The Wisdom of Islam (Wisdom Of Series) - Hardcover

From the seventh century A.D. on, Islam--and its cornerstone, the Koran--has played a part in forging the world's soul. Since the Prophet's revelation in Mecca and his exile to Medina, Muslims on four continents have brought about a true transformation of humanity and society. Islam has thus become one of the elements that make up our mentaland historical universe.

From Arabia to India, Indonesia, Russia, and China, the Islamic faith has tried to reconcile religion, ideology, and history by always and everywhere placing the Koran at the heart of thought. As such Islam has taken shape in the difficult interplay of history and men, reflection and imagination. In the process it has given birth to a civilization. Andalthough this Islamic culture is built up around divine revelation and a founding book, it promotes a way of life as much as a form of belief.

It is our duty then to lift Islam out of the rut of received wisdom and Islamist caricatures that reduce it to a series of certitudes, dogmas, and religious practices, and focus ourattention rather on its humanity.

This humanity was already present in the personal path taken up by the founder of Islam, Mohammed, who shrank at times from both the revelation made to him and the rolesome wanted to see him play.

Far from the simplistic image of the triumphant warrior, two beings coexist within the Prophet, as within his fellow men and women. There is a human being, with his hesitationsand weaknesses, and a being called to an eternal destiny. It is Islam's vocation to reassure man and help him surmount his weaknesses.

Between divine will and human limits lies a space that allows of human freedom. In this space man can create his own relationship with God, a relationship that needs nointermediary. And the very first thing he must do in paying homage to his Creator is to put his reason to use, that absolute gift made by God to his creature.

It is with heartfelt joy that Muslims give thanks to God for this privilege by exercising their reason here on earth, sharing it with others, and transmitting their knowledge totheir fellow beings in order to remain faithful to the divine message.

The same holds for Nature, which Muslims "return" to the Creator after reworking, transforming, and occasionally "uplifting" it, as in those gardens that are meant to give us a foretaste of paradise here on earth. There is in this a magnificent way of embracing life, a capacity for happiness, and a sensuality that can be seen in gardens just as much asin certain homes and their interiors (jewelry, fabrics, rugs), in music, poetry, and stories. The most sumptuous example of this is found in The Thousand and One Nights.Throughout its many pages this book suggests models for the good life and a refined code of social conduct through which a true ethics of happiness takes shape.

We are a far cry then from orthodox Islam, which rejects this direct relationship of an individual with God if it does not fall under collective law. Theologians staunchly committed to orthodoxy were to condemn the greatest mystics, including al-Hallaj, Suhrawardi, and Ibn Arabi, whose religious impulse is solitary. Such men and women were especially suspect since to express the flame of their belief, they borrowed from the language of khamrya (bacchanalian poetry) and ghazal (love poetry), diverting it from itsprofane meaning to attain the sacred.

Orthodox belief did everything in its power to exclude these mystics, going so far as to condemn some to the stake, as was the case with al-Hallaj, whose words thus resound even more intensely:"Kill me then, my faithful comrades,; In my murder lies my life." These theologians' terrible fear of the depth of this mystic love only brings to light thetepidness of their faith and the weakness of their spirituality.

How can one compare their dependence on a system of punishments and rewards with the fervor of a love like that expressed by the woman mystic Rabi'a al-Adawiyya, who raced through the streets of Baghdad carrying fire in one hand and water in the other, crying: "With these things I am going to set fire to Heaven; And put out the flames ofHell; So that voyagers to God can rip the veils; And see the real goal."

Who are the madmen and who are the sages here? And what if they were none other than the "white thread" and the "black thread" that the Koran speaks of, its way ofsaying that only the dawn will enable us to distinguish one from the other?

If only the few words of Islamic wisdom mentioned in this volume---rawn from the Koran, as well as from various poems dedicated to love, God, and men--could lift for a moment the dark veil that some have thrown over this culture, perhaps then we might glimpse the Islam dear to the heart of the contemporary poet Jamal Eddin Bencheikh:

"The Islam that I claim as my own is faith not power, ethics not politics.

"I assert its spirituality against the hegemonic ambitions of a handful of its adepts.

"I put my faith in the harrowing passion of the prophet from Mecca, in the purity of his dream of eternity, not his autocratic conception of the state and hierarchicconception of society.

"His is not of my century and no one, as far as I know, can claim the right to come and interpret God for me.

"Islam gives me the signal privilege of being solely accountable for my acts."

Nacer Khemir