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 back 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 back, 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 back 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