The following is a (late) dialogue I wrote for class while in Indiana with Daisy Khan. These individuals are not real characters, and any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.
On the Exaltation of the Spirit: An Intrafaith Dialogue about Ibn Arabi
The following is a dialogue between Zaid, a traditionalist Muslim and Ayesha, a Sufi Muslim. Seated at Cafe Reggio on MacDougal Avenue, the two friends are discussing the their reading of Ibn Arabi from their Islamic Studies class.
ZAID: One of my favorite verses in the Qur'an, Ayesha, is when Allah says, "And if all the trees on earth were pens and the ocean (were ink), with seven oceans behind it to add to its (supply), yet would not the words of Alah be exhausted (in writing): for Allah is Exalted in Power, full of Wisdom." (31:27 ) I believe that in surah Al-Lugman, the inexhaustible supplies of pens and ink refer to the infinite evidence of God manifest in nature. Don't you agree?
AYESHA: [Smiling] I do. But this is all very heavy on a Thursday afternoon coffee break.
ZAID: [Returns her smile] Well, this verse attests to the physical manifestations of God in our natural world.
AYESHA: Of course, but the wealth of words and letters necessarily means there is an accompanying wealth of meanings, and interpretations. Even in this verse, the trees and oceans are literal manifestations of God's creation, as well as figurative symbols of infinity since water and trees are in a seemingly infinite supply. But there is a distinction implicit here between the exterior (or zahir in Arabic) world of nature and the interior (batin) world of meaning. I admit this distinction is fuzzy, given the overlap of the exterior and interior when we approach the Qur’an or any understanding of our Creator.
ZAID: But what do you think happens when the message within the Qur’an is considered more metaphoric than it is literal? What happens when mystic thinkers like ibn Arabi render the Qur’an one massive metaphor? Aside from the fact that he may be sacrilegious and heretical, ibn Arabi is also so esoteric that his writings are guilty of the same inaccessibility that he purports to break down. His approach to the Qur’an, through metaphor, symbolism, figurative language—these are fine techniques, but ibn Arabi’s dealings with the Qur’an are totally problematic.
AYESHA: Given that the Qur’an is a timeless open scripture with multiple layers of meaning, different people can approach the text differently at different times of human history. Do you think that if for 1425 years, Muslims only read the Qur’an literally, that there could be any form of progress? While you may be satisfied with a literal reading of the Qur’an, I may need more color, more nuances in order to understand the message of Islam. I believe ibn ‘Arabi was one of those individuals in history that allowed us to move beyond constricted, one-dimensional thought. In fact--
ZAID: You think I’m a constricted, one-dimensional thinker?
AYESHA: My dear, you may be able to reference a passage of the Qur’an that speaks to the multiplicity of meaning and interpretation of the Qur’an, but do you really believe it? You prefer citing the safe binaries of halal and haram, and the laws of Shari’ah to actually giving me a nuanced understanding of our creeds and practices.
ZAID: And this makes me a one-dimensional thinker?
AYESHA: Well, you’re no ibn Arabi, Zaid.
ZAID: Alhamdullilah, I‘m not. I have several critiques of this man, who for some reason, is still very popular. First, his ideas of both transcendence and immanence are so esoteric that his material is virtually intellectually inaccessible to me. Granted that I can accept that God works within these two fundamental modalities of transcendence and immanence without contradiction, I still cannot really understand where ibn ‘Arabi is going. Second, he is guilty of manipulating our scripture for his own esoteric quest for meaning. He may present some interesting ideas about God, and push our understanding of textual Islam, but he has no authority to do it. Like other mystics, he might as well be pulling material from his kister, Ayesha.
AYESHA: Let me take one claim at a time. Or do you have more?
ZAID: Oh yes. He sounds like a heretic. He does not consider fiqh in his mystical musings. He treats the Qur’an as more a pretext than a text (Chodkiewicz, 22).
AYESHA: Ok. I will refute your claims against ibn Arabi on the following grounds. (1) Ibn Arabi was a revolutionary thinker that pushes our textual and therefore conceptual understanding of Islam by dissolving notions of binaries (2) Ibn Arabi takes risks—what you call esoteric musings—in his exegesis that are necessary and important for the Muslim community to progress intellectually, and spiritually. So let us begin with “The Wisdom of Exaltation in the Word of Noah.” First, do you think God can be both transcendent of our limited human understanding and intimate to our very psyche?
ZAID: God created us with a limited understanding of Him. But God also created us so that we may know Him. So yes, I suppose God can be both transcendent and immanent.
AYESHA: This is ibn ‘Arabi’s first claim. We both agree that it is a valid premise, meaning it is possible for it to be true. His next claim is that prophet Noah was of the transcendentalist camp, meaning he believed that God was beyond human reality, thought, and comprehension. Throughout Surah Al-Araf, prophet Noah calls his people to righteousness by repenting their wickedness. This is typical of prophets to insist that that God is most Exalted, most Great, Supreme, Ruler of the Heavens and Earth. Don’t you agree?
ZAID: Yes, the purpose of prophets is to deliver God’s message of supreme authority to different communities at different times.
AYESHA: In the case of Noah’s community, however, the gods were intervening idols that were worshipped in order to gain favors, or better fortunes. We would expect Noah to denounce idol-worship for the One God, in the tradition of all Quranic prophets, However, the dilemma is that ibn Arabi doesn’t seem to think the pre-Islamic kaffir community was so bad. In fact, ibn Arabi goes further to say that Noah fails to show his people the Oneness of God because of the fact that Noah does not allow for the coexistence of both immanence and transcendence. Ibn Arabi’s Noah does not recognize God as both immanent, in the sense that He is accessible to our daily lives, and transcendent, in the sense that he is beyond human suffering, and intervening selectively in human history. These two camps represent the two “fundamental modalities of divine Self-expression” for the (human) being to recognize in God (Austin, 72). And more importantly, transcendence and immanence are inexorably linked in ibn Arabi’s approach to the Word of God.
ZAID: So these qualities of transcendence and immanence are in reference to God or human beings or both?
AYESHA: Both. Ibn Arabi considers God to be both transcendent and immanent. But Ibn Arabi also suggests that the qualities of God are manifest in His Creation. For example, the text says that Arabi regarded the human being as an “isthmus, [as] the microcosmic synthesis of form and spirit, being the spirit of the form and the form of the spirit” (72).
ZAID: But what does that mean? It looks great on paper but it hardly makes sense.
AYESHA: You can think about the distinction between form and spirit as the timeless debate in philosophy between body and soul, or the phenomenological difference between mental and (physical) brain states.
ZAID: I’m not a philosophy student Ayesha. And that hardly makes ibn Arabi more accessible. I recognize that transcendence and immanence are binaries. But God is beyond all binaries. He exists close to us in our hearts, but He remains unknowable. This is the simple paradox. But what is the purpose of this paradoxical relationship between God and humankind? Is it not better to leave it at the paradox? How can we move beyond the seen and unseen world, between the physical form and the spirit, beyond the physical manifestations of God in reality and the spiritual realm that we cannot describe or know? And is it a simple matter of negotiation between the two realms of understanding? Do we simply sit back and recognize that God is both transcendent and immanent?
AYESHA: That is where ibn Arabi only begins. He starts at the conjunction of “and” and moves so much further beyond the dictates of sentential logic, beyond syntax and sentence form and structure. There is a message here, embedded within our reading, that I don’t think you fully understand.
ZAID: How can if I am one dimensional, Ayesha? I do believe the world can be divided into the seen, and unseen, and that God is a transcendental force that exists beyond these binaries. But I do not see ibn Arabi’s point. How does a critique of Prophet Noah’s deliverance of revelation further us on our path of Islam? What is the point of describing Noah as a not-so-perfect prophet?
AYESHA: I take it then that you were less than satisfied by our reading last night.
ZAID: It is more than dissatisfaction. I feel at a loss. I cannot see how ibn ‘Arabi has anything more to offer than the Qur’an already offers. What he presents is simply a rewording of Quranic text. But this reworking, Ayesha, is prohibited in the Quran: "The Words of God do not change" (Quran 10 :64). How do you explain that? And how does a rereading of Noah as an unsuccessful prophet help us in our faith?
AYESHA: My dear, it is not a simple matter of faith. Between iman and kufr, there are a great many layers of options. We need to move beyond the binarism of the exterior (the physical realm of nature) and the interior (the realm of heart, or spirit) to a third space.
ZAID: What is this third space Ayesha? Your theories of postmodernism are hardly applicable to ibn Arabi and the Qu’ran.
AYESHA: We need to move to a metaphoric space in which ibn Arabi is not attacked as a heretic on the simple fact that he is a dissenting voice. We need a space in which critical thought is not haram. If Ibn Arabi were sitting right here, he would be dismayed to see how Muslims, especially young Muslims like you, have stopped critically thinking about what they’re reading. We are satisfied with the basic homework assignment: declare faith, pray, fast, pay charity, and go on haj. What ibn Arabi and other Gnostics do, and what they call others to do, is a sort of spiritual extra credit. Ibn Arabi encourages us to move to a world of imagination, in which we are breathing the shahadah, not as words but as Truth. There is no God but God and Muhammad (pbuh) was His messenger. We need to move beyond such an utterance, and beyond the basic practice of our faiths, to actual thought. Ibn Arabi would say that we need to stop fearing critical thought because it may temper our faith. So let’s move beyond binaries because God is an integration of all binaries, and so we, too, should be beyond those binaries.
ZAID: Binaries? Are you kidding? Ibn Arabi does not do more than point out binaries. Much of this text is about the binaries of transcendence and immanence, which to me appear to be fancy ism-words for interiority and exteriority. Transcendence is the idea that God is above, and beyond all polarities, ideas, concepts—but somehow we can reach God if we think hard enough. This is not possible, Ayesha, because God endows us with limits to our reason.
AYESHA: But truth does not stop with transcendence. You can’t merely say, well, God is beyond our limited understanding, so let us put Him high above us. Ibn Arabi would agree: “he who asserts God is purely transcendent is either a fool or a rogue, even if he be a professed believer” (74).
ZAID: Now I am a fool? Great.
AYESHA: [smiling] Zaid that is another discussion entirely. But really, if the Qur’an is to transcend our tongues, and reach our hearts, we must do the extra credit homework assignments. If we insist either only on His transcendence or His immanence, then we restrict God, and therefore, also limit our hearts. I believe this idea speaks to the fact that ibn Arabi brings God back up to a realm that is not fully comprehensible.
ZAID: So it’s good to be confused now.
AYESHA: No. I think mostly through theology we bring God down to a human level. People repeat his name hundreds of times, assign Him 99 attributes, render Him “king”—but these do not capture the essence of God. These are mere rituals and belief systems that bring God to our level. That is to say, if you do X, Y, Z, you will reach God is an illusion. Rather, spiritual teachers like ibn Arabi put God back up in His place. Ibn Arabi not only revamps God, his work also keeps Islam dynamic. His work has inspired so much thought, criticism, and contemplation—that really is the point of a religious teacher. When individuals are free to think, and feel entitled to take religion beyond what we currently know, then religion is not static, or one-dimensional.
And if the Qu'ran is a timeless, universal text and message (which we agree it is), then surely our interpretations of the text must remain fluid and applicable in all times to the Word. The Qur’an should allow our hearts to open, to revive the message to all who seek it, rather than constrict from a rigid, one-dimensional Quranic interpretations. Rather, if we are to successively increase our knowledge of Allah, then surely we must strive to understand the Word, to internalize the Quran in our hearts. We cannot simply critique ibn Arabi as an illegitimate teacher. If we are going to plunge into a sea of spiritual knowledge, we cannot merely remain at the shore (Chodkiewicz, 23). Perhaps he was enlightened, and guided by the noor of Allah (Quran 39:22) to offer us a new understanding of the Qur’an. The threat of this new understanding is what allows others to deem him a heretic or atheist (Chodkiewicz,19). It is this difference of thought that threatens the status quo that allows traditionalists to place ibn Arabi at the fringes.
ZAID: Well, thank you for that monologue. I know that every time I read the Quran, I feel like I take away something different. But unlike ibn Arabi, I don't pretend to be a scholar quoting heavily from Arabic text. I agree that the multiplicity of meanings and interpretations is what allows the Qur’an to be a timeless, universal, and relevant text today. But I suppose I am uncomfortable with subscribing to his position, which seems to be outside of traditionalist Islamic discourse. He was a Gnostic, after all.
AYESHA: That is a superficial difference Zaid. There is a hadith in which the Prophet (pbuh) said that the difference between the one who remembers God and the one who doesn't is like the difference between the living and the dead. If as believers, our hearts are alive, we ought to revere the heart that remembers God no matter what the form of that devotional practice. One can spend six minutes whirling with one’s arms waiting for God’s embrace. Or one can write about Noah’s failure to combine transcendence and immanence in summoning his people to God. Whatever the mechanism for critical thought, exploration and faith, I believe there is legitimacy to it, especially if your heart resonates with what you are experiencing.
ZAID: I agree. It’s not that "everything of which we speak in our meetings and in our writings comes from the Quran and its treasures"—but rather that everything is derived from a faith in the Oneness of God. And God guides our hearts to truth, as it perhaps guided ibn Arabi’s heart to share his bezels of wisdom.
On the Exaltation of the Spirit: An Intrafaith Dialogue about Ibn Arabi
The following is a dialogue between Zaid, a traditionalist Muslim and Ayesha, a Sufi Muslim. Seated at Cafe Reggio on MacDougal Avenue, the two friends are discussing the their reading of Ibn Arabi from their Islamic Studies class.
ZAID: One of my favorite verses in the Qur'an, Ayesha, is when Allah says, "And if all the trees on earth were pens and the ocean (were ink), with seven oceans behind it to add to its (supply), yet would not the words of Alah be exhausted (in writing): for Allah is Exalted in Power, full of Wisdom." (31:27 ) I believe that in surah Al-Lugman, the inexhaustible supplies of pens and ink refer to the infinite evidence of God manifest in nature. Don't you agree?
AYESHA: [Smiling] I do. But this is all very heavy on a Thursday afternoon coffee break.
ZAID: [Returns her smile] Well, this verse attests to the physical manifestations of God in our natural world.
AYESHA: Of course, but the wealth of words and letters necessarily means there is an accompanying wealth of meanings, and interpretations. Even in this verse, the trees and oceans are literal manifestations of God's creation, as well as figurative symbols of infinity since water and trees are in a seemingly infinite supply. But there is a distinction implicit here between the exterior (or zahir in Arabic) world of nature and the interior (batin) world of meaning. I admit this distinction is fuzzy, given the overlap of the exterior and interior when we approach the Qur’an or any understanding of our Creator.
ZAID: But what do you think happens when the message within the Qur’an is considered more metaphoric than it is literal? What happens when mystic thinkers like ibn Arabi render the Qur’an one massive metaphor? Aside from the fact that he may be sacrilegious and heretical, ibn Arabi is also so esoteric that his writings are guilty of the same inaccessibility that he purports to break down. His approach to the Qur’an, through metaphor, symbolism, figurative language—these are fine techniques, but ibn Arabi’s dealings with the Qur’an are totally problematic.
AYESHA: Given that the Qur’an is a timeless open scripture with multiple layers of meaning, different people can approach the text differently at different times of human history. Do you think that if for 1425 years, Muslims only read the Qur’an literally, that there could be any form of progress? While you may be satisfied with a literal reading of the Qur’an, I may need more color, more nuances in order to understand the message of Islam. I believe ibn ‘Arabi was one of those individuals in history that allowed us to move beyond constricted, one-dimensional thought. In fact--
ZAID: You think I’m a constricted, one-dimensional thinker?
AYESHA: My dear, you may be able to reference a passage of the Qur’an that speaks to the multiplicity of meaning and interpretation of the Qur’an, but do you really believe it? You prefer citing the safe binaries of halal and haram, and the laws of Shari’ah to actually giving me a nuanced understanding of our creeds and practices.
ZAID: And this makes me a one-dimensional thinker?
AYESHA: Well, you’re no ibn Arabi, Zaid.
ZAID: Alhamdullilah, I‘m not. I have several critiques of this man, who for some reason, is still very popular. First, his ideas of both transcendence and immanence are so esoteric that his material is virtually intellectually inaccessible to me. Granted that I can accept that God works within these two fundamental modalities of transcendence and immanence without contradiction, I still cannot really understand where ibn ‘Arabi is going. Second, he is guilty of manipulating our scripture for his own esoteric quest for meaning. He may present some interesting ideas about God, and push our understanding of textual Islam, but he has no authority to do it. Like other mystics, he might as well be pulling material from his kister, Ayesha.
AYESHA: Let me take one claim at a time. Or do you have more?
ZAID: Oh yes. He sounds like a heretic. He does not consider fiqh in his mystical musings. He treats the Qur’an as more a pretext than a text (Chodkiewicz, 22).
AYESHA: Ok. I will refute your claims against ibn Arabi on the following grounds. (1) Ibn Arabi was a revolutionary thinker that pushes our textual and therefore conceptual understanding of Islam by dissolving notions of binaries (2) Ibn Arabi takes risks—what you call esoteric musings—in his exegesis that are necessary and important for the Muslim community to progress intellectually, and spiritually. So let us begin with “The Wisdom of Exaltation in the Word of Noah.” First, do you think God can be both transcendent of our limited human understanding and intimate to our very psyche?
ZAID: God created us with a limited understanding of Him. But God also created us so that we may know Him. So yes, I suppose God can be both transcendent and immanent.
AYESHA: This is ibn ‘Arabi’s first claim. We both agree that it is a valid premise, meaning it is possible for it to be true. His next claim is that prophet Noah was of the transcendentalist camp, meaning he believed that God was beyond human reality, thought, and comprehension. Throughout Surah Al-Araf, prophet Noah calls his people to righteousness by repenting their wickedness. This is typical of prophets to insist that that God is most Exalted, most Great, Supreme, Ruler of the Heavens and Earth. Don’t you agree?
ZAID: Yes, the purpose of prophets is to deliver God’s message of supreme authority to different communities at different times.
AYESHA: In the case of Noah’s community, however, the gods were intervening idols that were worshipped in order to gain favors, or better fortunes. We would expect Noah to denounce idol-worship for the One God, in the tradition of all Quranic prophets, However, the dilemma is that ibn Arabi doesn’t seem to think the pre-Islamic kaffir community was so bad. In fact, ibn Arabi goes further to say that Noah fails to show his people the Oneness of God because of the fact that Noah does not allow for the coexistence of both immanence and transcendence. Ibn Arabi’s Noah does not recognize God as both immanent, in the sense that He is accessible to our daily lives, and transcendent, in the sense that he is beyond human suffering, and intervening selectively in human history. These two camps represent the two “fundamental modalities of divine Self-expression” for the (human) being to recognize in God (Austin, 72). And more importantly, transcendence and immanence are inexorably linked in ibn Arabi’s approach to the Word of God.
ZAID: So these qualities of transcendence and immanence are in reference to God or human beings or both?
AYESHA: Both. Ibn Arabi considers God to be both transcendent and immanent. But Ibn Arabi also suggests that the qualities of God are manifest in His Creation. For example, the text says that Arabi regarded the human being as an “isthmus, [as] the microcosmic synthesis of form and spirit, being the spirit of the form and the form of the spirit” (72).
ZAID: But what does that mean? It looks great on paper but it hardly makes sense.
AYESHA: You can think about the distinction between form and spirit as the timeless debate in philosophy between body and soul, or the phenomenological difference between mental and (physical) brain states.
ZAID: I’m not a philosophy student Ayesha. And that hardly makes ibn Arabi more accessible. I recognize that transcendence and immanence are binaries. But God is beyond all binaries. He exists close to us in our hearts, but He remains unknowable. This is the simple paradox. But what is the purpose of this paradoxical relationship between God and humankind? Is it not better to leave it at the paradox? How can we move beyond the seen and unseen world, between the physical form and the spirit, beyond the physical manifestations of God in reality and the spiritual realm that we cannot describe or know? And is it a simple matter of negotiation between the two realms of understanding? Do we simply sit back and recognize that God is both transcendent and immanent?
AYESHA: That is where ibn Arabi only begins. He starts at the conjunction of “and” and moves so much further beyond the dictates of sentential logic, beyond syntax and sentence form and structure. There is a message here, embedded within our reading, that I don’t think you fully understand.
ZAID: How can if I am one dimensional, Ayesha? I do believe the world can be divided into the seen, and unseen, and that God is a transcendental force that exists beyond these binaries. But I do not see ibn Arabi’s point. How does a critique of Prophet Noah’s deliverance of revelation further us on our path of Islam? What is the point of describing Noah as a not-so-perfect prophet?
AYESHA: I take it then that you were less than satisfied by our reading last night.
ZAID: It is more than dissatisfaction. I feel at a loss. I cannot see how ibn ‘Arabi has anything more to offer than the Qur’an already offers. What he presents is simply a rewording of Quranic text. But this reworking, Ayesha, is prohibited in the Quran: "The Words of God do not change" (Quran 10 :64). How do you explain that? And how does a rereading of Noah as an unsuccessful prophet help us in our faith?
AYESHA: My dear, it is not a simple matter of faith. Between iman and kufr, there are a great many layers of options. We need to move beyond the binarism of the exterior (the physical realm of nature) and the interior (the realm of heart, or spirit) to a third space.
ZAID: What is this third space Ayesha? Your theories of postmodernism are hardly applicable to ibn Arabi and the Qu’ran.
AYESHA: We need to move to a metaphoric space in which ibn Arabi is not attacked as a heretic on the simple fact that he is a dissenting voice. We need a space in which critical thought is not haram. If Ibn Arabi were sitting right here, he would be dismayed to see how Muslims, especially young Muslims like you, have stopped critically thinking about what they’re reading. We are satisfied with the basic homework assignment: declare faith, pray, fast, pay charity, and go on haj. What ibn Arabi and other Gnostics do, and what they call others to do, is a sort of spiritual extra credit. Ibn Arabi encourages us to move to a world of imagination, in which we are breathing the shahadah, not as words but as Truth. There is no God but God and Muhammad (pbuh) was His messenger. We need to move beyond such an utterance, and beyond the basic practice of our faiths, to actual thought. Ibn Arabi would say that we need to stop fearing critical thought because it may temper our faith. So let’s move beyond binaries because God is an integration of all binaries, and so we, too, should be beyond those binaries.
ZAID: Binaries? Are you kidding? Ibn Arabi does not do more than point out binaries. Much of this text is about the binaries of transcendence and immanence, which to me appear to be fancy ism-words for interiority and exteriority. Transcendence is the idea that God is above, and beyond all polarities, ideas, concepts—but somehow we can reach God if we think hard enough. This is not possible, Ayesha, because God endows us with limits to our reason.
AYESHA: But truth does not stop with transcendence. You can’t merely say, well, God is beyond our limited understanding, so let us put Him high above us. Ibn Arabi would agree: “he who asserts God is purely transcendent is either a fool or a rogue, even if he be a professed believer” (74).
ZAID: Now I am a fool? Great.
AYESHA: [smiling] Zaid that is another discussion entirely. But really, if the Qur’an is to transcend our tongues, and reach our hearts, we must do the extra credit homework assignments. If we insist either only on His transcendence or His immanence, then we restrict God, and therefore, also limit our hearts. I believe this idea speaks to the fact that ibn Arabi brings God back up to a realm that is not fully comprehensible.
ZAID: So it’s good to be confused now.
AYESHA: No. I think mostly through theology we bring God down to a human level. People repeat his name hundreds of times, assign Him 99 attributes, render Him “king”—but these do not capture the essence of God. These are mere rituals and belief systems that bring God to our level. That is to say, if you do X, Y, Z, you will reach God is an illusion. Rather, spiritual teachers like ibn Arabi put God back up in His place. Ibn Arabi not only revamps God, his work also keeps Islam dynamic. His work has inspired so much thought, criticism, and contemplation—that really is the point of a religious teacher. When individuals are free to think, and feel entitled to take religion beyond what we currently know, then religion is not static, or one-dimensional.
And if the Qu'ran is a timeless, universal text and message (which we agree it is), then surely our interpretations of the text must remain fluid and applicable in all times to the Word. The Qur’an should allow our hearts to open, to revive the message to all who seek it, rather than constrict from a rigid, one-dimensional Quranic interpretations. Rather, if we are to successively increase our knowledge of Allah, then surely we must strive to understand the Word, to internalize the Quran in our hearts. We cannot simply critique ibn Arabi as an illegitimate teacher. If we are going to plunge into a sea of spiritual knowledge, we cannot merely remain at the shore (Chodkiewicz, 23). Perhaps he was enlightened, and guided by the noor of Allah (Quran 39:22) to offer us a new understanding of the Qur’an. The threat of this new understanding is what allows others to deem him a heretic or atheist (Chodkiewicz,19). It is this difference of thought that threatens the status quo that allows traditionalists to place ibn Arabi at the fringes.
ZAID: Well, thank you for that monologue. I know that every time I read the Quran, I feel like I take away something different. But unlike ibn Arabi, I don't pretend to be a scholar quoting heavily from Arabic text. I agree that the multiplicity of meanings and interpretations is what allows the Qur’an to be a timeless, universal, and relevant text today. But I suppose I am uncomfortable with subscribing to his position, which seems to be outside of traditionalist Islamic discourse. He was a Gnostic, after all.
AYESHA: That is a superficial difference Zaid. There is a hadith in which the Prophet (pbuh) said that the difference between the one who remembers God and the one who doesn't is like the difference between the living and the dead. If as believers, our hearts are alive, we ought to revere the heart that remembers God no matter what the form of that devotional practice. One can spend six minutes whirling with one’s arms waiting for God’s embrace. Or one can write about Noah’s failure to combine transcendence and immanence in summoning his people to God. Whatever the mechanism for critical thought, exploration and faith, I believe there is legitimacy to it, especially if your heart resonates with what you are experiencing.
ZAID: I agree. It’s not that "everything of which we speak in our meetings and in our writings comes from the Quran and its treasures"—but rather that everything is derived from a faith in the Oneness of God. And God guides our hearts to truth, as it perhaps guided ibn Arabi’s heart to share his bezels of wisdom.
so much to comment...
ReplyDeleteso little time...
a few thoughts, from a simpleton.
First, the dialogue is ultimately enjoyable; i am impressed by your ability to communicate such a discourse in such an entertaining writing style.
Second, Zaid is not one-dimensional, he's a bad arguer. Completely different things. "(2) Ibn Arabi takes risks—what you call esoteric musings—in his exegesis that are necessary and important for the Muslim community to progress intellectually, and spiritually." What Zaid should have said is that, "This may be true, however progress is based on the premise that we (the current community) has a basic understanding of the first layer to begin with. What I believe Ibn Arabi would most be disappointed with in the Muslim world today is the lack of knowledge of the first level of understanding."
Second, "We are satisfied with the basic homework assignment: declare faith, pray, fast, pay charity, and go on haj. What ibn Arabi and other Gnostics do, and what they call others to do, is a sort of spiritual extra credit." Zaid: The Prophet (saw) stated that doing those five things alone will place one in jannah. so why shouldn't we be satisfied with them? and, what ibn Arabi and other Gnostics purportedly do is exactly what you say: extra credit. But why not sit down and perform dhikr as the Prophet (saw) recommended (in the manner he recommended it). Why not praise the name of Allah (as the Qur'an recommends in numerous verses? Better yet, in addition to Zakat, why not feed the poor, the orphan, the wayfarer? While it is important to "breathe the shahadah," I believe that a. we are judged on our actions and b. that good actions will strengthen the shahadah more than philosophical thought.
And your thought that "These are mere rituals and belief systems that bring God to our level." these rituals and belief systems were outlined by God in the Qur'an as a way to become closer to him. How could one possibly say that believing one "will reach God" in this manner "is an illusion" and not be heretical? This also infers that those who may not have the ability (or the resources) to reach other levels of understanding of the Qur'an will not reach God.
Third, "If as believers, our hearts are alive, we ought to revere the heart that remembers God no matter what the form of that devotional practice." Zaid: Really? Then what would have been the point of sending messengers down? Why not just send spiritual thought and verses that stretch the mind? There is a form of devotional practice; it was laid out for us in the sunnah via the hadith. Otherwise, why not bust out idols as a physical representation of our Lord? Why not smoke payote as a devotional practice, which Native Americans believe enhance the spirit's ability of understanding the divine? I believe that the great thinkers of our time all recommend that we should have a firm fundamental basis before we move on to further thought. we should finish the B.A. before we proclaim ourselves Ph.D.'s.
As for whether ibn Arabi is a heretic or not; let that be decided by others who have time to waste on that subject. If one is at the level of delving into philosophical thought then one would have the wares to pull good from that research.
P.S. This is but a few thoughts of many.
P.P.S. I only posited my thoughts on Zaid's side and not those of the other's, because I feel that Ayesha treated Zaid in a condescending manner (although Zaid didn't do much to help his cause).
P.P.P.S. You should have posted this earlier so i would have had something to read in property. boooo.
i think this should be reenacted on macdougal street in real time
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