All of the Qur'an is guidance. Nonetheless, not all of the guidance is necessarily intended for everyone.
For example, Alaf Lam Meen is guidance. Ha Meem is guidance. Ta Ha is guidance. Ya Seen is guidance. Yet, such guidance does not necessarily apply to anyone except those for whom God intended it.
People have made an assumption that injunctions in the Qur'an dealing with, say, punishment are incumbent for all peoples, circumstances, societies, and historical times, but these injunctions concerning punishment may not have been intended to apply to everyone any more than the series of Arabic letters at the beginning of certain surahs are necessarily intended for everyone. Rather, in each case, the guidance may be intended only for certain historical and social circumstances.
This distinction may be especially important when it comes to differentiating between the private sphere and the public sphere. Although there often is a public context in which the basic pillars and beliefs of Islam are embraced, the fact of the matter is that all of these pillars and beliefs are largely a matter of individual observance and responsibility.
This is also the case with respect to those aspects of character development that extend beyond the basic pillars and beliefs. One may seek to practice love, kindness, generosity, forgiveness, tolerance, patience, and so on in relation to other people, but the development of such traits is a function of an individual's solitary struggle. One may observe the five daily prayers with other people, but each individual carries the responsibility of paying attention during prayers and applying as much of her or his spiritual capacity to the observance of prayers as one is individually able to do – nobody else can do this for a person.
Shari'ah is a matter of individual aspiration and not of public imposition. The Prophet is reported to have said: “I have been given all the Names and have been sent to perfect good character.” He did not say that he has been sent to establish a good system of jurisprudence or corporal punishment.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is also reported to have said:
“Muslims are brothers and sisters in Deen, and they must not oppress one another, nor abandon assisting each other, nor hold one another in contempt. The seat of righteousness is the heart. Therefore, that heart which is righteous does not hold a Muslim in contempt.” Yet, many of those with a fundamentalist inclination do seek to oppress others through the exercise of public power, and they do tend to harbour contempt for anyone who does not act or believe as such fundamentalists believe should be the case.
Moreover, the foregoing hadith indicates that the seat of righteousness is the heart. The hadith says nothing about the seat of righteousness being in government or the public sphere of power or a particular system of imposed punishment.
Through the Qur'an, Allah guided the people in the time of the Prophet in a way that they could understand and in a manner which fit in with their life styles, social conventions, history, ways of doing things, and sensibilities. In other words, during the time of the Prophet and under certain circumstances best understood by the Prophet, the process of beheading a person, or amputating a limb, or flogging an individual, or stoning a person were all expressions of following a portion of the guidance which had been given to the Prophet by God in order to establish order and security in a Arabian society that was used to dealing with certain aspects of life through the law of retribution and which is why God proscribed that sort of law for such a people so they would understand.
Nonetheless, through the Qur'an, God also provided guidance for people who would live in subsequent times which were different in many ways from those which existed during the life of the Prophet. Furthermore, these other dimensions of guidance were expressed in a manner that could be understood by, and which fit in with, the life-style, conventions, history, practices, and sensibilities of the people who would live in those later times.
This does not mean that people of subsequent generations were free to do whatever they liked. However, part of the beauty, generosity, and depth of the Qur'an is that it is filled with principles of guidance which are appropriate for all manner of circumstances and conditions, and, as such, the Qur'an has degrees of freedom contained within which are capable of assisting individuals in a variety of circumstances and situations – even if there are people today, unfortunately, who are unwilling to acknowledge these other dimensions of Quranic guidance.
Shari'ah has always remained what it is – the personal, private process of struggling to purify oneself, develop constructive character traits, realize spiritual capacity, and gain insight into the nature of one's essential relationship with God. The Qur'an says: “I have not created human beings nor jinn except that they may worship Me [that is, Divinity].” (Qur'an 51:56-57), and shari'ah, when properly pursued, is the key, God willing, to fulfilling the purpose for which human beings and jinn have been created – that is, worship or ibadat.
Is there a need for maintaining a safe and stable environment so that people may be free to pursue the real meaning of shari'ah in their own individual way? Yes, there is, but there also are alternative Quranic means of establishing and securing such an environment without necessarily having to resort to executions, amputations, floggings, stonings, oppressions, and so on. Moreover, we live in times when the latter sort of approach to establishing a public space that is conducive to spiritual pursuits is no longer appropriate, constructive, practical, or capable of encouraging spirituality.
Furthermore, all of the foregoing can be said without, for a moment, implying that what took place in the time of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was in any way immoral, cruel, incorrect, uncivilized, or barbaric. God knew the people who lived in the time of the Prophet better than we do, and Divinity proscribed for those people what was necessary to help them create -- in their social, economic, historical, and spiritual circumstances -- a safe, secure, stable public sphere which could assist such individuals to begin to make the transition from what had been in pre-Islamic times to what might be through the degrees of freedom contained in the Divine guidance of the Qur'an.
In fact, the inclination of the Prophet was to discourage people coming to him and making their sins and transgressions public. The Prophet encouraged people to seek repentance from God directly rather than having things mediated through public procedures.
Nevertheless, if people insisted on confessing their sins to the Prophet or insisted on making a public issue of such matters, then, the Prophet was obligated to settle those matters in accordance with his duties as a Prophet of God and in accordance with the specific guidance given by Divinity for maintaining social order in those times. However, given that the Prophet is no longer physically present among us, there really is no one who currently exists who has the spiritual authority [despite the fact that many try to arrogate to themselves such authority] to carry out the same function as was performed by the Prophet in those earlier days, nor is there anyone currently available in the public sphere who has the depth of wisdom to verify that the specific rules contained in the Qur'an concerning, say, forms of punishment, are applicable to anyone beyond that portion of the community of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) that existed more than 1400 years ago.
In the days of the Prophet, when corporal forms of punishment came into play – and such was not the case all that frequently – those forms of punishment were understood as a way of having one's spiritual slate wiped clean with respect to what one would be held responsible for in the life to come. Today, those same forms of punishment have been stripped clean of what had been – at one time – their spiritual function and, instead, are frequently used as tools of oppression to control people and forcibly impose some invented theology upon a population which takes issue with the spiritual corruption, economic inequities, and social injustices being perpetrated by such governments as they try to hide behind the ruse of merely wishing to establish shari'ah as the law of the land, when, in point of fact, shari'ah was never intended to be a law which people were compelled to obey and has always been the right way for an individual to seek and realize God's purpose for that individual.
Earlier, the etymology of shari'ah had been noted as a path which leads one to water. The nature of this water entails the sort of thirst-quenching experience which occurs when, God willing, an individual realizes her or his unique spiritual capacity and essential identity. This is the sort of water to which shari'ah leads a person, and this is why the Qur'an indicates that in such matters there is no compulsion (Qur'an 2:256), and this is why people make a mistake when they treat shari'ah as something which can be imposed on others.
On page 53-54 of Daveed Gartenstein-Ross's book My Year Inside Radical Islam, the author writes:
“I had known from the first time I encountered Ashland's Muslims and saw al-Husein debate with Sheikh Hassan that there was a name for the kind of Islam practised by the community's leaders: Wahhabism. The Wahhabis are a Sunni sect founded by Muhammad ibn-Abdul Wahhab, an eighteenth-century theologian who lived in what is now Saudi Arabia. Abdul Wahhab was obsessed with returning Islam to the puritanical norms that he thought were practised in Prophet Muhammad's time. He had a severe and strict interpretation of the faith.
“In accord with Abdul Wahhab's teachings, the Wahhabis have an absolutist vision for Islam that holds that the Qur'an and Prophet Muhammad's example (the Sunnah) are the only permissible guides for the laws of the state and the conduct of an individual. They resent Muslims whose norms differ from theirs … the Sufis are also particularly despised. The Sufis … tend to be more free-form in interpreting the Qur'an.”
Starting with the last sentence first, the fact of the matter is that interpretation of the Qur'an – whether by Sufis or others – is not a part of shari'ah. In Surah 3, verse 7, one finds:
“He [that is, God] it is Who hath revealed unto thee (Muhammad) the Scripture wherein are clear revelations -- They are the substance of the Book--and others (which are) allegorical. But those in whose hearts is doubt pursue, forsooth, that which is allegorical seeking (to cause) dissension by seeking to explain it. None knoweth its explanation save Allah. And those who are of sound instruction say: We believe therein; the whole is from our Lord; but only men of understanding really heed.”
Moreover, in another part of the Qur'an, Allah provides the following guidance:
“He granteth wisdom to whom He pleaseth; and he to whom wisdom is granted receiveth indeed a benefit overflowing; but none will grasp the message but men of understanding.” (2:269)
Interpretation is not an expression of wisdom which God grants but is the antithesis of such wisdom. Interpretations are projected onto Divine guidance, whereas wisdom concerning that guidance is a gift of God.
Sufis don't have a more free-form way of interpreting the Qur'an. Rather, they try to refrain from interpreting the Qur'an and seek, instead, to struggle to be in a spiritual condition which, if God wishes, such an individual will receive wisdom from God concerning those Quranic verses which are not clear and straightforward.
Interpretations are invented explanations which are a function of ignorance and presumption. Wisdom is a received understanding which has been granted by God and is a function of, among other features, Divine grace/barakah and an individual's taqwa or God-consciousness.
According to the author of My Year Inside Radical Islam – and as previously noted –“Abdul Wahhab was obsessed with returning Islam to the puritanical norms that he thought were practised in Prophet Muhammad's time. He had a severe and strict interpretation of the faith.”
However, what was practised by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was not some form of puritanical doctrine but, rather, a way, or deen, or tariqa, or shari'ah, or sirat-ul-mustaqueen which helped individuals learn, God willing, how to become a person of understanding and wisdom concerning the nature and purpose of Quranic guidance. In contrast to what Abdul-Wahhab and others of fundamentalist leanings believe, this way of Allah was not meant to be imposed on anyone and, consequently, it could not become the law through which the state governed people.
As noted previously, the function of the state is different from the function of shari'ah. Sharia'ah is intended to govern the realm of private spiritual aspiration according to one's capacity as well as in accordance with Divinely granted understanding. The state is intended to create the sort of public space within which people would be able to freely and safely pursue shari'ah according to their understanding of things as long as that understanding did not spill over into compelling others to live in accordance with such a perspective.
The puritanical system to which Abdul-Wahhab wished to return people was a figment of his imagination. The puritanical system which he invented was the result of a revisionist history which Abdul-Wahhab constructed concerning the nature of Divine revelation and the life of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
The severe and strict interpretation of faith which was held and promulgated by Abdul Wahhab was a projection of his own spiritual pathology onto both the Qur'an and the life of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). The system envisioned by Abdul Wahhab was not a process of returning Islam to its roots but a failure to understand the nature of those roots altogether and as such laid the foundations for a system of theological oppression which has, like a virulent pathogen, spread to many parts of the world.
The foregoing comments actually lead to an observation concerning the title of the book by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross. More specifically, My Year Inside Radical Islam, is something of a misnomer.
If a person spent a year with a group which counterfeited money and, then, wrote a book about his or her experiences during that period calling the memoir: My Year Inside the Federal Treasury, the people who read the book might object because they clearly understand that the counterfeiting outfit has nothing to do with the Federal Treasury Department except in relation to the counterfeiting group's attempt to pass off its product as a legitimate form of legal, monetary tender.
However, a similar sort of objection can be made with respect to the experiences of Mr. Gartenstein-Ross. He didn't really spend a year inside of radical Islam. Rather, he spent a year with a group of radical spiritual counterfeiters who did their best to try to convince Mr. Gartenstein-Ross that their product was the equivalent of Islam, which it wasn't.
To put forth such an observation concerning the problem with the title of Mr. Gartenstein-Ross' book doesn't undermine the importance of much of what the author has to say about the group in question, for, I would agree with many aspects of his critical commentary concerning the teachings of that group which are recounted in his book. I merely wish to place those critical observations in a proper context by saying that although the group in question may have been radical, and although that same group parasitically sought to usurp the name Islam and, in the process, attempted to create the impression that its radical philosophy was part and parcel of Islam, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross actually spent time inside a group of counterfeiters and not inside an Islamic group.
On page 71 of his book, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross writes:
“When I was a campus activist at Wake Forest, I was always eager to speak against injustice, and often considered myself courageous when I did. But my approach to Al-Haramain [i.e., the Muslim group in Ashland, Oregon] was the opposite. I recognized that disagreeing with prevailing religious sentiments could stigmatize me. My approach, starting with my first week on the job, was to avoid making waves, to try to understand where the others were coming from, and to emphasize our religious commonality rather than argue over differences.”
Not wishing to create controversies or wanting to emphasize commonalities rather than argue about differences or trying to understand someone else's perspective are all important and commendable intentions. Nonetheless, I believe that the search for truth as well as Mr. Gartenstein-Ross's personal situation would have been better served if he had stuck with his tendency to speak out against injustice and give voice to the problems he saw rather than, due to a fear of being stigmatized, remain silent.
In a sense, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross became his own worst enemy with respect to being pulled into the spiritual quagmire represented by the Ashland group because, for a time, he seemed to have suspended the very tools with which God had equipped him – namely, an inherent dislike of injustice as well as a critical capacity for detecting when things don't make sense. In short, for a time, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross ceded his intellectual and moral authority to the group or leaders of the group in Ashland, when he would have been much better off if he listened to the counsel of his own heart … which in many cases -- at least with respect to the things about which he wrote in his book -- was a better source of understanding concerning the nature of Islam than anything he was hearing from the Muslim group with which he was associating.
I say the foregoing not as someone who seeks to stand in judgment of Mr. Gartenstein-Ross but as someone who, so to speak, has been there and done that. There have been times in my own life when I should have listened to the counsel of my own heart but, instead, gave preference to the views and ideas of someone else out of a desire to not stir up controversy or disturb the peace and, in the process, ceded to someone else the very intellectual and moral authority which God had given me responsibility for the exercise thereof.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is reported to have said that one should:
“Seek the guidance of your heart (istaftii qalbaka: ask for the fatwa), whatever opinion others may give.”
To be sure, there are some dangers associated with such counsel because one can easily mistake the musings of one's own ego or nafs for the guidance of one's heart. However, if one is sincere in seeking the truth, then, if God wishes, Divinity will help move the heart in the correct spiritual direction.
The question which arises here, of course, is how does one know one is being sincere? In relation to this issue, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is reported to have said:
“All people are doomed to perish except those of action, and all people of action will perish except for the sincere, and the sincere are at great risk.”
Why are the sincere at such risk? Because, among other things, there are many who are seeking to sway the sincere from the counsel of their heart – the very counsel to which the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him) in the previously noted hadith is encouraging such sincere ones to listen to.
When one does not listen to the counsel or fatwa of one's heart, the vacuum which is created thereby becomes filled with the musings of whoever happens to be present and who is prepared, legitimately or illegitimately, to exploit another person's abdication of her or his spiritual responsibilities with respect to his or her own heart.
This is what happened to Mr. Gartenstein-Ross when he became inclined to remain silent amidst the radicalized propaganda, biases, and prejudices of the Ashland group. Through his own decision to remain relatively silent concerning the problems he encountered within the group, he unintentionally opened himself up to the malignant forces which would begin to work on him through the theological machinations of the Wahhabi-influenced group with which the author had, for a time, chosen to associate in Ashland, Oregon.
One of the first things the group tried to do was undermine Mr. Gartenstein-Ross' God-given right to try to ascertain, for himself, the truth with respect to an array of issues. For instance, at one point in his book, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross describes how, when working in the office of the Ashland group, he wrote an e-mail in response to a university student who was inquiring about the practice of infibulation, a process of genital mutilation which is forced upon women within various Muslim communities in different parts of the world.
Very reasonably, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross wrote to the student and explained that one had to distinguish between the teachings of Islam and cultural practices which had nothing to do with such teachings but, unfortunately, had been conflated with those teachings by people of mischief and those with vested interests. The author clearly, and correctly, indicated to the student that the practice of infibulation has nothing to do with Islam.
One of the consequences which ensued from the e-mail was that the other members of the Ashland group were very upset with Mr. Gartenstein-Ross for having written such an e-mail. The author was told that he did not have the right to issue a fatwa, and there were numerous scholars in Saudi Arabia who were far more qualified than was Mr. Gartenstein-Ross and who were prepared to answer such complex questions of Islamic law.
Despite all too many facets of the Muslim community operating for some 1100-1200 years under the contrary delusion (since the rise of various schools of jurisprudence within the Muslim community), there is no such thing as Islamic law. While there are legal systems which have been generated by Muslims, and while, sometimes, these legal systems do seek to incorporate this or that understanding concerning what certain people believe Islam to be about, the result is not Islamic law but, rather, Muslim law.
A whole cacophony of religious scholars, imams, qazis, muftis, and theologians have arrogated to themselves the right to make pronouncements – called fatwas -- which they believe to be binding on others. They have developed arcane, obscure, irrelevant, and deeply flawed methodologies for generating torturous explanations that attempt to justify such practices as female mutilation, or which seek to justify: why women should be completely covered, or why women should be deprived of the rights which the Qur'an clearly gives them, or why men should be beaten if they don't grow a beard, or why a women who is raped should be executed for fornication, or why honor killings are okay, or why not belonging to a given madhhab or school of jurisprudence is a heinous crime and renders one an unbeliever, and other similar iniquities.
The practice of infibulation or female mutilation is not a matter of complex Islamic law. It is a matter of a complex pathology.
There is nothing of a reliable nature in the Qur'an to support such a practice. There is nothing of a reliable nature in the sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad to support such a practice.
However, the fundamentalist mind-set seeks to induce one to believe that life is real only when one submits to the beliefs and teachings of certain acceptable – to the fundamentalists -- religious scholar. According to that mind-set, if one doesn't operate out of a given madhab's book of fiqh or application of law based on such a school's interpretation of the Qur'an, Hadith, and subsequent legal commentary, then, one is leading an invalid, haramic life.
For such a mind-set, validity is not a matter of whether a given understanding can be shown to conform to the guidance of the Qur'an. Rather, validity is purely a function of whether a given understanding conforms to a certain theological paradigm.
If one conforms, then, one is a brother or sister. If one dissents, then, one is likely to lose one's family affiliation and become branded as a kafir or unbeliever.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and My Year Inside Radical Islam - Part 4
On page 94 of My Year Inside Radical Islam, one reads:
“As I was walking toward the red Tercel, a dark-haired woman who looked to be in her late thirties greeted me. She wasn't wearing a hijab, the head scarf worn by Muslim women. I was surprised to see her. It took me a second to realize the reason for my surprise: it had been weeks since I'd had any real contact with a woman. And, to my dismay, I had begun to internalize the dress code of the Musalla. Her lack of hijab struck me as wrong.”
What Mr. Gartenstein-Ross is describing when he talks about having begun to internalize the dress code of the Musalla or Muslim center in Ashland is, actually, an expression of Pavlovian classical conditioning. In some of the early experiments conducted by Pavlov, a dog would be presented with an unconditioned stimulus, such as food, and, the presentation of the food would automatically induce the dog to salivate, which was referred to as an unconditioned response. In the next stage of the experiment, a tone would be sounded at the same time as the food was presented, and when the tone and sight of the food were paired enough times, the sounding of the tone was enough to induce salivation in the dog even if no food was present.
The process through which the dress code was being internalized within Mr. Gartenstein-Ross is not exactly the same as the previously described experiment of Pavlov, but there are some important similarities. When most men who have grown up in North America meet a woman – such as the situation described by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross -- there is no inherent sense that there is anything wrong with the way such a woman is dressed as long as her clothes fall within certain broad parameters of aesthetics and decency.
In such a case, the unconditioned stimulus is the woman and her clothing. However, under normal circumstances, there is not necessarily any particular unconditioned response which is likely to be displayed by someone like Mr. Gartenstein-Ross in relation to such an encounter.
Yet, if one works and spends time within an environment like the fundamentalist-leaning Muslim center in Ashland as Mr. Gartenstein-Ross did, then, what happens is that every time a woman appears on the scene, certain behaviours, comments, or body language are given expression through the male hierarchy of the group. Having spent considerable time in such environments, I am well aware of the things that are said, or the behaviours which are encouraged and discouraged, or the kind of body language and facial expressions that are used to induce people – both men and women -- to conform to a specific way of doing things.
One of the chants of the fundamentalist mind-set is that women must be kept out of sight. Women should not participate in mosque activities – unless it is to cook food. Women should be herded into little rooms in the basement or to some other room away from the main focus of activity. Women should be dressed in a particular way. Women should observe hijab. Women need to be kept separate from men.
After enough pairings of the foregoing sort of theological perspective and the presence of women, then, in a relatively short period of time, the presence of a woman in and of herself -- unaccompanied by the presence of a fundamentalist-oriented commentator -- is enough to elicit the mind-set which has been conditioning the thoughts and feelings of someone who is in a position like that of Mr. Gartenstein-Ross. Consequently, a person who is in a position similar to that of Mr. Gartenstein-Ross begins to automatically disapprove of a given woman if she does not conform to the theological mind-set which is in place.
One does not think about what is going on. One merely feels what one has been conditioned to feel such that the unconditioned stimulus – the presence of a woman without hijab – is enough to elicit feelings of disapproval … that is, the conditioned response.
Although both Muslim men and women are enjoined to be modest in their manner of dress, the Quranic verse which indicates that women should cover themselves does not stipulate that no part of a woman should be visible to the world. This extended notion of covering up is someone's interpretation of what God meant. If covering up is for the sake of modesty, and men are required to be modest in their dress, then, why is it that women are required to be so much more modest and so much more covered up in this respect than men?
Why aren't men the ones who are stuffed into small rooms in the basement or up in the cramped quarters of the balconies? Why aren't men the ones who are kept away from the main center of activities within a mosque? Why aren't men the ones who are discouraged from taking part in mosque activities? Why aren't men the ones who are told that they cannot use the main entrance to enter the mosque? Why is it okay to listen to the sound of a male voice in the mosque, but listening to the sound of a woman's voice somehow threatens to shake the foundations of all that is true and just?
In all too many mosques and Muslim centers, none of the foregoing questions are really open for discussion. Everyone – both men and women – has been conditioned to accept the status quo without engaging in any rigorous, critical exploration of whether such is the way things need to be or should be.
Almost everyone is on auto-pilot, operating in conjunction with classically conditioned responses. Reason, insight, critical inquiry, dialogue, rigorous examination, and wisdom concerning such issues are almost nowhere to be found.
As pointed out by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross, if one has objections to any of the foregoing, one is chastised and criticized for the weakness of one's faith, or one is given a book to read which is written by someone with the “right kind” of theological orientation, or one is recited a litany of obscure names residing in this or that Muslim country whom one is enjoined to treat as authoritative icons whose words are not to be disputed.
After all, those people are scholars. They are experts. They know Arabic.
Don't think! Don't reflect! Don't question! Just blindly accept what one is being told, and if one is not prepared to do this, then, you, my friend, are likely to be accused of being an unbeliever … or a minion of Satan.
In fundamentalist-leaning groups [and what is being said here applies as much to fundamentalist Christian and Jewish communities as it does to Muslim groups] there is tremendous pressure – both spoken and unspoken – that is imposed upon people – both men and women – to submit to the theology being promulgated by the group. One is encouraged to internalize the idea that obedience to what the theological leaders are saying is the only acceptable form of adab or spiritual etiquette.
If one objects to the idea of being required to show blind obedience to human beings, and, instead, one humbly expresses the opinion that 'I thought we were supposed to submit only to God”, one is told that what these leaders are saying is precisely the same as what God is saying. From their perspective, what they are promulgating is what God meant even if what they claim God meant is not necessarily what God actually said in the Qur'an.
According to the fundamentalist orientation, one should be ashamed for even considering the possibility that God might have meant something other than what the leaders are telling one is the case. Creating such controversy is described by those with vested theological interests as being tantamount to fitna or creating discord in the community … and, remember, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
In other words, if you don't agree with them, then, you are the source of fitna. To suggest that such people may be the source of fitna for introducing problematic ideas and understandings in the first place does not appear anywhere on their theological radar except as a hostile invader seeking to destroy Islam.
For the fundamentalist mind-set, the only way to achieve group and community harmony is if everyone submits to their theology. Thus, the fundamentalists have set up the game plan to be something of a fait accompli … keep one's mouth shut and do things their way or be labelled as an unbeliever and as one who creates fitna in the community.
The fundamentalist strategy often tends to consist of bullying, intimidation, indoctrination, control, and oppression. Sincere dialogue and rigorous exploration of the issues are not compatible with such a strategy as Mr. Gartenstein-Ross indicates was his experience on many occasions during the course of his interaction with the Muslim group in Ashland, Oregon.
There are several junctures in Mr. Gaertenstein-Ross' book when the issue of apostasy is, to a degree, discussed. This topic, of course, is of particular interest to the author of My Year Inside of Radical Islam because toward the end of his book he provides an account of how he left the Muslim community to become Christian.
Prior to the foregoing point, however, the issue of apostasy is explored within a context and at a time when Mr. Gartenstein-Ross still considered himself to be a Muslim. For example, on pages 153-154 of his book, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross relates the words of someone -- a fellow by the name of Abdul-Qaadir – for whom the author had respect on the basis of other conversations which they had engaged in previously.
Mr. Gartenstein-Ross wanted to know if such people should be killed. His friend said:
“The reason a lot of people are uncomfortable with this is because they don't understand the notion of apostasy in Islam. … They hear that you can be killed for leaving Islam, and their reaction is 'Huh?' What they're not considering is that religion and politics aren't separable in Islam the way they are in the West. When you take the Shahadah, you aren't just pledging your allegiance to Allah, you're aligning yourself with the Muslim state. Leaving Islam isn't just converting from one faith to another. It's more properly understood as treason.”
Mr. Gartenstein-Ross reports that his response to the foregoing was: “That makes sense.” Actually, the fact of the matter is that such a perspective makes no sense at all.
To say that religion and politics aren't separable in Islam is to propagate a myth. As the Qur'an points out, and as has previously been noted, when Muslims pledged their oath of allegiance to the Prophet at Hudaibiyah, not only was their oath given to Muhammad (peace be upon him) as the Prophet of God, but via revelation, Allah clarified the matter and said that the oath of allegiance given by Muslims was really to God for God's hand was above the hand of the Prophet.
There was no Muslim state at the time. There was a community in Yathrib whose people – both Muslim and non-Muslim – had, for the most part, agreed to accept the Prophet as leader of that community and who were prepared to accept his rulings in certain matters.
A constitution was established in order to formalize the nature of the relationship which had been agreed to between the Muslims in Yathrib and certain non-Muslim tribes. As such, this constitutional understanding did not bind the non-Muslim tribes to a Muslim state but, instead, outlined the duties and rights of the respective signatories and in this sense was more like a treaty among different peoples than a document which created a political state.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is reported to have said:
“Leave me alone so long as I leave you alone.” He did not encourage people to make requests that he lay down further spiritual precepts beyond what was given in the Qur'an, nor did he encourage them to question him minutely about deen for fear that people would burden themselves in such matters beyond what God had intended and beyond what they were able to do.
Certainly, the Prophet was not someone who busied himself with setting up a political, state apparatus. He did what was necessary in order to establish a judicious, safe, stable public sphere, but this was done not for the purposes of politics or creating a state but, instead, was done in order to develop an atmosphere which was conducive to people pursuing shari'ah according to their individual capacities and inclinations.
When the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) passed away, a convention was established in which certain people in the community gave oaths of allegiance to whomever was elected to be Caliph of the community. The taking of such an oath did not bind the individual to an Islamic state but was, rather, a contract between the leader and those who acceded to being led by such a person.
As Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddiq (may Allah be pleased with him) indicated upon becoming Caliph:
“Obey me as long as I obey Allah and His Prophet, when I disobey Him and His Prophet, then obey me not.”
The issue of the relationship between a leader and those who came to be aligned with that leader through an oath was not a function of politics or membership in a state, but, rather, this was a matter of a person's understanding concerning the truth. When all parties involved in such an arrangement were on the same page with respect to their respective understanding of the nature of truth under a given set of circumstances, then all such parties worked together, and when there were differences entailed by their respective understandings of the truth, then, allegiance no longer bound the two parties together.
Shortly after the Prophet passed away and prior to becoming Caliph, Hazrat Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) said:
"Listen to me, ye people. Those of you who worshipped Muhammad know that he is dead like any other mortal. But those of you who worship the God of Muhammad (SAW) know that He is alive and would live forever."
Then he repeated a passage from the Qur'an:
"Muhammad is but a messenger, Messengers of God have passed away before him; What if he dies or is killed? Will you turn back upon your heels? And whosoever turns back upon his heels will by no means do harm to Allah, and Allah will reward the thankful."
A Muslim's primary allegiance is to Allah. Messengers pass away, and Caliphs pass away, and leaders pass away, but Allah is ever-lasting, and, ultimately, it is one's relationship with God that is of essential importance – not one's relationship with a state or government … Muslim or otherwise.
With respect to those who accept Islam and then turn away from it, the Qur'an says:
Those who turn back to unbelief after the guidance has become clear are seduced by Shaitan who gives them false hopes. [47:25]
There is nothing in this ayat which alludes, either directly or indirectly, to the idea that such a person has committed treason with respect to the Muslim community. Moreover, there is a question concerning exactly what it means to “turn back to unbelief”.
If someone becomes a Muslim and, then, due to various circumstances, leaves the Muslim community but still retains many of the same beliefs, values, and commitments, can one necessarily and categorically state that such a person has turned back to unbelief? If such a person believes in God, and the Prophets, and the life here- after, and the Day of Judgment, and the angels, and has respect and love for Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and prays to God (but not necessarily in the prescribed format), and remembers God, and seeks to do good for the sake of God, and engages in charitable works, and is committed to fighting against injustice, and seeks, for the sake of God, to exercise qualities of patience, humility, honesty, love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and tolerance – can one say that such a person has turned back to unbelief? If one does not pray the five daily prayers or does not fast during the month of Ramazan or one does not go on Hajj even though one is physically and financially able to do so, but one believes in the oneness of God and gives zakat or charity, can one conclude that such a person has turned back to unbelief?
If someone comes to Islam accepting all the basic beliefs as well as observing the pillars of Islam, but, then, because of spending time with Muslims who are authoritarian, dogmatic, oppressive, arrogant, intolerant, misogynistic, and ignorant, then decides that he or she does not want to turn into that kind of Muslim yet is led to believe, through the use of undue influence in a cult-like set of circumstances, that anything which does not reflect such oppressive, arrogant dogmatism is not the true Islam, and, as a result, wishes not be considered a Muslim anymore, can such a person really have been said to have returned to unbelief? Isn't it much closer to the truth to argue that leaving behind the ignorance of such a group is actually moving toward Islam and not away from it … that leaving such a group is an act of belief in support of truth and a rejection of falsehood?
If a person gravitates toward Islam because she or he has been led to believe that the way of Divinity is about the sort of love, compassion, remembrance, piety, character, justice, kindness, tolerance, patience, friendship, and integrity which shatters the heart due to its breathtaking beauty and majesty, and, then, one is instead shown through people's words and actions that some Muslims actually promote having contempt for others, judging others, talking behind their backs, maligning people, harbouring enmity toward Muslims and non-Muslims alike, killing whomever disagrees with you, terrorizing humanity, being obsessed with harshly punishing others, oppressing people, and being intolerant toward one and all, why would anyone wish to stay mired in such a spiritual cesspool? Would not anyone with the least bit of understanding counsel such a person to leave the latter group of Muslims and return to your original understanding concerning Islam?
One begins to descend a very slippery slope when one starts to arrogate to oneself the right to decide who is, and who is not, a Muslim. A person treads on very dangerous spiritual ground when he or she assumes that God has appointed her or him to not only determine whose faith and deen constitutes the 'real Islam' but that God has, as well, authorized one to kill such individuals or punish them in any way.
Whatever might, or might not, have been the practices of the Prophet in relation to the issue of apostasy, this does not necessitate that such a practice must be observed in the present day. Just because the Prophet may have had, by the Grace of Allah, the spiritual wisdom and insight to make determinations in such matters, it does not, therefore, follow that anyone in today's world enjoys the same kind of spiritual wisdom and insight or that anyone in today's world has the same duties and responsibilities which accrue to a Prophet of God but which do not necessarily accrue to the rest of us.
According to some individuals, there is a reported hadith of the Prophet Muhammad in which he indicated that 'Whoever accepts Islam and then renounces that faith should be killed.' On the other hand, there also are reported hadiths which indicate that the Prophet told people to destroy their collections of hadith.
First of all, it is not clear what the Prophet meant – if he actually did say what he is reported to have said in this regard – when he allegedly indicated that anyone who commits apostasy should be killed. There are people who claim that they know what he meant, but I'm not quite sure why I should believe that such individuals actually know the mind and intentions of the Prophet.
Secondly, the Qur'an says:
“O believers! Obey Allah, obey the Rasool and those charged with authority among you. Should you have a dispute in anything, refer it to Allah and His Rasool, if you truly believe in Allah and the Last Day. This course of action will be better and more suitable.” (Qur'an 4:59)
Now, if the Prophet ordered that collections of hadith were to be destroyed, I'm rather uneasy with the spiritual appropriateness of following something – namely, collections of Hadith -- which has reached me in apparent contradiction to such guidance. This is especially so since the alleged saying concerning apostasy does not just require me to do something that affects only my own, individual life but, rather, that to which I supposedly am being directed has rather serious ramifications for other human beings and their being able to continue to live.
The Qur'an indicates I may refer any such quandaries or disputes to Allah and His Rasool, and I have done this. The counsel of my heart which arises from this process of referral tells me something quite different than what the alleged hadith concerning apostasy indicates. Moreover, since the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is reported to have said, as previously indicated, that I should follow the counsel or fatwa of my heart no matter what others may say, then, this too would seem to mitigate against following the – I repeat -- alleged hadith concerning apostasy.
Of course, there will be those who will point out that when the Prophet said one should listen to the fatwa of one's heart no matter what others may say, the Prophet was not suggesting that this gives people permission to act in contravention to spiritual principles. I tend to agree with such a perspective while simultaneously noting that there is both considerable ambiguity as well as quite a few degrees of freedom concerning the nature of what, precisely, is entailed by such principles.
In addition, although the previously noted ayat of the Qur'an does indicate that one also should obey those who are charged with authority among us, there are quite a few questions which arise with respect the issue of precisely who it is that has been charged with such authority. There are many people who have usurped authority in illegitimate ways. There are many people who have arrogated to themselves the power to oppress the lives of others. Yet, I have a sense that those among us who actually have been charged by Divinity with true spiritual authority are actually few and far between.
Many people confuse power with authority. Just because God has granted one power, this does not mean that God also has granted one authority.
There are many pretenders who seek to use their power to leverage such authority or act as a pseudo-substitute for such authority, but, in reality, there are precious few people who have been charged with authentic authority. Furthermore, I am not at all convinced that such legitimate authority is necessarily given expression through the head of any specific political state or nation or that being charged with valid spiritual authority necessarily entails membership in the circles of religious scholars, imams, muftis, jurists, mullahs, or theologians.
“As I was walking toward the red Tercel, a dark-haired woman who looked to be in her late thirties greeted me. She wasn't wearing a hijab, the head scarf worn by Muslim women. I was surprised to see her. It took me a second to realize the reason for my surprise: it had been weeks since I'd had any real contact with a woman. And, to my dismay, I had begun to internalize the dress code of the Musalla. Her lack of hijab struck me as wrong.”
What Mr. Gartenstein-Ross is describing when he talks about having begun to internalize the dress code of the Musalla or Muslim center in Ashland is, actually, an expression of Pavlovian classical conditioning. In some of the early experiments conducted by Pavlov, a dog would be presented with an unconditioned stimulus, such as food, and, the presentation of the food would automatically induce the dog to salivate, which was referred to as an unconditioned response. In the next stage of the experiment, a tone would be sounded at the same time as the food was presented, and when the tone and sight of the food were paired enough times, the sounding of the tone was enough to induce salivation in the dog even if no food was present.
The process through which the dress code was being internalized within Mr. Gartenstein-Ross is not exactly the same as the previously described experiment of Pavlov, but there are some important similarities. When most men who have grown up in North America meet a woman – such as the situation described by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross -- there is no inherent sense that there is anything wrong with the way such a woman is dressed as long as her clothes fall within certain broad parameters of aesthetics and decency.
In such a case, the unconditioned stimulus is the woman and her clothing. However, under normal circumstances, there is not necessarily any particular unconditioned response which is likely to be displayed by someone like Mr. Gartenstein-Ross in relation to such an encounter.
Yet, if one works and spends time within an environment like the fundamentalist-leaning Muslim center in Ashland as Mr. Gartenstein-Ross did, then, what happens is that every time a woman appears on the scene, certain behaviours, comments, or body language are given expression through the male hierarchy of the group. Having spent considerable time in such environments, I am well aware of the things that are said, or the behaviours which are encouraged and discouraged, or the kind of body language and facial expressions that are used to induce people – both men and women -- to conform to a specific way of doing things.
One of the chants of the fundamentalist mind-set is that women must be kept out of sight. Women should not participate in mosque activities – unless it is to cook food. Women should be herded into little rooms in the basement or to some other room away from the main focus of activity. Women should be dressed in a particular way. Women should observe hijab. Women need to be kept separate from men.
After enough pairings of the foregoing sort of theological perspective and the presence of women, then, in a relatively short period of time, the presence of a woman in and of herself -- unaccompanied by the presence of a fundamentalist-oriented commentator -- is enough to elicit the mind-set which has been conditioning the thoughts and feelings of someone who is in a position like that of Mr. Gartenstein-Ross. Consequently, a person who is in a position similar to that of Mr. Gartenstein-Ross begins to automatically disapprove of a given woman if she does not conform to the theological mind-set which is in place.
One does not think about what is going on. One merely feels what one has been conditioned to feel such that the unconditioned stimulus – the presence of a woman without hijab – is enough to elicit feelings of disapproval … that is, the conditioned response.
Although both Muslim men and women are enjoined to be modest in their manner of dress, the Quranic verse which indicates that women should cover themselves does not stipulate that no part of a woman should be visible to the world. This extended notion of covering up is someone's interpretation of what God meant. If covering up is for the sake of modesty, and men are required to be modest in their dress, then, why is it that women are required to be so much more modest and so much more covered up in this respect than men?
Why aren't men the ones who are stuffed into small rooms in the basement or up in the cramped quarters of the balconies? Why aren't men the ones who are kept away from the main center of activities within a mosque? Why aren't men the ones who are discouraged from taking part in mosque activities? Why aren't men the ones who are told that they cannot use the main entrance to enter the mosque? Why is it okay to listen to the sound of a male voice in the mosque, but listening to the sound of a woman's voice somehow threatens to shake the foundations of all that is true and just?
In all too many mosques and Muslim centers, none of the foregoing questions are really open for discussion. Everyone – both men and women – has been conditioned to accept the status quo without engaging in any rigorous, critical exploration of whether such is the way things need to be or should be.
Almost everyone is on auto-pilot, operating in conjunction with classically conditioned responses. Reason, insight, critical inquiry, dialogue, rigorous examination, and wisdom concerning such issues are almost nowhere to be found.
As pointed out by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross, if one has objections to any of the foregoing, one is chastised and criticized for the weakness of one's faith, or one is given a book to read which is written by someone with the “right kind” of theological orientation, or one is recited a litany of obscure names residing in this or that Muslim country whom one is enjoined to treat as authoritative icons whose words are not to be disputed.
After all, those people are scholars. They are experts. They know Arabic.
Don't think! Don't reflect! Don't question! Just blindly accept what one is being told, and if one is not prepared to do this, then, you, my friend, are likely to be accused of being an unbeliever … or a minion of Satan.
In fundamentalist-leaning groups [and what is being said here applies as much to fundamentalist Christian and Jewish communities as it does to Muslim groups] there is tremendous pressure – both spoken and unspoken – that is imposed upon people – both men and women – to submit to the theology being promulgated by the group. One is encouraged to internalize the idea that obedience to what the theological leaders are saying is the only acceptable form of adab or spiritual etiquette.
If one objects to the idea of being required to show blind obedience to human beings, and, instead, one humbly expresses the opinion that 'I thought we were supposed to submit only to God”, one is told that what these leaders are saying is precisely the same as what God is saying. From their perspective, what they are promulgating is what God meant even if what they claim God meant is not necessarily what God actually said in the Qur'an.
According to the fundamentalist orientation, one should be ashamed for even considering the possibility that God might have meant something other than what the leaders are telling one is the case. Creating such controversy is described by those with vested theological interests as being tantamount to fitna or creating discord in the community … and, remember, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
In other words, if you don't agree with them, then, you are the source of fitna. To suggest that such people may be the source of fitna for introducing problematic ideas and understandings in the first place does not appear anywhere on their theological radar except as a hostile invader seeking to destroy Islam.
For the fundamentalist mind-set, the only way to achieve group and community harmony is if everyone submits to their theology. Thus, the fundamentalists have set up the game plan to be something of a fait accompli … keep one's mouth shut and do things their way or be labelled as an unbeliever and as one who creates fitna in the community.
The fundamentalist strategy often tends to consist of bullying, intimidation, indoctrination, control, and oppression. Sincere dialogue and rigorous exploration of the issues are not compatible with such a strategy as Mr. Gartenstein-Ross indicates was his experience on many occasions during the course of his interaction with the Muslim group in Ashland, Oregon.
There are several junctures in Mr. Gaertenstein-Ross' book when the issue of apostasy is, to a degree, discussed. This topic, of course, is of particular interest to the author of My Year Inside of Radical Islam because toward the end of his book he provides an account of how he left the Muslim community to become Christian.
Prior to the foregoing point, however, the issue of apostasy is explored within a context and at a time when Mr. Gartenstein-Ross still considered himself to be a Muslim. For example, on pages 153-154 of his book, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross relates the words of someone -- a fellow by the name of Abdul-Qaadir – for whom the author had respect on the basis of other conversations which they had engaged in previously.
Mr. Gartenstein-Ross wanted to know if such people should be killed. His friend said:
“The reason a lot of people are uncomfortable with this is because they don't understand the notion of apostasy in Islam. … They hear that you can be killed for leaving Islam, and their reaction is 'Huh?' What they're not considering is that religion and politics aren't separable in Islam the way they are in the West. When you take the Shahadah, you aren't just pledging your allegiance to Allah, you're aligning yourself with the Muslim state. Leaving Islam isn't just converting from one faith to another. It's more properly understood as treason.”
Mr. Gartenstein-Ross reports that his response to the foregoing was: “That makes sense.” Actually, the fact of the matter is that such a perspective makes no sense at all.
To say that religion and politics aren't separable in Islam is to propagate a myth. As the Qur'an points out, and as has previously been noted, when Muslims pledged their oath of allegiance to the Prophet at Hudaibiyah, not only was their oath given to Muhammad (peace be upon him) as the Prophet of God, but via revelation, Allah clarified the matter and said that the oath of allegiance given by Muslims was really to God for God's hand was above the hand of the Prophet.
There was no Muslim state at the time. There was a community in Yathrib whose people – both Muslim and non-Muslim – had, for the most part, agreed to accept the Prophet as leader of that community and who were prepared to accept his rulings in certain matters.
A constitution was established in order to formalize the nature of the relationship which had been agreed to between the Muslims in Yathrib and certain non-Muslim tribes. As such, this constitutional understanding did not bind the non-Muslim tribes to a Muslim state but, instead, outlined the duties and rights of the respective signatories and in this sense was more like a treaty among different peoples than a document which created a political state.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is reported to have said:
“Leave me alone so long as I leave you alone.” He did not encourage people to make requests that he lay down further spiritual precepts beyond what was given in the Qur'an, nor did he encourage them to question him minutely about deen for fear that people would burden themselves in such matters beyond what God had intended and beyond what they were able to do.
Certainly, the Prophet was not someone who busied himself with setting up a political, state apparatus. He did what was necessary in order to establish a judicious, safe, stable public sphere, but this was done not for the purposes of politics or creating a state but, instead, was done in order to develop an atmosphere which was conducive to people pursuing shari'ah according to their individual capacities and inclinations.
When the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) passed away, a convention was established in which certain people in the community gave oaths of allegiance to whomever was elected to be Caliph of the community. The taking of such an oath did not bind the individual to an Islamic state but was, rather, a contract between the leader and those who acceded to being led by such a person.
As Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddiq (may Allah be pleased with him) indicated upon becoming Caliph:
“Obey me as long as I obey Allah and His Prophet, when I disobey Him and His Prophet, then obey me not.”
The issue of the relationship between a leader and those who came to be aligned with that leader through an oath was not a function of politics or membership in a state, but, rather, this was a matter of a person's understanding concerning the truth. When all parties involved in such an arrangement were on the same page with respect to their respective understanding of the nature of truth under a given set of circumstances, then all such parties worked together, and when there were differences entailed by their respective understandings of the truth, then, allegiance no longer bound the two parties together.
Shortly after the Prophet passed away and prior to becoming Caliph, Hazrat Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) said:
"Listen to me, ye people. Those of you who worshipped Muhammad know that he is dead like any other mortal. But those of you who worship the God of Muhammad (SAW) know that He is alive and would live forever."
Then he repeated a passage from the Qur'an:
"Muhammad is but a messenger, Messengers of God have passed away before him; What if he dies or is killed? Will you turn back upon your heels? And whosoever turns back upon his heels will by no means do harm to Allah, and Allah will reward the thankful."
A Muslim's primary allegiance is to Allah. Messengers pass away, and Caliphs pass away, and leaders pass away, but Allah is ever-lasting, and, ultimately, it is one's relationship with God that is of essential importance – not one's relationship with a state or government … Muslim or otherwise.
With respect to those who accept Islam and then turn away from it, the Qur'an says:
Those who turn back to unbelief after the guidance has become clear are seduced by Shaitan who gives them false hopes. [47:25]
There is nothing in this ayat which alludes, either directly or indirectly, to the idea that such a person has committed treason with respect to the Muslim community. Moreover, there is a question concerning exactly what it means to “turn back to unbelief”.
If someone becomes a Muslim and, then, due to various circumstances, leaves the Muslim community but still retains many of the same beliefs, values, and commitments, can one necessarily and categorically state that such a person has turned back to unbelief? If such a person believes in God, and the Prophets, and the life here- after, and the Day of Judgment, and the angels, and has respect and love for Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and prays to God (but not necessarily in the prescribed format), and remembers God, and seeks to do good for the sake of God, and engages in charitable works, and is committed to fighting against injustice, and seeks, for the sake of God, to exercise qualities of patience, humility, honesty, love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and tolerance – can one say that such a person has turned back to unbelief? If one does not pray the five daily prayers or does not fast during the month of Ramazan or one does not go on Hajj even though one is physically and financially able to do so, but one believes in the oneness of God and gives zakat or charity, can one conclude that such a person has turned back to unbelief?
If someone comes to Islam accepting all the basic beliefs as well as observing the pillars of Islam, but, then, because of spending time with Muslims who are authoritarian, dogmatic, oppressive, arrogant, intolerant, misogynistic, and ignorant, then decides that he or she does not want to turn into that kind of Muslim yet is led to believe, through the use of undue influence in a cult-like set of circumstances, that anything which does not reflect such oppressive, arrogant dogmatism is not the true Islam, and, as a result, wishes not be considered a Muslim anymore, can such a person really have been said to have returned to unbelief? Isn't it much closer to the truth to argue that leaving behind the ignorance of such a group is actually moving toward Islam and not away from it … that leaving such a group is an act of belief in support of truth and a rejection of falsehood?
If a person gravitates toward Islam because she or he has been led to believe that the way of Divinity is about the sort of love, compassion, remembrance, piety, character, justice, kindness, tolerance, patience, friendship, and integrity which shatters the heart due to its breathtaking beauty and majesty, and, then, one is instead shown through people's words and actions that some Muslims actually promote having contempt for others, judging others, talking behind their backs, maligning people, harbouring enmity toward Muslims and non-Muslims alike, killing whomever disagrees with you, terrorizing humanity, being obsessed with harshly punishing others, oppressing people, and being intolerant toward one and all, why would anyone wish to stay mired in such a spiritual cesspool? Would not anyone with the least bit of understanding counsel such a person to leave the latter group of Muslims and return to your original understanding concerning Islam?
One begins to descend a very slippery slope when one starts to arrogate to oneself the right to decide who is, and who is not, a Muslim. A person treads on very dangerous spiritual ground when he or she assumes that God has appointed her or him to not only determine whose faith and deen constitutes the 'real Islam' but that God has, as well, authorized one to kill such individuals or punish them in any way.
Whatever might, or might not, have been the practices of the Prophet in relation to the issue of apostasy, this does not necessitate that such a practice must be observed in the present day. Just because the Prophet may have had, by the Grace of Allah, the spiritual wisdom and insight to make determinations in such matters, it does not, therefore, follow that anyone in today's world enjoys the same kind of spiritual wisdom and insight or that anyone in today's world has the same duties and responsibilities which accrue to a Prophet of God but which do not necessarily accrue to the rest of us.
According to some individuals, there is a reported hadith of the Prophet Muhammad in which he indicated that 'Whoever accepts Islam and then renounces that faith should be killed.' On the other hand, there also are reported hadiths which indicate that the Prophet told people to destroy their collections of hadith.
First of all, it is not clear what the Prophet meant – if he actually did say what he is reported to have said in this regard – when he allegedly indicated that anyone who commits apostasy should be killed. There are people who claim that they know what he meant, but I'm not quite sure why I should believe that such individuals actually know the mind and intentions of the Prophet.
Secondly, the Qur'an says:
“O believers! Obey Allah, obey the Rasool and those charged with authority among you. Should you have a dispute in anything, refer it to Allah and His Rasool, if you truly believe in Allah and the Last Day. This course of action will be better and more suitable.” (Qur'an 4:59)
Now, if the Prophet ordered that collections of hadith were to be destroyed, I'm rather uneasy with the spiritual appropriateness of following something – namely, collections of Hadith -- which has reached me in apparent contradiction to such guidance. This is especially so since the alleged saying concerning apostasy does not just require me to do something that affects only my own, individual life but, rather, that to which I supposedly am being directed has rather serious ramifications for other human beings and their being able to continue to live.
The Qur'an indicates I may refer any such quandaries or disputes to Allah and His Rasool, and I have done this. The counsel of my heart which arises from this process of referral tells me something quite different than what the alleged hadith concerning apostasy indicates. Moreover, since the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is reported to have said, as previously indicated, that I should follow the counsel or fatwa of my heart no matter what others may say, then, this too would seem to mitigate against following the – I repeat -- alleged hadith concerning apostasy.
Of course, there will be those who will point out that when the Prophet said one should listen to the fatwa of one's heart no matter what others may say, the Prophet was not suggesting that this gives people permission to act in contravention to spiritual principles. I tend to agree with such a perspective while simultaneously noting that there is both considerable ambiguity as well as quite a few degrees of freedom concerning the nature of what, precisely, is entailed by such principles.
In addition, although the previously noted ayat of the Qur'an does indicate that one also should obey those who are charged with authority among us, there are quite a few questions which arise with respect the issue of precisely who it is that has been charged with such authority. There are many people who have usurped authority in illegitimate ways. There are many people who have arrogated to themselves the power to oppress the lives of others. Yet, I have a sense that those among us who actually have been charged by Divinity with true spiritual authority are actually few and far between.
Many people confuse power with authority. Just because God has granted one power, this does not mean that God also has granted one authority.
There are many pretenders who seek to use their power to leverage such authority or act as a pseudo-substitute for such authority, but, in reality, there are precious few people who have been charged with authentic authority. Furthermore, I am not at all convinced that such legitimate authority is necessarily given expression through the head of any specific political state or nation or that being charged with valid spiritual authority necessarily entails membership in the circles of religious scholars, imams, muftis, jurists, mullahs, or theologians.
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and My Year Inside Radical Islam - Part 5
On pages 177-178 of My Year Inside Radical Islam, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross writes:
“… my spiritual needs are irrelevant if Allah exists. If Allah exists, none of our spiritual needs will be fulfilled if our relationship with Him is based on falsehood. If Allah exists, we don't forge a relationship with Him. Instead, He dictates a relationship with us. Salafism led me to comprehend this in a way that I never did before. The scientific methodology espoused by Bilal Philips and others like him was an effort to ensure that our understanding and actions accord with Allah's will.
“Salafis carefully interpret the Qu'ran and Sunna because they believe that the best way of interpreting Allah's will is going back to the earlier understanding of Islam. The earliest generation of Muslims is a pious example because if Muhammad were truly a prophet, those who were closest to him and experienced life under his rule would best understand the principles on which an ideal society should be built.”
While one might agree that a person's spiritual needs might not be fulfilled if the individual's relationship with Divinity is based on falsehood rather than truth, this still leaves the problem of determining what is truth and what is falsehood. According to the quoted passage, those who are under the influence of the Salafi approach to things believe they are capable of differentiating truth and falsehood, but is this necessarily the case?
The Salafis claim to have a methodology which will bring one back to the earliest understanding of Islam … the one which existed at the time of the Prophet and his Companions. The Salafis contend that the ones who were closest to the Prophet had the best understanding of the principles on which an ideal society should be built, and, therefore if one can understand what they understood, then, one will have what one needs to be able to build an ideal society.
Leaving aside the issue of whether, or not, the point of Divine guidance actually is to help people establish an ideal society, there are a few other potential problems with the Salafi perspective as outlined in the earlier quote. First of all, why should one be expected to permit one's relationship with God to be filtered through someone's understanding (for example, that of the Salafis) of, in turn, someone else's understanding (for example, that of the Companions of the Prophet) of God's guidance?
Furthermore, what guarantee does one have that the manner in which Salafis go about interpreting the earliest sources is correct or leads to valid conclusions? Why should I suppose that the Salafis have correctly understood the intentions, meanings, and purposes of such earliest sources?
When someone says something, all one has to go on are the words. One does not have direct access to what is going on in the mind, heart, and soul of the person who utters such words, but, rather, one must try, as best one can, to try to deduce the condition of a person's mind, heart, and soul based on analyzing the words.
One may, or may not, also have a concrete context out of which words are spoken to assist one, somewhat, with deciphering what may have been meant by certain words in such a context. However, here again, one must not only deal with the problem of trying to determine whether, or not, one actually understands such a context in all of its historical, social, personal, and spiritual complexities, but as well, one still must deal with the problem of whether, or not, one accurately understands that context as the person making the statement understood such a context.
The truth of the matter is that most of us have difficulty trying to figure out what people mean when they speak in contexts going on today. Consequently, I have my doubts about how accurately someone will be able to render what was going on inside of the minds, hearts, and souls of people more than 1400 years ago.
Even if one were to agree with the idea that some of the people who lived in the time of the Prophet may have had the best and most intimate insight concerning the nature of Divine Revelation or the behaviour of the Prophet, nevertheless, one must jump a huge historical and experiential chasm to be able to go on to claim with any degree of validity that one understands things in precisely the way that people understood things some 1400 years ago. What is more, there is no way in which one can prove such claims.
The Salafi methodology and mode of approaching the problem of how does one differentiate truth from falsehood is unnecessarily circuitous, indirect, and complicated. God's guidance was meant to be engaged by individuals who depend on God's help to arrive at a correct understanding of revelation rather than seeking to have one's understanding of Divine guidance filtered through someone else's understanding of someone else's understanding.
Each individual has her or his own responsibility to struggle with the task and challenge of working toward ascertaining the nature and meaning of Divine guidance for himself or herself. My spiritual duty is to seek and to surrender to God's truth. My duty is not to seek and submit to someone else's version of that truth.
Unfortunately, Shari'ah has been made a public issue when, in fact, it is a private matter. Shari'ah has been subordinated to a system of religious leadership and power struggles which demand obedience to the leadership and its perspective. Guidance is not a demand for obedience but is an attempt to draw one's attention to a path which leads toward, through, and by means of truth, justice, identity and purpose
Spirituality has been legalized in the sense that the former has been reduced to being a function of legal dogmas and rules which are an oppressor of spirituality not the means of realizing and unleashing spirituality. Spirituality has been made a matter of obedience when, in truth, spirituality lies entirely at the opposite end of the spectrum from matters of obedience.
Spirituality is about honoring – through realizing and fulfilling – the amana or trust which has been bequeathed to us. Spirituality is not about ceding moral or intellectual authority to others. Spirituality is about what it means to be a servant of God who creatively serves the responsibilities of being God's Khalifa on earth and, and as such, all of life becomes an expression of worship.
It is not possible to realize the amana or trust through obedience to authority in and of itself. Mere obedience to authority removes the active and dynamic element of personal responsibility, commitment, and on-going intellectual and moral choice which is necessary for the struggle toward spirituality.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is reported to have said that: “the one who knows one's soul, knows one's Lord”. One can't come to know one's soul by abdicating one's spiritual responsibilities and ceding them to someone else's understanding of things – even if the latter understanding is correct.
The Qur'an gives expression to wisdom. Nonetheless, as the Prophet is reported to have indicated: “What good is the Qur'an without understanding?”, and, consequently, the understanding one must have is one's own understanding and not mere obedience to someone else's understanding.
All too often, obedience qua obedience entails a desire on the part of an individual to get out from beneath the felt existential burden of having to constantly and rigorously search for truth and justice. As a result, all too many people shy away from embracing the struggle which the Qur'an indicated that God intended life to be for human beings.
“And surely We shall test you with some fear and hunger and loss of wealth and lives and crops.” (Qur'an, 2:155)
The struggle of life requires us to constantly seek that which is more true, just, and essential and to leave behind that which is less true, less just and less essential. The intention with which one pursues spirituality should not be to submit to and satisfy someone else's theological likes and dislikes but, instead, to seek the truth concerning oneself and one's relationship with Being and to do justice in accordance with that truth and in accordance with one's capacity for both truth and justice.
One must stand alone before God and affirm [through understanding and action] one's relationship with God – 'Am I not your Lord?' As the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is reported to have said: “Every one of you is a guardian, and every one of you shall be questioned about that which you are guarding.”
The aforementioned affirmation is not out of obedience qua obedience but is, instead, an expression of one's recognition of the way things are with respect to the Divine order of creation and Allah's purpose for creation.
First comes understanding … however limited this may be. Obedience without understanding is an empty form, and when the mind, heart, and soul have a proper insight into the nature of creation, then, intentions arise, God willing, which conform with the nature of truth and justice. This conformity between, on the one hand, intention, and, on the other hand, truth and justice is not obedience per se but, rather, the conformity constitutes action rooted in one's knowledge concerning the nature of one's being and its relation to Divinity.
Mr. Gartenstein-Ross lends credence to what is said above when his book described how he abdicated his own moral and intellectual authority and proceeded to cede them to the Salafi perspective. On page 154, he says:
“I didn't want to be racked by doubts and uncertainty. … I wanted to live a life of conviction – like Abdul-Qaadir, like al-Husein [both imbued with the Salafi perspective]. I wanted a clear guide for telling right from wrong.”
In exchange for what Mr. Gartenstein-Ross was led to believe would be a mental clarity free from doubts and uncertainty, all the author had to do was cede his intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority to the Salafi leaders. They would tell him what was true and what was false. He needn't worry about anything except submitting to what he was told.
As the author of My Year Inside Radical Islam wrote just prior to the above quotation:
“Now, when I heard a new fatwa or an unfamiliar point of Islamic law … I no longer asked if it was moral. Rather, I asked whether this was a proper interpretation of the Qur'an and Sunna.” (page 154)
The meaning of what constituted a “proper interpretation of the Qur'an and Sunna” would be provided by the Salafi leaders in their literature, audio recordings, DVDs, lectures, sermons, and everyday interactions.
If one bowed down to Salafi theology, then all doubts and uncertainty would disappear amidst the absolutist -- albeit rather arrogant, self-satisfied and unproven –pronouncements of the Salafi leadership. One didn't have to struggle with anything except the demand to submit to the theology being propagated by the Salafi brotherhood.
Mr. Gartenstein-Ross's original idea of seeking God and seeking to please God became lost amidst the theological musings of the Salafis. The author, by his own admission, became more preoccupied with not wanting “to be regarded as a heretic by my brothers and sisters in faith,”(page 154) and in the process he ceded his intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority to people who did not have his best spiritual interests at heart.
Later, in reference to himself, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross writes:
“When you became Muslim, you thought that the moderate interpretation was clearly right. You thought that extremists were either ignorant or manipulating the faith for their own gain. Your time at al-Haramain (the Ashland Muslim group) has made you question this. As your cherished vision of Islam collapsed, you're left feeling depressed, helpless, and confused.”
The truth of the matter is that Mr. Gartenstein-Ross' cherished vision of Islam collapsed because he permitted spiritual vampires to come into his life and suck that vision from him. Of course, just as is the case in the movies, when Mr. Gartenstein-Ross decided to go to work at al-Haramain, he didn't realize he would be associating with such spiritual vampires, but, unfortunately, we don't always exercise due diligence under such circumstances and, as a result, we often have to scramble just to be able to stay sufficiently alive, in a spiritual sense, to be able to protect ourselves against those who would rob us of our God-given birthright to seek out, and live in accordance with, the truth.
Mr. Gartenstein-Ross' cherished vision of Islam collapsed because he ceded his intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority to someone else so that he wouldn't be “regarded as a heretic by his brothers and sisters.” He permitted concerns about how others would perceive him – which is a worry of the ego and not a spiritual principle -- to cloud his judgment and to undermine his spirituality.
Mr. Gartenstein-Ross' cherished vision of Islam was ripped from his heart through a process of undue influence exercised on him by the people involved with the cult-like Ashland Muslim group that was associated with the allegedly charitable al-Harimain Foundation. Having been exposed to similar people and situations, I know the incredibly relentless, stifling, and oppressive pressure which can be placed on a person to induce him or her to submit to the theological propaganda being espoused by such fundamentalist-leaning self-proclaimed leaders.
Perhaps, the biggest difference between Mr. Gartenstein-Ross and myself is that I had someone whom I could trust to help me, by God's Grace, to resist permitting my understanding of, and love for, Islam to become corrupted. By his own admission (which was noted previously), Mr. Gartenstein-Ross had no one whom he could trust to help him protect his cherished view of Islam, and, consequently, he became “depressed, helpless, and confused” … just the sort of psychological and emotional condition which people of unscrupulous spiritual nature – such as the leaders of the Ashland Group -- love to take advantage of because a person who is drowning doesn't tend to consider what the cost may be when someone of questionable spiritual integrity throws one what seems to be a life line.
Mr. Gartenstein-Ross' experience was with a group that had a Salafi orientation. However, there are other fundamentalist-oriented groups within the Muslim community with whom he might have become entangled.
Moreover, although Mr. Gartenstein-Ross generally has good things to say about the Sufis throughout his book, the sad fact of the matter is that not all groups and teachers who refer to themselves as Sufi are necessarily authentic. We live in truly precarious spiritual times when spiritual counterfeiters are virtually everywhere and are busily engaged in trying to pass off what is ultimately worthless as legitimate spiritual tender.
Actually, on the one hand, given the obvious warmth that Mr. Gartenstein-Ross felt toward the Sufis,and given that it was his friend at Wake Forest who introduced him to Islam through ideas and teachings which were Sufi-oriented, and given that Mr. Gartenstein-Ross even took Shahadah with a Sufi group in Italy, one might ask the question of why the author of My Year Inside Radical Islam didn't communicate, in some way, with his Sufi connections in order to find a way of trying to counter what the Salafi group at the Ashland al-Harimain center were doing as that group pulled the author deeper into the depths of the group's world view. On the other hand, the fact of the matter is that his friend at Wake Forest had himself come under the influence of a fundamentalist group and had largely distanced himself from the Sufi perspective. Furthermore, once these sort of fundamentalist groups are successful in creating a sense of vulnerability in a person such that the individual begins to have doubts about how to go about seeking spiritual truth, and, as a result, the individual begins to cede more and more of her or his intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority to the leaders of the fundamentalist group, then, a person becomes less and less inclined to consider any source of understanding as being reliable except that which one is told is authentic by the fundamentalist group. In short, one begins to exist in an almost hermetically sealed environment in which seeking access to information and behaviours other than what the fundamentalist group are espousing doesn't tend to enter one's mind or heart.
In effect, one begins to self-censor one's own thoughts, feelings and behaviours in order to try to fit in with what is going on around one and to be accepted by the group. Moreover, whenever one says or does something which runs counter to the worldview of the fundamentalist group with which one is associating, one undergoes a new round of criticism, censorship, and indoctrination by the other group members … which, in time, leads to further forms of self-censorship.
Little by little, one is emptied of oneself and replaced by the worldview of the group. The pressure applied to the individual is somewhat like what happens when a boa constrictor wraps its body around, say, a human being.
The person seeks to take in new air. However, at some point, the individual also has to exhale. When the individual does this, the boa constrictor wraps more tightly around the individual which, in turn, restricts the ability of the individual to take in new air with the next round of breathing.
This cyclical process of increasing constriction continues until the person is unable to take in any new air at all and/or the person's bones begin to break. What happens within fundamentalist groups as well as within inauthentic Sufi groups is similar to the interaction between a boa constrictor and its prey, except that in the case of such groups, it is the mind, heart, and soul of the individual which is broken, and as well the individual becomes less and less willing – because of the group pressure which is being applied -- to take in new information and possibilities concerning the nature of truth and justice.
Toward the latter part of his book, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross describes some of the factors which played a role in his leaving what he believed to be Islam and converting to Christianity. Let us leave aside the issue that, perhaps, what Mr. Gartenstein-Ross left was not Islam but, instead, was someone's theological invention which the fundamentalist group in question referred to as Islam and, thereby, helped confuse people like Mr. Gartenstein-Ross who, while being very interested in learning about Islam, unfortunately, took up associating with the wrong people … people who led him further away from Islam rather than deeper into it.
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and My Year Inside Radical Islam - Part 6
On pages 231 through 233 of My Year Inside Radical Islam, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross writes:
“In church the next Sunday, the sermon was about God's love. For months, I was sure that I couldn't possibly be worthy of God's love. … The sermon had an angle I didn't expect: that we weren't really worthy of God's love.” Nobody deserves salvation,” the preacher said. “We're all tarred with sin; we are all dead in our own sinfulness. None of us is worthy of standing before God on the Day of Judgment.”
"Long pause. “But He loves us anyway. He loves us with a perfect divine love. The only way we can be worthy of standing before God is through the sacrifice of the perfect embodiment of humankind, the sacrifice of one without sin. That is why God gave us the ultimate sacrifice, the sacrifice of His only begotten son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
“This was the first time that I had considered that God might love me even though it was a love that I didn't deserve. The idea appealed to me deeply on an emotional level. But was it the truth?”
He goes on to write:
“I found that Islam and Christianity had two very different accounts of what became of Jesus. Christianity holds that Jesus was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the dead. … Verse 4:157 [of the Qur'an] addressed the crucifixtion: “That they said (in boast), 'We killed Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah'; -- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ, therein are full of doubts.” Which one was right?
“What principle could distinguish between the two accounts? I thought of the persecution that Jesus' disciples suffered because of their belief in the crucifixion and resurrection. They didn't die for a set of ideals – it was for a set of facts. Do people die for a set of facts that they know to be false?
“I felt that I was on to something. Slowly, with each layer that I pulled back, I felt my ideas about God shifting.”
I should start by saying that the point of the comments which are to follow has nothing to do with trying to establish who is right and who is wrong with respect to the life of Jesus (peace be upon him). We all have responsibility for the spiritual choices we make concerning beliefs and behaviours, and both Christians and Muslims believe that each of us will be held accountable for such choices on the Day of Judgment.
My focus is, instead, on a style of argument that is being used by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross. In fact, it is almost as if Mr. Gartenstein-Ross doesn't seem to understand that the manner in which he talks in his book about the kind of considerations which led to his conversion to Christianity, that he appears to be committing many of the same kinds of mistakes he made with respect to his interaction with the Salafi-oriented group in Ashland, Oregon.
Other than referring to themselves, respectively, as Christian and Muslim, what is the difference between the Christian preacher to whom Mr. Gartenstein-Ross refers and the Salafi shaykhs or preachers whom he mentioned? They both are espousing their worldviews and seeking to influence the people who are listening to their respective sermons. They both believe themselves to be correct and to have a sound understanding about what the relationship is between God and creation.
According to the Christian preacher whom Mr. Gartenstein-Ross quotes, none of us is worthy of God's love. Well, maybe, but on what empirical evidence is such a claim based? How does one go about proving such a statement?
Isn't it conceivable that precisely because we are God's creation that such a fact, in and of itself, renders us worthy of Divine love not necessarily because of us, per se, but because human beings give expression, in part, to God's handiwork. Creation is worthy of God's love because creation comes from God. Why assume that God would create something which Divinity would find unworthy rather than create something which God loved and cherished?
Indeed, in the Qur'an one finds:
“Behold thy Lord said to the angels: "I will create a vicegerent on earth." They said "Wilt thou place there one who will make mischief therein and shed blood? Whilst we do celebrate Thy praises and glorify Thy holy (name)?" He said: "I know what ye know not." (Qur'an 2:30)
Allah has placed within each of us a potential for worthiness – a worthiness which was hidden from the understanding of the angels. Unworthiness is rooted only in the failure to nurture and develop the spiritual potential which God placed within us.
According to the Christian preacher cited by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross: “We're all tarred with sin; we are all dead in our own sinfulness. None of us is worthy of standing before God on the Day of Judgment.”
One might agree that we are all tarred in sin of one kind or another. Most of us are aware of our individual faults, the mistakes we make, and the people we hurt through our deeds and misdeeds. The empirical proof of such a claim is in our daily lives.
However, the further contention that “we are all dead in our own sinfulness” may be quite another matter. This is an expression of a theological position for which proof is much harder to come by, if one can demonstrate it at all.
One may believe that such is the case. Nevertheless, having such a belief and proving that such a belief is true is not necessarily one and the same thing even though many people do suppose that because they believe something, then, somehow, merely having the belief means that the belief must be true.
Furthermore, when the Christian preacher mentioned by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross also claims that “None of us is worthy of standing before God on the Day of Judgment,” such a statement tends to generate a sense of dissonance with certain facets of both Christian and Islamic understandings. According to both religious traditions, the Day of Judgment is something which most of us will have to face irrespective of whether we are worthy or not and irrespective of whether we are ready or not. We don't get any choice in the matter.
Then, the Christian preacher goes on to say: “The only way we can be worthy of standing before God is through the sacrifice of the perfect embodiment of human kind, the sacrifice of one without sin. That is why God gave us the ultimate sacrifice, the sacrifice of His only begotten son, the Lord Jesus Christ.” First, the preacher says that none of is worthy to stand before God on the Day of Judgment, and, then, it turns out that there is, after all, a way of being worthy of standing before God – namely, through Jesus (peace be upon him) who is described as being one that is without sin and who is the perfect embodiment of human kind.
I am willing to accept that Jesus (peace be upon him) is a perfect embodiment of human kind, and I am even willing to accept the idea that the life of Jesus (peace be upon him) was without sin. I also am willing to accept the idea that Jesus (peace be upon him) dedicated his whole life to God, and, in this sense sacrificed his life for the sake of God.
However, saying all of the foregoing does not in any way require me to conclude that Jesus (peace be upon him) was the only perfect embodiment of human kind or that he was the only human being who was without sin or that he was the only person who willingly sacrificed his life for the sake of God. There have been many examples of perfection, sinlessness, and sacrifice in the prophetic tradition.
So, if it is the case that what renders one worthy of standing before God on the Day of Judgement is because of the perfection, sinlessness, and sacrifice of a servant of God, then, perhaps there are many individuals from among God's prophets and messengers whose quality of life renders their followers worthy of standing before God on the Day of Judgment. One cannot simply take Jesus (peace be upon him), remove him from the context of spiritual history, and conclude, with any persuasiveness, that Jesus (peace be upon him) is the only one capable of making us worthy.
One also might raise a question about whether, or not, what renders someone worthy to stand before God on the Day of Judgement is a function of what someone else did quite independently of the choices we make as individuals. According to the theological perspective being espoused by the Christian preacher to whom Mr. Gartenstein-Ross alludes, the sacrifice of Jesus (peace be upon him) only renders us worthy of standing before God on the Day of Judgment if one believes in Jesus (peace be upon him) and the sacrifice that he is alleged to have made.
Therefore, the sacrifice of Jesus (peace be upon him), in and of itself, is not sufficient to render someone worthy of standing before God on the Day of Judgment. A person must make the decision to accept and believe in that sacrifice, and it is the making of such a choice that is said to be necessary if the sacrifice of Jesus (peace be upon him) is to be effective in the life of that person. According to such a theology, Jesus (peace be upon him) is purported to have done his part, but individuals must also do their part – that is, to accept and believe in Jesus (peace be upon him) in accordance with the dictates of the theology being espoused.
With respect to the foregoing, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross says: “This was the first time that I had considered that God might love me even though it was a love that I didn't deserve. The idea appealed to me deeply on an emotional level.”
The fact that an idea appeals to one on a deeply emotional level doesn't necessarily make such an idea true. There were many ideas described by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross in his book which allude to his being touched on a deeply emotional level … ideas which had to do with certain aspects of Islam, including its mystical, Sufi dimension, and, ideas which were sufficiently intense and deep to induce him to become a Muslim, and, yet, which, apparently, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross has decided to cast aside in favour of a certain kind of Christian theological argument. If both positions are rooted in something which touched him on a deeply emotional level, then, obviously, emotional considerations, in and of themselves, are not necessarily capable of settling the matter of what is true and what is not true.
Furthermore, there is certain ambiguity entailed by the perspective which Mr. Gartenstein-Ross is putting forth at this point. If the perfection, sinlessness, and sacrifice of Jesus (peace be upon him) only has efficacy if a person chooses to accept and believe in those dimensions of the life of Jesus (peace be upon him), then, clearly, there is something which renders one worthy of standing before God apart from, but related to, the issue of Jesus (peace be upon him) – namely, the choice or decision one makes concerning Jesus (peace be upon him).
In Islam one is required to make certain choices for which one will be held accountable on the Day of Judgment. In Christianity one is required to make certain choices for which one will be held accountable on the Day of Judgment.
Theologies have arisen among both Muslims and Christians concerning what the nature of such choices should be. There is nothing new in what Mr. Gartenstein-Ross is doing in conjunction with his move toward Christianity that he wasn't previously engaged in when a Muslim – that is, he is caught up in theology, and he is being influenced by what others are saying rather than thinking for himself or examining any of these issues in a critically rigorous manner.
Of course, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross believes there is a huge difference between the two theologies. He believes that the Christian theology is correct and that the Muslim theology is incorrect.
In support of his conclusions he says – as noted previously:
“What principle could distinguish between the two accounts? I thought of the persecution that Jesus' disciples suffered because of their belief in the crucifixion and resurrection. They didn't die for a set of ideals – it was for a set of facts. Do people die for a set of facts that they know to be false?”
This is not a very good argument. It is saturated with problems.
For example, he mentions how the disciples of Jesus (peace be upon him) suffered because of their willingness to believe the crucifixion and resurrection, but this, in and of itself, proves nothing except that they were committed to their beliefs. There were many Companions of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) who suffered, who were tortured, and who lost their lives because of their commitment to their belief in the Prophet and the Qur'an.
If willingness to endure suffering as a result of belief in something is the measure of truth, then, why make reference to only the disciples of Jesus (peace be upon him)? Should one not suppose that if one is to abide by the logic of the argument being put forth by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross at this point, then, the fact that if a person suffers as a result of the beliefs they hold, then, this is an indication that what they believe is true?
Consider the following set of cases. One person believes in the existence of God and undergoes suffering as a result of that belief. Another person does not believe in the existence of God and undergoes suffering as a result of that belief.
Both of the aforementioned cases involve suffering. According to Mr. Gartenstein-Ross, the presence of willingness to suffer for what one believes is an indication that what is believed must be true, and, yet, what the believer in God holds and what the disbeliever in God holds cannot simultaneously be true.
At this juncture, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross asks what he appears to believe is a rhetorical question: “Do people die for a set of facts that they know to be false?” The implied answer is “No! People do not die for a set of facts that they know to be false, and, therefore, according to Mr. Gartenstein-Ross, one must conclude that the set of facts for which the disciples were willing to die were and are true.
However, while one might agree with Mr. Gartenstein-Ross that people are not likely to be willing to suffer or die for a set of facts which they know to be false, this is not the situation with which any of us really is confronted. We have beliefs, and one of those beliefs is that there is truth, and we hope that the other beliefs we have accurately reflect the nature of truth or reality, but, the fact of the matter is that in many cases we don't know whether, or not, the beliefs we hold are true.
People may not be willing to suffer or die for something which they know isn't true. Nonetheless, people often are willing to undergo suffering or to die for something which they believe to be true even if, ultimately, what they believe may turn out to be false.
The fact that certain people who claimed to be following Jesus (peace be upon him) were willing to suffer and die for what they believed with respect to the crucifixion and resurrection proves absolutely nothing about the truth of that in which they believed. The fact that certain people of a Salafi-orientation claim to be following the Qur'an and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and are willing to suffer and die for what they believe in this respect proves absolutely nothing about the truth of that in which they believe.
When he was a Muslim, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross ceded his intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority to a group of fundamentalist Muslims who followed Salafi teachings. When he became a Christian, Mr.Gartenstein-Ross ceded his intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority to another set of theological teachings.
Mr. Gartenstein-Ross may feel that everything has changed with his rejection of Islam and his conversion to Christianity. And, of course, in certain ways this is true, but in an essential sense, nothing really has changed in his methodological approach to developing a spiritual world view.
In both cases he seems to have made choices on the basis of emotional considerations as well as on the basis of problematic theological thinking, rather than as a result of essential spiritual understanding. In both cases, he had a tendency to cede his intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority to other people rather than try to establish what the truth might be in terms that were rooted in his own spiritual capabilities.
When Mr. Gartenstein-Ross was inclined to ask lots of questions and engage in critical reflections concerning issues of morality, values, and justice, whether with respect to Christianity or Islam, then, in my opinion, he came a lot closer to the truth of things, than when he was inclined to cede away his intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority to others. Moreover, this is so irrespective of whether one is talking about Christian or Muslim theology.
As Mr. Gartenstein-Ross said when he was at an existential point that was sort of in between Islam and Christianity:
“For months, I was sure that I couldn't possibly be worthy of God's love. How could I be? Here I was racked with doubts, unable to trust myself to do the right thing or to follow basic rules.” (page 231)
Earlier in his book, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross said almost exactly the same thing as he hovered, at a sort of spiritual fail safe point, at the edge of the Salafi sphere of influence – namely, “I didn't want to be racked by doubts and uncertainty … I wanted a clear guide for telling right from wrong.” (page 154)
In the latter case, he permitted himself to be drawn into the Salafi theology. In the former case, he permitted himself to be drawn into the sphere of influence of Christian theology. In both cases he abdicated his spiritual responsibilities and ceded his intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority to someone else and permitted those people to establish the criteria for differentiating right from wrong and the true from the false.
Should one infer from the foregoing that I am saying that one should be the decider of truth? The answer to this question is: “No!”
God has given each of us spiritual sensibilities, faculties and capacities. These sensibilities, faculties, and capacities function best when we open ourselves up to be taught directly by God through the truth inherent in authentic revelation, through the truth which is manifested in the lives of the servants of Divinity, through the truth which is inherent in the nature of creation, as well as through the truth which is inherent in our unique spiritual capacity and essential identity.
The process of permitting oneself to be opened up to truth as it is manifested on different levels of being is a long, difficult struggle. During this process one must go through a great deal of purification with respect to the different aspects of the soul and, as well, one must undergo many spiritual transformations across states and stations in order, God willing, to acquire the character traits which tend to be reflective of a mind, heart, soul, and spirit which has committed itself to learning how to let God teach one to travel along the spiritual path.
In this spiritual quest, people who are spiritually knowledgeable can play very important catalytic and supportive roles in assisting one, God willing, to travel along the path. However, at every point along this journey, one has responsibility for properly exercising one's God-given intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority. When this authority is ceded to others, one is extremely likely to encounter significant problems on the spiritual path.
I learned a great deal from my shaykh. However, at no point did he ever ask me cede away my intellectual, moral, or spiritual authority to him. Rather, he focused on helping me learn how to exercise such responsibilities in a way that would lead me toward realizing my own personal relationship with Divinity rather than a relationship which was being mediated through, and filtered by, someone else.
“In church the next Sunday, the sermon was about God's love. For months, I was sure that I couldn't possibly be worthy of God's love. … The sermon had an angle I didn't expect: that we weren't really worthy of God's love.” Nobody deserves salvation,” the preacher said. “We're all tarred with sin; we are all dead in our own sinfulness. None of us is worthy of standing before God on the Day of Judgment.”
"Long pause. “But He loves us anyway. He loves us with a perfect divine love. The only way we can be worthy of standing before God is through the sacrifice of the perfect embodiment of humankind, the sacrifice of one without sin. That is why God gave us the ultimate sacrifice, the sacrifice of His only begotten son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
“This was the first time that I had considered that God might love me even though it was a love that I didn't deserve. The idea appealed to me deeply on an emotional level. But was it the truth?”
He goes on to write:
“I found that Islam and Christianity had two very different accounts of what became of Jesus. Christianity holds that Jesus was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the dead. … Verse 4:157 [of the Qur'an] addressed the crucifixtion: “That they said (in boast), 'We killed Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah'; -- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ, therein are full of doubts.” Which one was right?
“What principle could distinguish between the two accounts? I thought of the persecution that Jesus' disciples suffered because of their belief in the crucifixion and resurrection. They didn't die for a set of ideals – it was for a set of facts. Do people die for a set of facts that they know to be false?
“I felt that I was on to something. Slowly, with each layer that I pulled back, I felt my ideas about God shifting.”
I should start by saying that the point of the comments which are to follow has nothing to do with trying to establish who is right and who is wrong with respect to the life of Jesus (peace be upon him). We all have responsibility for the spiritual choices we make concerning beliefs and behaviours, and both Christians and Muslims believe that each of us will be held accountable for such choices on the Day of Judgment.
My focus is, instead, on a style of argument that is being used by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross. In fact, it is almost as if Mr. Gartenstein-Ross doesn't seem to understand that the manner in which he talks in his book about the kind of considerations which led to his conversion to Christianity, that he appears to be committing many of the same kinds of mistakes he made with respect to his interaction with the Salafi-oriented group in Ashland, Oregon.
Other than referring to themselves, respectively, as Christian and Muslim, what is the difference between the Christian preacher to whom Mr. Gartenstein-Ross refers and the Salafi shaykhs or preachers whom he mentioned? They both are espousing their worldviews and seeking to influence the people who are listening to their respective sermons. They both believe themselves to be correct and to have a sound understanding about what the relationship is between God and creation.
According to the Christian preacher whom Mr. Gartenstein-Ross quotes, none of us is worthy of God's love. Well, maybe, but on what empirical evidence is such a claim based? How does one go about proving such a statement?
Isn't it conceivable that precisely because we are God's creation that such a fact, in and of itself, renders us worthy of Divine love not necessarily because of us, per se, but because human beings give expression, in part, to God's handiwork. Creation is worthy of God's love because creation comes from God. Why assume that God would create something which Divinity would find unworthy rather than create something which God loved and cherished?
Indeed, in the Qur'an one finds:
“Behold thy Lord said to the angels: "I will create a vicegerent on earth." They said "Wilt thou place there one who will make mischief therein and shed blood? Whilst we do celebrate Thy praises and glorify Thy holy (name)?" He said: "I know what ye know not." (Qur'an 2:30)
Allah has placed within each of us a potential for worthiness – a worthiness which was hidden from the understanding of the angels. Unworthiness is rooted only in the failure to nurture and develop the spiritual potential which God placed within us.
According to the Christian preacher cited by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross: “We're all tarred with sin; we are all dead in our own sinfulness. None of us is worthy of standing before God on the Day of Judgment.”
One might agree that we are all tarred in sin of one kind or another. Most of us are aware of our individual faults, the mistakes we make, and the people we hurt through our deeds and misdeeds. The empirical proof of such a claim is in our daily lives.
However, the further contention that “we are all dead in our own sinfulness” may be quite another matter. This is an expression of a theological position for which proof is much harder to come by, if one can demonstrate it at all.
One may believe that such is the case. Nevertheless, having such a belief and proving that such a belief is true is not necessarily one and the same thing even though many people do suppose that because they believe something, then, somehow, merely having the belief means that the belief must be true.
Furthermore, when the Christian preacher mentioned by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross also claims that “None of us is worthy of standing before God on the Day of Judgment,” such a statement tends to generate a sense of dissonance with certain facets of both Christian and Islamic understandings. According to both religious traditions, the Day of Judgment is something which most of us will have to face irrespective of whether we are worthy or not and irrespective of whether we are ready or not. We don't get any choice in the matter.
Then, the Christian preacher goes on to say: “The only way we can be worthy of standing before God is through the sacrifice of the perfect embodiment of human kind, the sacrifice of one without sin. That is why God gave us the ultimate sacrifice, the sacrifice of His only begotten son, the Lord Jesus Christ.” First, the preacher says that none of is worthy to stand before God on the Day of Judgment, and, then, it turns out that there is, after all, a way of being worthy of standing before God – namely, through Jesus (peace be upon him) who is described as being one that is without sin and who is the perfect embodiment of human kind.
I am willing to accept that Jesus (peace be upon him) is a perfect embodiment of human kind, and I am even willing to accept the idea that the life of Jesus (peace be upon him) was without sin. I also am willing to accept the idea that Jesus (peace be upon him) dedicated his whole life to God, and, in this sense sacrificed his life for the sake of God.
However, saying all of the foregoing does not in any way require me to conclude that Jesus (peace be upon him) was the only perfect embodiment of human kind or that he was the only human being who was without sin or that he was the only person who willingly sacrificed his life for the sake of God. There have been many examples of perfection, sinlessness, and sacrifice in the prophetic tradition.
So, if it is the case that what renders one worthy of standing before God on the Day of Judgement is because of the perfection, sinlessness, and sacrifice of a servant of God, then, perhaps there are many individuals from among God's prophets and messengers whose quality of life renders their followers worthy of standing before God on the Day of Judgment. One cannot simply take Jesus (peace be upon him), remove him from the context of spiritual history, and conclude, with any persuasiveness, that Jesus (peace be upon him) is the only one capable of making us worthy.
One also might raise a question about whether, or not, what renders someone worthy to stand before God on the Day of Judgement is a function of what someone else did quite independently of the choices we make as individuals. According to the theological perspective being espoused by the Christian preacher to whom Mr. Gartenstein-Ross alludes, the sacrifice of Jesus (peace be upon him) only renders us worthy of standing before God on the Day of Judgment if one believes in Jesus (peace be upon him) and the sacrifice that he is alleged to have made.
Therefore, the sacrifice of Jesus (peace be upon him), in and of itself, is not sufficient to render someone worthy of standing before God on the Day of Judgment. A person must make the decision to accept and believe in that sacrifice, and it is the making of such a choice that is said to be necessary if the sacrifice of Jesus (peace be upon him) is to be effective in the life of that person. According to such a theology, Jesus (peace be upon him) is purported to have done his part, but individuals must also do their part – that is, to accept and believe in Jesus (peace be upon him) in accordance with the dictates of the theology being espoused.
With respect to the foregoing, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross says: “This was the first time that I had considered that God might love me even though it was a love that I didn't deserve. The idea appealed to me deeply on an emotional level.”
The fact that an idea appeals to one on a deeply emotional level doesn't necessarily make such an idea true. There were many ideas described by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross in his book which allude to his being touched on a deeply emotional level … ideas which had to do with certain aspects of Islam, including its mystical, Sufi dimension, and, ideas which were sufficiently intense and deep to induce him to become a Muslim, and, yet, which, apparently, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross has decided to cast aside in favour of a certain kind of Christian theological argument. If both positions are rooted in something which touched him on a deeply emotional level, then, obviously, emotional considerations, in and of themselves, are not necessarily capable of settling the matter of what is true and what is not true.
Furthermore, there is certain ambiguity entailed by the perspective which Mr. Gartenstein-Ross is putting forth at this point. If the perfection, sinlessness, and sacrifice of Jesus (peace be upon him) only has efficacy if a person chooses to accept and believe in those dimensions of the life of Jesus (peace be upon him), then, clearly, there is something which renders one worthy of standing before God apart from, but related to, the issue of Jesus (peace be upon him) – namely, the choice or decision one makes concerning Jesus (peace be upon him).
In Islam one is required to make certain choices for which one will be held accountable on the Day of Judgment. In Christianity one is required to make certain choices for which one will be held accountable on the Day of Judgment.
Theologies have arisen among both Muslims and Christians concerning what the nature of such choices should be. There is nothing new in what Mr. Gartenstein-Ross is doing in conjunction with his move toward Christianity that he wasn't previously engaged in when a Muslim – that is, he is caught up in theology, and he is being influenced by what others are saying rather than thinking for himself or examining any of these issues in a critically rigorous manner.
Of course, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross believes there is a huge difference between the two theologies. He believes that the Christian theology is correct and that the Muslim theology is incorrect.
In support of his conclusions he says – as noted previously:
“What principle could distinguish between the two accounts? I thought of the persecution that Jesus' disciples suffered because of their belief in the crucifixion and resurrection. They didn't die for a set of ideals – it was for a set of facts. Do people die for a set of facts that they know to be false?”
This is not a very good argument. It is saturated with problems.
For example, he mentions how the disciples of Jesus (peace be upon him) suffered because of their willingness to believe the crucifixion and resurrection, but this, in and of itself, proves nothing except that they were committed to their beliefs. There were many Companions of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) who suffered, who were tortured, and who lost their lives because of their commitment to their belief in the Prophet and the Qur'an.
If willingness to endure suffering as a result of belief in something is the measure of truth, then, why make reference to only the disciples of Jesus (peace be upon him)? Should one not suppose that if one is to abide by the logic of the argument being put forth by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross at this point, then, the fact that if a person suffers as a result of the beliefs they hold, then, this is an indication that what they believe is true?
Consider the following set of cases. One person believes in the existence of God and undergoes suffering as a result of that belief. Another person does not believe in the existence of God and undergoes suffering as a result of that belief.
Both of the aforementioned cases involve suffering. According to Mr. Gartenstein-Ross, the presence of willingness to suffer for what one believes is an indication that what is believed must be true, and, yet, what the believer in God holds and what the disbeliever in God holds cannot simultaneously be true.
At this juncture, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross asks what he appears to believe is a rhetorical question: “Do people die for a set of facts that they know to be false?” The implied answer is “No! People do not die for a set of facts that they know to be false, and, therefore, according to Mr. Gartenstein-Ross, one must conclude that the set of facts for which the disciples were willing to die were and are true.
However, while one might agree with Mr. Gartenstein-Ross that people are not likely to be willing to suffer or die for a set of facts which they know to be false, this is not the situation with which any of us really is confronted. We have beliefs, and one of those beliefs is that there is truth, and we hope that the other beliefs we have accurately reflect the nature of truth or reality, but, the fact of the matter is that in many cases we don't know whether, or not, the beliefs we hold are true.
People may not be willing to suffer or die for something which they know isn't true. Nonetheless, people often are willing to undergo suffering or to die for something which they believe to be true even if, ultimately, what they believe may turn out to be false.
The fact that certain people who claimed to be following Jesus (peace be upon him) were willing to suffer and die for what they believed with respect to the crucifixion and resurrection proves absolutely nothing about the truth of that in which they believed. The fact that certain people of a Salafi-orientation claim to be following the Qur'an and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and are willing to suffer and die for what they believe in this respect proves absolutely nothing about the truth of that in which they believe.
When he was a Muslim, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross ceded his intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority to a group of fundamentalist Muslims who followed Salafi teachings. When he became a Christian, Mr.Gartenstein-Ross ceded his intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority to another set of theological teachings.
Mr. Gartenstein-Ross may feel that everything has changed with his rejection of Islam and his conversion to Christianity. And, of course, in certain ways this is true, but in an essential sense, nothing really has changed in his methodological approach to developing a spiritual world view.
In both cases he seems to have made choices on the basis of emotional considerations as well as on the basis of problematic theological thinking, rather than as a result of essential spiritual understanding. In both cases, he had a tendency to cede his intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority to other people rather than try to establish what the truth might be in terms that were rooted in his own spiritual capabilities.
When Mr. Gartenstein-Ross was inclined to ask lots of questions and engage in critical reflections concerning issues of morality, values, and justice, whether with respect to Christianity or Islam, then, in my opinion, he came a lot closer to the truth of things, than when he was inclined to cede away his intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority to others. Moreover, this is so irrespective of whether one is talking about Christian or Muslim theology.
As Mr. Gartenstein-Ross said when he was at an existential point that was sort of in between Islam and Christianity:
“For months, I was sure that I couldn't possibly be worthy of God's love. How could I be? Here I was racked with doubts, unable to trust myself to do the right thing or to follow basic rules.” (page 231)
Earlier in his book, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross said almost exactly the same thing as he hovered, at a sort of spiritual fail safe point, at the edge of the Salafi sphere of influence – namely, “I didn't want to be racked by doubts and uncertainty … I wanted a clear guide for telling right from wrong.” (page 154)
In the latter case, he permitted himself to be drawn into the Salafi theology. In the former case, he permitted himself to be drawn into the sphere of influence of Christian theology. In both cases he abdicated his spiritual responsibilities and ceded his intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority to someone else and permitted those people to establish the criteria for differentiating right from wrong and the true from the false.
Should one infer from the foregoing that I am saying that one should be the decider of truth? The answer to this question is: “No!”
God has given each of us spiritual sensibilities, faculties and capacities. These sensibilities, faculties, and capacities function best when we open ourselves up to be taught directly by God through the truth inherent in authentic revelation, through the truth which is manifested in the lives of the servants of Divinity, through the truth which is inherent in the nature of creation, as well as through the truth which is inherent in our unique spiritual capacity and essential identity.
The process of permitting oneself to be opened up to truth as it is manifested on different levels of being is a long, difficult struggle. During this process one must go through a great deal of purification with respect to the different aspects of the soul and, as well, one must undergo many spiritual transformations across states and stations in order, God willing, to acquire the character traits which tend to be reflective of a mind, heart, soul, and spirit which has committed itself to learning how to let God teach one to travel along the spiritual path.
In this spiritual quest, people who are spiritually knowledgeable can play very important catalytic and supportive roles in assisting one, God willing, to travel along the path. However, at every point along this journey, one has responsibility for properly exercising one's God-given intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority. When this authority is ceded to others, one is extremely likely to encounter significant problems on the spiritual path.
I learned a great deal from my shaykh. However, at no point did he ever ask me cede away my intellectual, moral, or spiritual authority to him. Rather, he focused on helping me learn how to exercise such responsibilities in a way that would lead me toward realizing my own personal relationship with Divinity rather than a relationship which was being mediated through, and filtered by, someone else.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Sufi Reflections Podcast No. 24
Sufi Reflections Podcast No. 24 is now available for downloading. We hope you'll join us!
Episode 24: DOWNLOAD
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Ruh
The spirit (ruh) comes by the command of God. As a general rule, most people have very little direct, experiential knowledge of it.
The spirit is said to be the locus of manifestation of love. Indeed, the proper vocation of the spirit is nothing but love.
According to Sufi masters, there is a dimension of the heart which gives expression to love. However, this facet of the heart, when it becomes spiritually active, is consumed with love of human beings, specifically, and all of creation, in general.
There is another level of the heart which gives expression to love for the Divine Presence. The love of the spirit is complementary and supplemental to this kind of love of Divinity.
The spirit is dedicated completely to love of God. However, the spirit's capacity for Divine love, when it becomes perfected, illumines, shapes, colors and moves the love of the heart.
The spirit is described by Sufi masters as having certain qualities. These qualities are: familiarity, forbearance, light, love, life, knowledge and permanence.
The familiarity of the spirit is primordial in character. It is shaped by the experience of "being brought" by God from non-existence into created existence. Furthermore, this aspect of familiarity reverberates with the original covenant of commitment between the spirit and God.
The spirit's quality of forbearance addresses, among other things, the spirit's capacity to refrain from everything except fulfilling the conditions of servanthood. Three spiritual currents run through this quality of forbearance: namely, modesty, tranquility and dignity.
Being modest in all things before God is one of the characteristics of a true servant. Moreover, through servanthood, one derives both essential dignity and tranquility.
A third quality of the spirit involves light. This potential encompasses hearing, speech and vision.
The servant of God hears the call of Divinity and responds in order to serve the will of God. Through speech, the servant of God also is busy with praise, glorification and worship of Divinity. By means of vision, the servant experiences the overwhelming beauty and majesty of Divinity.
Love is another quality of the spirit. The love of the spirit is marked by yearning, seeking and sincerity.
The one in love always yearns for the beloved and is never happy away from the beloved. Restlessness characterizes the one who is separated from the source of all happiness, joy and unity.
Our restlessness in this world is a reflection of the spirit's yearning to be reunited with the beloved. No matter what we do or try, until we are wholly with the Beloved, we always will remain restless.
The one in love constantly is seeking the "object" of love. The individual sees traces and signs of that which is sought after almost everywhere. In fact, the individual keeps mistaking the signs for the reality of which the signs are but a trace.
As a result, the person becomes involved in one "affair" after another with the things of the world. The individual is attracted by things because the seeking spirit catches a reflection of the beloved in those things. The individual "falls in love" with the things, only to discover, in time, those things are not what the spirit is really seeking after all.
The spiritual journey constitutes the search of the spirit. The spirit seeks the only Reality with which the spirit can feel fully satisfied, complete and at peace.
To sustain the spiritual journey, one needs sincerity. Without sincerity, one will never be able to withstand the trials, difficulties and challenges which the One sought has created to test the quality of love of the would-be suitor.
Furthermore, once, God willing, the quest of the spirit has been realized through being reunited with the Beloved, there will be further need of sincerity. The servant proves the sincerity of his or her love by fulfilling the request made by the Beloved.
From the spirit's quality of life comes a variety of capacities or potentials. These include not only intelligence but, as well, a whole spectrum of different modes of perception.
When these potentials are perfected, they become tools through which the individual serves God. Moreover, these qualities of intelligence and perception become so many different modalities for experiencing, as well as giving expression to, love of God.
The spirit's capacity for knowledge entails two themes. One theme involves cognition. The other aspect concerns will.
The cognition referred to here is not a reference to brain functioning which is the usual sense of this term. The cognition of the spirit is a matter of the spirit's ability, when perfected, to understand through love of Divinity.
Love has its own unique way of knowing and understanding. When the individual comes to realize experientially, through the spirit, the infinite breadth, depth and richness of God's love, everything in the life of the individual becomes infused with, and illuminated by, such love. Knowledge and understanding both see through the eyes of Divine love.
Love is not passive, it is active and dynamic. That which is known and understood through the vision of Divine love is acted upon. Consequently, the quality of will entailed by the knowledge of the spirit, seeks, with God's permission, to put understanding into action in the service and worship of Divinity.
Finally, the spirit's quality of permanence encompasses dimensions of steadfastness and persistence. Each of these dimensions colors permanence in a different manner.
To be steadfast, is to be constant in one's love for, service to, and worship of God. The perfected spirit is a perpetual motion "machine" which generates a constant reflection of Divine love.
Sufi masters radiate, and glow with, this quality of steadfastness. It permeates every aspect of their being.
In addition, the quality of permanence contains the potential for persistence. Long after all traces of the body and the world have disappeared from the Face of existence, the spirit will persist in its journey from God, to God through God, by God and with God.
When we come into this world, the potentials of the spirit's capacity are unrealized for the most part. They need to be perfected.
When one steps onto the mystical path, one begins the journey toward, among other things, the perfection of the spirit. There are various stages to this journey.
Different Sufi masters describe these stages in different ways. The central themes of these descriptions, however, are essentially the same. One way of providing an overview of the stages of the journey toward perfection of the spirit is as follows.
The journey can be construed in terms of nine themes. These are: compatibility, inclination, fellowship, passion, friendship, exclusive friendship, ardent affection, enslavement and bewilderment.
Before one decides to undertake a journey with someone, one wants to have a sense of how compatible the companion is with whom one is contemplating taking the journey. Although the ultimate companion for the journey is really Divinity, one tries to evaluate compatibility through Divinity's surrogate for the journey - namely, the shaykh.
If one feels comfortable with the degree of perceived compatibility between oneself and the spiritual guide, one begins to think about departure. However, before one really gets under way, there are some unresolved matters which need to be addressed.
To begin with, one soon discovers there are some adjustments in one's thinking about, and attitudes toward, the issue of compatibility which are necessary. Most importantly, if one is fortunate, one begins to realize one must learn how to be compatible with the shaykh.
The spiritual guide is an experienced traveler. One has never been on this journey before. If one wants to reach the destination of one's journey, one had best start following the advice and counsel of the spiritual guide. This is true compatibility.
One travels beyond compatibility through inclination. To be inclined to the shaykh, and, therefore, God, is to become inclined to the way of life of the shaykh.
Over time, and if God wishes, one becomes inclined to the beliefs, values, actions, goals, and qualities of the shaykh.
Once inclination has become established, a bond of fellowship arises in relation to the shaykh. One begins to enjoy traveling with the spiritual guide. One accepts the ups and downs of the journey and is happy to be going through all of this with the shaykh as one's guide and companion of the way.
Out of the bond of fellowship, arises passion. One cannot bear to think of traveling without the shaykh. One would feel lost and adrift. Consequently, one holds tightly, passionately, to the hand of one's spiritual guide.
Friendship is given birth through passion. One keeps nothing from the friend. Nothing is hidden from the friend.
One finds comfort, contentment and peace through the friend. One confides in one friend with respect to all one's doubts, worries, concerns and difficulties. And, the friend helps one in, and with, everything.
Exclusive friendship follows upon friendship. One really has no thoughts, interests or aspirations which are not centered around the friend. Meaning, purpose, value and significance rise and set with the presence of the friend.
One has been falling in love with the shaykh since the days of compatibility, but in the stage of ardent affection one begins to feel the stirring of a deep, intense, abiding affection for the shaykh. One fears doing anything which would displease the spiritual guide.
In the stage of ardent affection, even on the most storm filled days, the sun shines brilliantly and warmly when the shaykh is pleased with one. On the other hand, even on the sunniest of days, the air is heavy with darkness and sadness when one feels the shaykh is displeased with one's efforts or demeanor on the path.
At the far edge of the stage of ardent affection, one trips over enslavement, and falls deeply, completely, desperately in love. In this condition, one gladly would sacrifice whatever one has, or is, for the shaykh.
When enslaved by love, one's life has no meaning or value except in the context of one's love for the shaykh. All one's joy, happiness, and fulfillment are derived from being engaged in loving service to, and for, the shaykh.
Bewilderment is the next stop on the journey after enslavement. So many different manifestations of the wonder, majesty and beauty of love are disclosed in this condition that one becomes overwhelmed.
One both understands and does not understand at the same time. In short, one is bewitched, bothered and bewildered - in a spiritual sense, of course.
All through the foregoing journey, there is a growing realization within the individual. This growing realization manifests itself in a different way with each new stage.
The nature of the realization is this. One's companion on the journey is far more complex than one originally imagined to be the case.
The shaykh is, on the one hand, a unique manifestation of all of the shaykhs who have preceded the spiritual guide on the mystical path. Furthermore, the shaykh is a unique, reflected manifestation of the entire Prophetic tradition.
On the other hand, the wayfarer realizes more and more that underwriting all of these manifestations is none other than Divinity. God is teaching, helping, supporting, protecting, guiding, nurturing, and transforming the individual through the agencies of manifestation we recognize as the shaykh, the saints, and the Prophets.
When these realizations come to their full fruition with the completion of the aforementioned journey of love, the spirit, with all its previously discussed qualities, will become perfected. Thereafter, everything which is: done, seen, heard, willed, experienced, perceived, spoken, known, understood, sought, and yearned for, will be in terms of, and an expression of, Divine love. Such love will be the modest, dignified, tranquil, steadfast, persistent love of the servant of God.
The spirit is said to be the locus of manifestation of love. Indeed, the proper vocation of the spirit is nothing but love.
According to Sufi masters, there is a dimension of the heart which gives expression to love. However, this facet of the heart, when it becomes spiritually active, is consumed with love of human beings, specifically, and all of creation, in general.
There is another level of the heart which gives expression to love for the Divine Presence. The love of the spirit is complementary and supplemental to this kind of love of Divinity.
The spirit is dedicated completely to love of God. However, the spirit's capacity for Divine love, when it becomes perfected, illumines, shapes, colors and moves the love of the heart.
The spirit is described by Sufi masters as having certain qualities. These qualities are: familiarity, forbearance, light, love, life, knowledge and permanence.
The familiarity of the spirit is primordial in character. It is shaped by the experience of "being brought" by God from non-existence into created existence. Furthermore, this aspect of familiarity reverberates with the original covenant of commitment between the spirit and God.
The spirit's quality of forbearance addresses, among other things, the spirit's capacity to refrain from everything except fulfilling the conditions of servanthood. Three spiritual currents run through this quality of forbearance: namely, modesty, tranquility and dignity.
Being modest in all things before God is one of the characteristics of a true servant. Moreover, through servanthood, one derives both essential dignity and tranquility.
A third quality of the spirit involves light. This potential encompasses hearing, speech and vision.
The servant of God hears the call of Divinity and responds in order to serve the will of God. Through speech, the servant of God also is busy with praise, glorification and worship of Divinity. By means of vision, the servant experiences the overwhelming beauty and majesty of Divinity.
Love is another quality of the spirit. The love of the spirit is marked by yearning, seeking and sincerity.
The one in love always yearns for the beloved and is never happy away from the beloved. Restlessness characterizes the one who is separated from the source of all happiness, joy and unity.
Our restlessness in this world is a reflection of the spirit's yearning to be reunited with the beloved. No matter what we do or try, until we are wholly with the Beloved, we always will remain restless.
The one in love constantly is seeking the "object" of love. The individual sees traces and signs of that which is sought after almost everywhere. In fact, the individual keeps mistaking the signs for the reality of which the signs are but a trace.
As a result, the person becomes involved in one "affair" after another with the things of the world. The individual is attracted by things because the seeking spirit catches a reflection of the beloved in those things. The individual "falls in love" with the things, only to discover, in time, those things are not what the spirit is really seeking after all.
The spiritual journey constitutes the search of the spirit. The spirit seeks the only Reality with which the spirit can feel fully satisfied, complete and at peace.
To sustain the spiritual journey, one needs sincerity. Without sincerity, one will never be able to withstand the trials, difficulties and challenges which the One sought has created to test the quality of love of the would-be suitor.
Furthermore, once, God willing, the quest of the spirit has been realized through being reunited with the Beloved, there will be further need of sincerity. The servant proves the sincerity of his or her love by fulfilling the request made by the Beloved.
From the spirit's quality of life comes a variety of capacities or potentials. These include not only intelligence but, as well, a whole spectrum of different modes of perception.
When these potentials are perfected, they become tools through which the individual serves God. Moreover, these qualities of intelligence and perception become so many different modalities for experiencing, as well as giving expression to, love of God.
The spirit's capacity for knowledge entails two themes. One theme involves cognition. The other aspect concerns will.
The cognition referred to here is not a reference to brain functioning which is the usual sense of this term. The cognition of the spirit is a matter of the spirit's ability, when perfected, to understand through love of Divinity.
Love has its own unique way of knowing and understanding. When the individual comes to realize experientially, through the spirit, the infinite breadth, depth and richness of God's love, everything in the life of the individual becomes infused with, and illuminated by, such love. Knowledge and understanding both see through the eyes of Divine love.
Love is not passive, it is active and dynamic. That which is known and understood through the vision of Divine love is acted upon. Consequently, the quality of will entailed by the knowledge of the spirit, seeks, with God's permission, to put understanding into action in the service and worship of Divinity.
Finally, the spirit's quality of permanence encompasses dimensions of steadfastness and persistence. Each of these dimensions colors permanence in a different manner.
To be steadfast, is to be constant in one's love for, service to, and worship of God. The perfected spirit is a perpetual motion "machine" which generates a constant reflection of Divine love.
Sufi masters radiate, and glow with, this quality of steadfastness. It permeates every aspect of their being.
In addition, the quality of permanence contains the potential for persistence. Long after all traces of the body and the world have disappeared from the Face of existence, the spirit will persist in its journey from God, to God through God, by God and with God.
When we come into this world, the potentials of the spirit's capacity are unrealized for the most part. They need to be perfected.
When one steps onto the mystical path, one begins the journey toward, among other things, the perfection of the spirit. There are various stages to this journey.
Different Sufi masters describe these stages in different ways. The central themes of these descriptions, however, are essentially the same. One way of providing an overview of the stages of the journey toward perfection of the spirit is as follows.
The journey can be construed in terms of nine themes. These are: compatibility, inclination, fellowship, passion, friendship, exclusive friendship, ardent affection, enslavement and bewilderment.
Before one decides to undertake a journey with someone, one wants to have a sense of how compatible the companion is with whom one is contemplating taking the journey. Although the ultimate companion for the journey is really Divinity, one tries to evaluate compatibility through Divinity's surrogate for the journey - namely, the shaykh.
If one feels comfortable with the degree of perceived compatibility between oneself and the spiritual guide, one begins to think about departure. However, before one really gets under way, there are some unresolved matters which need to be addressed.
To begin with, one soon discovers there are some adjustments in one's thinking about, and attitudes toward, the issue of compatibility which are necessary. Most importantly, if one is fortunate, one begins to realize one must learn how to be compatible with the shaykh.
The spiritual guide is an experienced traveler. One has never been on this journey before. If one wants to reach the destination of one's journey, one had best start following the advice and counsel of the spiritual guide. This is true compatibility.
One travels beyond compatibility through inclination. To be inclined to the shaykh, and, therefore, God, is to become inclined to the way of life of the shaykh.
Over time, and if God wishes, one becomes inclined to the beliefs, values, actions, goals, and qualities of the shaykh.
Once inclination has become established, a bond of fellowship arises in relation to the shaykh. One begins to enjoy traveling with the spiritual guide. One accepts the ups and downs of the journey and is happy to be going through all of this with the shaykh as one's guide and companion of the way.
Out of the bond of fellowship, arises passion. One cannot bear to think of traveling without the shaykh. One would feel lost and adrift. Consequently, one holds tightly, passionately, to the hand of one's spiritual guide.
Friendship is given birth through passion. One keeps nothing from the friend. Nothing is hidden from the friend.
One finds comfort, contentment and peace through the friend. One confides in one friend with respect to all one's doubts, worries, concerns and difficulties. And, the friend helps one in, and with, everything.
Exclusive friendship follows upon friendship. One really has no thoughts, interests or aspirations which are not centered around the friend. Meaning, purpose, value and significance rise and set with the presence of the friend.
One has been falling in love with the shaykh since the days of compatibility, but in the stage of ardent affection one begins to feel the stirring of a deep, intense, abiding affection for the shaykh. One fears doing anything which would displease the spiritual guide.
In the stage of ardent affection, even on the most storm filled days, the sun shines brilliantly and warmly when the shaykh is pleased with one. On the other hand, even on the sunniest of days, the air is heavy with darkness and sadness when one feels the shaykh is displeased with one's efforts or demeanor on the path.
At the far edge of the stage of ardent affection, one trips over enslavement, and falls deeply, completely, desperately in love. In this condition, one gladly would sacrifice whatever one has, or is, for the shaykh.
When enslaved by love, one's life has no meaning or value except in the context of one's love for the shaykh. All one's joy, happiness, and fulfillment are derived from being engaged in loving service to, and for, the shaykh.
Bewilderment is the next stop on the journey after enslavement. So many different manifestations of the wonder, majesty and beauty of love are disclosed in this condition that one becomes overwhelmed.
One both understands and does not understand at the same time. In short, one is bewitched, bothered and bewildered - in a spiritual sense, of course.
All through the foregoing journey, there is a growing realization within the individual. This growing realization manifests itself in a different way with each new stage.
The nature of the realization is this. One's companion on the journey is far more complex than one originally imagined to be the case.
The shaykh is, on the one hand, a unique manifestation of all of the shaykhs who have preceded the spiritual guide on the mystical path. Furthermore, the shaykh is a unique, reflected manifestation of the entire Prophetic tradition.
On the other hand, the wayfarer realizes more and more that underwriting all of these manifestations is none other than Divinity. God is teaching, helping, supporting, protecting, guiding, nurturing, and transforming the individual through the agencies of manifestation we recognize as the shaykh, the saints, and the Prophets.
When these realizations come to their full fruition with the completion of the aforementioned journey of love, the spirit, with all its previously discussed qualities, will become perfected. Thereafter, everything which is: done, seen, heard, willed, experienced, perceived, spoken, known, understood, sought, and yearned for, will be in terms of, and an expression of, Divine love. Such love will be the modest, dignified, tranquil, steadfast, persistent love of the servant of God.
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