Quintessential

What is there left to be said of the remarkable and provocative speech of the Pope? That he should draw such a stark and bold line between Islam and reason is quite surprising, to say the least. A few points here. Surely each tradition acknowledges the excess of truth over reason: can one ‘know’ Christ except through Grace or the Holy Spirit (even to use the word ‘know’ shows the bias of the Islamic perspective since ‘love’ would be more appropriate); Leo Strauss has Maimonides and the medieval Jewish tradition concurring and the reservations about depicting the ‘Father’ in the Orthodox Tradition are surely an indication of the fact that the divine essence is unknown. The whole idea of mystery and seeing through a glass darkly also points to this excess and if we are ‘being’ then God is ‘beyond-being’ , the divine darkness. So, whilst all traditions can hardly dispense with transcendence one does not have to deduce from that that there is no immanence or analogy between the divine and the human. Any religion must have both and differences can only arise as to on which there is an emphasis.

Now, to claim that Islam is essentially or fundamentally irrational in that it conceives of its God as a Will that cannot be known , that is arbitrary , is quite remarkable in itself. Firstly, it ignores the whole tradition of philosophy in general and Islamic Aristotelianism in particular. The issue here is not whether Greek philosophy is alien to the spirit of Islam and , therefore, not something that one could reasonably cite as an example of Islamic thought that contradicts the Pope. Such a claim could, with some justification, be put to all of the Semitic monotheistic faiths: is there an irreconcilable difference in outlooks, aims and motives  between Athens and Jerusalem? The point is, rather, that as a matter of fact, history, there have been traditions of an incorporation of Greek philosophy into the fold of Islam. And it is fairly well recognised that Islam was a continuation and transmitter of the classical heritage.

The second point is distinct but related to the historical argument above. Is it not true that the very possibility of Revelation , the very fact that there is a revelation, indicates that there is the ’entry’ of the divine into the world? (here one must be aware of differences in perpsectives: for the muslim it is the miracle of the book that is analogous to the logos-and not the example of the Prophet) . In addition to this, the contents of the revelation-and not just the fact of revelation- also establish a relation between transcendence and human affairs. The Law id the bridge betwen the two realms and it is in this way that something of the divine will can be known. Here one could add that the Names (or Attributes) have always been another way in which we can ‘know’ something of God-even as His Transcendence remains unquestioned and unquestionable.

Another way in which reason can know something of the ultimate reality is in the aim to establish political and social justice for these must also conform to human values and aspirations -or at the very least, take into account the human margin, human nature as it is. One could also add that God is closer to us than our own self (our own “jugular veins” is the Quranic phrase) and that “he who knows the finite knows the Lord. To this one could multiply examples of the importance of seeking knowledge and of education. And as with social and political justice, knowledge of Nature and History are not thought of as radically opposed to the spiritual message of Islam. In all these senses, then, the notion that Islam is somehow less related to reason and the world of human affairs is quite an astounding one. It remains to be noted that Gnostic tendencies are far stronger in Christianity than in Islam which was , in its early days, always accused of giving too much to the world and to sensuality, the body!

I think the really intersting issue is not whether Islam is essentially anti-classical (Allama Iqbal would famously say that hsi whole work aims to demonstrate just that point); no, the interesting thing is that what seems to underlie the Pope’s words are a fear that the thread that bound reason to Christinity has come undone: there is now  a chasm between the human and divine. The divine is so far off that he can only be reached by a “leap of faith”, through ‘blind faith’. The very notion that thought and faith are deeply intertwined, that there is something unconditional before thought, that we believe in order to understand , not understand in order to believe (Anselm) is a view that has progressively become unhinged from the European tradition. Reason now stands autonomous , philosophy is no longer bound by the law (Leo Strauss). In the economic, political and cultural realms what relation is there between thought and action and a Christian perspective?

There is something harsh, severe, rigid, and strict in religion. Concentrated, pure, crystalline, as hard as diamonds. To talk of freedom without limitations…one could equally talk about a heart that is constricted and knows no love. But there is something extreme in Christianity which doesn’t appeal to me (this is not a judgement and far less a moral position); we are only talking here of a compatibility with one’s temperament -and that is something that is utterly beyond one’s choice. Again, one has to tread carefully here since different tendencies are present in any one tradition. Islam has its asceticism, for example. And no-one would contest that its outward sobriety in certain matters is anything but a refined detachment or that half the religion is jalal and ‘awe’ and reticence. Add to this that the perspective is infused with the spirit of the ‘law’ and obedience rather than love and it is quite possible to come to just the opposite conclusion of what I am suggesting. One must also be aware that differences in perspectives narrow down considerably the more one’s actions and thoughts are centred on a truly religious life.

But be that as it is, there is something disconcerting-from the Christian perspective-about a religion that is so concerned about the good of this world and the good of the next. Behind such a concern there is always the hint of a suggestion that what we have here is a concession to worldliness and sensuality, a conformity to the strictures of an organised religion and not to the unbound spirit. Hagarism.

This confusion of perspectives is, of course, not always a result of bad faith. From a vantage point that stresses ‘the one thing needful’ or the truly singularly cosmic intervention of the divine into human affairs other faiths, or rather the possibility of other faiths, are not a pressing question. To ignore other meeting places and transitional stages between nature and grace-as Gustave Thibon puts it-in favour of the cross is not wholly surprising. Islam, on the other hand, emphasises a continuity of Revelation and is therefore essentially pluralistic. From its perspective it a truth that must already contain the truth of Christianity within it whereas from the latter’s point of view Islam will necessarily always be an outsider. Perhaps it is this that accounts for Islam’s supreme flexibility-a religion that could take in not only people from many different cultural backgrounds but whose theology could express itself at once in terms of Greek metaphysics and nomadic thought, a synthesis of civilisation and the desert (Medina and Mecca); more than anything else, the ‘world’ and the body were not looked at in a negative light but were themselves ‘ladders’ or bridges leading back to the holy. It is that sense of equilibrium and balance that minimised the fissures in the soul and the extreme tension (as George Steiner has it) between flesh and spirit, Revelation and History, time and the end of time that one detects in Christianity. One only has to compare this to the sublime the whole earth is a mosque to get an idea of the differences in contemplative attitudes.

But having said that, here are a few of my favourite words by an extremist-Simone Weil. I invariably find it exhausting reading her even in small doses, since it is as if one needed a superhuman effort to pay attention to a single point and that one is being made painfully aware of the inadequacies of one’s own soul; a quiet thought dawns on us: had we realised but one point, had the intelligence of mind and attentiveness of will, we would be as radically de-centred, de-created as her. 

1. There is every degree of distance between the creature and God.A distance in which the love of God is impossible: matter, plants, animals. Evil is so complete there that it destroys itself: there is no longer any evil: mirror of divine innocence. We are at the point where love is just possible.
2. We can say that we exist (to be placed outside) not that we are. God who is Being has in a sense effaced himself so that we can exist.
3. Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness. We must also renounce the past and future, for the self is nothing but a coagulation of the past and future around a present that is always falling away.
4. Time is the door to Eternity, not a substitute for it.
5. [S]in springs from the desire to appear and dominate.
6. When speaking of God’s ‘dependence’ on creatures one can say that things are true in the order of love and false in the order of being.
7. We only attain to real prayer only after we have worn down our own will by keeping rules.
8. We want the future to be there without ceasing to be the future.This is an absurdity of which eternity alone is the cure.
9. It is God who in love withdraws from us so that we can love Him.For if we were exposed to the direct radiance of His love , without the protection of space, of time, and of matter, we should be evaporated like water in the sun.
10. We must take the feeling of being at home into exile. We must be rooted in the absence of a place.
11. To transfer the source of our actions outside ourselves. To be impelled. The purest of motives (or the basest: the law is always the same) appear as something exterior.
12. To be only an intermediary between the uncultivated ground and the ploughed field, between the blank page and the poem.
13. Idolatry comes from the fact that, whilst thirsting for absolute good, we do not possess the power of supernatural attention and we have not the patience to allow it to develop.
14. It is because of this monotony [of evil] that quantity plays so great a part.
15. Necessity is God’s veil. Limitation is proof that God loves us.
16. Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.
17. We know by means of our intelligence that what the intelligence does not comprehend is more real than what it does comprehend. All that I conceive of as true is less true than those things of which I cannot conceive the truth, but which I love. The desire to discover something new prevents people from allowing their thoughts to dwell on the transcendent, indemonstrable meaning of what has already been discovered.
18. It must be work in which the body constantly bears a part ..if this condition is not fulfilled then every change in our thinking is illusory.
19. No human being should be deprived of his metaxu , that is to say of those relative and mixed blessings (home, country, traditions, culture etc) which warm and nourish the soul and without which, short of sainthood, a human life is not possible.