Page 8 - Chapter One:
"All three dimensions of Islam have been present wherever there have been Muslims.
People cannot take their religion seriously without engaging their bodies, their minds,
and their hearts; or their activity, their thinking, and their being. But these dimensions
became historically differentiated in many forms, the diversity of which has all sorts of
causes, about which historians have written no end of books. After all, we are talking
about how Muslims practice their religion, how they conceptualize their faith and their
understanding of things, and how they express their quest to be near to God. We are
talking about various branches of Islamic law and institutions of government, diverse
schools of thought investigating the nature of God and the human soul, and multifarious
organizations that guide people on the path of spiritual aspiration and give focus to
their vastly different experiences of God’s presence.
"These diverse
expressions of Islam, which have undergone tremendous historical and regional variation,
have been given many names over Islamic history. The whole situation has become much more
complex because of the investigations of modern scholars, who have had their own programs,
agendas, and goals and who have employed diverse interpretive schemes in their attempts to
make sense of Islamic history in contemporary terms."
Commentary: While
it is clear that the author of Sufism - A Short Introduction is
"talking about how Muslims practice their religion, how they conceptualize their
faith and their understanding of things, and how they express their quest to be near to
God", it is not at all clear that talking about these things is going to get one any
closer to the ‘reality without a name’. In fact, the author has created
something of a ‘Tower of Babel’ by referring and/or alluding to all of the
diverse ways in which Muslims from different historical periods and geographical regions
have constructed institutions, schools, and so on, for the purpose of propagating their
particular interpretations of Islam. In addition, the author notes how further confusion
is added to this quest for understanding by modern scholars who have their own agendas,
biases, and interests to impose upon Islam.
According to the author,
such diversity exists because of the "vastly different experiences of God’s
presence" which is reflected in all of the accounts and institutions that have been
generated, both currently, as well as in the past. However, there are a number of
questions which might be raised concerning the author’s method of setting the stage
for subsequent discussion.
For example, one can
agree with the author when he states that modern scholars have "their own programs,
agendas, and goals" which employ "diverse interpretive schemes in" these
scholars’ "attempts to make sense of Islamic history in contemporary
terms". The question which needs to be asked, however, is why bother bringing modern
scholars into the picture at all?
The ‘reality without
a name’ existed before modern scholars came along. Knowledge concerning the
‘reality without a name’ has been transmitted from generation to generation
quite independently of the scholars. Furthermore, the ‘reality without a name’
still exists today far beyond the horizons of the books, papers, articles, and classes
which are produced by the modern scholars.
If a person wants to find
out about the ‘reality without a name’, one might make better progress if one
were not to ask an academic scholar anything about this issue. Instead, one
has a far better likelihood of learning something of real value in this respect if one
stays far removed from the hallowed halls of academia and goes in search of individuals
who actually know something, first hand, of the ‘reality without a name’ -
although occasionally ... very occasionally ... one might come across a modern scholar who
also happens to be on intimate terms with the ‘reality without a name’.
With a few notable
exceptions, the biggest contribution of modern scholars to this area of inquiry is
confusion. This is so because most of these scholars are quite confused themselves about
the nature of the ‘reality without a name’ since they have never undertaken the
quest to find the Source of this ‘reality’ nor have they imbibed anything of its
‘taste’.
Similarly, what Muslims
do or think or feel does not necessarily have anything to do with the ‘reality
without a name’. The criterion for relevance in this regard depends not only on
whether, or not, a given Muslim has apprenticed for an extended period of time under the
direction and assistance of a qualified Sufi shaykh, but also depends on whether such an
individual has learned anything of value during this period of apprenticeship.
When the author speaks of
the "vastly different experiences of God’s presence" which feed the
diversity of interpretations by Muslims or modern scholars, he is making an assumption.
More specifically, while it is true to say that God is always present and, therefore,
whatever experiences one has are an engagement of that Divine presence, it does not follow
that all understandings of this engagement process are of equal value or equally
insightful with respect to helping one to become properly oriented toward the
‘reality without a name’.
Consequently, the fact
there are, and have been, "vastly different experiences of God’s presence"
is, in and of itself, irrelevant as far as coming to understand the nature of the
‘reality without a name’ is concerned. Yet, the author is referring to all of
this diversity of experience under several possible assumptions - and which assumption is
operative is not made clear by the author and, paradoxically, both assumptions may be at
work simultaneously.
On the one hand, there
are indications in the writing of the author that sifting through these "vastly
different experiences of God’s presence", in the hopes of finding some glimpse
of the ‘reality without a name’, may be worthwhile, in some sense. On the other
hand, the author also seems to indicate, from time to time, that examining and analyzing
these ‘vastly different experiences’ only will serve to bog one down,
hopelessly, in a quagmire of conflicting opinions.
Whichever assumption may
be operative, one needs to ask what kinds of forces were, and are, filtering these
"vastly different experiences of God’s presence"? The "nafs" or
carnal soul, various kinds of conceptual/theoretical systems, political and social
movements, satanic suggestions, as well as ‘dunya’ (the ways in which we become
entangled with the world of everyday experience through our desires, appetites,
motivations, and emotions) can all serve as filters which color, shape, alter, and veil
experience so that one has an extremely distorted understanding of the nature of
God’s presence in one’s life.
The author unnecessarily
confuses matters by mentioning all of these diverse points of view. What has happened, or
has been written, or has been constructed - historically, or in the present - is
irrelevant unless the mode of investigation at issue (then or now) is (or was) conducted
under the watchful eye and heart of a sincere participant in the ‘reality without a
name’. Everything else is hearsay and/or vulnerable to the many forces which actively
seek to undermine learning the truth about, or stepping onto, the Sufi Path.
The nature of God’s
presence can only be understood through the faculties within the individual which have
been deposited, by Divinity, into the ‘fitra’ (or original primordial spiritual
potential) of that person for precisely such a purpose. These ‘faculties’
include: the heart, the sirr (mystery), the ruh (spirit), the ‘kafi’ (the
hidden), and the ‘aqfah’ (the more hidden). Moreover, all of these faculties
must be brought on line, so to speak, be working properly, and in concert with one
another, for the individual’s experience of the presence of God to provide useful
insights concerning the nature of the ‘reality without a name’.
The author of Sufism
- A Short Introduction might have said something along the foregoing lines, but,
unfortunately, he didn’t. Instead, a reader of his book is likely to be left, at this
juncture, with an impression that little but confusion, differences of opinion, biases,
and sundry interpretations presently permeate, and have - in the past - characterized, the
study of, and search for, the ‘reality without a name’.
There is, of course, a
certain truth underlying the impression which the author has created since many of those
who have written about the ‘reality without a name’ didn’t (or don’t)
know, as pointed out earlier, what they were (are) talking about, and, therefore, one
should not be surprised that a tremendously diverse body of interpretive literature should
have arisen from people who were (or are) themselves either ignorant of, or confused
about, the ‘reality without a name’. The foregoing truth notwithstanding, the
author made a mistake by not clearly stating that this diverse, incredibly large body of
interpretive literature (both historical and contemporary) has, for the most part (and
there are exceptions to this general principle), nothing to do with the ‘reality
without a name’.
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