The Cool Water of the Koran (Part V)
Say: 'I take refuge with the Lord of men, the King of men, the God of men, from the evil of the slinking whisperer who whispers in the breasts of men of jinn and men.' -- Koran 114: 1-6
by Salim Mansur
[This is the fifth Letter on Islam written by Salim Mansur in response to a non-Muslim writer. Letter I is HERE. Letter II is HERE.Letter III is HERE. Letter IV is HERE. -- Ed.]
Dear friend:
An acquaintance recently asked why Muslims, or for that matter people belonging to other faith-traditions, spend such enormous time speaking and writing about matters of faith when the “faithful” continue to do violence against their fellow humans. In some manner this gentleman was re-stating what you have written to me.
On this question individuals have written volumes. Among Muslims I am reminded most of Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), the famous Arab historian-philosopher from North Africa born in Tunis. Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah (“The Introduction”) was in part an effort to understand and explain the violence of Arabs, particularly of the Bedouins or nomads of the desert. His contemplation was the forerunner of what we today take as sociology.
Ibn Khaldun introduced the notion of culture and civilization in writing about human affairs. As a Muslim by birth he took the fundamentals of his faith as given, and wrote at a time when Muslim power across North Africa and into the heartland of Asia was as dominant as when Rome ruled an empire. Ibn Khaldun was perplexed by the nature of violence within the Muslim realm as his family was a victim of the same in Spain from where they departed for refuge in Tunis.
For Ibn Khaldun sedentary dwelling — made possible in cities where an individual found refinement in living, where arts and philosophy flourished and business prospered — accounted for civilization. But he saw an abiding tension between people who built cities and those who raided them. From this tension he conceived an explanation for the cycle of the rise and fall of civilizations and their ruling dynasties.
Ibn Khaldun viewed Islam as a civilizing force for the Arabs, especially for the Arabs of the desert – the Bedouins. Of the Bedouins, Ibn Khaldun wrote, they are “a savage nation, fully accustomed to savagery and the things that cause it… Such a natural disposition is the negation and antithesis of civilization.” Ibn Khaldun would have well understood at once the savage “natural disposition” of Osama bin Laden and the men of al Qaeda and similar organizations that run amuck in the Arab-Muslim world threatening civilization beyond the desert boundaries (real or allegorical) of the world in which they are born.
Another North African, living a thousand years before Ibn Khaldun, also wrote on the violence of men and the ruin of civilized order. St. Augustine (354-430) was born in Thagaste, presently recognized as Souk Ahras in modern Algeria, a town in close proximity to Tunis. Unlike Ibn Khaldun, St. Augustine was born into a pagan household, acquired Manichaean belief, and then in his middle years converted to Christianity.
In his Confessions St. Augustine narrated his spiritual journey in captivating prose of great majesty. I traveled a summer ago to the home town of St. Augustine to pay homage to this great soul from North Africa, and later spent an afternoon meditating at his Cathedral over-looking the city of Annaba built on the Mediterranean at the eastern end of Algeria.
St. Augustine believed human violence resulted from a lack of goodness in the hearts of men or, more pointedly, from the absence of God in their lives. Man, he wrote, “is a great abyss,” and “the moods and attractions of his heart far outnumber the hairs of his head.” The violence men do to others or to themselves is due to insufficient goodness in their hearts. Evil, St. Augustine explained, “does not exist of itself.”
St. Augustine spoke of “true holiness” or goodness as an “interior disposition;” as an inward awakening of the heart to a reality where God resides in the heart of man. A man awakened to this inward reality will be filled with goodness and incapable of doing harm. There would be no evil in him.
The common thread that runs through the writings of St. Augustine and Ibn Khaldun concerns the condition of man, of men insufficient in goodness and of men naturally disposed to savagery. St. Augustine, as a theologian, contemplated on the nature and presence of God and in the manner He revealed himself through Jesus Christ. Ibn Khaldun. trained as a Muslim jurist, contemplated on the nature of the good society based on laws derived from religion revealed in the Koran by a merciful God. They would have made good companions as contemporaries respectfully engaging with each other in the temperate climate of North Africa along the shores of the Mediterranean.
I think of St. Augustine and Ibn Khaldun when I contemplate on the state of our present world, or when I turn to the Koran to read God’s words as they were addressed at a particular time in a particular place to a particular individual, Muhammad. Both North Africans were men of faith. They placed God at the centre of their lives and from this reality drew conclusions for individuals and society in terms of goodness and its insufficiency that breeds evil.
But understanding God in the manner of theologians, philosophers and jurists remains a cold cerebral exercise in explaining a reality that, in its infinity, is elusive. A mystic seeks immersion in the reality of God, yet once he is soaked in that reality he can scarcely communicate his experience to non-mystics. This is the paradox of the human mind striving to comprehend and convey what is unlimited. It is like a flea taking in the size of an elephant.
This is why the Koran, at least for Muslims, is the closest example available of God’s disclosure of Himself to every man and woman in His own words. The purpose of Revelation in the first instance is to make human beings aware of God as the Source of all things, and how they might eventually and of necessity find refuge in His mercy. Everything ultimately is dissolved in God’s goodness as St. Augustine would remind us, and it is this simple eternal truth of which the Koran speaks equally to an illiterate peasant in the field and a university professor engaged in theorizing on the mysterious workings of quantum mechanics. The Persian poet Rumi spoke of this dissolution in his inimitable style as follows:
As salt resolved in the ocean
I was swallowed in God’s sea,
Past faith, past unbelieving,
Past doubt, past certainty.
Suddenly in my bosom
A star shone clear and bright;
All the suns of heaven
Vanished in that star’s light.
My late teacher and friend, Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916-2000), described the Koran (certainly for Muslims) as “the eternal breaking through into time; the unknowable disclosed; the transcendent entering history and remaining here, available to mortals to handle and to appropriate; the divine become apparent.” The Koran, in this particular sense, is God’s mercy for human beings who, unaided by its words, can scarcely imagine truthfully His presence unless He discloses Himself.
It is merely adolescent for men and women to quarrel over God and insist their perspectives are the only truthful ones and others are in error or false. Anyone who experiences the reality of God, even when such experience cannot be articulated, knows that others with similar experiences have been graced with divine mercy.
Those who experience God have their hearts filled with His goodness and in them there is no evil. Of those who merely speak about God, we should remain always wary. about They dress in the garments of religion to mask their politics. And then there are those whose hearts remain closed to God irrespective of how many times they strike their heads on the ground in acts of prayer. Their words and deeds, insufficient in goodness, are evil.
Respectfully,
Salim Mansur
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario and a syndicated columnist in Canada and the United Kingdom. A Muslim native to Calcutta, India, and a noted Islamic scholar, Prof. Mansur has written extensively on Islamic extremism and the challenges facing contemporary Islam.
“From water God made every living thing.”
-Surah Number 21 Ayah Number 30, Koran
My late teacher and friend, Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916-2000), described the Koran (certainly for Muslims) as “the eternal breaking through into time; the unknowable disclosed; the transcendent entering history and remaining here, available to mortals to handle and to appropriate; the divine become apparent.”
Here’s how I would describe the Koran:
“A bad-faith appropriation of other cultures’ experience of the eternal put in the service of temporal ends, an obfuscation of the unknowable’s self-revelation as loving Father, a blockage of the pathway between the transcendent and history via the proclamation of finality, available to despots to manipulate the ignorant, the divine become routinized”
The Koran, in this particular sense, is God’s mercy for human beings who, unaided by its words, can scarcely imagine truthfully His presence unless He discloses Himself.
Actually, except for Arabs, the world had a pretty good idea of how to imagine God truthfully without the Koran.
I realize the professor is trying to explain Islam to a non-Muslim audience, but truly, if he has any intellectual gifts, they should be better utilized explaining why Islam is false to a Muslim audience. I guess the former is a much safer occupation than the latter, but without the latter, the only inevitable result is clash of civilizations (although I prefer the “clash of civilization vs. barbarism” formulation).
I recommend reading the Koran to all my friends. Sadly, few of them do.
The relentless intolerance expressed in the Koran towards those who do not believe according to the Koran’s dictates goes a long way to explaining the current crises in which Islam is overwhelmingly the largest source of violence among the world’s religions.
My late teacher and friend, Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916-2000), described the Koran (certainly for Muslims) as “the eternal breaking through into time; the unknowable disclosed; the transcendent entering history and remaining here, available to mortals to handle and to appropriate; the divine become apparent.” The Koran, in this particular sense, is God’s mercy for human beings who, unaided by its words, can scarcely imagine truthfully His presence unless He discloses Himself.
Sorry, but um, this is already exactly what was done in the Incarnation of Christ and which continues to this day in the Church.
What you are claiming for the Koran is not only completely unoriginal, but its already been done better, as all of it happened in a flesh and blood being as opposed to some scratchings on paper.
Tell me which is the greater creation? Man or some words on paper?
If God were going to break into time as you say, why would he stop at some words on paper? If he were going to make his greatest revealation in time then he would settle for nothing less than his greatest creation as his form.
You seem to just completely ignore the fact that what you are saying is word for word the same as the Christian claim about the Incarnation. You can apparently imagine God breaking into time and space in a book but not in flesh.
Why? Because the Koran denies that the Incarnation happened? Just because it says so?
What a paltry God yours must be since he can only express Himself in time in a book. Either that or he hates and shuns the flesh that he has on the other hand declared to be good and the best of all Creation.
But I am wasting my breath. You are talking only to yourself and hearing only what you want to hear, living in lala land where you can post only your florid replies to letters that noone else has seen with no accountabilty or obligation to either fully disclose or to reply to anyone speaking back to you. I guess you must think you are doing a great work not realizing that you are just annoying people, especially me.
Please stop your warped regurgitation of Christian theology in Muslim guise. Its getting really old now.
Peggy,
When your first idea of God is that he’s the moon , I guess his becoming a book is a huge advance.
Pity they don’t seem to be able to make any more advances.
to venividivici:
Like Salim, I am a friend of Rumi’s who was loved in his day and continues to be loved today for his expansive and all-encompassing wisdom. He was publicly challenged over this by an arch bigot of the day, a Muslim dignitary by the name of Qonavi, who used these words: “You claim to be at one with 72 religious sects, but the Jews cannot agree with the Christians, and the Christians cannot agree with Muslims. If they cannot agree with each other, how could you agree with them all?” To this Rumi answered, “Yes, you are right, I agree with you too.”
In the same spirit, I say to you, venividivici: “Yes, you are right, I agree with you too.”
There is no doubt, no doubt at all, that the Quran is as you see it, from where you stand. As a non-Muslim myself, having become more intensely acquainted with Islam since sep11, I see it in a similar way.
You are not happy because Salim is failing to join many other very prominent and articulate ex-Muslims who are clarifying that negative view of Islam and of its central cultural expression in the Quran. Those ex-Muslims are doing a fine job. They don’t need Salim’s help.
On the other hand, much of the early “Islam is a religion of peace” message was delivered by saccharine apologists who painted Mohammad in a way suspiciously similar to those vapid portraits of Jesus found in most Christian churches today. There was no reality to any of it.
Your own description of the Quran introduces some much needed grit.
However, I applaud Salim for taking what has now become a brave stance. His realistic political assessments of the Islamic world today have angered many of his co-religionists. Now, his insistence both on Islam’s historical civilizing influence and on a basic integrity (what could be called an “eternal verity”) of its core spiritual message, these are drawing the wrath both of Christians and of post-Christian “secularists”.
Thus does he stand alone. Where is the “safety” in that?
It is neither his style nor his calling, it seems, to reply to the commenters here. However, whenever and however I can, I will try to lend my support here, albeit from a nominally non-Muslim standpoint.
Respectfully,
Anne
to hgwells:
I would simply quote back to you some words from your own namesake, who does agree but also goes further.
[Muhammad] seems to have been a man compounded of very considerable vanity, greed, cunning, self-deception and quite sincere religious passion. He dictated a book of injunctions and expositions, the Koran, which he declared was communicated to him from God. Regarded as literature or philosophy the Koran is certainly unworthy of its alleged Divine authorship.
Yet when the manifest defects of Muhammad’s life and writings have been allowed for, there remains in Islam, this faith he imposed upon the Arabs, much power and inspiration. One is its uncompromising monotheism; its simple enthusiastic faith in the rule and fatherhood of God and its freedom from theological complications. Another is its complete detachment from the sacrificial priest and the temple. It is an entirely prophetic religion, proof against any possibility of relapse towards blood sacrifices. In the Koran the limited and ceremonial nature of the pilgrimage to Mecca is stated beyond the possibility of dispute, and every precaution was taken by Muhammad to prevent the deification of himself after his death. And a third element of strength lay in the insistence of Islam upon the perfect brotherhood and equality before God of all believers, whatever their colour, origin or status.
source: H.G. Wells: A Short History of the World.
Dear Peggy,
Please excuse any confusion in my name. My “real world” name is Anne but my typekey identity is Arizona.
You are quite correct in reminding us of God’s incarnation in the flesh of Jesus Christ. However, we mere mortals like something tangible to hold onto and Jesus-in-the-flesh is no longer with us. Back when He knew that His end was nigh, He gave us the simple ceremony of breaking bread and drinking wine in remembrance of Him. The trouble was that, in time, this became an elaborate ceremony that could only be performed by (male) priests. The truth is that, any day and every day, if we break bread and drink wine while remembering Him, then the transubstantiation happens, with or without a (male) priest in attendance.
Islam went one further in the process of simplification. The Quran allows any Muslim to be in touch with God simply by handling a smallish book. You could say that, in throwing out the need for a priest and replacing him with a book as divine mediation, Islam foreshadowed the Christian Reformation. Indeed, a lot of similarities have been noted between Islam and Protestantism, not least of which are the abhorrence of imagery and of alcohol as approaches to divinity.
I can sense your frustration that Salim doesn’t enter into further discussion through these commentaries and I will try, in whatever way I can, to fill this gap for you. I cannot be Salim, of course, but I can be a friend in your search for truth and for peace.
Respectfully,
Anne