
Egypt and northern Africa to Spain and southern France.39
However,
he adds, “But all this is only contingent and built on sand; it is
to-day
and to-morrow is not. With all the passionate interest he shows,
the
Mahometan is really indifferent to this social fabric, and rushes
on in
the ceaseless whirl of fortune . . . Those dynasties were
destitute of the
bond of an organic firmness, the kingdoms therefore did nothing
but
degenerate; the individuals that composed them simply
vanished.”40
Hegel does acknowledge that the Arabs zealously promoted art
and
literature, and built cities, schools, and commerce, that science
and
philosophy came from the Arabs into the West, that poetry and
imagi-
nation were kindled among the Germans by the East. “But,” he
adds,
“the East itself . . . sank into the grossest vice.”41
The only—absolutely only—real content of human subjectivity,
of

human thought and activity, is the worship of God, and that is
the only
bond between humans. Other than that there exists nothing that
can
define, prescribe, or moderate any relationship between them.
Social
institutions exist, but without foundation. “It is only a singular
pur-
pose that all peoples should be brought to glorify the Lord.” 42
This, for
Hegel, is what drives Islam to aspire for “world domination,”
and makes
the religion “fanatical.” Hegel clarifies his earlier mentioned
comment
claiming Islam to be an “antithesis” of Christianity:
The antithesis consists in the fact that in Christianity
spirituality is
developed concretely within itself and is known as Trinity, as
spirit; and
that human history, the relationship to the One, is likewise a
concrete
40 Ibid., p. 375.
41 Ibid., pp. 376–377.
history . . . The religion of Islam, by contrast, hates and
proscribes
everything concrete; its God is the absolute One, in relation to
whom

human beings retain for themselves no purpose, no private
domain,
nothing peculiar to themselves. In as much as they exist,
humans do
in any case create a private domain for themselves in their
inclina-
tions and interests, and these are all the more savage and
unrestrained
in this case because they lack reflection. But coupled with this
is also
the complete opposite, namely the tendency to let everything
take its
own course, indifference to life; no practical purpose has any
essential
value. But since human beings are in fact practical and active,
their
purpose can only be to bring about the veneration of the One in
all
humanity. Thus the religion of Islam is essentially fanatical.43
In effect, for Hegel there are three fundamental reasons
embedded
in the essential philosophical core of Islam that make it
fanatical: First,
the concept of God is extended over all of humanity, which
must be
brought to acknowledge it; second, man is to live in fear and
service of
that God, without freedom; and third, other than the worship of
that
God, no other content of human thought or activity is real,
lasting, or
instrumental in creating a bond among people. The only purpose
is to
live or, better yet, die for God with “sensual enjoyment . . . as a
reward

of the faithful in Paradise.”44
These “fanatical” aspects are a clear indication for Hegel that
human consciousness and activity have not been given their
proper
place, compatible status, and value in the equation between man
and
God. If man is subservient to God, in his fear, and unhinged and
lost
in unlimited superficial activity, then man cannot be a vehicle
for
God’s self-awareness; consequently, the concept of God itself,
by being
removed and disconnected from man, is not evolved and self-
deter-
mining enough, not in charge of its own conceptual
development and
actualization in man.
The fundamental flaw of Islam, according to Hegel, is its
complete
disregard of the worth, self-determinacy, and groundedness of
human
existence. Human consciousness and activity are God’s
concretization
of himself and the means of his self-knowledge. Any religion
that seeks
to devalue human life or the substantiality of social institutions,
any
civilization that has the character of aimless, arbitrary, and
unstable
existence, that is here now and gone tomorrow, is a civilization
that has
not understood its own worth as the embodiment of God. Any
religion

43 Hegel, Consummate Religion III, p. 243.
Religion 415
that aims to end the specificity of human life in order to
obliterate con-
creteness in the abstractness of the One, is incapable of truly
grasping
the essence of sublation.
Lack of Sublation between Man and God
To begin with, if God is not properly self-determining, man is
not free
and grounded, and man is limited to the role of a servant vis-à-
vis God,
there is certainly no possibility of sublation in the Hegelian
sense.
“God’s acceptance has occurred once and for all, and what
replaces
reconciliation and redemption is something that has implicitly
hap-
pened, a choice, an election by grace involving no freedom. [We
have
here a] view grounded on power, a blind election, not an
election made
from the viewpoint of freedom.” 45 This is an incredibly crucial
state-
ment. Before one attempts to interpret it with secular and
current con-
cerns of “freedom”—too much of it or not enough46—it needs
to be

understood in Hegelian terms within his philosophy of religion.
To be
sure, I do not intend to defend Hegel’s opinions about Islam; I
simply
clarify them. The way Hegel sees it, in Christianity, the very
possibility
of elevating human consciousness to divine infinity implies
freedom.
Articulating the divine absolute, realizing one’s relationship to
it, and
raising human consciousness to divine infinity is a process, a
move-
ment of actualization, at the end of which sublation of God and
man
is achieved. And this process happens as and when (and, to
make the
point, if ) human consciousness unfolds it. In that sense it
implies a free
choice. In Islam, according to Hegel, there is no such process
required,
because it has already “implicitly happened.” The definition of
the
divine absolute as the Lord and man’s relationship with it as
servant is
axiomatically given at the very outset, without choice or
without any
need to contemplate and realize it. Hence, says Hegel, there can
be no
process, no freedom, and hence no possibility of sublation.
Sublation
would take place, if some philosophical and religious-spiritual
practice
were in place in Islam that would help man raise his
consciousness to a
union with God in a way that human particularity is preserved
in the

divine absolute.
In response to this, one immediate question that was asked by
the
listeners of this paper was, What about Sufism? In Sufism is a
union
46 Salama, Islam, Orientalism, and Intellectual History, pp.
113–115.
with God not sought and achieved? Is the individual not free, in
the
spiritual sense, to go against prescribed notions of religiosity,
and find
an intimate and real connection with God in a way that a union
of
man with God, a recognition of the divine within, is encouraged
and
accomplished? The question here, however, is not what kind of
reli-
gious philosophy Sufism presents, or what the difference is
between
Sufism practiced in various parts of the world, and much less
how we
understand Sufism today. The question is if Hegel would agree
to call
Sufi mysticism (or any mysticism) sublation.
The answer, of course, is no. There is evidence that Hegel read
translations of Rumi and Hafez.47 To begin with, though, Hegel
refers

to them in his discussions on poetry and art, which, according to
him,
is a definitely less evolved and less self-reflexive mode of
Spirit’s expres-
sion in the triad of art-religion-philosophy. And even in that
discussion
he categorizes their poetry as “mysticism” under “Pantheism of
Art.”48
[O]riental pantheism is elaborated in Mohammedanism more
particu-
larly among the Persians . . . To explain this more fully we
would point
out that so long as the poet yearns to behold the Divine in
every-
thing, and really so beholds it, he also surrenders his own
personality;
but, while doing so, he realizes quite as vividly the immanence
of the
Divine in his spiritual world thus expanded and delivered; and
conse-
quently there grows up within him that joyful ardour of the
soul, that
liberal happiness, that revel of bliss, which is so peculiar to the
Ori-
ental, who in freeing himself from his own particularity seems
wholly
to sink himself in the Eternal and Absolute, and henceforth to
know
and feel the image and presence of the Divine in all things.
Such a
self-absorption in the Divine, such an intoxicated life of bliss in
God
borders closely on mysticism. Under this aspect no volume is
more
famous than the Oschelaleddin-Rumi . . .49

As is well known, the controversial Pantheismusstreit between
F. H. Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn in 1785–1786 brings
Spinoza’s
47 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, vol. 2, trans. F.
P. B. Osmaston (London:
G. Bell and Sons, 1920), pp. 89–97; Gerrit Steunebrink, “A
Religion after Christianity:
Hegel’s Interpretation of Islam between Judaism and
Christianity,” in Hegel’s Philosophy of
the Historical Religions, ed. Bart Labuschagne and Timo
Slootweg (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp.
236–240.
48 Hegel, Philosophy of Fine Art, pp. 89–95. Klas Grinell,
“Hegel Reading Rumi: The
Limitations of a System,” available at
http://www.grinell.se/Hegel%20reading%20Rumi
.pdf, accessed 15 February 2013.
49 Hegel, Philosophy of Fine Art, pp. 92–93.
Religion 417
pantheism to the forefront of philosophical discussions in
Germany.50
Hegel all too well recognizes that claiming the entirety of the
world as
an embodiment of the divine/philosophical absolute—Spirit—
brings
his own thought dangerously close to pantheism, which believes
God is

immanent in all the material world. Hegel defends speculative
thought
against the charges of pantheism as well as atheism. That is to
say,
he argues that the pietists (who declare that God is knowable
only
in personal immediate feeling) and the Enlightenment
rationalists
(who declare that God is unknowable because reason has limits)
are
both wrong. Thought is not a finite human faculty and activity;
it is
infinite and therefore able to conceive, articulate, and develop
God.
While it might be admirable for art and poetry to express an
emotional
experience of the pantheistic Divine, philosophy is too
sophisticated
an enterprise to have a vague, empty, and abstract all-one-
doctrine of
pantheism, to reduce God merely to an intuitive feeling, or to
simply
banish God outside thought and reason.51 Hegel opposes the
panthe-
istic all-in-one doctrine precisely by making a dialectic
argument to
combine divine universality with concrete thought. In an all-in-
one
pantheistic doctrine, God is everything in a way that it is
indistinguish-
able from nothing. Hence, intuitive and immediate union with
the
divine universality involves emptying of one’s mind of all
concrete-
ness, all thought, surrendering all particularity. In meditation
practices

of Hindu and Buddhist spirituality, for example, says Hegel,
becoming
one with the divine abstraction does not preserve human
concreteness.
The latter has to be utterly obliterated; the mind and
consciousness
need to be completely absorbed and dissolved into God.52
Dissolution
of consciousness and thought to be one with the One is by no
means a
sublation for Hegel.
If Hegel were to comment on Sufism in his philosophy of
religion,
which he does not, he would apply the same criticism of
pantheism
to it that he uses for other “primitive” Eastern religions. We
may refer
to Naim Şahin’s comparative philosophical study between
Rumi and
Hegel, which, much like many other comparative studies in
philoso-
phy, concludes with “some similarities” and “some differences”
between
50 Daniel Dahlstrom, “Moses Mendelssohn,” in The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Spring 2011 ed.), ed. Edward N. Zalta,
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/
mendelssohn, accessed 15 February 2013.
51 Jaeschke, “Philosophical Theology and Philosophy of
Religion,” pp. 1–18. Also see
John Macquarrie, “Pietism,” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale,
2006); F. Stoeffler, “Pietism,” in Encyclopedia of Religion

(New York: Macmillan, 2005).
the two.53 However, the author does mention that for Rumi God
is a
“Oneness”; the real world is fleeting, and it has no absolute
existence
vis-à-vis God, whereas in Hegel the world is absolutely
necessary for
the embodiment and process of God’s self-actualization.54
Hegel would
whole-spiritedly agree!
The Rumi type of aesthetic spirituality belongs, for Hegel, in
the
realm of art, and that pantheistic mysticism is quite different
from the
Muslim conception of God as the Lord, in whose fear and
service man
spends and ends his life. Hegel is careful to state that in either
idea of
God, though, human particularity needs to be absorbed; a sense
of self
is required to be annihilated in the divine or in service of the
divine,
not aufgehoben, elevated, or sublated.
So Islam is not a perfect embodiment of Spirit. But how does
one
explain the fact that it arose after Christianity? How does Hegel
explain

this anomaly in the linear progress of history and thought?
Exactly the
same way as he treats early philosophies of the East, namely by
banish-
ing them if not completely outside then to the very periphery of
his-
tory. For example, despite his relative openness to revise and
recognize
Indian thought as “philosophy,” he claims that “philosophy
proper”
began with the Greeks, and hence the earlier Eastern thought
should
be placed on the outskirts as the “presupposition” of the history
of phi-
losophy.55 In the same way, Islam should fall (and has fallen)
on the
outside of religion on this side of the spectrum, after it has
culminated
and ended in Christianity. “At present, driven back into its
Asiatic and
African quarters, and tolerated only in one corner of Europe
through
the jealousy of Christian Powers, Islam has long vanished from
the stage
of history at large, and has retreated into Oriental ease and
repose.”56
Conclusion
We have unfolded both approaches at once in the above triadic
analy-
sis of Hegel’s understanding of Islam namely Hermeneutic and
Criti-
53 Naim Şahin, “Der Vergleich einiger Metaphysischer
Begriffe Zwischen Mewlâ Na

Dshcelâ Leddin Rûmi Und G. W. F. Hegel,” Selcuk Universitesi
Sosyal Bilimler Enstitusu
Dergisi 20 (2008): 747–777,
http://www.sosyalbil.selcuk.edu.tr/sos_mak/articles/2008/20/
NSAHIN.PDF, accessed 22 February 2013.
54 Ibid., p. 774.
55 Robert Bernasconi, “With What Must the History of
Philosophy Begin? Hegel’s Role
in the Debate on the Place of India within the History of
Philosophy,” in Hegel’s History of
Philosophy: New Interpretations, ed. David Duquette (Albany:
State University of New York
Press, 2003), pp. 35–50.
Religion 419
cal.57 That is to say, in Gadamer’s terms, we have explained
Hegel’s
hermeneutic horizon and his system’s prejudices that filter his
interpre-
tive lens, and in Ricoeur’s terms, we have critically revealed
Hegel’s
exercise of power and domination in confining and condemning
Islam
as a savage religious philosophy. On the hermeneutic hand, we
see that
his scattered references to Islam in his Philosophy of Religion
and other
texts need to be understood in the conceptual quest of his triads,

in
order to philosophically parse what he exactly means by
descriptions
as specific as “absorption in the abstract One” and even as
general as
“fanatic” and “aimless.” He is looking for a concept of divine
univer-
sality that is abstract yet concretized in human particularity and
the
sublation of the two. In Islam he finds the concept of God too
abstract,
and as a result a humanity that is ungrounded, disconnected, and
sub-
missive to it, rather than being its free vehicle of self-
determination.
Hegel’s situatedness in his core triadic dialectic dictates his
reading of
Islam and leads him to his conclusions and judgments.
On the critical hand, his foregone predetermined conclusion, his
“inside candidate” (in the parlance of our profession)—
Christianity—
creates a position description for the perfect religion that no
other
religion can fit. His interpretive methods prompt him to dig into
his
paradigm, impose familiar criteria on Islam to argue its
imperfections,
and confine it in the threefold superstructure. It would be one
thing,
although still an act of structural imposition, if he were to tease
out
a conceptual design of Islam from within the information
presented
to him, but his domination and violence consist in inflicting the
tri-

adic framework from without and in blatantly repeating
arguments
that would reinforce or leaving out information that would
challenge
his judgments. References to the “Osman” empire, for example,
are
sparse in Philosophy of History, which refer to its “terror” and
acknowl-
edge that the “Osman race at last succeeded in establishing a
firm
dominion,” only resulting in the fact that “fanaticism having
cooled
down, no moral principle remained in men’s souls.” 58 The
Turks are,
of course, “the terrible power which threatened to overwhelm
Europe
from the East.” 59 In Philosophy of Religion, Islam is not given
the sta-
tus of a separate chapter or section, worthy of focused and
undivided
attention dedicated to it; it is demoted to scattered mentions that
57 Bradley Herling, “Either a Hermeneutical Consciousness or a
Critical Consciousness:
Renegotiating Theories of the Germany-India Encounter,”
Comparatist 34 (2010): 63–79.
58 Hegel, Philosophy of History, pp. 452, 377.
59 Ibid., p. 452.
appear in comparison to other religions, to Judaism and
Christianity in

particular. Moreover, Hegel opens his good old bag of tricks
and pulls
out the same vocabulary of criticism for Islam—namely, a much
too
abstract unreacheable concept of the universal absolute—that he
uses
for Kant (who shows the limits of reason), pantheism (that sees
the
divine manifested in everything), Hinduism (a polytheism with
a posi-
tive all-encompassing universal Self ), and Buddhism (with a
negative
all-extinguishing nirvana) alike.
Bringing hermeneutic and critical consciousnesses in
conversation
with each other is already a respectable task given where
German Ori-
entalism theory is today. But to move it forward, we have to
explore
further than one-sided Western appropriation of the East and
wonder
what effect the other side has on the interpreter’s clarity,
comfort, and
conviction. Hegel’s structural confinement and his obsessive
omis-
sions and repetitions are not only evidence of a certain violence
to his
sources, but also indicative of a desperation and anxiety that
Europe,
Christianity, and his tightly wound system of philosophy might
be
crumbling under the conceptual weight of foreign thought. What
if
we pursue this anxiety? Hermeneutic consciousness implies that
given

the precepts of his system, Hegel’s interpretation could not have
been
much different. But what if we dive into the same precepts and
show
that it could, if we use Hegelian paradigm and vocabulary itself
and
argue Islam’s position in a way that could potentially destroy
Hegel’s
teleology?
It is in this regard that I think the following examples of applied
Hegelianism are crucial. First, a footnote by Slavoj Zizek in his
article
“A Glance into the Archives of Islam,” in which he proposes
Judaism-
Christianity-Islam as a Hegelian dialectic triad.60 Second, John
Oli-
ver’s hilarious comments in an episode of The Daily Show
explaining
the young adulthood and maturity of Islam (and Judaism and
Christi-
anity) as they grow, age, and live out their lives.61
Zizek opens his article acknowledging that to Western
historians
of religion Islam presents a problem of temporal and spacial
contradic-
tion, given that it emerged after Christianity and is still ascribed
to the
“Orient.” But more interestingly, he proposes that Judaism,
Christian-
60 Slavoj Zizek, “A Glance into the Archives of Islam,”
http://www.lacan.com/
zizarchives.htm, accessed 25 September 2012. Also see
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj

-zizek/articles/a-glance-into-the-archives-of-islam/, accessed 16
October 2014.
61 “Actual Democalypse 2012,” The Daily Show,
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/
mon-september-17–2012/actual-democalypse-2012--islam-s-
growing-pains, accessed 19
Sep tember 2012.
Religion 421
ity, and Islam could embody the triad of Hegelian dialectic
develop-
ment: “first the immediate/abstract monotheism which, as the
price to
be paid for its immediate character, has to be embodied in a
particular
ethnic group (which is why Jews renounce all proselytism); then
Chris-
tianity with its trinity; finally Islam, the truly universal
monotheism.”
The first moment of Judaism conveys only a constrained and
narrow
sense of monotheism/God, which rules over a restricted
community,
which itself goes through trials and tribulations to conceive its
mono-
theism consistently. Christianity is the second moment, in
which the
initial un-self-aware abstraction of God becomes concrete,
manifest,
and manifold (in the trinity) and partakes directly in history and
human

particularity in the form of the son of God. In the third moment,
the
original limited Jewish monotheism, having concretized itself in
Chris-
tianity, fully reconciles with itself in Islam, sublates the
concreteness
back into a now universally applied concept of the divine
absolute.
Zizek strengthens the same argument with a different
perspective:
Judaism is the religion of genealogy, of succession of
generations;
when, in Christianity, the Son dies on the Cross, this means that
the
Father also dies (as Hegel was fully aware)—the patriarchal
genealogi-
cal order as such dies, the Holy Spirit does not fit the family
series,
it introduces a post-paternal/familial community. In contrast to
both
Judaism and Christianity, the two other religions of the book,
Islam
excludes God from the domain of the paternal logic: Allah is
not a
father, not even a symbolic one—God is one, he is neither born
nor
does he give birth to creatures. There is no place for a Holy
Family in
Islam. This is why Islam emphasizes so much the fact that
Muhammed
himself was an orphan.62
Judaism is bound by a genealogy and hence to a community;
Chris-
tianity acknowledges this, uses this feature to establish an

unprec-
edented connection between God and man, and thereby
accomplishes
the concretization of God, and yet ultimately eliminates it. And
Islam,
once again, overcomes the need of genealogy at all; it has no
use for it
any more, now that it has reabsorbed the all-encompassing
universal-
ity in its God. Zizek’s take on Judaism-Christianity-Islam as a
Hege-
lian triad is indeed an interesting idea, which brings together
the three
Abrahamic religions in a conceptually progressive and
chronologically
consistent unity. While potentially resolving Hegel’s struggle
with
62 Zizek, “Archives of Islam,”
http://www.lacan.com/zizarchives.htm.
Islam’s young age, Zizek’s argument, of course, completely
destroys
Hegel’s teleological culmination into Christian perfection.
Whereas Zizek proposes to observe the triadic concept of
religion
evolving through different religions, John Oliver of The Daily
Show
urges his viewers to consider one single religion aging and
maturing
through its own stages. As with everything on the brilliant Daily

Show,
it too is a hilarious take on our own hypocrisy, but it is also an
applica-
tion of the Hegelian organic evolution of a concept through the
stages
of its life and its journey toward self-awareness. Hegel is not
averse to
the idea of one single religion’s stages of maturity; after all,
Christian-
ity matured into Protestantism too. If in Hegelian terms “God”
and
“religion” are concepts that determine and carry out their own
stages
of life, and earlier civilizational manifestations of the concept
“reli-
gion” (Hinduism, for example) can be said to be in the
“childhood”
stage of history, then “Islam” (or Judaism or Christianity) is a
concept
too, in charge and subject to its life, age, and maturity. John
Oliver
in his 17 September 2012 segment—“Islam’s Growing Pains”—
pres-
ents just that notion. While reporting on the Cairo protests,
Oliver
says, “We should really remember Islam’s young age.” The
host, Jon
Stewart, exclaims, “What . . . Islam is fourteen hundred years
old!” to
which Oliver responds, “Exactly, Jon, in religious years Islam is
still
just a teenager and, to put it in context, think what Christianity
was
doing when it was only fourteen hundred years old . . . exactly!
Bloody
crusades, the inquisition, execution of heretics.” After big

applause
from the audience and further discussion with Stewart on “what
Juda-
ism was doing” when it was that young, John Oliver adds, “The
point
is, Jon, there is good news, and that is that religions grow out of
this
awkward phase. Again, look at Christianity. We’ve aged into
young
adulthood, and now we can all laugh about the time we used to
burn
young girls at the stake for being left-handed, or, as we called it
back
then, witchcraft.”63
In this context of applied Hegelianism, Goux’s words are aptly
applicable:
What makes current events enigmatic is that they are the conse-
quence of a tremendous and dangerous collision of two
temporalities
or temporal modes. We must therefore think the untimely—that
is, the
upsurge of a foreign temporality in our History as well as the
upsurge of
our History in a foreign temporality . . . One of the dramas of
our time
63 “Actual Democalypse 2012.”
Religion 423
is that accelerated globalization . . . no longer allows

civilizations in
close proximity and juxtaposed to one another to live under
different
temporal regimes.64
While Zizek’s interpretation is more philosophical, academic,
and
declaredly Hegelian, Oliver is clearly less serious, more
popular, and,
perhaps, therefore, more problematic. The Daily Show audience,
with
its religious relativism, would normally consider all world
religions at
a given time equal and different, and would ideologically
hesitate to
call one religion more or less primitive than another. Of course,
there
are several subtle shades of the appeal of Oliver’s argument and
several
reasons for the roaring audience applause. But if some of it is to
allow
Islam some leeway in the wake of Christianity’s past, and if
Goux’s
above words on the clash of temporal modes speak to us, then it
is
indicative of the fact that Hegelian notions of temporalities and
of
progressive journey of thought and action have long seeped into
our
collective mind.
Hegel would be equipped, mind you, if he were to be presented
with
the above two examples, with his oft repeated argument that in
Islam’s
case, because of its core conceptual insufficiency—God’s

abstractness
and disconnection with the ungrounded unfree aimless
humanity—it
has no device to mature into a sophisticated religion or to
sublate the
triad of Abrahamic religions. But these applied Hegelianisms
are pre-
cisely the occasions through which the weakness of Hegel’s
system can
be exposed from within its paradigms in a way that Hegel’s
preemp-
tive defense of Christianity cannot address. To be fair, rather
than as
a fully reasoned philosophical counterattack on Hegel, these
examples
are intended to serve as cracks and crevasses that would
question the
strength and sustainability of his grand edifice. And in that
capacity
they would open up a direction for East-West studies, in which
herme-
neutic and critical consciousnesses can move forward together:
Along
with understanding the Western interpreter’s horizon as well as
expos-
ing his power and violence, they can explore the subversive
agency of
the interpreted East in stirring up the interpreter, his anxiety
ridden
defensive rhetoric, and thus the tipping of the power scales.
This exploration is absolutely crucial, for while it may be inter-
esting to imagine Hegel turning in his grave to see Islam not
quite
“vanished from history,” 65 for not foreseeing its role in world
politics

64 Goux, “Untimely Islam,” pp. 55, 68.
as we experience it today, it is also rather obvious that the idea
of a
rational West vis-à-vis an inherently religio-philosophically
fanatical
Islam have been glaringly at play in intellectual, theological,
political,
and popular discourses. Oliver’s reference to Islam’s and
Christianity’s
ages and stages is not far from a nineteenth-century
Orientalist—Julius
Wellhausen—who drew an analogy between Islamic rule and
“Luther’s
view of medieval Catholicism . . . of Caesaro-papism, complete
with
inquisition, executioners, and court astrologers.” 66 Pope
Benedict XVI,
in his infamous 2006 Regensburg lecture, feels it justified to
quote a
fourteenth-century Byzantine text and use Hegelian rhetoric to
jux-
tapose European and Christian synthesis of faith and reason
against
Islam, an irrational and fanatic religion based on obedience and
abso-
lute submission to God.67 And the image of an analytical West
and a
mystical East is far from gone from our popular perception. In
Paul de

Man’s gloriously horrifying words, “whether we know it or not,
or like
it or not, most of us are Hegelians and quite orthodox ones at
that.”68 If
Hegel is, as Almond says, an oscillating sum of his “textual
memory . . .
an intensely lexical phenomenon, an absorber, modifier and
redistribu-
tor of the written,” 69 we have to ask ourselves how much we
have inter-
nalized our textual memory of Hegel. Indeed, hermeneutic and
critical
consciousness should go past being interpretive theories and
together
become a self-reflexive consciousness.
66 Marchand, German Orientalism, p. 188.
67 David Nirenberg, “Islam and the West: Two Dialectical
Fantasies,” Journal of Religion
in Europe 1, no. 1 (2008): 3–33.
68 Paul de Man, Aesthetic Ideology, ed. Andrzej Warminski
(Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1996), p. 92.
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Rubic_Print_FormatCourse CodeClass CodeAssignment
TitleTotal PointsNRS-410VNRS-410V-O501CLC - Evidence-
Based Practice Project: Intervention Presentation on
Diabetes150.0CriteriaPercentageUnsatisfactory (0.00%)Less
than Satisfactory (75.00%)Satisfactory (79.00%)Good
(89.00%)Excellent (100.00%)CommentsPoints
EarnedContent80.0%Article5.0%The article is omitted or fails
to meet the assignment criteria.The article fails to meet most of
the assignment criteria; the article is not relevant to nursing
practice.The article is published in the last 5 years and has a
general focus on an intervention or treatment tool for managing
diabetes in adults or children. The article has some application
to nursing practice.The article is published in the last 5 years,
has a focus on an intervention or treatment tool for managing
diabetes in adults or children. The article has general
application to nursing practice.The article is published in the
last 5 years, has a focus on an intervention or treatment tool for
managing diabetes in adults or children. The article has direct
application to nursing practice.Intervention or Treatment Tool
and Specific Patient Population of Study5.0%Intervention, or
treatment tool, and the specific patient population used in the
study are omitted or inaccurate.An incomplete summary of the
intervention, or treatment tool, and the specific patient
population used in the study is presented. There are significant
gaps and inaccuracies.A summary of the intervention or
treatment tool and the specific patient population used in the
study is presented. Some aspects require more detail for clarity.
There are minor inaccuracies.A description of the intervention
or treatment tool and the specific patient population used in the
study is presented. Minor detail is needed for clarity or
accuracy.A thorough description of the intervention or
treatment tool and the specific patient population used in the
study is presented.Summary of Article15.0%The summary is
omitted or fails to meet the assignment criteria.A partial

summary of the article is presented. There are major omissions.
The summary fails to accurately represent the main idea for a
specific patient population, the clinical findings, or the
relevance to diabetes and nursing practice.A summary of the
article is presented. The summary generally presents the main
idea for a specific patient population, the clinical findings, and
the relevance to diabetes and nursing practice. There are some
inaccuracies. More information is needed.A summary of the
article is presented. The summary presents the main idea for a
specific patient population, the clinical findings, and the
relevance to diabetes and nursing practice. Some detail or
information is needed for clarity.A thorough summary of the
article is presented. The summary accurately presents the main
idea for a specific patient population and the clinical findings,
and clearly illustrates relevance to diabetes and nursing
practice.Inclusion of the Psychological, Cultural, and Spiritual
Aspects15.0%Explanation of why the psychological, cultural,
and spiritual aspects are important to consider for patient who
has been diagnosed with diabetes is omitted.A partial
explanation of why the psychological, cultural, and spiritual
aspects is important to consider for a patient who has been
diagnosed with diabetes is presented. The explanation contains
significant omissions and inaccuracies. Reasoning or rationale
is not provided for support.A general explanation of why the
psychological, cultural and spiritual aspects is important to
consider for a patient who has been diagnosed with diabetes is
presented. The explanation contains some omissions and
inaccuracies. General reasoning or rationale is provided for
support.An explanation of why the psychological, cultural, and
spiritual aspects is important to consider for a patient who has
been diagnosed with diabetes is presented. The explanation
contains adequate reasoning or rationale provided for support.
Some detail is needed for clarity.A compelling explanation for
why the psychological, cultural and spiritual aspects is
important to consider for a patient who has been diagnosed with
diabetes is presented. The explanation is well-developed and

contains strong reasoning and rationale for support.Presentation
of Content40.0%The content lacks a clear point of view and
logical sequence of information. Includes little persuasive
information. Sequencing of ideas is unclear.The content is
vague in conveying a point of view and does not create a strong
sense of purpose. Includes some persuasive information.The
presentation slides are generally competent, but ideas may show
some inconsistency in organization and/or in their relationships
to each other.The content is written with a logical progression
of ideas and supporting information exhibiting a unity,
coherence, and cohesiveness. Includes persuasive information
from reliable sources.The content is written clearly and
concisely. Ideas universally progress and relate to each other.
The project includes motivating questions and advanced
organizers. The project gives the audience a clear sense of the
main idea.Organization, Effectiveness, and
Format20.0%Layout5.0%The layout is cluttered, confusing, and
does not use spacing, headings, and subheadings to enhance the
readability. The text is extremely difficult to read with long
blocks of text, small point size for fonts, and inappropriate
contrasting colors. Poor use of headings, subheadings,
indentations, or bold formatting is evident.The layout shows
some structure, but appears cluttered and busy or distracting
with large gaps of white space or a distracting background.
Overall readability is difficult due to lengthy paragraphs, too
many different fonts, dark or busy background, overuse of bold,
or lack of appropriate indentations of text.The layout uses
horizontal and vertical white space appropriately. Sometimes
the fonts are easy to read, but in a few places the use of fonts,
italics, bold, long paragraphs, color, or busy background
detracts and does not enhance readability.The layout
background and text complement each other and enable the
content to be easily read. The fonts are easy to read and point
size varies appropriately for headings and text.The layout is
visually pleasing and contributes to the overall message with
appropriate use of headings, subheadings, and white space. Text

is appropriate in length for the target audience and to the point.
The background and colors enhance the readability of the
text.Language Use and Audience Awareness (includes sentence
construction, word choice, etc.)5.0%Inappropriate word choice
and lack of variety in language use are evident. Writer appears
to be unaware of audience. Use of primer prose indicates writer
either does not apply figures of speech or uses them
inappropriately.Some distracting inconsistencies in language
choice (register) or word choice are present. The writer exhibits
some lack of control in using figures of speech
appropriately.Language is appropriate to the targeted audience
for the most part.The writer is clearly aware of audience, uses a
variety of appropriate vocabulary for the targeted audience, and
uses figures of speech to communicate clearly.The writer uses a
variety of sentence constructions, figures of speech, and word
choice in distinctive and creative ways that are appropriate to
purpose, discipline, and scope.Mechanics of Writing (includes
spelling, punctuation, grammar, language use)5.0%Slide errors
are pervasive enough that they impede communication of
meaning.Frequent and repetitive mechanical errors distract the
reader.Some mechanical errors or typos are present, but they are
not overly distracting to the reader.Slides are largely free of
mechanical errors, although a few may be present.Writer is
clearly in control of standard, written, academic
English.Documentation of Sources (citations, footnotes,
references, bibliography, etc., as appropriate to assignment and
style)5.0%Sources are not documented.Documentation of
sources is inconsistent or incorrect, as appropriate to
assignment and style, with numerous formatting errors.Sources
are documented, as appropriate to assignment and style,
although some formatting errors may be present.Sources are
documented, as appropriate to assignment and style, and format
is mostly correct.Sources are completely and correctly
documented, as appropriate to assignment and style, and format
is free of error.Total Weightage100%

A k a d e m i k A r a $ t i r m a l a r D e r g i s i 2 0 0 5 , S a y i
2 6 , S a y f a I a r 1 9 1 - 2 1 0
The Concept of Revelation According to
the Bible and the Qur'an
Niyazi BEKI*
The main objective of this article is to itivestigate the tneaning
of revelation
in the Bible and the Qur'an. My basic question can be
formulated as follows:
Can the authenticity of revelation as a sacred text be established
through its
(verbatim) words, or through its meaning, or through both? To
provide a
general background, I shall start with the concept of revelation
in the three
Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I shall make
some brief
comparative remarks about the Jewish and Christian notions of
revelation to
show their common ground with the Islamic concept of
revelation. The main
focus of the paper, however, will be the concept of revelation in
the Islamic
tradition. If one understands that these three faiths share the
same source of
revelation, then the believers of these faiths can accord equal
respect to one
another and engage not only in dialogue, but also might learn to
heed the call
that has echoed throughout their scriptures. As it is described in
the Qur'an:

"The truth is from thy Lord: so be not at all in doubt. To each is
the goal which
Allah turns him: than strive together as in a race to all that is
good.
Wheresoever ye are, Allah will bring you together. For Allah
hath power over
all things" (2:147-148).'
Revelation is a divine communication to human beings. "It is
the
phenomenon whereby a supra human, or supernatural,
communication is
transmitted from the Divine to humankind or in which the
manifestation or
epiphany of the Divine occurs which presents itself to the
human sight, hearing,
sensibility, and consciousness as an event out of the ordinary
course."^ As
such, writes Johannes Deninger in The Encyclopedia of
Religion, revelation is
comprised of the most "diverse experiences."^ He explains that
phenomenologists of religion divide the characteristics of
revelation into five
categories:
1. Origin or author: God, spirits, ancestors, power, forces. In all
of these
cases, the source of revelation is something supernatural or
numinous.
2. Instrument or means: sacred signs in nature [...], dreams,
visions,
ecstasies; finally, words or sacred books.
3. Content or object: the didactic, helping, or punishing
presence, will,

being, activity, or commission of the divinity.
4. Recipients or addressees: medicine men, sorcerers,
sacrificing priests,
shamans, soothsayers, mediators, prophets with a commission or
information
intended for individuals or groups, for a people or the entire
race.
191
Akademik
Ara§tirmalar
Dergisi
The Concept of Revelation According to the Bible and the
Qur'an
5. Effect and consequence for the recipient: personal instruction
or
persuasion, divine mission, service as oracle — all this through
inspiration or,
in the supreme case, through incarnation."*
These characteristics of revelation can also apply to the Islamic
notion of
revelation. This shows that we can find a relationship between
the Islamic and
Biblical concept of revelation. With this point in mind, we now
turn to the
Jewish concept of revelation as the Jews were the first people to
have a revealed
book.
I. The Jewish Concept of Revelation

Jewish tradition emphasizes that Abraham broke the idols and
false gods in
his father's household by smashing them into pieces. Little by
little Abraham
began to receive words and promises from God that formed the
basis of a
mutual agreement called a Covenant. Then, God revealed the
Torah to Moses.
He first sent a law because the pagan world was in a state of
anarchy and
needed the direction and discipline that only law could bring.
Exodus 24:12
reads: 'The Lord said to Moses, 'Come up to me on the
mountain, stay there,
and let me give you the stone tablets with the law and
commandment I have
written down for their instruction." The tablets are described in
Exodus 32:15-
16: "Moses went back down the mountain holding the two
tablets of the
Testimony, inscribed on both sides, on the front and the back.
The tablets were
the handiwork of God, and the writing was God's writing,
engraved on the
tablets." The law that was sent to Moses was of two kinds:
ritual law and moral
law, and both are found in various parts of the Torah and the
other books of the
Old Testament.'
The essence of revelation according to the Old Testament or the
Hebrew
Bible as it is called in the Jewish tradition consists precisely of
this self-
communication of God to His people as He makes himself

known to them (Ex.
64:2) and speaks to them (Ex. 25:22). The word of God is
spoken in a special
way to Moses (Ex. 20:18). God's word to Israel is His most
precious gift; in it
He communicates himself: "I am the Lord" (Gn. 28:13; Ex. 6:2,
6:29) and
"there is no other" (Is. 45:5).
In light of the above, we can say that the Jewish concept of
revelation is
based on God's direct communication to the people through
books and
commandments. "We believe," says Maimonides, "that the
Torah reached
Moses from God in a manner that is described in Scripture
figuratively by the
term 'word' and that nobody has ever known how it took place
except Moses
himself to whom the word reached."^ When God spoke with
Moses at Sinai,
"there was neither a physical voice nor a physical perception
but rather a
spiritual voice."'
192
Journal
of Academic
Studies
Niyazi Beki Yil: 7, Sayi: 26 AQustos - Ekim 2005
II. The Christian Concept of Reveiation

The New Testament writers see revelation as the self-
communication of God
in and through Jesus Christ. This communication is regarded as
the supreme,
fmal, irrevocable, and unsurpassable self-disclosure of God in
history. In Jesus,
the agent of revelation and content of revelation are identical
and make up the
sole object of revelation. According to The Encyclopedia of
Religion,
"Revelation is therefore given together with the person of the
Logos (the
Word); it is the manifestation of the life and love of God.
Because Jesus is the
only-begotten Son, he reveals the Father in what he says and
does." Indeed, in
John 14:9, Jesus says, "Whoever has seen me has seen the
Father."
The classic formula explaining the concept of revelation is that
God is the
author of both the Old and New Testaments. Throughout the
history of
Christian thought, the Scriptures have been called the word of
God and
identified with revelation. In the Qamus al-Kitab al-Muqaddas
(The Dictionary
of the Bible) revelation is described as the "indwelling of the
Spirit of God in
the spirit of the inspired writers in order that they might know
spiritual truths
and unseen matters without anything of the personality of these
writers being
lost. Thus each of them retains their own style and mode of
expression." In the

same vein, the First Vatican Council said of the Scriptures that
"because they
were written as a result of the prompting of the Holy Spirit,
they have God for
their author".'" Similarly, in the twentieth century, the
Protestant evangelist Dr.
Billy Graham said that "the Bible is a book written by God
through thirty
secretaries"."
Revelation occupies a central place in the Christian tradition.
First of all, it
is basic to the Christian faith that God is a personal God who
has spoken to
men. He has initiated a dialogue with them, in which they are
invited to listen to
His words, and to respond. His words are revelation, and man's
response is
faith.'^ God, who through the Word creates all things (John 1:3)
and keeps them
in existence, gives men an enduring witness to Himself in
created realities
(Rom. 1:19-20). In time. He appointed and called Abraham in
order to make of
him a great nation (see Gen. 12:2). Then, after speaking in
many and varied
ways through the prophets, "now at last in these days has
spoken to us in His
son.""
As God's direct revelation, Jesus Christ may be said to have
three, aspects or
functions, as follows:
1. Jesus represents the moral character of God. According to
this view,

Jesus is God's revelation in the sense that he exemplifies for us
what God is
like. The moral attributes of God can also be attributed to a
human being, and it
is these qualities that Jesus reflects in his human aspect. For
example, God is
compassionate and forgiving, Jesus practiced compassion and
forgiveness in his
own life and death. From Jesus' human love we can see what
God's love is like.
2. Jesus reveals the universal possibility of the Union between
the Divine
and the Human. This second view states that Jesus reveals
"God-in-humanity"
193
Akademik
Ara5tirmalar
Dergisi
The Concept of Revelation According to the Bible and the
Qur'Sn
as a universal possibility of human life. Here Jesus' function
takes on a more
spiritual and metaphysical sense and goes beyond mere ethics.
3. Jesus reveals the unique presence and act of God. In this
view, it is Jesus
who reveals and embodies the unique presence of God in human
life.'*

In the light of these considerations, we can identify three major
views of
revelation in the Christian tradition. The first is the revelation
sent to the
Biblical Prophets, which Christianity shares with both Judaism
and Islam. This
refers to all the revealed messages and the word of God written
in the Old
Testament. The second is the revelation sent to the authors of
the scriptures, that
is, the apostles who, according to the Christian view, have been
divinely
"inspired" to write down the Gospels. The third meaning of
revelation pertains
directly to Jesus himself as he is believed to be the Word of
God. As we shall
see below, these three meanings of revelation in Christianity
have both
similarities and differences with the Islamic concept of
revelation, to which I
now turn.
III. The Islamic Concept of Reveiation
Islam's understanding of revelation is very much like that of the
Bible,
especially the Old Testament. Wahy or revelation comes from
God, usually
through the agency of the archangel Gabriel. "Revelation is the
act by which
God, having created the world, proceeds to disclose Himself to
His own
creation, acting in His capacity as hadi (Guide). As such the
term embraces any
act of self-disclosure, beginning with God's addressing our First
Parents in the

Garden, and proceeding through a series of disclosures to
prophets of both
categories, rusul and anbiya', culminating in a final defmitive
act of disclosure
known as khatm an-nubuwwa, or Seal of Prophethood."'' It is
unanimously
accepted by Muslim scholars that revelation is given to prophets
and, in its
defmitive and fmal form, to the Prophet Muhammad. In the
Qur'an, the content
of revelation is wisdom and guidance for living and, above all,
warnings and the
announcement of the fmal judgment. Since revelation is divine
in its origin, it
cannot be altered.'*
To support the above, the Qur'an says:
We have sent you revelation [wahy ] as we sent it to Noah and
the
messengers after him: We sent revelation to Abraham and
Ismail, Isaac, Jacob
and the tribes, to Jesus, Job, Jonah, Aaron, and Solomon, and to
David We gave
the Psalms. Of some messengers We have already told you the
story; of others
We have not — and to Moses Allah spoke directly. Messengers
who gave good
news as well as warnings, that mankind, after (the coming) of
the messengers
should have no plea against Allah: For Allah is Exalted in
Power and Wise
(4:163-65)"
194
Journal

of Academic
Studies
Niyazi Beki Yil: 7, Sayi: 26 AQustos - Ekim 2005
Wahy means to inspire, or to communicate something in a
manner that is not
obvious or apparent to someone else. In the Qur'an it is referred
to in the
following contexts:
1. The natural order and laws of nature. The Qur'an says, 'Then
He
completed and fmished their creation (as) seven heavens, and
He inspired in
each heaven its affair" (41:12). This can be considered as the
natural laws, such
as the orbits of the planets and the rotation of the earth, etc.
2. Natural animal instinct. The Qur'an says, "And your Lord
inspired the
bee, saying, take as habitations mountains, and in the tree and
in what
(mankind) builds, than, eat of all fruits, and follow the ways of
your Lord."
(16:68-69)
This signifies the natural animal instinct that every creature is
endowed
with:
Bees, for example, instinctively build their hives and search for
nectar from

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