The Omission of Islam

Abstract

One of the great mysteries about Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion is why he does not dedicate a special analysis to Islam in the same way that he does to the other religions. This chapter examines this question along with Hegel’s general understanding of Islam. According to Hegel, the basic conception of the divine in Islam is the unitary God. Given this, it is understandable that he is at pains to distinguish Islam conceptually from the two other great monotheistic religions: Judaism and Christianity. In contrast to Jehovah of Judaism, Allah is an inclusive, universal God who has a relation to all human beings not just a specific group. In contrast to Christianity, Islam with its insistence on the unity of the divine, radically rejects the empirical realm of particularity. God is what is infinite, absolute, and true, whereas the mundane world is transitory, corrupt, and of no ultimate value. The key difference between Christianity and Islam, according to Hegel, lies in the fact that the former recognizes the validity of the particular, without this impinging on or compromising the universal; specifically, through the person of Christ, the truth of the particular is accorded its due. Nevertheless Islam has an important role to play in the development of history, according to Hegel’s understanding.