Part 1 (1/2)
Universal.
Dimensions of Islam.
Patrick Laude.
Editorial.
One of the fundamental problems of our contemporary world has been judiciously referred to as a ”clash of the uncivilized.”1 This conflict has been particularly acute in the encounter between certain mainstream elements of the secular West-with which one must aggregate, at least outwardly, a few zones of resilient Christian ident.i.ty and emerging neo-Christian cultures-and some of the most visible contemporary expressions of people and societies for whom Islam is the predominant principle of collective ident.i.ty. In the West, one of the praiseworthy responses to such tensions and oppositions has come from those who have called for a better ”understanding” of Islam. Here, understanding is not meant to refer to a full acceptance, but to a sufficient grasp of the inner and outer ”logic” of Islam, as well as to a degree of recognition of its spiritual and moral values. Perhaps paradoxically to some, such a capacity to understand others presupposes an inner att.i.tude which has everything to do with the degree to which one has a.s.similated the core principles of one's own civilization. This holds true, needless to say, on any side of the civilizational ”divide.” There is no civilization formed by the sacred that does not ultimately lead its most discerning representatives to perceive in some measure the relativity of its own exclusiveness, at least in petto. To this extent, to be ”civilized” amounts almost as much to recognizing the intelligence and beauty of other civilizations as it is to fathom the foundations of one's own; the latter being, in fact, the precondition, if not the guarantee, for the former.
The writings collected in this volume make the case for a vision of Islam as a religion and civilization intrinsically equipped to address universal human predicaments, and converging thereby with the highest spiritual expressions of all authentic religious heritages. They point to fundamental ”universals” of Islam, such as the doctrine of Unity and ”unification” (tawhid), the essentialness of Divine Mercy, the inclusive and integrative nature of the Muslim concept of prophecy, the Islamic ability to a.s.similate various cultural and ethnic languages, and the capacity of Islamic mysticism to serve as a spiritual bridge between diverse religions. They include now cla.s.sic essays by ”founding fathers” of the Perennial Philosophy, testimonies from spiritual figures of Sufism, and contemporary studies of Islam and Sufism by experts and younger scholars of religion. Finally, as the universal language par excellence, poetry could not but be included in this volume.
The universal dimensions of Islam refer to the dimension of breadth as well as depth. They pertain to both form and essence.
On the level of form, there is to our mind no better way of pointing out this universality than by quoting Schuon's a.s.sertions that ”Islam . . . has given a religious form to that which const.i.tutes the essence [”substance” in the original French] of all religion”2 and that ”Islam . . . aims to teach only what every religion essentially teaches; it is like a diagram of every possible religion.”3 The simplicity of the form renders it accessible to any man or woman, and therefore potentially to all of mankind. It speaks to all capacities and levels of understanding. It also allows for its manifestation through diverse cultural contexts, from Sub-Saharan Africa and the Balkans to India and China.
From another point of view-notwithstanding the expansive potentiality of Islam's schema-like form-other aspects of its form have placed limits on Islamic expansion. This is particularly true when referring to the Bedouin and Arab cladding, as it were, of the message. Such a cladding is not the best means of ”exporting” Islam, as it enters into conflict with psychological and cultural traits predetermined by other civilizational ”logics”. Be that as it may, this twofold aspect of the Islamic form may correspond to the distinction, on the one hand, between form as an expression of divine essence, or ”archetypal form,” and, on the other hand, form as a providential but necessarily exclusive clothing of human culture.
On the level of the essence of the message, the princ.i.p.al element of Islam's universality undoubtedly lies in its doctrine of Unity, understood either from an exoteric or esoteric perspective. From an exoteric standpoint, the universality of Islam is to be found, in a sense, in the aforementioned ”schematic” aspect of its affirmation of one supreme G.o.d as opposed to many divine manifestations. The Qur'an and the traditional teachings and interpretations of its message have shown the way of universality through the affirmation of a metaphysics of the Unity of Divine Reality and through the corresponding affirmation of a divine recognition of other traditional faiths. They have done so to the extent that it is possible within the context of a religion, that is to say, within an exclusive belief system. Esoterically, tawhid opens onto the metaphysics of essential Unity, which the various spiritual and traditional languages couch in so many ”syntaxes,” either affirmatively or apophatically, objectively or subjectively, doctrinally or methodically.
Thus, Islam arrives at the religious paradox of founding the providential legitimacy of its own exclusiveness on the very principle of its overall inclusiveness; a paradox that lies at the core of the unity of Islam, while being the source of its diversity throughout all times and places.
Patrick Laude.
Footnotes.
1 The expression was coined by Zaid Shakir in the context of recent inter-cultural polemics, especially relating to Samuel Huntington's claim of a so-called ”clash of civilizations.”
2 Frithjof Schuon, Roots of the Human Condition, ”Outline of the Islamic Message” (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2002), p. 81.
3 Frithjof Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts, ”Contours of the Spirit” (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2007), p. 68.
ESSAYS.
Outline of the Islamic Message.
Frithjof Schuon.
The enigma of the lightning-like expansion of Islam and its adamantine stability lies in the fact that it has given a religious form to what const.i.tutes the essence of all religion. It is in this sense that some Sufis have said that, being the terminal religion, Islam is ipso facto the synthesis of the preceding religions-the synthesis and thereby the archetype; terminality and primordiality rejoin.
On the surface of Islam, we find some features of the Bedouin mentality, which quite obviously have nothing universal about them; in the fundamental elements, however, we encounter as it were religion as such, which by its essentiality opens quite naturally onto metaphysics and gnosis.
All metaphysics is in fact contained in the Testimony of Faith (Shahadah), which is the pivot of Islam.1 Exoterically, this Testimony means that the creative Being alone is the Supreme Principle that determines everything; esoterically, it means in addition-or rather a priori-that only Beyond-Being is the intrinsic Absolute, since Being is the Absolute only in relation to Existence: this is the distinction between tma and Maya, which is the very substance of esoterism. ”Neither I (the individual) nor Thou (the Divine Person), but He (the Essence)”: it is from this Sufi saying that the p.r.o.noun ”He” has often been interpreted as meaning the impersonal Essence; and the same meaning has been attributed to the final breath of the Name Allah.
After the Testimony of Faith comes Prayer (Salat), in the order of the ”Pillars of the Religion” (Arqan ad-Din): the human discourse addressed to the Divinity, which is of primary importance since we are beings endowed with intelligence,2 hence with speech; not to speak to G.o.d, yet to speak to men, amounts to denying G.o.d and His Lords.h.i.+p. The intention of primordiality, in Islam, is manifested by the fact that every man is his own priest; primordial man-or man in conformity with his profound nature-is a priest by definition; without priesthood, there is no human dignity. The meaning of prayer is to become aware-always anew-of total Reality, then of our situation in the face of this reality; hence to affirm the necessary relations.h.i.+ps between man and G.o.d. Prayer is necessary, not because we do or do not possess a given spiritual quality, but because we are men.
The Testimony and Prayer are unconditional; Almsgiving (Zakat) is conditional in the sense that it presupposes the presence of a human collectivity. On the one hand it is socially useful and even necessary; on the other hand it conveys the virtues of detachment and generosity, lacking which we are not ”valid interlocutors” before G.o.d.
As for the Fast (Siyam)-practiced during Ramadan-it is necessary because asceticism, like sacrifice in general, is a fundamental possibility of human behavior in the face of the cosmic maya; every man must resign himself to it to one degree or another. Indeed, every man, whether he likes it or not, experiences pleasure, and thus must also experience renunciation, since he chooses Heaven; to be man is to be capable of transcending oneself. At the same time, Islam is well aware of the rights of nature: all that is natural and normal, and lived without avidity and without excess, is compatible with the spiritual life and can even a.s.sume in it a positive function.3 n.o.bility is here the awareness of the archetypes, and above all the sense of the sacred; only he who knows how to renounce can enjoy n.o.bly, and this is one of the meanings of the Fast.
Unlike the Testimony of Faith, the Prayer, the Fast, and to a certain extent Almsgiving, the Pilgrimage, and the Holy War are conditional: the Pilgrimage depends on our capacity to accomplish it, and the Holy War is obligatory only under certain circ.u.mstances. We need not take into consideration here the fact that every obligation of the religion-except for the Testimony-is conditional in the sense that there may always be insuperable obstacles; the Law never demands anything impossible or unreasonable.
The meaning of the Pilgrimage (Hajj) is the return to the origin, thus what is involved is a living affirmation of primordiality, of restoring contact with the original Benediction-Abrahamic in the case of Islam. But there is also, according to the Sufis, the Pilgrimage towards the heart: towards the immanent sanctuary, the divine kernel of the immortal soul.
In an a.n.a.logous fas.h.i.+on, there is, along with the outer Holy War (Jihad), the ”Greater Holy War” (al-Jihad al-akbar), that which man wages against his fallen and concupiscent soul; its weapon is fundamentally the ”Remembrance of G.o.d” (Dhikru 'Llah), but this combat presupposes nonetheless our moral effort. The all-embracing virtue of ”poverty” (faqr) is conformity to the demands of the Divine Nature: namely effacement, patience, grat.i.tude, generosity; and also, and even above all, resignation to the Will of G.o.d and trust in His Mercy. Be that as it may, the goal of the inner Holy War is perfect self-knowledge, beyond the veilings of pa.s.sion; for ”whoso knoweth his soul, knoweth his Lord”.
To return to the Testimony of Faith: to believe in G.o.d is to believe also in that which G.o.d has done and will do: it is to believe in the Creation, in the Prophets, in the Revelations, in the Afterlife, in the Angels, in the Last Judgment. And to believe is to acknowledge sincerely, drawing the consequences from what one believes; ”belief obligates”, we could say. Whence the crucial importance, in the thought and sensibility of Islam, of the virtue of sincerity (sidq), which coincides with ”right doing” (ihsan), whether it be a question of religious zeal or esoteric deepening.4 Theologically, one distinguishes faith (iman), practice (islam), and their quality (ihsan), the ”right doing”, precisely; and this right-doing, according to a Muhammadan saying, consists in ”wors.h.i.+pping G.o.d as if thou seest Him; and if thou dost not see Him, He nonetheless seeth thee”.
Translated by Mark Perry.
Footnotes.
1 ”There is no divinity if not the (sole) Divinity (Allah).” This may be compared with the Vedantic formulation: ”Brahmais real, the world is an appearance.”
2 We could say ”endowed with reason”, but it is not reason as such which counts, it is integral intelligence of which reason is only the discursive mode.
3 This is what is expressed and in principle realized in every religion by the formulas of consecration such as thebenedicite or the basmalah.
4 Echoing the parable of the talents, Saint James in his Epistle says that ”to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin”; which is to say that G.o.d requires even wisdom of him who possesses it potentially; whence the inclusion of esoteric spirituality (tasawwuf) in ihsan.
Sufism and Mysticism.
t.i.tus Burckhardt.
Scientific works commonly define Sufism as ”Muslim mysticism” and we too would readily adopt the epithet ”mystical” to designate that which distinguishes Sufism from the simply religious aspect of Islam if that word still bore the meaning given it by the Greek Fathers of the early Christian Church and those who followed their spiritual line: they used it to designate what is related to knowledge of ”the mysteries”. Unfortunately the word ”mysticism”-and also the word ”mystical”-has been abused and extended to cover religious manifestations which are strongly marked with individualistic sub jectivity and governed by a mentality which does not look beyond the horizons of exotericism.
It is true that there are in the East, as in the West, borderline cases such as that of the majdhub in whom the Divine attraction (al-jadhb) strongly predominates so as to invalidate the working of the mental faculties with the result that the majdhub cannot give doctrinal formulation to his contemplative state. It may also be that a state of spiritual realization comes about in exceptional cases almost without the support of a regular method, for ”the Spirit bloweth whither It listeth”. None the less the term Taawwuf is applied in the Islamic world only to regular contemplative ways which include both an esoteric doctrine and transmission from one master to another. So Taawwuf could only be translated as ”mysti cism” on condition that the latter term was explicitly given its strict meaning, which is also its original meaning. If the word were understood in that sense it would clearly be legitimate to compare Sufis to true Christian mystics. All the same a shade of meaning enters here which, while it does not touch the meaning of the word ”mysticism” taken by itself, explains why it does not seem satisfactory in all its contexts to transpose it into Sufism. Christian contemplatives, and especially those who came after the Middle Ages, are indeed related to those Muslim contemplatives who followed the way of spiritual love (al-maabbah), the bhakti marga of Hinduism, but only very rarely are they related to those Eastern contemplatives who were of a purely intellectual order, such as Ibn 'Arabi or, in the Hindu world, ri akaracharya.1 Now spiritual love is in a sense intermediate between glowing devotion and knowledge; moreover, the language of the bhakta projects, even into the realm of final union, the polarity from which love springs. This is no doubt one reason why, in the Christian world, the distinction between true mysticism and individualistic ”mysticism” is not always clearly marked, whereas in the world of Islam esotericism always involves a metaphysical view of things-even in its bhaktic forms-and is thus clearly separated from exoteri cism, which can in this case be much more readily defined as the common ”Law”.2 Every complete way of contemplation, such as the Sufi way or Christian mysticism (in the original meaning of that word), is dis tinct from a way of devotion, such as is wrongly called ”mystical”, in that it implies an active intellectual att.i.tude. Such an att.i.tude is by no means to be understood in the sense of a sort of individualism with an intellectual air to it: on the contrary it implies a disposition to open oneself to the essential Reality (al-aqiqah), which transcends discursive thought and so also a possibility of placing oneself in tellectually beyond all individual subjectivity.