IB World Religions 5.1.4. Ummah, Ibadah, Akhlaq, Niyyah and the Two Jihads Notes

5.1.4. Ummah, Ibadah, Akhlaq, Niyyah and the Two Jihads

Ummah and its reach

1. Ummah is the worldwide Muslim community, and the word carries no ethnic or national limit. Muslims hold that submission to Allah, and not ancestry, is what places a person inside it.
2. The Qur'an addresses the ummah as a single body and calls it a middle community, a people set to bear witness and to avoid extremes.
3. The Constitution of Madinah, agreed after the hijrah of 622, turned the ummah into a political fact by binding believers and allied groups into one community with stated duties.
4. Hajj makes the ummah visible. Pilgrims from every continent wear the same plain garments and stand together, so differences of wealth and origin are deliberately covered over.
5. The ummah holds together while disagreeing sharply. Sunni and Shi'ah Muslims divided over authority after the Prophet's death, and both still describe themselves as parts of one ummah.
6. Minority settings stretch the concept further. Muslims in Europe, the Americas and East Asia build institutions across ethnic lines, and giving to distant Muslims is regularly explained by appeal to the ummah.

Ibadah as worship

1. Ibadah (worship) shares a root with 'abd (servant), so the word describes a standing relationship of service rather than a set of ceremonies.
2. The Qur'an gives worship as the purpose of creation, saying that Allah created jinn and humankind only to worship Him.
3. Muslim jurists sort actions into 'ibadat (acts of worship) and mu'amalat (dealings between people), while holding that both are owed to Allah.
4. The formal acts are the core, above all salah, sawm, zakat and hajj, and each is treated in detail among the rituals of Islam.
5. Ibadah nevertheless reaches past them. A hadith counts clearing a harmful thing from the road, smiling at a brother and honest labour as worship when done for Allah.
6. Because worship belongs to Allah alone, directing any part of it elsewhere is shirk. The concept therefore ties both ritual and ethics back to tawhid.

Akhlaq and character

1. Akhlaq (ethics and conduct) names settled character rather than isolated good deeds. Its singular, khuluq, means disposition, the shape a person's habits have taken.
2. The Qur'an praises the Prophet Muhammad for standing on a mighty khuluq, and a hadith reports him saying that he was sent to complete noble character.
3. Muslims distinguish akhlaq from fiqh (jurisprudence). Fiqh rules on what is permitted, while akhlaq asks what kind of person the permitted act is making.
4. The virtues named most often are sidq (truthfulness), amanah (trustworthiness), sabr (patient endurance), 'adl (justice) and rahmah (mercy).
5. Adab, good manners, carries akhlaq into daily detail. It governs greeting, eating, asking permission and how absent people are spoken about.
6. Sufi teachers treat akhlaq as the visible result of inner purification, holding that a heart cleared of arrogance and envy produces good conduct without strain.

Niyyah and the inner act

1. Niyyah (intention) is the inward resolve that turns an action into worship. A hadith states that actions are judged by intentions and that each person receives what was intended.
2. Niyyah is required before salah, wudu, sawm and hajj. It is a resolve of the heart, and most scholars hold that saying it aloud is not necessary.
3. The doctrine separates habit from worship. Going without food is a diet or a fast depending on nothing except what the person means by it.
4. It also makes worship portable. A traveller shortening prayers, or an ill person praying seated, performs the same act because the intention has not changed.
5. Riya' (worshipping in order to be seen) is niyyah's corruption. Scholars treat it as a hidden form of shirk that can spoil an outwardly flawless act.
6. Shi'ah jurists commonly frame niyyah as qurbah, the intention of drawing near to Allah, which makes the same point in a different vocabulary.

The two jihads

1. Jihad comes from a root meaning to strive or exert effort. It does not mean holy war, and Arabic uses a separate word, harb, for war itself.
2. Muslims distinguish the Greater Jihad, the personal struggle against evil in oneself, from the Lesser Jihad, the collective defence of the Muslim community.
3. The ranking rests on a much quoted report in which the Prophet, returning from battle, tells his companions that they have come back from the lesser jihad to the greater. Hadith specialists classify the report as weak, though the priority it states is widely accepted.
4. The greater jihad works on the nafs (the lower self). Muslim writers describe it moving from al-nafs al-ammarah, the self that commands wrongdoing, towards al-nafs al-mutma'innah, the self at peace.
5. Sufi orders make that struggle their programme, using dhikr, fasting and self-examination as its instruments under a teacher's direction.
6. The lesser jihad is regulated rather than open. Classical jurists required legitimate authority to declare it, confined it mainly to defence, and forbade harm to non-combatants, places of worship, crops and trees.
7. Who may declare it is contested along branch lines. Sunni jurists tied the power to a legitimate ruler, while Twelver Shi'ah jurists held that offensive jihad is suspended while the infallible imam is absent.

The concepts held together

1. The five concepts describe one life from different angles. Ummah gives it a community, ibadah a purpose, akhlaq a character, niyyah an inner condition and jihad an effort.
2. Niyyah is the hinge. It settles whether an act of ibadah counts, whether akhlaq is genuine, and whether a struggle is undertaken for Allah or for the ego.
3. Ummah keeps the rest from turning private. Zakat, communal prayer and shared festivals mean personal devotion is expected to appear as obligations towards other people.
4. The greater jihad joins akhlaq to ibadah, since the character the tradition prizes is held to be won by struggle rather than received ready made.
5. Sunni, Shi'ah and Sufi Muslims share this vocabulary and weight it differently, with Sufi teaching pressing the inner terms and jurists pressing the measurable duties.
6. The shared vocabulary is also what lets Muslims argue with one another, since disputes about practice are usually conducted by appeal to these same words.