Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF ISLAMIC ART

One cannot speak of beauty in the Islamic context without saying something about Islamic art and its spiritual and religious significance. Since Islam seeks to embrace all of life, it had to create its own art just as it brought forth the Divine Law. Now, human beings both act and make. TheShari‘ah concerns the plane of action, while Islamic art is concerned with the principles and methods of the making of things.

Both Islamic art and Islamic Law derive from the Quranic revelation and theSunnah of the Prophet, but they do so in different ways. TheShari‘ah is based on the legal aspects of the revelation and the literal and outward meaning of the Quran and Sunnah, while Islamic art is derived from the haqiqah, or inner truth, of these sources. As in other major traditions such as Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, the sacred art of Islam is related to its very essence and heart. If one wants to understand what Christianity is, all one needs to do is to go inside Chartres Cathedral and behold the sacred space and forms that surround the observer.

Or what better explanation of Japanese Buddhism than the Golden Temple in Kyoto? Once a European asked Titus Burckhardt, who more than any other Westerner has succeeded in revealing the meaning and spiritual significance of Islamic art, what Islam was. He answered, “Go and see the Ibn T. ulun Mosque in Cairo.” He could have said the same of many other masterpieces of Islamic architecture, from the Mezquita in Cordova to the Qayrawan Mosque in Tunis to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem or the Shah Mosque in Isfahan and the Sult.an Ah.mad Mosque in Istanbul.

For Westerners sensitive to art, Islamic art is in fact one of the best means of understanding the heart of Islam. The metaphysical reason why something in the material world made of brick, stucco, or stone can play such a role is that, according to the famous Hermetic saying, “That which is lowest symbolizes that which is highest.” By virtue of belonging to the physical level of reality, the plastic and sonoral arts are able to symbolize and reflect the highest level of reality, which is the Divine Realm. Far from being something peripheral, Islamic art is a central manifestation of the Islamic religion. It not only plays a decisive and essential role in the life of Muslims, but is also a key for the understanding of the deepest dimensions of Islam, if one is willing to seek beyond mere formal appearances.

In Arabic the words used for art are fann and s.ina‘ah.

The second word, like the original Greek term techne and the Latin ars, means simply to make something according to the correct principles. The first means the know-how in doing or making anything correctly and must be combined with wisdom, or hikmah, to become operative as art. In traditional Islamic society art was life itself and not a particular activity, and everything from sewing to cooking to playing music or composing poetry had its own fann. Once A. K. Coomaraswamy, the great twentieth-century Indian expert on traditional metaphysics and art, said that in modern society the artist is a special kind of person, while in traditional society every person is a special kind of artist. This observation holds completely true for traditional Islamic society as well, where no distinction was made between

fine arts and industrial arts or major and minor arts or religious and secular art. Everything was marked by the seal of Islamic spirituality.

Of course, each civilization has its own hierarchy of arts based on the formal structure of the religion that created that civilization. For example, in the West the highest form of art has been painting because of the centrality of the icon in Christianity. In contrast, there is no iconic presentation in Islamic art, since Islam, like Judaism, prohibits the painting or sculpture of the image of the Divine and its sacred art is aniconic. For Islam the highest art is, as in Christianity, related to the Word of God, which for Islam, however, is not a person named Christ, but a book known as the Quran. The writing of the Word of God, that is, calligraphy, and chanting of it, that is, Quranic psalmody, stand at the top of the hierarchy of the arts. Next comes architecture, essentially of the mosque, but also extending to other forms, where the Word of God in the form of the chanting of the Quran reverberates. The art of dress, both male and female, follows, because after our body nothing is as close to our soul as the clothing we wear. Much of the artistic creativity of Muslims went into the art of the dress based on the modesty ordained by the Quran, the theomorphic nature of the human being and its sacerdotal function in the world, and the sharp distinction between the complementary functions of men and women, including the complementary nature of the beauty belonging to each gender.

After dress come the articles of the house, the so-called minor arts, such as carpets, textiles, utensils, and the like, which affect the soul much more than paintings hanging on the walls of palaces or museums do. Then there is the art of the book, which includes paintings usually called miniatures. These were originally illustrations for various scientific, literary, and historical texts, but later developed as refined Persian miniatures, which reached their peak of perfection from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries.

The Persian miniature also led later to the Ottoman and Moghul schools of miniature painting.

Although some Persian miniatures are among the great masterpieces of world art and Islamic paintings in general are deeply appreciated in the West, painting as a whole does not occupy the same position in Islamic art as it does in Western art. But that does not mean that all forms of painting were prohibited in Islam. What is forbidden is the painting or sculpture of the Divine and of the Prophet.

Furthermore, Islam opposes a naturalistic art that would seek to imitate God’s creation without being able to breathe life into it; hence the almost complete lack of the art of sculpture in Islam. The few lions or other animals that do appear in some gardens are highly stylized. As a whole, Islamic piety tries to avoid setting before believers any images that might become idols or negatively affect the imaginative faculty. Therefore, there are no images of any kind in any mosques or other places of worship, and the Quran andHadith are never illustrated. The prohibition of nonnaturalistic paintings has been strongest historically among Arabs, who as Semites are in greater danger of confusing image and idol than most other ethnic groups.

Among Persians, Turks, Indian Muslims, Malays, and Black Africans the prohibition has not been as strict. In modern times, of course, there are painters everywhere, including in the Arab world, but most modern paintings, even if they are sometimes inspired by traditional Islamic themes and motifs, are not really Islamic art, but Westerninspired art executed by artists who are Muslims.

A word must also be said about music and poetry, both of which are sonoral arts and must be considered separately from the hierarchy listed above. Although the Quran is poetry of the highest quality and eloquence, it is not called poetry in the usual sense; in fact, in one of the Quranic chapters entitled “The Poets” it is said, “As for the poets, the erring follows them” (26:224). But this criticism was cast not against poetry in general, but rather against the influential poets of pre-Islamic Mecca, soothsayers who would compose poetry for any patron without being concerned with the truth (although their poetry was of a very high quality). In fact, as a result of the impact of the Quran, poetry became a highly appreciated art in Islam, and major works of poetry appeared in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and other Islamic languages, some of which are among the greatest masterpieces of world literature. Wherever Islam has gone, poetry has flourished, and to this day poetry is very much alive as a major cultural force in nearly every Islamic society, where it plays a much more central role culturally, religiously, and socially than it does in America and in most European countries today.

Many Westerners have heard that music is forbidden in Islam and may have even heard Muslim individuals from certain religious backgrounds express the same opinion. Yet the Quran, whose psalmody is the supreme sonoral sacred art in Islam, and the call to prayer are chanted musically throughout the Islamic world, and if one turns on the radio in a country such as the Islamic Republic of Iran one will hear the most sublime pieces of classical Persian music played throughout the day. The question of the legality of music in Islam is a complex one and the Quran, it seems providentially, did not leave specific injunctions concerning it. However, on the basis of theSunnah of the Prophet and the general tenor of the teachings of the Quran, music developed differently than it did in the West. First of all, for the chanting of the Quran and other liturgies the Arabic term musiqa, which is derived from the same Greek word that is the origin of the English word “music,” has never been used. Moreover, the chanting of the Quran is always done only with the human voice, and musical instruments are not allowed in mosques. In the early history of Christianity also the use of instruments was forbidden in sacred music, as we see with Gregorian chant. Second, certain kinds of music, such as music played at weddings, for the march of caravans, and for military expeditions, were allowed explicitly by the Prophet and in fact the earliest Western military bands were based on Ottoman models.

We even have Mozart’s famous “Turkish March.” As for other forms of music, what incited the passions toward evil acts was forbidden, and the door was left open for the development of the spiritual music that came to be cultivated by the Sufis over the centuries.

Several decades ago the world-famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin came to Tehran, and we arranged for him to hear classical Persian music for the first time. After listening to the concert he said, “This music is the ladder between the soul and God.” Being the great musician and human being that he was, he detected immediately the spiritual quality of this classical musical tradition, a quality also shared by classical Arabic, Turkish, Muslim Indian, and other traditions as far away as the Sundanese music of Java. The famous theologian and Sufi al-Ghazzali wrote that music intensifies the passions within the soul. If the passion is directed toward God, it makes this passion more powerful and increases the fire of love for God; and if there exists passion for worldliness, it increases the soul’s worldliness and tendency toward concupiscence. Islam was fully aware of this reality and limited exteriorized forms of music in favor of interiorized music, which increases the love for God, is the means of recollection of paradisal realities, and intensifies the upward currents that help the wings of the soul to fly to its original celestial homeland.

The traditions of music in the Islamic world are among the richest in the world. Over the ages they have not only enriched the lives of numerous Muslims and played an important role in Sufi practice, they have also influenced Western music in many ways. Whenever I hear flamenco music I feel as if I were hearing classical Arabic or Persian music. The Western lute was adapted from the Arabic ‘ud, as the name itself reveals, and the guitar is the child of the Persian tar. Today there is much interest in the Islamic musical traditions in the West, in a musical language that speaks of the deepest realities of Islam without the use of alien theological categories.

In recent years many heard of the Taliban’s banning of music in Afghanistan, a land that has always been a treasurehouse for several musical traditions in the Islamic world.

But this ban was far from being a common norm in Islamic history. Rather, it was like certain bans imposed in the past by strict Protestant groups on certain forms of art, including music, in the West. In the traditional Islamic world, one always heard and still hears to a large extent the sound of spiritual songs(nashid) in Egypt; the ney of the Mawlawis in Turkey; the tar and santur playing the dastgahs, or systems of classical Persian music, in Persia; the Andalusian orchestra in Morocco; the qawwali (made famous in the West by Nus.rat Fatih. ‘Ali Khan) in Pakistan and Muslim India; rhythmic drumbeats in Muslim Black Africa; and many other forms of spiritual music that permeated the air and accompanied throughout their lives those sensitive to the melodies and harmonies of music. Far from being un-Islamic, as some have claimed, the art of music in the Islamic world is one of the most powerful and universal means of expressing what lies at the heart of the Islamic message, which is the realization of the beauty of the Divine Face and surrender to that Reality which is at once Beauty and Peace, Compassion and Love.

Islamic art in its many forms is of the greatest import for the understanding of the essence of Islam and a central means of transmitting its message to the contemporary world. When one thinks of Islam, one should go beyond the repetitive scenes on television of wars and battles, which

unfortunately abound in today’s world, to behold the peace and harmony of Islamic art seen in the great mosques, traditional urban settings and gardens, and the rhythm and geometry of calligraphy and arabesque designs; read in the poems that sing of the love that permeates all of God’s creation and binds creatures to God; and heard in the strains of melodies that echo what we had experienced in that primordial morn preceding creation and our descent into this lowly world. Today more than ever before, the understanding of Islamic art is an indispensable key for the comprehension of Islam itself. Those who are sensitive to the language of traditional art and the beauty of a paradisal order that emanates from it as well as the intellectual principles conveyed through it can learn much from this art.

IHSAN: VIRTUOUS BEAUTY, BEAUTIFUL VIRTUE

The highest form of beauty in this world is the beauty of the human soul, which is related to ihsan, a term that means at once beauty, goodness, and virtue. To possess ihsan is to have the virtues of generosity and love and to live at peace in one’s Center, where God resides. The Quran states, “Surely We created man in the best of stature” (90:4). The word “best” in this verse is ah. san, which comes from the same root as ihsan and also means “beauty.” The verse could therefore also be translated as “in the most beautiful stature.” To embellish the soul with beauty, or ihsan, through spiritual practice is therefore to realize the original beauty of the soul and to return it to its primordial state of “the most beautiful stature.” To gain and practice ihsan is also to respond with the beauty of one’s soul to the Creator, Who is called the best or most beautiful of creators in the Quran (23:14) and to Whom belong the most beautiful Names (7:180). Even the famous Quranic verse “Is the reward of goodness ought save goodness(ihsan) ?” (55:60) can also be understood to mean “Is the reward of beauty but beauty?” Is the reward of the soul beautified through ihsan but the Beauty of the One?

The goal of human life is to beautify the soul through goodness and virtue and to make it worthy of offering to God Who is the Beautiful. Those who possess ihsan think through ihsan and act and create with ihsan. Their thoughts are based on the truth of which beauty is the aura and splendor, their actions are always based on ihsan as goodness, and what they create reflects the beauty of the object “written by God upon its face” as well as the beauty of the soul of the artisan. To possess ihsan is to be open to the Divine Compassion and Mercy and to be compassionate toward others. It is to love God and His creation in Him. It is to live at peace in the Center of one’s being in a state of equilibrium and harmony with the worlds within and without. And it is to be immersed in beauty on all its levels of manifestation, beauty that liberates us from the confinements of earthly existence and ultimately immerses us in the ocean of Divine Infinitude. To realize ihsan is, according to the already quotedhadith of Gabriel, to worship God as if we were to see Him, and if we were not to see Him, He would see us. It is therefore to live in Divine Intimacy, where the perfume and vision of God’s Compassion, Love, Peace, and Beauty are most evident. The person who has realized ihsan is fully aware of the centrality of the qualities of compassion and love, peace and beauty in the Islamic spiritual universe and is able to see with the inner eye the verse written on the Divine Throne, “Verily My Mercy and Compassion precede My Wrath.”

CHAPTER SIX: DIVINE AND HUMAN JUSTICE

Peace and the Question of War O believers, be ye steadfast before God, witness for justice.

Quran 5:8

God loves the just.

Quran 5:42

Shall I inform you of a better act than fasting, alms, and prayers? Making peace between one another: enmity and malice tear up heavenly rewards by the roots.

Prophetic hadith

I bear witness that He is Justice and that He acts justly.

‘Ali ibn AbiTalib, Nahj al-balaghah

THE INNATE HUMAN SENSE OF JUSTICE AND THE SEARCH FOR JUSTICE

Like the sense of peace and nostalgia for peace, the sense of justice and quest for its realization seem to have been kneaded into the very substance from which humanity was created. No matter how ambiguous and dim the philosophical, theological, and even juridical meaning of justice may be in our minds, our souls have in their depth a sense of justice that shines within our conscience, and a fire burns deep within us urging us to live justly, to administer justice, and to protect what we perceive to be just. Messengers, apostles, and sages-from the Hebrew prophets, Zoroaster, and Confucius to Solon, Plato, and Aristotle to Christ, the Prophet of Islam, and countless later religious thinkers, including Muslims-have uttered numerous statements and written many texts on the subject. Sacred scriptures from the Upanishads and the Bible to the Quran contain many illuminating passages on the centrality of justice to the moral and spiritual life. Every people and nation speaks of justice even when injustice abounds in this world, and the human spirit seems no more able to live without justice than it can without beauty, peace, love, and compassion.

And yet when it comes to the understanding of the exact meaning of justice, on the formal plane the concept differs in various religions and moral philosophies and even within a single religious universe. The case of Islam is no exception.

The theme of justice permeates the whole of Islamic life and the Divine Law, the goal of whose implementation is the establishment of justice. The Quran is strewn with references to the subject of justice and identifies the good society with a just one. This virtue is so central to Islam that, according to a saying of the Prophet, “A kingdom might survive in infidelity, but it cannot survive in injustice and inequity.” But for Muslims, as for Jews, who are addressed so often in the Torah on matters pertaining to justice, and Christians, so many of whose greatest religious thinkers have been primarily concerned with the issue, as well as for followers of other religions, some of the major questions are as follows: What does it mean to say that God is just and what does justice mean in this context? How does God judge and how can we judge in justice? What is the meaning of justice on the human plane and why, despite all the teachings of religion about justice, is there so much injustice in this world?

One truth, evident for and accepted by all Muslims, is that God is just and justice is related to Him and the truths revealed by Him through His prophets. But within this general framework, there have been many interpretations over the ages by various schools of Islamic thought on this central issue, as there have been for Christians and Jews.

Needless to say, we cannot deal with these theological and philosophical differences here, but we can turn to certain basic tenets universally accepted by Muslims and seek to understand in the Islamic context some of the essential features of the central reality of justice and the means of living and acting justly, on the one hand, and opposing injustice, oppression, and inequity, on the other.

DIVINE JUSTICE

In the same way that Compassion and Love, Peace and Beauty are Names of God, Justice is also a Divine Name.

God is al-‘Adil, as well as al-‘Adl, al-Muqsit, and al-Hakam, meaning the Just as well as Justice Itself, the Equitable, and the Bringer of Justice. As these Names show, one could say in the Islamic context that not only is God Just, but that He is Justice Itself in the highest sense of the term.

What, then, is the Islamic understanding of justice in itself and when applied to God? In one of his aphorisms ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib said, “Justice puts everything in its place.” Justice is related to balance, to giving each thing its due (h. aqq), to having everything be in its place according its nature, and, in keeping with what Plato said in the Republic, to having each person perform his or her duty in society in accordance with his or her nature. Now, God is al-H. aqq, the Truth and Reality, from which comes the word for what each thing is due and also the word for law and rights, to which we shall turn in the next chapter.

Being absolute Truth and Reality, and ultimately the only Reality, without any division or delimitation in His Essence, God is Justice Itself, for He is all Himself and nothing but Himself. There is no possibility of disequilibrium or disorder, hence injustice, within Him, for there is no other reality within or outside of Him to even make possible bringing such a thing about. Metaphysically and theologically speaking, only God is in fact perfect and infinite justice as well as the perfect dispenser of justice.

Over the centuries, Muslim theologians debated whether whatever God did was just by virtue of its being His act, or whether God, being God, could not but act justly and His being just was comprehensible to us according to the discernment of our intelligence given by Him. The Ash‘arites, who dominated Sunni theology for a millennium, took the first position and the Sunni Mu‘tazilites as well as the Shi‘ites took the second position. But the net result, as far as the general Islamic worldview is concerned, was the same, namely, that God is perfectly just and the perfect administrator of justice throughout His creation. The Quran asserts, “Perfect is the Word of thy Lord in truth and justice” (6:115); also, “Maintaining His creation in justice, there is no god save He” (3:18). God has created all things according to justice and wants men and women, to whom He has given free will, to be just. Three times in the Quran it is asserted that God loves the just.

It is on the basis of this cosmic and also human justice that God judges human beings. The Quran confirms the central importance of the role of God as judge as revealed earlier in the Torah. In fact, the Quran states explicitly, “We gave the Children of Israel the Book, the Judgment” (45:16), and “they [the Children of Israel] have the Torah where God has delivered judgments for them” (5:108).

The pious among Muslims, when confronted with enmity and oppression, shared the sentiments so powerfully expressed in the Psalms: “Arise, O Lord, in Thine anger, lift up Thyself because of the rage of mine enemies: and awake for me to the judgment that Thou hast commanded” (7:6).

In the Quranic perspective God is also the supreme judge. “Thou shalt judge between Thy servants” (39:46), and “He is the best of judges” (12:80). Moreover, the Quran asks rhetorically, “Is not God the justest of judges?” (95:8). The judgment of God is final, for “God judges; none repeals His judgment” (13:41), although the gauge of the Mercy of God is known to Him alone. Ultimately God is in fact the only judge, for “the judgment is God’s alone” (6:57), “His is the judgment” (28:88). Although, of course, human judgment exists in this world, for Muslims, as for devout Jews and Christians, who over the millennia relied upon the judgment of God and His justice above all human agencies, the ultimate refuge resides in Divine Justice and God’s judgment of human actions. It is only He who knows all things and who can judge human actions not only outwardly, but according to the intention in the heart, the intention being what determines the value of an action according to the famous saying of the Prophet, “Actions are judged according to their intentions.”

Throughout their lives, Muslims, whenever called to human judgment, recall, “Shall I seek after any judge but God?” (6:114), although this spiritual attitude does not negate in any way their responsibility before the Divine Law or even human laws, or ‘urf, and the human agencies established to judge men and women in this world according to established laws. The ultimate judge is, however, God and the ultimate judgment, the events of the Day of Judgment, the only judgment that finally matters.

THE BALANCE

Before turning to the eschatological (end-time) realities and the Day of Judgment according to Islamic doctrines, a word must be said about a key Quranic symbol related to justice and God’s ultimate judgment of us. That symbol is the balance (al-mizan), mentioned several times in the Quran and repeated in many contexts in various classical texts dealing with ethics and other subjects. God created all things in the correct proportion and harmony, and the world is dominated by this remarkable harmony, which is the imprint of unity upon the domain of multiplicity. As the Quran says, “And the earth we have spread out: set thereon mountains firm and immovable and produced therein all kinds of things in due balance” (15:19).

The balance applies to every level of reality, from the physical to the alchemical, psychological, and spiritual.

There is a balance of the elements within healthy bodies, and our psyche, if wholesome, is balanced. And for the spiritually accomplished Muslim there is a balance between the spirit, soul, and body and the satisfaction of their respective demands. To give each thing its due (h. aqq) in accordance with its nature as created by God is to live in balance and realize the balance of things and hence to live in justice.

Balance also involves human actions. The Quranic injunction “Give full measure and full weight in justice” (6:152) applies to selling things honestly in the bazaar as well as acting justly in every instance in life. Our actions in general are in fact “weighed” by God in a “balance,” and we shall be judged accordingly on the Day of Reckoning, for “We [God] shall set up the just balances for the Resurrection Day” (21:47). The balance as the visible symbol of justice as well as harmony and equilibrium in the cosmos is so significant that the Quran asserts, “God it is who hath revealed the book with Truth and the Balance” (57:25). To observe the balance in all things is to live in justice. There is no sculpture in traditional Islamic art, but the Western statue of a blindfolded figure holding a balance found in so many courts and halls of justice is helpful here. The balance may be said to symbolize the Islamic idea of justice and the blindfolded figure to represent equality before God’s Law.

Muslims are ever reminded to “establish weight with justice and fall not short in the balance” (55:9), for one day they will face the supreme balance before the Judge whose justice is infinite and judgment perfect, although His Mercy and Compassion are also boundless.

ISLAMIC ESCHATOLOGICAL DOCTRINES

All Muslims, of whatever school, believe in the afterlife, Heaven and hell, the Day of Judgment, and other eschatological realities, which in many cases are similar to traditional Christian doctrines. Belief in ma‘ad, literally “return” to God, or what is theologically known as eschatology, is part of the credo of Islam. It is discussed here rather than earlier, because the necessity of accepting the reality of the afterlife is so closely related to the realization of the reality of Divine Justice. People live in a world full of injustice, and if one accepts Divine Justice, it therefore becomes necessary to also accept the reality of other worlds and posthumous experiences for the human soul in which ultimate justice is to be found. Even Immanuel Kant, who was metaphysically “agnostic,” turned to God in his moral and practical philosophy precisely over the question of justice.

In any case, the reality of the afterlife is so intense for Muslims, even today, that the moral dilemma of a just God creating an unjust world so much discussed in the West does not seriously arise for them. They remain aware that our judgment of any life on earth is based on only a small segment of the total arc of a life whose fullness we cannot behold.

The scientistic philosophy that arose from modern science has deprived most of the well-educated classes in the West, and especially in Europe, of serious belief in the afterlife, and recently, on the basis of this skepticism, many have tried to make a mockery of the Islamic conception of the afterlife based on the Quran and Hadith. Interestingly enough, the same skeptics say little about Hindu or Buddhist eschatology nor care to remember the text of the greatest work of Western Christian literature, the Divine Comedy of Dante. It therefore becomes necessary to say a few words about the complicated subject of Islamic eschatology, which is one of the main themes of the Quran and to which many hadiths of the Prophet are devoted.

Muslims understand eschatology in two senses: one concerning the individual and the other human history. As far as the second is concerned, Muslims, like Christians, believe that there is an end to human history and that this end will be marked by Divine intervention in the temporal order with the coming of the Mahdi and his rule, followed by the Second Coming of Christ-and not the Prophet-in Jerusalem, the destruction of the world, resurrection, and final judgment before God. Few in the West realize the central role that Christ plays in Islamic eschatology, just as he does in the Christian understanding of the last days. As for the individual, eschatological doctrines teach us that at the moment of death the angel of death appears to take a person’s life, after which the person enters various paradisal, purgatorial, or infernal states depending upon that person’s actions in this world. In the deepest sense we are weaving our posthumous bodies with our actions in this life. Muslims, like Christians, also believe in the resurrection of the body and not only in the immortality of the soul.

Now, the extreme complexities of eschatological realities cannot be expressed for most people in ordinary human language save through certain simplifications that we see in both Christianity and Islam. Islam, like Christianity, presents ordinary believers with the grand choice between Heaven and hell with purgatorial states in between. In esoteric Islamic

teachings, such as the writings of Ibn ‘Arabi and Mulla S. adra, however, a more nuanced picture is developed that deals with the journey of the soul through various posthumous states and that also explains the hierarchies of the heavens, purgatories, and hells, in the manner of a Dante. There are, in fact, books in Arabic and Persian that are Islamic counterparts of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Furthermore, descriptions of posthumous realities must of necessity be symbolic, whether one speaks of the crystalline celestial Jerusalem of the Revelation of John or the gardens, houris, and rivers of paradise in the Quran. For centuries in the West certain critics of Islam sought to denigrate the Islamic paradise as nothing but a realm of sensual gratification in the same way that the paradise of the Native Americans was described pejoratively as “the happy hunting ground.” This childish and shallow criticism has now returned when the question of suicide bombers who are considered martyrs by their supporters comes up in the Western media. It is true that the Quran uses very concrete language to describe paradise and hell, a language that should not be strange in its concreteness, if not the specific symbols used, for those who are familiar with the Book of Revelation or the Divine Comedy. This concrete Quranic language is, however, symbolic and must not be taken only literally, although the literal meaning also has its significance.

Now, the description of paradise seems at first sight to be simply the sublimation of earthly pleasures, including sexuality.

In reality the reverse is true. Every legitimate experience of a pleasing nature here on earth is only a shadow and reflection of a paradisal reality. The most intense physical experience for the human being, which is sexual union, is a reflection of the union of the soul with God and reflects on its own level something of that supreme joy and expansion.

The fruits we eat here on earth are blessings from God, reflecting fruits of paradise. Even the traditional gardens of the earth are reflections of heavenly archetypes. The very word “paradise” comes from the Middle Persian term pardis (meaning “garden”), which is also the origin of the Arabic word firdaws, meaning “paradise.” It is not true that firdaws is simply a sublimation of the experience of a cool garden in the desert heat, while the same word in its English form, namely “paradise,” refers to spiritual realities.

Rather, every traditional garden here below is the reflection of firdaws, and paradise is a spiritual reality for Muslims as well as Christians. The attitude of Muslims, including martyrs, toward paradise is basically no different from that of countless devout Christians, including, of course, martyrs and saints.

What is different in the present-day context is that many in Europe and to a lesser extent in America have lost all belief in the afterlife, and for them human life is limited to the years spent here on earth. For most Muslims, however, as for still devout Christians, earthly life is only a segment of our total life. Human life was created by God to transcend the few days spent here on earth. The ups and downs of this life are trials sent by God, as the

Quran asserts. What is important is to live in justice and to do what is good, to which the Quran refers in numerous passages as ‘amal salih., or “good works,” remembering that as the Quran says, “And whoso doeth good an atom’s weight will see it then. And whose doeth ill an atom’s weight will see it then” (99:7-8). Conscious of Divine Justice but also of God’s infinite Mercy, Muslims live in open awareness of the realities of worlds beyond, and even today function in a world in which there is greater communication and rapport with realities that transcend the life of this world than there is for most modern Westerners. This awareness affects many aspects of life, including the understanding of God’s Justice, the significance of our actions for the ultimate end of our soul beyond the grave, and the meaning of human life itself.

JUSTICE IN THIS WORLD: THE VIEWS OF ‘ALI

Of all the companions of the Prophet no one said and wrote as much about justice as ‘Ali, whose Path of Eloquence (Nahj al-balaghah) contains some of the most important metaphysical and practical discussions about justice.

It was ‘Ali who insisted that God is not only just, but Justice Itself and that the virtue of justice flows into the souls of human beings from God. Since God is justice, everything that He does is just. But according to ‘Ali human beings must also be just to God as well as to His creatures. To be just to God is to be godly and virtuous and to fulfill the goal for which He created us, namely to worship Him. To be just to His creatures is to pay each thing its due and act toward that creature according to its rights. ‘Ali insists throughout his sermons, aphorisms, and letters that justice is related to worship and sincere piety. By drawing closer to God, human beings also become more just, since the virtue of justice flows within their being to an ever greater degree as they draw nearer to the Divine Proximity. Justice is both the effect of worship, for through worship we are just toward God, and the cause of justice, for worship draws us even closer to the Source of all justice. In the same way that for Plato “gazing” upon the Supreme Good was the source of justice, so in Islam, as expounded explicitly by ‘Ali, worship of the One is the fount of justice.

‘Ali also wrote much about justice in the practical realm of political and social life. Even when he held political power himself, he warned against the corrupting influence of power and pointed out how easily justice can be turned into its opposite, which is oppression or evildoing (z.ulm) in the hands of a heedless or corrupt ruler. He emphasized that God has made obligatory the rights of the ruler over the ruled, that the ruled will not be virtuous without their ruler being virtuous and just, and that, conversely, the ruler will not be virtuous if the ruled are not so. Each must pay the other its due (h. aqq), and only in this way can justice be established in society.

In the years when he was the political as well as spiritual head of the Islamic community, ‘Ali demonstrated his views of justice in many ways and established norms that became ideals, along with theSunnah of the Prophet (especially his practices in governing the Medina community) and the practices of other “rightly guided” caliphs, for many during the centuries that followed. Among the most important texts of ‘Ali on the question of justice on behalf of a ruler is his letter to the governor he had appointed for Egypt, Malik al-Ashtar. This letter, which is still widely read in the Islamic world and whose message is set as an ideal by which existing rulers are judged by many pious people, Sunni and Shi‘ite alike, demonstrates the centrality of justice and equity as well as forgiveness and compassion for a good government according to the traditional Islamic perspective.

‘Ali writes to Malik:

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate:

This is that with which ‘Ali, the servant of God and Commander of the Faithful, charged Malik ibn al-Harith al-Ashtar in his instructions to him when he appointed him governor of Egypt: to collect its land tax, to war against its enemies, to improve the condition of the people and to engender

prosperity in its region. He charged him to fear God, to prefer obedience to Him (over all else) and to follow what He has directed in His Book-both the acts He has made obligatory and those He recommends-for none attains felicity but he who follows His directions, and none is overcome by wretchedness but he who denies them and lets them slip by. (He charged him) to help God-glory be to Him-with his heart, his hand and his tongue, for He-majestic is His Name-has promised to help him who exalts Him. And he charged him to break the passions of his soul and restrain it in its recalcitrance, for the soul incites to evil, except inasmuch as God has mercy.

Know, O Malik, that I am sending you to a land where governments, just and unjust, have existed before you. People will look upon your affairs in the same way that you were wont to look upon the affairs of the rulers before you. They will speak about you as you were wont to speak about those rulers. And the righteous are only known by that which God causes to pass concerning them on the tongues of His servants.

So let the dearest of your treasuries be the treasury of righteous action. Control your desire and restrain your soul from what is not lawful to you, for restraint of the soul is for it to be equitous in what it likes and dislikes. Infuse your heart with mercy, love and kindness for your subjects. Be not in the face of them a voracious animal, counting them as easy prey, for they are of two kinds: either they are your brothers in religion or your equals in creation. Error catches them unaware, deficiencies overcome them, (evil deeds) are committed by them intentionally and by mistake. So grant them your pardon and your forgiveness to the same extent that you hope God will grant you His pardon and His forgiveness. For you are above them, and he who appointed you is above you, and God is above him who appointed you. God has sought from you the fulfillment of their requirements and He is trying you with them.

Set yourself not up to war against God, for you have no power against His vengeance, nor are you able to dispense with His pardon and His mercy.

Never be regretful of pardon or rejoice at punishment, and never hasten (to act) upon an impulse if you can find a better course. Never say, “I am invested with authority, I give orders and I am obeyed,” for surely that is corruption in the heart, enfeeblement of the religion and an approach to changes (in fortune). If the authority you possess engenders in you pride or arrogance, then reflect upon the tremendousness of the dominion of God above you and His power over you in that in which you yourself have no control.

This will subdue your recalcitrance, restrain your violence and restore in you what has left you of the power of your reason. Beware of vying with God in His tremendousness and likening yourself to Him in His exclusive power, for God abases every tyrant and humiliates all who are proud.

See that justice is done toward God and justice is done toward the people by yourself, your own family and those whom you favor among your subjects. For if you do not do so, you have worked wrong. And as for him who wrongs the servants of God, God is his adversary, not to speak of His servants. God renders null and void the argument of whosoever contends with Him. Such a one will be God’s enemy until he desists or repents.

Nothing is more conducive to the removal of God’s blessing and the hastening of His vengeance than to continue in wrongdoing, for God harkens to the call of the oppressed and He is ever on the watch against the wrongdoers.1