Part 6 (1/2)

There is no veil through which it does not see.

The center dwells in the periphery,

And as each ego thinks itself alone

All numbers must contain the number one.

The depth of G.o.d is more than we can tell;

Next to the deepest knowledge of the Real

Every religion is a heresy.

Eckhart, from whom G.o.d nothing hid, knew well:

To reach the kernel you must break the sh.e.l.l.

And Ibn 'Arabi, absorbed in prayer,

Saw nothing but an ocean without sh.o.r.e -

Its waves are flowing still through every soul:

There is no part that does not touch the whole.

Barry McDonald

The Koran as the Lover's Mirror

William C. Chittick It is well known that Sufism places a premium on love, but Western observers rarely a.s.sociate love with Islam itself. This no doubt helps to explain the tendency to see Sufism as somehow tangential to the tradition. I would argue rather that love for G.o.d is every bit as central to the Islamic perspective as it is to a tradition like Christianity, though the rhetorical stress is by no means the same. In the present context, one piece of evidence will have to suffice: Islamic praxis is based on following the Sunnah of Muhammad-that is, imitating his conduct, his customs, and his character traits. The Koran is of course utterly basic to Islamic ways of seeing and doing things, but the Koran is known and interpreted first of all through the manner in which it was embodied and acted out by Muhammad. Following the Prophet provides the parameters for the Muslim understanding of the Koran and of all things. But what exactly is the rationale for following the Prophet? A most succinct expression is found in surah 3:31: ”Say [O Muhammad!]: 'If you love G.o.d, follow me, and G.o.d will love you.'” If you do not love G.o.d, there is no reason to follow the Prophet. This has hardly been lost on practicing Muslims.

If it is not obvious to outsiders that Muslims have been motivated by love for G.o.d, this has something to do with the many directions in which Islamic civilization developed-literature, law, art, philosophy, theology, political inst.i.tutions. Modern scholars.h.i.+p has been much more interested in these observable aspects of culture than in psychological or spiritual motives. Nonetheless, most scholars recognize that Islamic civilization has always been concerned with unpacking the teachings of the Koran and applying them to diverse realms of human endeavor. In other words, expressions of Islamic civilization and culture flesh out the ways in which people imitate the Prophet, who embodied the Koran. And Muslims in turn are motivated to imitate the Prophet by love for G.o.d and the desire to call down G.o.d's love upon themselves.

Although Muslims have followed Muhammad in order to attract G.o.d's love, they have also recognized that G.o.d loves human beings in any case. Sufi authors commonly highlight the notion that the divine motivation for creating the universe is love. What makes human beings special, among all G.o.d's creatures, is that they have the capacity to love G.o.d freely in response to His love for them. All other things simply serve G.o.d as they were created to serve Him, with no free choice on their parts.1 As Rumi puts it, Choice is the salt of wors.h.i.+p-

the spheres turn, but not because they want to.

Their turning is neither rewarded nor punished,

for, at the time of reckoning, choice bestows excellence.2

So, to say that G.o.d created the universe out of love means that the divine love brings into existence the ugly along with the beautiful, the bad along with the good. Only within the context of such an apparently mixed-up universe can free choice have any meaning. And only those who choose freely to love G.o.d can love Him with worthy love. If love were to be coerced, it would not be love. This is one reason why the Koran says ”There is no compulsion in the religion” (2:256). The religion-the right path taught by the Koran and the Prophet-is precisely to live up to the requirements of love for G.o.d and to do so by putting the Sunnah into practice. If the religion were coerced, it would not be love, and it would not be the religion.

In short, although G.o.d loves humans beings and created them to love Him, they are free not to love Him. So, a second sort of divine love responds to the free choice of human beings to love G.o.d, a choice that demands following the divine guidance as embodied in the prophets. And, G.o.d says in the often cited adith qudsi, ”When I love My servant, I am the hearing with which he hears, the eyesight with which he sees, the hand with which he grasps, and the foot with which he walks.” When love reaches its culmination, the divine Lover is none other than those he loves, and the human lovers are none other than the divine Beloved. This is one of the meanings that Sufis see in the verse, ”He loves them, and they love Him” (Koran 5:54).

I chose to talk about the Koran as a ”mirror” because I wanted to stress the role of the interpreter in understanding scripture. The fact that people see the Koran through their own specific lenses is especially clear when one surveys the vast number of Koranic commentaries written over the centuries-not to mention the critiques and studies written by non-Muslims. Jurists have found in the Koran a book of law, theologians see all sorts of G.o.d-talk, philosophers find the guidelines for wisdom and virtue, linguists uncover fascinating intricacies of Arabic grammar, biologists find theories of life. As for Western scholars.h.i.+p, nothing is more obvious than that scholars reach different conclusions on the basis of diverse premises and prejudices.

When I first chose the topic for this paper, I immediately put into the relevant file a statement from the Maqalat of Shams-i Tabrizi, Rumi's famous companion. In that book we learn that Shams used to make his living as a teacher of the Koran. He tells us repeatedly that the path to G.o.d is that of following (mutabaat) the Prophet-having in mind, of course, the already mentioned Koranic verse, ”If you love G.o.d, follow me.” In one explanation of the central importance of the Koran, he says, For the travelers and the wayfarers, each verse of the Koran is like a message and a love-letter [ishq-nama]. They know the Koran. He presents and discloses the beauty of the Koran to them.3 I suppose that nowadays not too many people read the Koran as a love-letter. But, is this because of the contents of the Koran? Or is it because of the contents of the readers' souls? Shams thinks the answer is obvious: ”The flaw is that people don't look at G.o.d with the gaze of love.”4 The issue is not only interpretation of scripture, of course, since the same argument applies to our views on everything. Our understanding of the world and of our own role within it depends on where we are coming from. And with even more reason, how we understand ”G.o.d” depends on who we are. This should be obvious-everyone has a different understanding of the word ”G.o.d.” Ibn Arabi, the ”Greatest Master” of Sufi teachings, makes the point by arguing that absolutely no one can wors.h.i.+p G.o.d as such. All people without exception wors.h.i.+p the G.o.d or G.o.ds of their beliefs (al-ilah al-mutaqad). Given that the term ”G.o.d” can designate the point of reference for one's att.i.tudes and activities, even those who claim not to wors.h.i.+p any G.o.ds are deceiving themselves. All of us have points of reference and orientations.

I do not want to claim that interpretation of scripture is totally subjective, but it does seem clear that scripture has the capacity to allow people to see into their own souls. When people read scripture, they find themselves. If they do not like what they are seeing, they should-in the traditional way of looking at things-try to dissolve the knots in their souls that prevent them from seeing the beauty of the Divine Word. Needless to say, the modern response is somewhat different.

One needs to remember that Muslims never considered the Koran a book among other books, any more than the Bible was simply a cla.s.sic for Christians. The Koran was the Word of G.o.d, G.o.d's own self-expression with the purpose of guiding those whom He loves. People read and recited the Koran not to entertain themselves with old stories, nor to edify themselves, but to bring themselves into conformity with the divine reality that is disclosed in the text. The purpose of engaging with the Koran was to transform the soul. Reciting the text and conforming oneself to its teachings was a way to express one's love for G.o.d and to make oneself worthy for G.o.d's love.

The idea that reciting the Koran and observing the Sunnah are transformative goes back to Islamic teachings about what it means to be human, teachings with which the Koran is saturated-that is, if one is looking for them. People can become transformed because they can come to know G.o.d and love Him, and this is possible because human beings are not fixed in their status. It may be true that the G.o.d whom people wors.h.i.+p is always the G.o.d of belief, and it may also be true that G.o.d in Himself is always beyond the capacity of created beings to understand. But, this does not mean that the G.o.d of my belief today is the same as the G.o.d of my belief tomorrow, quite the contrary. Understanding and wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d change constantly in keeping with the growth and development of the human self.

Ibn Arabi points out that the uniqueness of human beings goes back to the fact that they cannot be pinned down. Just as G.o.d cannot be defined, so also the creatures whom He created in His own image cannot be put into a box. In other words, the ”definition” of what it means to be human has everything to do with indefinability.