Islamic Millennium - A Personal view

Islamic Millennium – A Personal View

Prof. Hossainur Rahman

The message of Islam was sent to the world fourteen centuries ago.  Does it need reinterpretation?  Is it not meant for the whole world and for all time?  The answer is in the affirmative. Even if a message is true, and in a sense eternal, it is … essential to understand it in accordance with the science, philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, and theology of the modern world; nay, the sum total of the world’s thinking, and its blazing light should be brought to bear upon it.

In the history of man, it is only some ten thousand years ago that he conceived the idea of certain divinities as ruling his destiny.  The stars in the sky, the animals in the forest, the birds in the air, the reptiles on the earth, the fishes in the sea contained supernatural beings endowed with the power to harm, and all over the world man worshipped these deities, and by sacrifices, chants, religious practices, ritual and dancing, he tried to ward off the evil.

Some five thousand years later, that is, only five thousand years ago, in Mesopotamia or thereabouts, and also in India, man for the first time in recorded history came to believe that it was not a thousand deities, but one supreme Being, the One, the Brahman, the Absolute, the Creator, Ram or Rahim, by whatever name you call it, which was the one object of worship. After a prolonged tribulation of the spirit came this great discovery probably the greatest single discovery in history of man.  It is greater than the discovery of zero, of fire or iron, of relativity of any known thing.  The concept itself is unique; it has a mysterious and compelling power; it revives broken spirits, it gives meaning to life, it makes man hear that which he cannot hear, makes man know that which he cannot know.  It does not depend upon human science and its changing moods, it is an eternal concept, not liable to change, decay or imperfection.  This message has often come to man through the vibrant spirit of a sensitive soul and one among the elect was the Prophet Muhammad.

Asaf A.A.Fyzee ardently believes that the unity of Godhead and everlasting value of the Koran are the greatest assets of humankind.  He also believes, with reason and conviction, that the Koran is the glory of Arabic and Arabic the pride of the Koran.

Fyzee argues in this way: The belief in the existence of God is based on experience.  It can never be proved, nor can it be disproved.  All this means that religion is neither argument nor mere talk.  It is not science either.  It is a matter of total submission; surrender to God, the Almighty.  It is a matter of realization. It is a journey within, seeking God’s direction and guidance in every sphere of man’s life.  To paraphrase Fyzee, the greatest single discovery of man is that there is no intermediate person between God and man.  Islam does not provide scope for priestcraft. However, there was need to communicate God’s instructions to man.  Language is always ‘human’ and ‘variable’.  That is, it is subject to change.  The classical Arab language has undergone a sea change over the centuries. Hence no language remains static. Fyzee says, ‘But we Muslims believe that the central message will last longer than its language, and that is the belief in God’.  ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.’  At this point, Fyzee flourishes in his reasoning and makes a strong plea:

Therefore, to me it is clear that we cannot go to the Koran, we have to go forward with it.  I wish to understand the Koran as it was understood by the Arabs of the time of the Prophet only to reinterpret it and apply it to my conditions of life and to believe in it, so far as it appeals to me, a twentieth century man.  I cannot be called upon to live in the desert, to traverse it on camel , to eat locusts, to indulge in vendetta, to wear a beard and a clock, and to cultivate a pseudo-Arab mentality.  I must distinguish between the husk and the kernel of religion, between law and legend.  I am bound to understand and accept the message of Islam as a modern man, and not as one who lived centuries ago.  I respect authority, but cannot accept it ‘without how’ (bila kaufa) in the matter of conscience.

He goes on to say what he wants to, and we must listen to him:
Islam is based on the Koran, and the Koran is to be interpreted in its historical setting and on chronological principles.  We must first study the main principles of Judaism and Christianity before approaching Islam, beginning with a sympathetic understanding of the religion of the Semities.  It is only when Judaism and Christianity are comprehended fully in their historical setting that the message of the prophet and its meaning become clear.

Indian Islam has produced outstanding Islamists during the last millennium.  Maulana Abul Kalam Azad certainly tops the list.  Asaf A.A.Fyzee, Mohammed Iqbal, Sir Syed Ahamd Khan, and Mohammed Ajmal Khan deserve special mention. Coming to Asaf Fyzee, he explains the Islamic situation in India:’…the Indian Muslim has to test and compare his faith and actions with those of his other compatriots… An interpretation enjoys the advantage of a common religious life and a shared mystical experience, which militates against bigotry and fanaticism, and makes for eclecticism and catholicity.  These are the great advantages for a world religion such as Islam.  An Azad or a Fyzee would have understood the spirit behind Arnold Toynbee’s words, ‘Modern man cannot live without religion.  ‘But what kind of religion is it?  Is it the kind of religion we see around us everyday?  Fortunately not.  Toynbee and others did not mean a religious sect by religion.  What they meant was a kind of inner certainty which provides an anchor against the sense of alienation from oneself.  To quote Azad’s words, ‘ There is no conviction in my heart which the thorns of doubt failed to pierce: there is faith in my soul which has not been subjected to all the conspiracies of disbelief.  Azad’s commentary on the Koran, Tarjuman al-Quran and Tadhkira, a biography of ‘unusual shape, ‘give ample idea of his spiritual insight.  ‘He ruminated on the three stages of experience-desire, love and truth… he passed, he says, from a halfway house into the discovery of liberty and truth.’

Now from the Tarjuman al-Quran:
“The more I dashed my hands and feet against the waves,
The more woefully perplexed did feel.
But when I ceased to struggle and lay motionless,
The waves of their free will drifted me across to the shore.”

This is what Sufism is in Islam.  Swami Vivekananda says, ‘Religion is not talk, or doctrines, or theories; nor is it sectarianism. Religion does not consist in erecting temples, or building churches, or attending public worship.  It is not to be found in books, or in words, or in lectures, or in organisations.  Religion consists in realization’.  According to Swami Vivekananda, religion is ‘the struggle to transcend the limitations of the senses.’  This is precisely what the Sufis are trying to do.

The great eleventh century Sufi, Ghazali, had written these words during his last illness; the writing was discovered after his death under his bed:
“A bird I am: this body was my cage, But I have flown leaving it as a token”.

Sufism is the mystic tradition of Islam. I wish to touch upon its salient features here.  Otherwise, the study of Islam in the past millennium would be incomplete.  Sufism is Islam’s greatest contribution to human civilization.  It is the greatest devotional achievement that a religion born in the deserts of Arabia could never have.  Sufism is the inner voice of Islam - away from religious and formal rigours - an outcome of the Koran and the Prophet.  The Sufis chant, ‘God is everywhere’.  They say, ‘Admire God in everything’.  The Sufis owe their very existence to Almighty God, seeking His love here and now. Not only that, they wholeheartedly believe that Prophet Muhammad is the first Sufi who, by his life and life-style, inspires the Sufis for all time to come.   Hence the Koran, in the first place, invokes the spirit of sacrifice and yearning for God in the heart of the Sufi.  And in the second place, the Prophet, through his austere living and compassionate approach to life and this mortal world, directs the Sufis to a path which is above greed and gluttony, covetousness and hatred.  A Sufi’s life is totally given to realization of God in his own self.  His is the life of a wanderer - a wanderer in quest of God.  Owing to the Prophet’s having all such qualities, some Sufis declared him to be ‘the supreme exponent of disciplined mystical ecstasy’.

Why did the Sufi discover the essence of Sufism in the Prophet?  The best possible answer is to be found in these words of the Prophet himself.  ‘Poverty is my pride’.  The founder of Islam lived a humble and lowly life.  His only concern was God.  He appealed to God thus”; O God, make me live and die a lowly life, and rise from the dead among the lowly.’  As if it was not enough, he further said, ‘On the Day of Resurrection, God will ask, “Bring ye my loved ones?”.  To God, the poor and the destitute are his loved ones.  Poverty brings out two virtues, say the Sufis: it encourages abstemiousness and eschewing unlawful pleasure, and stimulates trust in God. For a religion is meaningless, faith is meaningless, if the believer cannot give himself or herself up wholly to God, sacrificing all else in life.  Thus, mindless rituals, lifeless formalism, and soul-less religious practices are not the aim of the Sufis.  The Sufi faith in God goes to such heights”’ If ye trusted in God as ye should, He would sustain you even as He sustain the birds, which in the mornings go forth hungry and return in the evening filled.  ‘God’s love pervades the whole world.  The Prophet reported God as saying, ‘ My earth and Heaven contain me not, but the heart of my faithful servant contains Me’.  Again, God is stated to have said, ‘I was a hidden treasure, and desired to be known; therefore I created the creation in order that I might be known. Sufis have taken special care to make the most of this statement, declaring that man is the object of God’s love.  By ‘man’ is, of course, meant the ideal man.

Who is an ideal man?  According to the Sufi, the ideal man is he who is always aware of God’s affection for creation.  He has created all this and is conscious of truth.   Truth is God, and God is truth.  It was at this point that orthodox Islam could not accept the Sufis.  The reason was the hunger for the direct intimacy with Truth.   This state of affairs dismays conservative became the sheet anchor of Sufis. 

History has it that orthodox Islam’s failures in the early period became its success in another sense.  Orthodoxy weakened, giving place to liberalism.  Sufism liberalized Islam by emphasizing the devotional spirit, seeking diving knowledge, and rejecting reason and revelation defined dogmatically. It discounts what Muslim theology calls Aql (intellect) and naql (transmitted truth) and concentrates on kashf (discovery), in which the meaning of faith and truth is given in experimental immediacy to the seeking soul.  This insight is the reward of the path of knowledge which involves discipline and the ascetic life.

It is clear now that Sufis are essentially spiritual and not intellectual.  ‘Muhammad is the exemplar of the path.  He exemplifies faith as an attitude rather than dictate it as dogma’.  The Sufis ardently accept the Koran as ‘the textbook in the method,’ but it must be according to their own understanding.  They keep on changing, designing, synthesizing.  So they can scarcely conceptualize.  At the best they can say,’ Come where I am; I can show you the way.’  Thus, a Sufi protests, aspires, seeks.  He defies the Hadith, law and theology. Nevertheless he always submits for ‘religious fulfillment’.  To attain the goal, Sufis have designed a language which is most vital for a dialogue between God and man.  It is right language that can unify the individual soul, break down barriers between human and diving discourse, and enable the mystic to come near to the Reality that he is attempting to experience.  In religious terms, this is a quest for unity with the Divine through humanistic terms.  It is an effort to overcome division, to realize the Truth and attain wholeness of being.

Islamic mysticism has given the world a number of celebrities who have enriched our civilization.  Among them are Rabia, Hallaj, Al-Ghazali, Ibn al-Arabi.  Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) was one of the greatest of Sufis in Persia.  In one of his quatrains, he says:

“Awhile, as wont may be
self I did claim.
True self I did not see,
But heard its name.
I, being self-contained,
Self did not merit,
Till leaving self behind,
Did self inherit”

Rumi declares that self-centredness is anathema to realising God. He adds.  “All this talk and turmoil and noise and movement is outside of the veil of silence and calm and rest.  Dost thou hear?  There comes a voice from the brooks of running water.  But when they reach the sea they are quiet, and the sea is neither augmented by their incoming nor diminished by their outgoing”.

No discussion on Sufism is complete without reference to Persian poets. Infact, Sufism has flourished in Persia and India more than anywhere else.  Indian Vedanta and Buddhism, Persia’s poetry and eclecticism-all combined to enrich Sufism.  In the process, Sufism developed into ‘an ethic’ and a subtle metaphysics’.  Its soul is found in a Persian quatrain:

I sought a soul in the sea,
And found a coral there;
Beneath the foam for me,
An ocean all laid bare.
Into my heart’s night,
Along a narrow way
I grope, and lo, the light,
An infinite land of day”.

Annemarie Schimmel is an internationally known authority on Rumi. In her famous book, I am wind, You are fire, she has to say this about al-Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, generally known by his father’s name as Mansur, (“the victorious”): ‘Hallaj, who is famed for his statement “Ana’l haqq, I am the creative Truth”(or as it is interpreted, “I am God”), was cruelly executed in Baghdad on 26 March, 1922. His name became a symbol for the suffering lover of God, and later also to those who claimed the essential unity of all Being; intoxicated with the wine of Divine Love, Hallaj divulged the secret of the essential unity of Being, or also of the loving union between creature and Creator.’

Maulana Rumi supplements Hallaj in the most telling manner:

What is to be done, Muslims?
I, myself, do not know.
I am neither Christian nor Jew,
neither Magian nor Muslim.
I am not from east or west,
nor from land or sea,
I am not from the quarries of nature,
nor from the spheres of heaven,
I am not of earth, nor of water,
nor of air, nor of fire…
I am not from India, nor from China…
My place is placeless,
my trace is traceless.
No body, no soul,
I am from the soul of souls…”

This is the best example of ‘holy worldliness’ and ‘religion-less-ness’ of Sufism.  This is what a modern Christian would say ‘prayer-in-action’ and this helps one to see the meaning of St. John’s ‘doing the truth.’

It is by taking into account the meaning of Islam and other factors that we can find new forms of Islam and modern human ideals which are developing every day.  This approach to Islam is a sharing in God’s Love for the world; it continues the action of God himself in coming to meet man on his (man’s) own terms.  This action is not to be confused with proselytizing.  Rather, it is the search for the dialogue in which Hindus and Christians, Sikhs and Buddhists should be invited to join in. Together with the rethinking, there is need for a study of Indian Islam and the Indian Muslim.  This study should embrace not only Islamic sociology or philosophy but also everything which makes up the Muslim character both as it actually is and as the Muslim would like it to be.  The aim is the establishment of a dialogue which, by its authenticity, can lead to a meaningful dialogue between Hindus and Muslims in India and Christians and Muslims in Europe.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, lecturing in Persian on nationalism in Calcutta (1872), praised love of mankind above all else, quoting the Persian poet Shaikh sa’di Shirazi: “people are organically related to each other, since their creation is from the same soul.  When a limb throbs with pain, all other organs share the pain.”  According to a well-known Islamist Seyd Hossein Nasr, Persia and India have greatly contributed to the making of Sufism. Persia’s Pahlavi and India’s Sanskrit have made Sufism what it is today.  He goes so far as to suggest that.. Persian and India learning, written mostly in Pahlavi and Sanskrit, became as significant as the Greco-Alexandrian learning in Greek and Syriac.  This school became important especially in medicine and astronomy and by the seventh century AD it was probably the most important centre in the world, combining the scientific traditions of the Greeks, the Persians, and the Indians.’

In the year 200, we are in a better position to say this: either we co-exist or we become co-extinct.  And the decision must be made radically.  In 1930, delivering lectures at Manchester College, Oxford, titled The Religion of Man, Rabindranath Tagore said; “There are thinkers who advocate the doctrine of the purity of worlds which can only mean that there are worlds that are absolutely unrelated to each other.  Even if this were true it could never be proved.  For our universe is the sum total of what man feels, knows, imagines, reasons to be, and of whatever is knowable to him now or in another time.  It affects him differently in its different aspects, in its beauty, its inevitable sequence of happenings, its potentiality; and the world proves itself to him only in its varied effects upon his senses, imagination and reasoning mind.

The Sufis appreciate Tagore very much indeed.  They ardently believe what the Koran says emphatically: Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion.’  The Sufis equally appreciate Swami Vivekananda’s ideal of a universal religion: “What then do I mean by the ideal of a universal religion?  I do not mean any one universal philosophy, or any one universal mythology, or any one universal ritual held alike by all: for I know that this world must go on working, wheel within wheel, this intricate mass of machinery, most complex, most wonderful.  What can we do then?  We can make it run smoothly, we can lessen the friction, we can grease the wheels, as it were.  How?  By recognizing the natural necessity of variation.”  The Sufis have recognized this necessity of variation.  Sufism is a kind of reformation-in-reverse.  It creates a quasi-church, says Emest Gellner.  Nevertheless, Sufism is a movement within Islam.  The Sufis assert that all religions are equal in their worth or essence or aim.

Let me summarize with a quotation from Diana L. Eck’s Encountering GOD: “For Muslims, the revelation of the Quran in the “night of power” is not a parochial revelation meant for the ears of Muslims alone, but a revelation to all people, before which the proper response is Islam, literally “Obedience”.  For Muslims, aligning one’s life with the truth God has revealed, which is what Islam means, makes all believers Muslims with a small “m”. Similarly, when Hindus quote the words of the Rig Veda, “Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti, Truth is one, but the wise call it by many names”-they are not claiming this to be the case only for Hindus, but to be universally true.  Similarly, Christians who speak of the Christ event do not speak of a private disclosure of God to Christians alone but of the sanctification of humanity by God, a gift to be claimed by all who will put open the eyes to see it.  In the words of Charles Wesley, “The arms of love that circle me would all mankind embrace.”

- Courtesy SUVICHAR