Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Notes

1. One could say that had such a sapiential tradition survived, the modern world would not have come about, the homogeneity of the Western tradition would not have been broken, and the presence of other religions would not have to be taken into consideration in a way at all differing from what we observe in other epochs of history. There is no doubt, in fact, that the presence of other traditions today as a reality which concerns man in an “existential” manner is deeply related to the special predicament of modern man. Therefore, we pose this condition only theoretically in order to bring out the fundamental difference between the evaluation of the sacred by a sanctified intellect and by a secularized one.

2. The significance of this theme in the writings of the traditional authors is to be found already in the definition given of tradition which concerns eternal truth or wisdom as such. The number of articles and works by traditional authors on the study of religions and their “comparison” also attests to the centrality of this subject as far as tradition is concerned. See, for example, Guénon, Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines; Coomaraswamy, “Paths that Lead to the Same Summit,” in the Bugbear of Literacy; and esp. the numerous works of Schuon such as his Transcendent Unity of Religions and Formes et substances dans les religions. See alo M. Pallis, “On Crossing Religious Frontiers,” in his The Way and the Mountain, pp. 62-78.

3. The opposition of objective knowledge to the sacred and the destruction of the sacred quality of religion on the pretext of being objective and scientific lie at the root of that error which was originally responsible for the reduction of the intellect to reason and metaphysics to a purely human form of knowledge that means ultimately the subhuman.

4. It is precisely in this sense of “esoteric ecumenism” that Schuon deals in his latest book, Christianisme/Islam-Visions d’oeucuménisme ésotérique (in press), with the Christian and Islamic traditions.

5. This encounter, despite its exceptional qualities, is nevertheless of great importance for the present day debates between religions of the Abrahamic family and those of India, although it has not been taken as much into consideration by those concerned with the theological and philosophical implications of the relation between religions today as one would expect.

6. One can discern this phenomenon in Europe itself where in countries such as Spain serious interest in other religions and the study of comparative religion has increased to the extent that the hold of Christianity upon the people has become weakened. Likewise, in the Islamic world the study of comparative religion has attracted most interest in those countries such as Turkey where modern educational institutions have witnessed the greatest amount of development and where there is a fairly extensive reading public which is already modernized to some degree and not strictly within the traditional Islamic framework.

7. Including the “science of religions” in the sense of the German Religionswissenschaft.

8. The appropriate methodology for the study of religions has been of concern to most of the leadingWestern scholars of comparative religion, such figures as J. Wach, M. Eliade, H. Smith, and W. C. Smith. The last has been particularly concerned with the appropriate method of studying other religions in the light of its meaning as religious activity. See, for example,W. C. Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion: A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind, New York, 1963; The Faith of Other Men, New York, 1963; and Towards a World Theology, Philadelphia, 1981, esp. pt. 3, which deals with the theological and “existential” significance of the study of religions from the point of view not only of Christianity but of other faiths as well.

9. The use of methods and philosophies in the study of religion in a fashion which parallels what one encounters in science is to be seen from the nineteenth century onward and the founding of the so-called science of religion which is imbued with the same positivism that characterizes the prevalent scientific philosophies of the day. The same can be said about the role of evolutionary concepts in the study of both religion and nature.

10. With the rise of evolutionary philosophy, and its application to the study of religions, many Christians thought that they could use this method to their own advantage by studying other religions as stages in the gradual perfection and growth of religion

culminating in Christianity. This approach, however, left Islam as an embarrassing postscript which, according to the same logic, had to be more perfect than Christianity.

The purely historical and evolutionary approach cannot in fact be used as the means of defending any religion, including Islam, in which certain modern apologists have taken recourse to nearly the same arguments as those used by nineteenth-century Christian apologists concerning other religions. This is so because once a purely historical argument, based on the perfection of religion in time, is offered, there are those who claim that with the passage of time newer religious messages become more suitable and go “beyond” Islam or that Islam itself has to evolve into a higher form! The traditional Islamic doctrine of Islam’s finality and perfection as the last religion of this cycle of humanity must not be confused with this nineteenth-century evolutionism which has infiltrated into the minds of many Muslim modernists anxious to defend Islam before the onslaught ofWestern orientalism or the attacks of certain Christian missionaires.

11. This subject has been already dealt with by Ch. Adams in his, “The History of Religions and the Study of Islam,” American Council of Learned Societies Newsletter, no. 25, iii-iv (1974): 1-10.

12. There is a principle in Islamic philosophy according to which the lack of knowledge or awareness of something cannot be proof of the nonexistence of that thing (‘adam al-wujdan la yadullu ‘ala ‘adom al-wujud). Many modern scholars seem to ignore completely this principle, in fact reversing its tenet and insisting that what is not known historically could not have existed, thereby ignoring completely oral tradition and the whole question of transmission of knowledge and authority which lie at the heart of the very concept of tradition.

13. The interpretation of H. Corbin of phenomenology as the unveiling of the inner meaning of the truth (the ta’wıl of Islamic sources) and some of the earlier works of Eliade He close to the traditional perspective, while there are a number of Scandinavian scholars of religion who call themselves phenomenologists but whose perspective is, to say the least, very far from that of tradition with its concern for the reality of revelation and the particular universe that each revelation brings into being.

14. This lack of discernment between plenary and minor manifestations of the Spirit and the various stages of the actual condition of various religions is to be found in theworks of even such an eminent scholar as Eliade, who interestingly enough has made contributions to nearly every field of religious studies except Islam.

15. The contemporary philosopher O. Barfield has returned to this traditional theme in his Saving the Appearances; a Study in Idolatry, London, 1957, although treating it in an evolutionary context which destroys the permanent relationship that exists between appearances and their noumenal reality, irrespective of what Barfield calls the transformation of human consciousness from original participation to final participation. See his chap. 21.

16. Such is the characterization given by Corbin of phenomenology. See his En Islam iranien, vol. 1, p. xx.

17. Structuralism, which is associated with the anthropological works of C. Lévi-Strauss but which has now penetrated into the fields of philosophy, literary criticism, history, etc., is based on the tenet that all societies and cultures possess a permanent, unchanging, and common structure. Some have interpreted this view as being conducive to the traditional perspective and opposed to the antitraditional historicism that has dominated the social sciences for so long. While the latter part of this assertion is true, there is no guarantee whatsoever that structuralism leads to the traditional teachings any more than does phenomenology if the appropriate metaphysical knowledge is not available. One can say, however, that if there is such a knowledge then certain intuitions of structuralism can be integrated into the framework of that knowledge as can those of phenomenology.

18. For the Hindu bhaktis the tradition provided the necessary intellectual cadre and, in a sense, the tradition thought for them. It is for this reason that, once cut off from this essential framework and its protective embrace, the type of bhakti spirituality can lead to dangerous aberrations on the intellectual plane and finally to the kind of perversion of tradition in the name of the unity of religions which is so widespread today and which is most often identified with one movement or another of Indian origin.

19. On the fundamental distinction between unity and uniformity see R. Guénon, The Reign of Quantity, pp. 63-69.

20. See, for example, S. Katz, “Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism,” in S. Katz (ed.), Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis,New York, 1978, pp. 22-74; and also idem, “Models, Modeling and Religious Traditions” {in press).

21. Although at the beginning many of those, like L. Massignon, who were concerned with ecumenism within the orbit of Christianity, were genuinely interested in the spiritual significance of other religions, soon ecumenism became identified practically with modernism within the church. In many cases during the past two decades, ecumenism has become the caricature of the concern of tradition for the transcendent unity of religions.

22. See, for example, J. Hick, “Whatever Path Men Choose is Mine,” in Hick and B. Hebblethwaite (eds.), Christianity and Other Religions, Philadelphia, 1980, pp. 171-90.

23. L. Swidler, the editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, one of the leading journals in America on the question of dialogue between religions, and a person earnestly interested in better understanding between religions, writes:

By dialogue here we mean a conversation on a common subject among two or more persons with differing views. The primary goal of dialogue is for each participant to learn from the other.. . Each partner must listen to the other as openly, sympathetically as he or she can in an attempt to understand the other’s position as precisely and, as it were, from within, as possible. Such an attitude automatically includes the assumption that at any point we might find the other partner’s position so persuasive that, if we would act with integrity, we would have to change our own position accordingly. That means that there is a risk in dialogue: we might have to change, and change can be disturbing. But of course that is the point of dialogue, change and growth… .

In conclusion let me note that there are at least three phases in interreligious dialogue. In the first phase we unlearn misinformation about each other and begin to know each other as we truly are. In phase two we begin to discern values in the partner’s tradition and wish to appropriate them into our own tradition. For example, in the Catholic-Protestant dialogue Catholics have learned to stress the Bible and Protestants have learned to appreciate the sacramental approach to Christian life, both values traditionally associated with the other religious community. If we are serious, persistent and sensitive enough in the dialogue we may at times enter into phase three. Here we together begin to explore new areas of reality, of meaning, of truth which neither of us had even been aware of before. We are brought face to face with this new, unknown to us, dimension of Reality only because of questions, insights, probings produced in the dialogue. We may thus dare to say that patiently pursued dialogue can become an instrument of new revelation. From the Foreword of Swidler to P. Lapide and J. Moltmann, Jewish Monotheism and Christian Trinitarian Doctrine, Philadelphia, 1981, pp. 7-15.

24. We do not mean to imply that all movements for the rapprochement of religions, which in an etymological sense are ecumenical, are part of this type of ecumenism which comprises a distinct movement within both the Catholic and the Protestant churches.

25. This is not meant in a pejorative sense since it is perfectly legitimate to use every possible means to create peace among peoples provided that religious truth is not sacrificed in the process. The truth cannot be sacrificed for anything even if it be peace, for a peace based upon falsehood cannot be a worthwhile or lasting one.

26. As far as Christianity and Islam are concerned, there have been formal and official meetings and conferences involving the Catholic church, theWorld Council of Churches, and individual Protestant churches outside theWorld Council. See, for example, the journal Islamochristiana, published by the Pontificio Instituto di Studi Arabi in Rome, which contains exhaustive information about Christian-Islamic conferences and dialogues as well as some articles of scholarly interest on the subject. As for theWorld Council of Churches, and its activities in this field, see S. Samartha and J. B. Taylor (eds.)/Christian-Muslim Dialogue, Geneva, 1973; also Christians Meet Muslims: Ten Years of Christian-Muslim Dialogue, Geneva, 1977. There are many other works of concerned scholars in this domain including K. Cragg who has translated into English the City of Wrong: A Friday in Jerusalem by Kamel Hussein, Amsterdam, 1959, and written many works on Islamic-Christian themes including Alive to God: Muslim and Christian Prayer, New York, 1970; and The Call of the Minaret, New York, 1965;also D. Brown, Christianity and Islam, 5

vols., London, 1967-70; and from the Islamic side H. Askari, Inter-Religion, Aligarh, 1977. M. Talbi, M. Arkoun, and several other Muslim scholars have also been active in this process during the past few years, but strangely enough from both sides little use has been made of the sapiential perspective in making the inner understanding of the other religion possible.

One of the most devout Catholics and, at the same time, great scholars of Islam whose concern with Christian-Islamic understanding could have served as a beacon of light for later Catholic scholars, but who has not been as much followed as one would expect, was L. Massignon. See G. Bassetti-Sani, Louis Massignon-Christian Ecumenist, Chicago, 1974; also Y. Moubarak (ed.), Verse et controverse, Paris, 1971 (the editor, here pursuing a series of questions and responses with Muslim scholars, is a former student of Massignon and tries to reflect some of his teacher’s concerns for Islamic-Christian understanding.

27. Serious religious dialogue between Islam and Judaism independent of Christianity has begun in earnest only recently because of the prevalent political conditions in the Middle East. But they are bound to be of the greatest import if taken seriously and in the context of the traditional framework of both traditions.

28. Although tolerance is better than intolerance as far as religions other than our own are concerned, it certainly is far from sufficient for it implies that the other religion is false yet tolerated. Understanding of different universes of sacred form means that we come to accept other religions not because we want to tolerate our fellow human beings but because those other religions are true and come from God. This perspective does not of course mean that one should tolerate falsehood on the pretext that someone or some group happens to believe in it.

29. In normal times when each humanity lived as a separate world, obviously such a knowledge was not necessary except in exceptional circumstances. The necessity of such a penetration into other worlds of sacred form and meaning increases to the extent that the modern world destroys the religious homogeneity of a human collectivity.

30. W. C. Smith must be mentioned esp. as one of the most notable among the academicWestern scholars of religion who have emphasized the importance of faith in the study of religions. See, for example, his Faith of Other Men; Belief and History, Charlottesville, Va., 1977; and Faith and Belief.

31. On the relation between faith and knowledge see Schuon, Stations of Wisdom, chap. 2, “Nature and Argument of Faith,” and his Logic and Transcendence, chap. 13, “Understanding and Believing.”

32. This question is treated by Schuon in several of his recent works including Formes et substance dans les religions.

33. On this difficult question see M. Pallis, “Is There Room for ‘Grace’ in Buddhism?” in his A Buddhist Spectrum, chap. 4, pp. 52-71.

34. There are of course many factors which determine an act as profound as that of conversion, but from the point of view of the universality of tradition, it can be said that conversion can be perfectly legitimate for a person seeking a type of sapiential and esoteric teaching or spiritual instruction not available in his or her own tradition. In such a case the person makes the conversion without refuting the truth of the tradition that he or she is leaving behind but in fact with the hope of coming to know even that tradition better than before. In any case, conversion from the sapiential point of view is never wed to proselytism of any kind without its denying the reality of the dynamics of religious missions, propagation, and conversion on the exoteric level.

35. See Ibn al-‘Arabı, Bezels of Wisdom, especially chap. 15. On his Logos doctrine see Burckhardt, Introduction to Sufi Doctrine, pp. 70ff., and his introduction to De l’Homme universel of al-Jılı.

36. On the “Muh. ammadan Reality” see Ibn al-‘Arabı, op. cit, pp. 272ff.

37. Such profound morphological and metaphysical comparisons are to be found in all traditional writings on comparative religion but most of all in the works of F. Schuon, esp. his Transcendent Unity of Religions; Dimensions of Islam; and Formes et substance dans les religions.

38. For example, orientation in a sacred space is an essential part of religious rites but it does not mean that it has the same significance or even the same kind of significance let us say, in the rites of the American Indians and in the Christian Mass.

39. On this theme see Schuon, Formes et substance dans les religions, esp. pp. 19ff.

40. We do not of course mean that all elements are repeated in all religions or that, for example, time, creation, or even eschatological realities are the same in every religion.

41. These phases are dealt with in a general manner as far as Christian mysticism is concerned by E. Underhill in her Mysticism, A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness, New York, 1960, pt 2.

42. See Schuon, Islam and the Perennial Philosophy, chap. 1, “Truth and Presence.”

43. Called al-Milal wa’ l-nihal in Arabic of which the work of al-Shahristanı is the most famous. Milal is the plural of millah and is used here to refer to theological views of various religious communities; and nih. al the plural of nih. lah meaning philosophical school or perspective.

44. The case ofMır Findiriskı, who taught Avicenna’s Shifa’ and Qanun in Isfahan, composed an important work on alchemy, was an accomplished metaphysical poet, and wrote a major commentary upon the Yoga Vais.i´stha, is of particular interest in the encounter between Islamic and Hindu intellectual traditions and deserves to be studied much more. On Mır Findiriskı see Nasr, “The School of Isfahan,” in A History of Muslim Philosophy, vol. 2, pp. 922ff. F. Mojtaba’ı undertook a most interesting Ph. D. thesis at Harvard University onMır Findirisk ı and his commentary upon this Sanskrit work, but as far as we know, his work has never seen the light of day.

45. See S. H. Nasr, “Islam and the Encounter of Religions,” in Sufi Essays, New York, 1975, pp. 106-34.

46. According to Islam when the Mahdı appears before the end of time, not only will he reestablish peace but he will also uplift the outward religious forms to unveil their inner meaning and their essential unity through which he will then unify all religions. Similar accounts are to be found in other traditions such as Hinduism where the eschatological events at the end of the historical cycle are also related to the unification of various religious forms.