How can we have a Middle Eastern Islam whose leaders acknowledge the existence of what are for all intents and purposes polytheistic deities, like how Javanese Muslim clerics accepted the need to worship the Goddess of the Southern Ocean?
AHC: Polytheistic Islam
- Thread starter Intransigent Southerner
- Start date
"Javanese clerics"? Name a singe ulema of note from Java. Already, some Shi'i of the Ghulat faction worship Ali, or some other entity.
Sunan Kalijaga did not believe in gods other than Allah. He simply held a belief that over time a tradition will die out with the application of Sharia and Islam. Nowhere does he endorse the worship of other deities.
Polytheistic Islam seems unlikely. They had a base in Christianity with the Trinity that could be expanded and moved into a more polytheistic format, but instead it unified all the parts to a singular entity. Divine beings (angels, djinn and such) might have more prominance but an Islam with more than one God is not what we could really call Islam
That was responding to your ludicrous claim that Java had no religious leaders of note. Anyways ulama were not particularly well-regarded in Java compared to wandering Sufi Mystics, and the latter, like Prince Dipanagara, certainly worshipped the spirits. Javanese sultans officially worshipped the Godess of the Southern Seas as their spiritual consort.
I think the problem with a literal polytheistic islam is that it would go against the notion of unity not only within the islamic community but in term of the spiritual paradigm also.
along fellownerd's lines, I think a "multiplicity in oneness" sort of belief is the best you can hope to have a religion that acknowledge something close to other deities while still being recognisable as islam. What I mean by that is that you could have a concept that the 99 names of Allah are emanation with their own separate attributes and treated as separate entities in some context but yet are still only aspect of the One God and literately separate entities.
There is also a possibility of having cults dedicated to the various wâli in a method akin to the catholic saints. That way, you would have many aspects of polytheism without a literal one.
along fellownerd's lines, I think a "multiplicity in oneness" sort of belief is the best you can hope to have a religion that acknowledge something close to other deities while still being recognisable as islam. What I mean by that is that you could have a concept that the 99 names of Allah are emanation with their own separate attributes and treated as separate entities in some context but yet are still only aspect of the One God and literately separate entities.
There is also a possibility of having cults dedicated to the various wâli in a method akin to the catholic saints. That way, you would have many aspects of polytheism without a literal one.
When did I claim Java had no ulema? You were the one who said "religious clerics", which is ulema. A wandering Sufi is not ulema any more than Ibn Saba al-Himyari, or more modern, Usama Ibn Laden is a ulema.
If anyone made a ludicrous claim, it was you, who essentially made a blanket statement on Javanese ulema, which within their faith, accused them of Kufr Akbar.
My reason for asking where the Javanese ulema is, was to show that there have been no Ulema from Ahl Sunnah wa l'jma'ah that prescribes to the worship of any sea deity.
I think that the only way you could have a polytheistic religion growing out of western Arabia in the 600s (it might be an entirely different religion in this scenario) is if there's more polytheistic influence in Arabia, likely through a larger pagan population. Arabia at the time was inhabited by a mixed population of Christians, Jews, and pagans. However, I think that a more likely scenario would be more along the lines of a cult for a particular deity, more similar to the Cult of Mithras than to Christianity or Judaism. Such a cult could conceivably evolve into an essentially henotheistic religion that all but ignores the other deities that were once worshipped alongside the deity at the center of this alt-Islam.
