As militant Islam does its level best to discredit the religion, it's important to remember that there are other voices within the faith. One such is the Sufis, a branch of Islamic mystics who live islam (submission), iman (faith) and ishan (awareness of G-d, "to act beautifully"). Every Saturday, therefore, we spend some time with the Sufis' "crazy wisdom."
This week's entry comes from the 12th-century scholar and Sufi El-Ghazali (a.k.a. al-Ghazali):
"A man went to a doctor and told him that his wife was not bearing children. The physician saw the woman, took her pulse, and said: 'I cannot treat you for sterility because I have discovered that you will in any case die within forty days.' When she heard this the woman was so worried that she could eat nothing during the ensuing forty days. But she did not die at the time predicted. The husband took the matter up with the doctor, who said: 'Yes, I knew that. Now she will be fertile.' The husband asked how this had come about. The doctor told him: 'Your wide was too fat, and this was interfering with her fertility. I knew that the only thing which would put her off her food would be fear of dying. She is now, therefore, cured.' The question of knowledge is a very dangerous one."So, use the comments section and tell us: what might al-Ghazali be trying to tell us, especially re: his view of knowledge? UPDATE: See "Islam: Between Copying and Thinking," a follow-up from Egyptian writer Tarek Heggy. Next week's Sufi Wisdom continues the discussion.
The truth may not set you free.
The facetious answer: "tell a woman anything else before you tell her she's fat." Telling her she's gonna die is preferable to telling her that yes, that dress makes her look fat. Some things never change.
The on point answer: People won't always listen to what they need to hear. A little sugar coating can make the pill go down easier - and sometimes the opposite; given natural inertia.
I'm not sure I concur with him in what the fable implies, though; the fable implies the mysteries of expert knowledge entrusted to the cognocenti, which the people may not understand. The question of knowledge is dangerous and best intrusted to the professionals, who can manipulate us into doing what we need to for reasons that are kept hidden from us.
Note that this objection is quite different from the prudential objection I raised in an earlier comment some time ago (I can't remember in which post-thread) and which Den Beste mentions in an update of this post; there are times when not everything we're planning can be told, nor how we have some information and exactly what it is, not because it needs to be hidden from us but because letting it out means that our enemies get the information too, and if we don't want to see our people harmed we need to understand the concept of "information security" applies.
Yes, it's true that sometimes people won't face what they need to face and it's tempting to get them to do what you think they need to do on false premises; hidden-hand ruling styles like this are pervasive in the EU and not absent here (and, contra what some may then conclude, hardly unique to any administration).
The problem with trying to promote a 'peaceful Islam' is that Sufism is considered by Orthodox Islam as a Rank heresy and rightly so!!
It is akin to saying that the NOI is legitamate Islam or Mormonism is Christian etc etc!!
Sufism basically allegorizes all the ugly aspects of Muhammed's teaching and in reality probably owes as much of its teachings to Hindiusm and not Islam!!
Again it must be stated over and over again......Islam proper as taught literaly by Muhammed is unreformable and it is rotten to its very core!! We can try and whitewash the vileness of Islam all we want but as long as the Quran and Sahih Hadiths are unedited, Islam is a dangerous ideology not only to all non muslims but to muslims proper!
Thanks
Devon Hill
Proud Darul Harbian
Devon,
You look at what happened to the Hugenots and Anabaptists, for instance, and you'd never have believed that Christianity was reformable either.
A religion is what its adherents believe it to be.
That sometimes has a negative side - for instance, I think it's disingenuous to say that terrorism et. al. has no connection to Islam, given that so many Islamic clerics et. al. promote it. That, and the whole notion of aggressive jihad violence against the Dar-ul-Harb, are serious flaws that will render the long-term survival of Islam problematic in a world with so many other powerful civilizations. So, these issues and others need to be addressed.
On the other hand, if enough members of a religion change their minds and begin adhering to non-literal interpretations, then things can change a great deal. For instance, John Paul II's apologies during his term extended to pagans who were the object of brutal tactics by missionaries and soldiers. If you had told a practicing 16th century Catholic that this would be true, they would have branded you as literally insane. That wouldn't have even been imaginable.
As Judith Weiss once noted, religions have literalists and mystics, and the latter group often reach a place where they become almost like scientists and explorers, you get them together and they just want to talk about their experiments and experiences - FROM their frameworks, but not trapped WITHIN them. This is undoubtedly how Sufiism picked up Hindu influences in some of its schools.
So the Sufis are one example of an Islamic sect that is already there re: the spirit of the religion taking primacy, and their doctrines and teaching methods consistently stress interpretation and deeper understanding as necessary complements that move one beyond the official teachings without wholly abandoning them. They are Islamic, in other words, but not fundamentalist, Islamic Taoists to the Wahhabi Confucians, etc.
That, and they have these fantastic teaching stories and poetry. It's a significant cultural and spiritual contributions to the whole human race, as well as a reminder and source of hope. So I enjoy sharing, and many people here enjoy reading it.
Or, to put what Joe said another way: all modern Christian denominations, including the old ones like Catholocism and Orthodoxy, would probably be seen as "rank heresies" or at least being indifferent to heretics within their own ranks by the prelates of, say, 1200 A. D.