Islam, Past And Future
This is the Kabaa,
the central shrine of
Islam, located in
These are whirling dervishes, performing a
sacred dance used to raise spiritual energy. The
dervishes of
A central question
being asked in the
A Few Basics
Islam – like
Christianity and like Buddhism – is an important stream of thoughts and
institutions, with many different faces. For a Westerner trying to learn about
Islam, the first big challenge is to understand that there really are many
different faces; it is a great mistake to generalize too much from one or two
examples of people you know, even when they present what appears to be a
universal kind of face. This was not such a great challenge for me, because the
Moslems I have known have all been very different from each other in many ways.
The mass media now make it seem as if the world of Islam is a bewildering
mixture of anarchic factions, all dedicated to the struggle to dominate each
other as well as the rest of the world – a kind of war of all against
all. The second challenge, then, is to understand the underlying unities which
are there as well. I say “unities,” not “unity,”
because in reality the only true unity is that which
includes the entire human species and more.
Seeing Into and Through
the Present Situation
Economic realities
are just as important as spiritual realities in defining the present situation
in the
Marx’s
theories are only half true, and only half grounded in the true empirical
experience of history. Yet no one is perfect, and no one is perfectly wrong,
including even Marx.
Religion is not just
the opiate of the masses (as Marx claims) – yet powerful political and
economic forces have often used money and power to try to put a very strong
spin (or perversion) upon religion, in order to strengthen their power. Such
spin often outlives its creators, as secondary inheritors find it is useful to
their personal political status as well. Normal, undisciplined human brains
find it very hard to resist the seduction of allowing a few bits of illogic
here and there in their minds, when the social costs of asserting the full
truth can be high. By the way, I would claim that the Abbasids were guilty of
such distortions far more than the original Ottomans. The partial decline of the Ottomans owed a great deal to the
importation of perversions created by the Abbasids and never fully overcome
outside of the heartlands of the Ottomans. (For one example, click on the
Crusader fort on the Christianity page.) Certain
hate-mongers in the mass media today (both East and West) often try to inflame
passions regarding secondary issues, in order to better control and delude
ordinary people, so as to serve the cynical interests of those who pay for
them.
Likewise, Marx is
not correct in saying that a transition from one economic reality to another
must always be accompanied by enormous bloodshed. Stafford Beer, in analyzing
some of the great transitions in Europe, contrasted the very bloody transition
in
In analyzing this
situation, I would actually see through the eyes of mathematics and through the
eyes of spirit. But it is not appropriate to lay it all out here in the most
graphic and clear terms. And so… I will simply continue the comparison to
French and English history.
The recent decision
(November 2007) by the Moslem Brotherhood to work with the Sunni powers in the
“grand bargain” suggested by some of the oil companies has many
parallels to what the French nobility decided at a certain point. The Moslem
Brotherhood seemed once to have some parallels to the Jacobins in
As for Al
Queida… the obvious analogies are to forces like Oliver Cromwell or
Napoleon. Bin Ladin himself comes from the emerging capitalist sector in
feudalistic
Where in the Middle
East can one find anything like the path that
A more sustainable
and global grand bargain would include at least the following elements:
(1)
An
agreement that real interest rates will be gradually lowered to be “effectively
zero,” as described below. This is an essential element of the valid core
of Islam – and of any proper ethical concern for the future.
(2)
An agreement
that we will all work together towards complete sustainability, the
necessary foundation for stable long-term existence of human beings on earth.
This includes an agreement to accelerate
our efforts to find alternatives to overdependence on oil in cars, and to our
overdependence on coal and fission in primary energy generation. It also
requires enhancing education worldwide, in a way that truly helps liberate the
spirit and provides more meaning in life both to females and to males than the
mere increase of population.
(3)
As
implied by (1), restraints on the production of crude oil (saving it for the
future), enough to allow a steady rise in the price of crude oil “as fast
as the world economy can accommodate without great dislocation” even as
we try hard to increase the world’s ability to accommodate such a price
increase. This might even include a $100/barrel floor on the price of crude
oil.
(4)
An
agreement to strive carefully and conscientiously towards greater mutual
understanding, and towards an absolute maximum of mutual tolerance.
Of course, political
sorts of agents cannot and should not take full responsibility for all of these
minimal requirements, but they should at least agree to stop getting in the
way.
**************************Earlier
Version of this web page (October 2006)
Justice and balance demand
that I say something about Islam, immediately, at this time (October 2006) when
I have posted incomplete but detailed pieces on Buddhism and Taoism, and
Christianity. Yet the history and diversity of Islam is somewhat overwhelming,
and the gaps in my personal knowledge are harder to avoid here when I think of
how hard it would be to create an integrated picture. Facing this dilemma, I
will try to make a few scattered observations, and beg the readers’
forgiveness for the lack of organization.
Some
Moslem scholars might say that I have already presented their most important
core beliefs in what I have already said about Christianity. I have already
talked about the One, and the One Reality. I have stated that Jesus was an
authentic and inspired prophet, but that light, revelation and even the link to
our Father in heaven did not end with Jesus. Of course, they did not end with
Mohammed either. They are available to all of us here today. In discussing the
ancient idea of “One Man, One Soul,”
I cited the classic dream of Mohammed and some of its implications. But these
are only a few of the main streams of thought in Islam.
Many
of the internal struggles within Islam have been very similar to the struggles
within Christianity and even to the struggles within
For
example, there are themes of order versus freedom of the soul, and the dangers
of corruption when power is too centralized. At the extreme of order, there are
the famous shariyah or “Islamic Law”, and the ideal of complete
political rule by religious authorities. To champion the freedom of the soul,
there have been the whirling dervishes and the orders of Sufis. But many Sufis
would urge me to be more careful with my language here; they do not advocate
the most extreme Western concept of freedom, but a kind of submission
(“Islam” means submission) to the higher spiritual flow. Yet
“submitting to the spirit” and “going
with the flow” (as in Taoism) may really be pointing to the same
thing, in the end; in order to do full justice to the objective reality, it may
be essential to understand the equivalence between the two. Sufism also
contains many important practical ideas about the cultivation of the soul
beyond the scope of this page.
In practical terms – does an individual human try to open up to the
flow, and feel it, and understand it, or does he or she let someone else guide
him or her? Are you submitting to God, to the spiritual light, to a corrupt
leader, to a demagogue with dreams of personal glory, or to shared human
weaknesses? How do you know which is which? That is a universal dilemma. But in
general, humans in any society will be able to respond better to the authentic
flow of spirit if more of them try hard to open their eyes and ears and
understand, and avoid those political circumstances which get in the way of
this. Perhaps when Mohammed insisted that everyone
visit Mecca physically at least once, and try to visit it in their minds five
times a day, he was trying to encourage everyone to make the effort to open
their own eyes and ears to the greater inner light.
Political
chaos and political order can both get in the way. This has always been a major
challenge and stimulus to Islam, but they are important to the entire world
here and now.
Right
from the beginning, Mohammed in
Facing
a kind of war of all against all, Mohammed recognized that it was essential to
face up to the mundane conflicts of interest that had gotten out of hand. He
realized that it was essential to act on the mundane level, and not only the
spiritual level, in order to create a physical, mundane situation where the
inner light would have room for its expression. The required mundane action was
the kind of action that Locke, Hobbes and E.O. Schelling would understand very
well: people needed a kind of new social contract, a “new deal,” a
kind of balanced agreement in order to create a breathing space.
Mohammed’s new Contract for
But
this was only the first chapter of a long history. William McNeil, in his World History (Third Edition, 1979),
gives a useful and serious overview of this history, filtered as it may be
through American eyes.
As
Islam expanded, leadership fell to a succession of political leaders less able
to rely directly on spiritual inspiration. A critical turning point came when
most of Islam was taken over by the Abbasid Emperors, who played a role in
Islam similar to the role of
And
yet – excessive order and excessive political control can also suffocate
the spirit. It is said that absolute power corrupts absolutely. History shows
that theocracy is not exempt from this problem. Islam has experienced a series
of movements, like Shia and Wahhabism, analogous to Lutheranism and Oliver
Cromwell in
The
challenge before Islam and humanity now is how to construct a kind of new deal,
more suitable to the facts of the entire earth at present. Somewhere between
the extremes of suffocating order (and the danger of wars whenever one group
tries to impose its order on others) and of suffocating chaos, some new kind of
balance is needed, to create more breathing space. This challenge is with us
both between and within the major regions of the world.
Not
being Mohammed, I do not have a new contract to propose at this point –
at least, not one unified contract for everything. In fact, in today’s
world, no contract would be enough any more to ensure mundane security and
breathing space for the bulk of humanity. That requires more effective international
cooperation (with mutual understanding and enlightenment to give it a
foundation) aimed at achieving global
sustainability. The entire world needs to make adjustments, one way or
another, to achieve this goal. Otherwise, there will be no breathing space for
the spirit – and perhaps no humans at all. And yet, this is necessary,
not sufficient. As the Clintons have said, we must also remember that
“capitalism’ and “freedom” are not exactly synonyms;
humans need to be free to live under shariyah or to dedicate themselves to make
money if they so choose, but they should also be free to follow another path,
and to heed the call of the spirit as it calls them from one realm to another
in the course of their lives.
Cycles of Glory and Corruption
It is impossible to
understand Islam without some knowledge of its history.
Memory
of history is one of the great strengths of Islam. Modern Islam is an amalgam
of many very different streams emerging from the past. Yet some teachers of
Islam, like many false teachers of Christianity or of computer science, try to
shield their subjects from real knowledge of history, except for the story of
Mohammed himself. This is simply a technique for weakening the student, so as to
control him and to exaggerate the teacher himself.
Islam
was once indeed the main center of light and civilization for the entire world.
At its peak, under the green flag of the Ottomans, it did more than just
conquer territory. It did more to advance the inner, spiritual growth of humans
on a massive scale than any other organization in history. It led the world in
mathematics, in poetry, and in religious tolerance. Yet at another period,
under the Abbasid Emperors, the rich and powerful and cynical would indulge in
every possible form of corruption condemned by every culture of the world, even
as they cynically ordered their servants to construct a system of laws –
the shariyah – which would serve as an effective straitjacket to control
the lower classes of their empire.
Some Technical Details
Rules about Interest Rates
There is one
interesting aspect of old Islamic Law which needs to be updated, but merits
more serious attention from the entire world: the prohibition against paying
interest on money. The traditional version of that prohibition is not viable in
today’s new world, but the idea behind it may be. Interest rates
sometimes articulate the idea that pain and happiness by people in the future
(including ourselves!) is less important and less valuable than pain or
happiness in the present. Perhaps we need to think hard about how to establish
a regime of “ethical interest rates” which do not discount the
future. As it happens, such a regime would give greater weight to the value of
oil holdings in the
Rules about Images and Statues
Mohammed was deeply
horrified by the statues and images of tribal deities worshipped in
Yet
what would he say about the image of the Kabaa? In my view, he would say that
the inner thought of the person bowing to
In
the same way, of course, when people approach the Kabaa as if it were a tribal statue, symbolizing the worship of a God
different from the one of Christianity and Buddhism… and inciting the
kind of tribal warfare that Mohammed tried so hard to stop… certainly he
would want another iteration of correction here.