In physics, light makes potential colors into actual colors. In metaphysics, the rule stays the same with the objects being man.
The unhappiness of philosophers is due to their endless struggle to find reason in an irrational world.
All thinkers commit the folly of turning their personal experiences into universal laws
There is no drama bigger than real life itself
How will you find light in the West when even the sun is blinded there
Everyone is a genius. Some do not discover it, some do not actualize it and some are not discovered by others.
The hardest thing is not to achieve genius but to avoid ostentation with it.
No one is unhappier than an unacknowledged genius
It amazes me to see how genius is often attributed to ability alone instead of the life experiences that ignite it.
The irony of man is that he wants to be great and not suffer before it
The greatest men were not those who were not humiliated but those whose humiliations were for a higher cause
A poet is someone who can say in a sentence more profoundly, that, which a writer says in a whole book.
It is funny how the most sensitive people appear most heartless to those who dont know them
Modern maturity is loosing the virtues of a child while retaining the vices with far more complexities.
The mental age of a man is determined by life experiences and not his physical age.
Nothing is more unfortunate than when your fruits are overlooked for their roots
There is nothing more despicable and yet inevitable about human nature than being judgemental.
No book or academic endeavour has that knowledge which lies in the mind of a sufferer.
A conformist believer will always have much more hypocrisy than a disbeliever
It is indifference and not tolerance to be unbothered about the prevalence of falsehood. It is not modesty but lack of courage to not rectify it to avoid making foes.
It is utmost foolishness to confuse fear of people with humbleness and humility.
Modern Art is nothing but a beautiful outlet for a miserable void within.
Psuedo Literature is nothing but wonderful expressions of meaningless thoughts.
Modern Intelligence is the measure of someone's ability to be smart at something that is irrelevant to the purpose of life.
Modern Morality is a code of ethics that avoids displeasing the creation while being indifferent to the displeasure of their Creator.
Modern Success is a fool's endeavour to impress many other fools
Secularism is the name given to an idealism which helplessly hopes to combine peace with materialism
Modern respect is egotism under the guise of dignity.
Modernism is that which strives to solve the ancient problems of man with newer and much lesser effective solutions.
Intelligence is conceptual ability and not factual memorization. Intellectuality is a much deeper version of it. Talent is the ability to create something new - Genius is the sum of all three.
Islam is a combination of the virtues of both East and West whereas the Muslim Ummah combines the vices of both
Talent is not God-gifted but developed when natural attributes are invested for something. Thus, an unfulfilled talent does not imply a waste of attributes as they can be turned into some other ability with the same quality of output.
The prophet of today would be someone who critically examines Modern Thought with such perfection that he is neither influenced by it nor rejects it without reason.
Good deeds done with unlawful sustenance is equivalent to an entire life of transgressions
It is senseless to believe in the finality of prophethood and his book and yet deem their teachings as impractical.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
SUFISM–THE MISUNDERSTOOD ISLAM
One late night, Allama Iqbal called his faithful servant, Ali Baqsh. When Ali entered Iqbal’s room, he saw a buzurg (saintly man) with a very enlightened face sitting on a chair while Iqbal lie at his feet pressing his legs. He was very surprised to see this. Iqbal asked him to bring drinks from the market. Although surprised, considering the late hours, Ali went out nonetheless. Nearby, he saw another buzurg with a small shop. He got drinks from him but when he offered him money, the buzurg declined saying it was between him and Iqbal. After sometime, Iqbal called Ali again and asked him to take the buzurg outside and see him off. He went out with the buzurg but after a while, the buzurg suddenly disappeared. When he looked across, the shop had vanished as well. He was totally shocked and asked Iqbal about it. Iqbal requested him to not ask about it but he kept on asking with utmost curiosity. On his sheer insistence, Iqbal told him to never disclose it and said, “the buzurg in my room was Moinuddin Chishti and the one in the shop was Ali Hajweri”.
This incident took place about 850 years after Hajweri’s death and nearly 700 years after Chishti’s death. Muhammad Munawar Mirza, a prominent scholar of Iqbal Studies, is reported to have narrated this incident and was confirmed by Iqbal’s son, Javed as well. It happened during the later years of Iqbal’s life when the philosopher-poet had turned into a Sufi. To an ordinary man, such things are impossible to believe in but in the world of Tasawwuf, Mysticism and Sufism, it is nothing unusual.
There are four kinds of opinions about Sufism. The true Sufis claim it as the real Islam. The literalists shun it as a mixture of biddah, kufr and shirk. The pseudo-Sufis “follow” it without knowing anything about its reality. The rationalists deem it only for those who are superstitious, backwards and lack brains. Let us discuss all four with slight details.
The Sufis say that Islam is empty without Ihsan which is worshipping as if one sees God. They say that religion is way beyond acts with a ritualistic and heartless attitude devoid of any concentration. They say that Sufism is a higher dimension of Islam and the perfection of Iman. They aim far above the minimum requirements for salvation. Their focus is not just the quantity but the quality of deeds. They claim Sufism as the spirituality of Islam. Furthermore, they claim some portion of Sufism as a hidden Islam graspable only to them, not even to ordinary scholars let alone to laymen.
The literalists say that Sufism has nothing to do with Quran & Sunnah. They say that whatever Sufis say and do is either different or contradictory to what has been revealed to and practiced by the holy prophet. They say that Shariah is one for all without any distinction between the awaam (common man) and the khawaas (elite). They say that the holy prophet and his companions were the true elites and they didn’t practice Sufism.
The pseudo (fake) Sufis are the liberals who find the conventional, orthodox and traditional Islam as dry, boring and tough not knowing that it is a compulsory pre-requisite to Sufism. They take only the outer form of some aspects of Sufism without even a hint to their inner reality. For example, they are delighted with the artistic aspects of Sufism and find a way to follow their nafs under the guise of Sufi Art not knowing that before creating Sufi Art, one has to become a Sufi which is a lifetime struggle against nafs. Women who do not want to cover themselves as ordered by God, and, men who do not want to follow the Sunnah in appearance consider themselves as “Sufis”. The fact that Sufism stresses on the inner aspects does not mean that the outer is irrelevant; what it teaches is that the outer has to be combined with the inner. In the case of men, since beard and Islamic attire are both not compulsory, one may become a Sufi without Sufi appearance as an exception like Iqbal, but it is very rare. However, in the case of women, since the attire is a compulsion, it is impossible to be a Sufi without it. Salman Ahmed of Junoon comes first to my mind w.r.t this category.
The rationalists deny Sufi knowledge because according to them it has nothing to do with reason, logic and proof. This category has similarities as well as differences with the literalists. The difference is that where the later implies revelation as proof, these imply rationality or empirical information as proof. The similarity is that both deny religious experience and intuition as sources of knowledge because for them there are no higher levels of human consciousness than their own. Thus where one consists of those who are modernists to the bones, the other carries the germs of modernism.
Sufism, if properly understood, is the heart of Islam and the essence of deen. It comprises of tazkia-e-nafs (purification of soul) and tasfia-e-qalb (purification of heart). It involves the diminishing of ego, the dominance over animal instincts, abstinence from vain or worldly desires and the freeing of one’s heart from the love of all but God. The sole aim is an intimate relationship with Allah by self-negation.
No discourse on Sufism is worthy without a discussion on qalb (human heart). The entire Quran is full of verses which say that people who deny the truth have hearts with blameworthy traits. The sayings of holy prophet also convey the same theme. The Sufis claim that just as the denial of truth is linked to hearts that are diseased or hardened or blackened, the comprehension of truth to the extent of an almost direct “vision” of God is linked with the purity of heart. This fact is proved by prophet’s experience of miraaj. Although no heart can be purer than his heart but since this experience was of the highest order unmatched by Sufis, even his heart had to be washed thrice. Moreover, when his chest was ripped apart in childhood, even then his heart was washed.
The Sufis insist on nothing more than the act of zikr (remembrance of God) as it is the most supreme cleanser of hearts. However zikr has a much broader and deeper meaning in Sufism. It is not the repetition of a mere tongue-recital of divine names and words as non-Sufis do with the help of beads (tasbi). In general, it is a heartfelt awareness of Allah irrespective of whatever actions are on the limbs. A specific practice to develop this state is muraaqba (concentration) in which they do zikr in isolation in such a way that the tongue, heart and mind all converge on celestial verses while being forgetful of everything other than Allah. Both Quran and hadith have claimed zikr (whether general or specific) as among the most virtuous deeds.
The difference between calculating the height of Mount Everest and climbing it is not more than that between the theoretical conceptualization of and practical adherence to religion. That is why the main theme of Sufis is ishq-e-ilahi (love for Allah) as it is love that softens hearts and inspires men to reach heights, unmatched. Hence they differ from philosophers, theologians and jurists of religion who don’t go beyond mental comprehension. Instead of trying to understand God by reading or thinking, they believe in finding Him. Yet, due to the depth of Sufi thought, it is inevitable that some of the greatest intellectual contributions to both philosophy and literature came from Sufis.
A strong condemnation of Sufism is that since it is about renunciation and other-worldliness, if it is practiced, it will further stagnate the progress of ummah which is the last thing needed. This misconception is due to the lack of understanding of the word dunya in Islamic dictionary. Dunya, which is worthless in the eyes of God, is not attaining a high rank in the society itself but attaining it either for egoistic reasons or love of material things. If the same high rank is attained for a righteous cause with a godly intention, it is deen and not dunya. This proves we need Sufism all the more for two reasons. Firstly, since a Sufi cannot attain status through the wrong means, he has to rely on his brilliance alone and thus will be more competent. Secondly, if there will be Sufis at the top of society, there will be no dirty politics because they would not be sitting on high ranks for selfish motives. Thus Sufism has nothing to do with going to a forest and sitting under a tree doing zikr. Zikr is free from the limitations of place and time.
So far we have discussed aspects of Sufism which even its greatest opponents can only admire. What most don’t realize is that Sufism didn’t start with those categorized under the word, “Sufi”. All those since Adam who lived exclusively for God whether they were prophets or others were Sufis. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) himself was the biggest ever Sufi and his companions were also true Sufis irrespective of when this word was introduced in any language. It was for a reason that Hazrat Ali Hajweri said that once there used to be Sufis but the name of Sufism was not there; now there are only Sufi terminologies but there are no Sufis left. However, there are two things that need to be understood at all costs. Firstly, someone who rejects all aspects of Sufism may enter the lowest ranks in paradise but cannot become a momin at all. Secondly, a momin who is considered as a non-Sufi is actually a semi-Sufi because he cannot become a momin without following a major portion of Sufism even if he rejects the minor portion.
However, Sufism is not as simple as we have disclosed so far. Its history is full of controversial statements and actions. Many Sufis have been labeled as either heretics or crazy. Few were persecuted or forced to leave their towns. Most were either never understood or many years after their deaths. The first criticism against Sufis is their distinction in knowledge between the common men and the spiritually elite ones. The question is when Islam is the same for everyone, who put this distinction? The holy prophet himself created this distinction. Hazrat Abu Hurairah narrates a hadith: “God gave me two types of knowledge. One, I have transferred to you. The other, had I transferred, people would have cut down my throat”. When the purpose of holy prophet’s life was to spread knowledge, why would he say such a thing had there been no distinction? Furthermore, another hadith is, “We, the assemblies of the prophets have been commanded to address men in proportion to their intellects”. It proves that prophets do not disclose everything to laymen.
The second criticism raised against Sufis is about their claim that there are hidden and higher dimensions to meanings of Quranic verses. Hazrat Ali narrates a hadith, “every verse of the Qur’an has four layers of meaning: an exoteric sense (zahir), an inner sense (batin), a limit (hadd), and a beware point (matla‘)”. It was for a reason that Al-Ghazali claimed four levels of Tauheed. He said that the first and lowest is the literal text of Surah Ikhlaas which is for ordinary men. The second is for the khawaas (elite). The third is for the elite among the elite. About the fourth, he said that had he disclosed, people would call him a kafir. Here, we cannot help but mention a very subtle aspect of a Quranic verse [Yousaf Ali 3:7]. “In it are verses basic (of established meaning); they are the foundations of the Book: others are allegorical…..but no one knows its hidden meanings except God. And those who are firmly grounded in knowledge…..none will grasp the Message except men of understanding”. Notice that the full stop between the bolded lines is put by the translator and is obviously not in the original Arabic text, without which it would be read: “no one knows its hidden meaning except God and those who are firmly grounded in knowledge”.
Religious knowledge is divided into two: evidence-based and experience-based; the earlier means the literal text of Quran and hadith; the later implies the one earned by actually walking on the path taught by the earlier and thus a more profound understanding of the earlier. The literalists reject the later one due to their shallowness, superficiality and short-sightedness. Hence, although they are fully qualified for eternal salvation, they deprive themselves of an immense treasure of knowledge. The Sufis believe in learning by doing it, a rule people otherwise follow in all walks of life e.g a doctor who has not practiced medicine or treated patients will never grasp the expertise through reading books alone.
The Sufis take this concept to another level. They claim intuition (ilhaam) with a pure heart as a source of higher knowledge beyond sense and reason. It is below only the prophetic revelation in the hierarchy of God-man communication. Since non-Sufis cannot see anything in between revelation and reason, they are divided into 2 categories - the ordinary religious man deems Sufis as deviants as he sees only revelation, whereas the modern rationalist deems them senseless as he sees only reason. Both are wrong as they don’t see anything in between. This intuitive aspect allows Sufis to have access to those channels of truth which non-Sufis don't have and thus are deemed as crazy.
Now we will discuss the most “dangerous” part of Sufism - the things said by Sufis which seem totally outside the bounds of Shariah. Human language is lost for words to describe a state of spiritual witnessing. Few moments of mystical experience yield more knowledge than a thousand books. During such experiences, the levels of human consciousness reach far beyond a normal man. Thus mystics have access to those channels of truth which normal people cannot even think about. Here we discover another reason why prophets are greater than the Sufis. Both of them know and experience way beyond a common man but where the prophet's superior wisdom doesn't let him disclose everything, the childish ecstasy of a Sufi turns him vocal and thus leads to trouble among novices. That is why Sufis call themselves as intoxicated.
Let us consider the most extreme case of the great Mansur Al-Hallaj who uttered probably the most controversial words in the history of Sufism, “I am the Truth”. If his words are taken literally, how can a non-Sufi accept it? It took another great Sufi, Rumi, to explain it three centuries later after experiencing the same level of proximity to God. As a person travels the path of Sufism, his own “I” (as standing in opposition to Him) gradually gets diminished as it continues to attain unification with “He”. There comes a point when the mystic doesn’t even possess an individual “I”. When Hallaj said “I”, since his own “I” had diminished in the love of “He”, he meant “He is the Truth” with the highest possible conviction. Such apparent contradictions arise due to the fact that a Sufi has two centers of consciousness – human and divine. Outside his state, he speaks from the earlier one; during his state he speaks from the later one.
Some Sufis recognize two deep layers within qalb. The first is called ruh, the spirit and the second which lies even deeper is called sirr, the secret. The sirr is the deepest layer of consciousness and is infact “beyond consciousnesses”. It is the sacred core of the soul where the divine and the human become united, unified and fused. In other words, it is in this dimension of the soul that the “uniomystica” is realized. The ego-consciousness which is actualized in this dimension and which naturally is the highest form of ego-consciousness in Sufism is no longer the consciousness of the mystic himself. It is rather the consciousness of the divine I speaking through him.
Ibn-al-Arabi’s Wahdat-ul-Wajood (Unity of Being) is another serious example. It implied that God alone has existence, and, was misunderstood as Pantheism by the Western Orientalist, Nicholson. It took someone as great as Shah Wali Ullah to admit that far from being false, it was the ultimate realization of Tawheed on a most superior level. Amazingly, Quantum physics, the enemy within secular science, has recently proved exactly the same thing. We live in a spiritual (rather than material) universe. There is a universal consciousness right from an atom to a human being. There is no dead matter. The intensity of this universal soul differs among creations and thus creates the hierarchy from matter to plants to animals to humans. The scientific explanation is not part of this topic but it proves that both extremes were wrong - the dualism of Creator-creation as well as that everything is God – the right view is that “in everything there is God”. Reading scientific proof of Wahdat-ul-Wajood sounds almost unthinkable but the relationship between a high intuition and ordinary rational intellect was best expressed by Iqbal:
“Where thought grasps Reality piecemeal, intuition grasps it in its wholeness. One fixes its gaze on the temporal aspect of Reality; the other on the eternal. One slowly traverses, specifies and closes up the various regions of the whole for exclusive observation; the other is present enjoyment of the whole of Reality”.
Since Thought (brain) will grasp that, much later, which a high Intuition (heart) grasped much earlier, it took 1000 years for scientists to understand that which a mystic understood in a moment. The incommunicability of a mystical state, in the form of an argument, between the one undergone and the one challenging its authenticity raises serious doubts. It is because intuitive knowledge, despite being valid, is unverifiable. However, as discussed earlier, it is even verifiable for those who reach that spiritual level. The great Rumi once said that “whatever exists in the unseen realm has its roots in the seen realm; the forms may change but the essence remains the same”. The multiplicity of different beings that we observe in the universe with the physical eyes is reduced to unity when witnessed with the eye of heart. Thus the mystic, in that state, “sees” or rather experiences nothing but one being in the form of a light (nur) (or some other inexpressible entity) everywhere.
Modern man finds such subjective experiences impossible to believe in. How can we rely in matters of knowledge on something as unreliable as experience of others? What about History? Why, then, does he believe in Aristotle or Plato? Has he himself seen, heard or touched them? The whole recorded history is nothing but an account of other’s experiences. “If a man could say nothing but what he can prove, history could not have been written” – Michael Jackson. Not only this but when we closely study the lives of these Sufis, their truthfulness even in ordinary matters of life was undeniable let alone in a matter as big as the experience of God.
A very strong criticism against Sufism is its extremeness and lack of balance. The Urdu word Ishq, which has no equivalent in its English translation “love”, does true justice to Sufism. Ishq itself turns something finite into infinite but when the subject of that ishq is Himself Infinite, then how can there be balance in it? The holy prophet, again, due to his superiority above Sufis could combine the mutually exclusive combination of Ishq and moderation; otherwise, there is no greatness without a touch of madness. A Sufi sees neither heaven nor hell but only his Beloved. For him, deeds done for the fear of a fire or want of a garden is a trade, not worship.
The various orders (tariqah/silsila) of Tasawwuf have often been criticized as they involve a kind of exaggerated relationship between a Shaikh (master) and a mureed (disciple) in which the later “blindly follows” the earlier by a “slavish imitation”. Even religious people, influenced by contemporary thought, criticize it. It is true that Islam is submission to God and not to someone else but before that one has to learn submission itself and it is not an easy or an overnight process at all as it is harsh on the nafs. The purpose behind such a relationship is learning the “art of submission” which once learned makes following Islam in totality easy on the nafs. Otherwise a genuine Shaikh never goes against Quran and Sunnah in both speech and action.
Secondly, since the Shaikh has walked the path, he knows exactly all the traps and webs of both Satan and nafs and how to avoid and conquer them as well. Thus he makes the aspirant’s journey much easier. The traveler’s spiritual progress is accelerated as a result. Those who do not follow anyone remain stagnant in tarbiat (training of nafs) and islah (self-rectification). When a 1000 things told by a Shaikh are followed, since he is only human, there maybe 10 wrong things as well but who would deprive himself of the benefit of the other 990?
“Every Sufi order is descended from the Prophet. The rite of initiation (bait) is a crucial moment in the history of Islam when, sitting beneath a tree, he called on his Companions to pledge their allegiance to him over and above the pledge they made at their entry into Islam. The prototype of the pact between Master and disciple is mentioned in the Quran[XLVIII:18]: God was well pleased with the believers when they pledged allegiance unto thee beneath the tree. He knew what was in their hearts and sent down the Spirit of Peace upon them and hath rewarded them with a near victory”.
Islamic Education, Culture and Civilization is incomplete without the concept of adab. One may explain everything about Islam in the most convincing manner but he cannot become a scholar unless he has adab for those above him in knowledge, taqwa or experience. Today we come across students and professors of Islamic studies who reject Sufism simply because they cannot understand it. Rather than considering their own lowliness, they reject something followed by the greatest Muslims in history, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The only explanation behind this severe lack of adab is arrogance.
This raises a very serious question. Is there anyone other than the holy prophet who was so pious or knowledgeable that he was infallible? No. Ghazali or Ibn-al-Arabi or Rumi or even the Sahaba (Companions) didn’t have that right at all. But the point that modernists miss is that only those who themselves reach that or near that level have the right to refute them, not us. The hierarchy among scholars cannot be broken; one cannot jump without crossing the intermediate levels. When someone of the caliber of Ibn-e-Taimiyah criticizes Sufism, then it is intellectual difference worthy of respect. But people like us have no choice but to be silent when we don’t understand a Sufi or find him contradictory to Quran due to our own low understanding of Quran.
What it is about Sufis that they deserve knowledge and experiences of a different level altogether? Here, they can be clearly differentiated from other religious people. Religious people may follow all the compulsory acts and abstain from all prohibited acts but when it comes to negating oneself, no one tolerates anything that hurts his pride among others. There is no veil between man and God thicker and most hard to lift than his own ego. No one wants to be considered inferior at any cost and would do anything to avoid such an opinion among peers. What makes Sufis the greatest after the prophets is their willingness to suffer humiliation for God because of their ishq (intense love) for Him. They, because of their humbleness, attain indifference to how much people look down upon them. Their selflessness is their highest virtue and their key to unlock the Divine mysteries kept hidden from everyone else.
This incident took place about 850 years after Hajweri’s death and nearly 700 years after Chishti’s death. Muhammad Munawar Mirza, a prominent scholar of Iqbal Studies, is reported to have narrated this incident and was confirmed by Iqbal’s son, Javed as well. It happened during the later years of Iqbal’s life when the philosopher-poet had turned into a Sufi. To an ordinary man, such things are impossible to believe in but in the world of Tasawwuf, Mysticism and Sufism, it is nothing unusual.
There are four kinds of opinions about Sufism. The true Sufis claim it as the real Islam. The literalists shun it as a mixture of biddah, kufr and shirk. The pseudo-Sufis “follow” it without knowing anything about its reality. The rationalists deem it only for those who are superstitious, backwards and lack brains. Let us discuss all four with slight details.
The Sufis say that Islam is empty without Ihsan which is worshipping as if one sees God. They say that religion is way beyond acts with a ritualistic and heartless attitude devoid of any concentration. They say that Sufism is a higher dimension of Islam and the perfection of Iman. They aim far above the minimum requirements for salvation. Their focus is not just the quantity but the quality of deeds. They claim Sufism as the spirituality of Islam. Furthermore, they claim some portion of Sufism as a hidden Islam graspable only to them, not even to ordinary scholars let alone to laymen.
The literalists say that Sufism has nothing to do with Quran & Sunnah. They say that whatever Sufis say and do is either different or contradictory to what has been revealed to and practiced by the holy prophet. They say that Shariah is one for all without any distinction between the awaam (common man) and the khawaas (elite). They say that the holy prophet and his companions were the true elites and they didn’t practice Sufism.
The pseudo (fake) Sufis are the liberals who find the conventional, orthodox and traditional Islam as dry, boring and tough not knowing that it is a compulsory pre-requisite to Sufism. They take only the outer form of some aspects of Sufism without even a hint to their inner reality. For example, they are delighted with the artistic aspects of Sufism and find a way to follow their nafs under the guise of Sufi Art not knowing that before creating Sufi Art, one has to become a Sufi which is a lifetime struggle against nafs. Women who do not want to cover themselves as ordered by God, and, men who do not want to follow the Sunnah in appearance consider themselves as “Sufis”. The fact that Sufism stresses on the inner aspects does not mean that the outer is irrelevant; what it teaches is that the outer has to be combined with the inner. In the case of men, since beard and Islamic attire are both not compulsory, one may become a Sufi without Sufi appearance as an exception like Iqbal, but it is very rare. However, in the case of women, since the attire is a compulsion, it is impossible to be a Sufi without it. Salman Ahmed of Junoon comes first to my mind w.r.t this category.
The rationalists deny Sufi knowledge because according to them it has nothing to do with reason, logic and proof. This category has similarities as well as differences with the literalists. The difference is that where the later implies revelation as proof, these imply rationality or empirical information as proof. The similarity is that both deny religious experience and intuition as sources of knowledge because for them there are no higher levels of human consciousness than their own. Thus where one consists of those who are modernists to the bones, the other carries the germs of modernism.
Sufism, if properly understood, is the heart of Islam and the essence of deen. It comprises of tazkia-e-nafs (purification of soul) and tasfia-e-qalb (purification of heart). It involves the diminishing of ego, the dominance over animal instincts, abstinence from vain or worldly desires and the freeing of one’s heart from the love of all but God. The sole aim is an intimate relationship with Allah by self-negation.
No discourse on Sufism is worthy without a discussion on qalb (human heart). The entire Quran is full of verses which say that people who deny the truth have hearts with blameworthy traits. The sayings of holy prophet also convey the same theme. The Sufis claim that just as the denial of truth is linked to hearts that are diseased or hardened or blackened, the comprehension of truth to the extent of an almost direct “vision” of God is linked with the purity of heart. This fact is proved by prophet’s experience of miraaj. Although no heart can be purer than his heart but since this experience was of the highest order unmatched by Sufis, even his heart had to be washed thrice. Moreover, when his chest was ripped apart in childhood, even then his heart was washed.
The Sufis insist on nothing more than the act of zikr (remembrance of God) as it is the most supreme cleanser of hearts. However zikr has a much broader and deeper meaning in Sufism. It is not the repetition of a mere tongue-recital of divine names and words as non-Sufis do with the help of beads (tasbi). In general, it is a heartfelt awareness of Allah irrespective of whatever actions are on the limbs. A specific practice to develop this state is muraaqba (concentration) in which they do zikr in isolation in such a way that the tongue, heart and mind all converge on celestial verses while being forgetful of everything other than Allah. Both Quran and hadith have claimed zikr (whether general or specific) as among the most virtuous deeds.
The difference between calculating the height of Mount Everest and climbing it is not more than that between the theoretical conceptualization of and practical adherence to religion. That is why the main theme of Sufis is ishq-e-ilahi (love for Allah) as it is love that softens hearts and inspires men to reach heights, unmatched. Hence they differ from philosophers, theologians and jurists of religion who don’t go beyond mental comprehension. Instead of trying to understand God by reading or thinking, they believe in finding Him. Yet, due to the depth of Sufi thought, it is inevitable that some of the greatest intellectual contributions to both philosophy and literature came from Sufis.
A strong condemnation of Sufism is that since it is about renunciation and other-worldliness, if it is practiced, it will further stagnate the progress of ummah which is the last thing needed. This misconception is due to the lack of understanding of the word dunya in Islamic dictionary. Dunya, which is worthless in the eyes of God, is not attaining a high rank in the society itself but attaining it either for egoistic reasons or love of material things. If the same high rank is attained for a righteous cause with a godly intention, it is deen and not dunya. This proves we need Sufism all the more for two reasons. Firstly, since a Sufi cannot attain status through the wrong means, he has to rely on his brilliance alone and thus will be more competent. Secondly, if there will be Sufis at the top of society, there will be no dirty politics because they would not be sitting on high ranks for selfish motives. Thus Sufism has nothing to do with going to a forest and sitting under a tree doing zikr. Zikr is free from the limitations of place and time.
So far we have discussed aspects of Sufism which even its greatest opponents can only admire. What most don’t realize is that Sufism didn’t start with those categorized under the word, “Sufi”. All those since Adam who lived exclusively for God whether they were prophets or others were Sufis. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) himself was the biggest ever Sufi and his companions were also true Sufis irrespective of when this word was introduced in any language. It was for a reason that Hazrat Ali Hajweri said that once there used to be Sufis but the name of Sufism was not there; now there are only Sufi terminologies but there are no Sufis left. However, there are two things that need to be understood at all costs. Firstly, someone who rejects all aspects of Sufism may enter the lowest ranks in paradise but cannot become a momin at all. Secondly, a momin who is considered as a non-Sufi is actually a semi-Sufi because he cannot become a momin without following a major portion of Sufism even if he rejects the minor portion.
However, Sufism is not as simple as we have disclosed so far. Its history is full of controversial statements and actions. Many Sufis have been labeled as either heretics or crazy. Few were persecuted or forced to leave their towns. Most were either never understood or many years after their deaths. The first criticism against Sufis is their distinction in knowledge between the common men and the spiritually elite ones. The question is when Islam is the same for everyone, who put this distinction? The holy prophet himself created this distinction. Hazrat Abu Hurairah narrates a hadith: “God gave me two types of knowledge. One, I have transferred to you. The other, had I transferred, people would have cut down my throat”. When the purpose of holy prophet’s life was to spread knowledge, why would he say such a thing had there been no distinction? Furthermore, another hadith is, “We, the assemblies of the prophets have been commanded to address men in proportion to their intellects”. It proves that prophets do not disclose everything to laymen.
The second criticism raised against Sufis is about their claim that there are hidden and higher dimensions to meanings of Quranic verses. Hazrat Ali narrates a hadith, “every verse of the Qur’an has four layers of meaning: an exoteric sense (zahir), an inner sense (batin), a limit (hadd), and a beware point (matla‘)”. It was for a reason that Al-Ghazali claimed four levels of Tauheed. He said that the first and lowest is the literal text of Surah Ikhlaas which is for ordinary men. The second is for the khawaas (elite). The third is for the elite among the elite. About the fourth, he said that had he disclosed, people would call him a kafir. Here, we cannot help but mention a very subtle aspect of a Quranic verse [Yousaf Ali 3:7]. “In it are verses basic (of established meaning); they are the foundations of the Book: others are allegorical…..but no one knows its hidden meanings except God. And those who are firmly grounded in knowledge…..none will grasp the Message except men of understanding”. Notice that the full stop between the bolded lines is put by the translator and is obviously not in the original Arabic text, without which it would be read: “no one knows its hidden meaning except God and those who are firmly grounded in knowledge”.
Religious knowledge is divided into two: evidence-based and experience-based; the earlier means the literal text of Quran and hadith; the later implies the one earned by actually walking on the path taught by the earlier and thus a more profound understanding of the earlier. The literalists reject the later one due to their shallowness, superficiality and short-sightedness. Hence, although they are fully qualified for eternal salvation, they deprive themselves of an immense treasure of knowledge. The Sufis believe in learning by doing it, a rule people otherwise follow in all walks of life e.g a doctor who has not practiced medicine or treated patients will never grasp the expertise through reading books alone.
The Sufis take this concept to another level. They claim intuition (ilhaam) with a pure heart as a source of higher knowledge beyond sense and reason. It is below only the prophetic revelation in the hierarchy of God-man communication. Since non-Sufis cannot see anything in between revelation and reason, they are divided into 2 categories - the ordinary religious man deems Sufis as deviants as he sees only revelation, whereas the modern rationalist deems them senseless as he sees only reason. Both are wrong as they don’t see anything in between. This intuitive aspect allows Sufis to have access to those channels of truth which non-Sufis don't have and thus are deemed as crazy.
Now we will discuss the most “dangerous” part of Sufism - the things said by Sufis which seem totally outside the bounds of Shariah. Human language is lost for words to describe a state of spiritual witnessing. Few moments of mystical experience yield more knowledge than a thousand books. During such experiences, the levels of human consciousness reach far beyond a normal man. Thus mystics have access to those channels of truth which normal people cannot even think about. Here we discover another reason why prophets are greater than the Sufis. Both of them know and experience way beyond a common man but where the prophet's superior wisdom doesn't let him disclose everything, the childish ecstasy of a Sufi turns him vocal and thus leads to trouble among novices. That is why Sufis call themselves as intoxicated.
Let us consider the most extreme case of the great Mansur Al-Hallaj who uttered probably the most controversial words in the history of Sufism, “I am the Truth”. If his words are taken literally, how can a non-Sufi accept it? It took another great Sufi, Rumi, to explain it three centuries later after experiencing the same level of proximity to God. As a person travels the path of Sufism, his own “I” (as standing in opposition to Him) gradually gets diminished as it continues to attain unification with “He”. There comes a point when the mystic doesn’t even possess an individual “I”. When Hallaj said “I”, since his own “I” had diminished in the love of “He”, he meant “He is the Truth” with the highest possible conviction. Such apparent contradictions arise due to the fact that a Sufi has two centers of consciousness – human and divine. Outside his state, he speaks from the earlier one; during his state he speaks from the later one.
Some Sufis recognize two deep layers within qalb. The first is called ruh, the spirit and the second which lies even deeper is called sirr, the secret. The sirr is the deepest layer of consciousness and is infact “beyond consciousnesses”. It is the sacred core of the soul where the divine and the human become united, unified and fused. In other words, it is in this dimension of the soul that the “uniomystica” is realized. The ego-consciousness which is actualized in this dimension and which naturally is the highest form of ego-consciousness in Sufism is no longer the consciousness of the mystic himself. It is rather the consciousness of the divine I speaking through him.
Ibn-al-Arabi’s Wahdat-ul-Wajood (Unity of Being) is another serious example. It implied that God alone has existence, and, was misunderstood as Pantheism by the Western Orientalist, Nicholson. It took someone as great as Shah Wali Ullah to admit that far from being false, it was the ultimate realization of Tawheed on a most superior level. Amazingly, Quantum physics, the enemy within secular science, has recently proved exactly the same thing. We live in a spiritual (rather than material) universe. There is a universal consciousness right from an atom to a human being. There is no dead matter. The intensity of this universal soul differs among creations and thus creates the hierarchy from matter to plants to animals to humans. The scientific explanation is not part of this topic but it proves that both extremes were wrong - the dualism of Creator-creation as well as that everything is God – the right view is that “in everything there is God”. Reading scientific proof of Wahdat-ul-Wajood sounds almost unthinkable but the relationship between a high intuition and ordinary rational intellect was best expressed by Iqbal:
“Where thought grasps Reality piecemeal, intuition grasps it in its wholeness. One fixes its gaze on the temporal aspect of Reality; the other on the eternal. One slowly traverses, specifies and closes up the various regions of the whole for exclusive observation; the other is present enjoyment of the whole of Reality”.
Since Thought (brain) will grasp that, much later, which a high Intuition (heart) grasped much earlier, it took 1000 years for scientists to understand that which a mystic understood in a moment. The incommunicability of a mystical state, in the form of an argument, between the one undergone and the one challenging its authenticity raises serious doubts. It is because intuitive knowledge, despite being valid, is unverifiable. However, as discussed earlier, it is even verifiable for those who reach that spiritual level. The great Rumi once said that “whatever exists in the unseen realm has its roots in the seen realm; the forms may change but the essence remains the same”. The multiplicity of different beings that we observe in the universe with the physical eyes is reduced to unity when witnessed with the eye of heart. Thus the mystic, in that state, “sees” or rather experiences nothing but one being in the form of a light (nur) (or some other inexpressible entity) everywhere.
Modern man finds such subjective experiences impossible to believe in. How can we rely in matters of knowledge on something as unreliable as experience of others? What about History? Why, then, does he believe in Aristotle or Plato? Has he himself seen, heard or touched them? The whole recorded history is nothing but an account of other’s experiences. “If a man could say nothing but what he can prove, history could not have been written” – Michael Jackson. Not only this but when we closely study the lives of these Sufis, their truthfulness even in ordinary matters of life was undeniable let alone in a matter as big as the experience of God.
A very strong criticism against Sufism is its extremeness and lack of balance. The Urdu word Ishq, which has no equivalent in its English translation “love”, does true justice to Sufism. Ishq itself turns something finite into infinite but when the subject of that ishq is Himself Infinite, then how can there be balance in it? The holy prophet, again, due to his superiority above Sufis could combine the mutually exclusive combination of Ishq and moderation; otherwise, there is no greatness without a touch of madness. A Sufi sees neither heaven nor hell but only his Beloved. For him, deeds done for the fear of a fire or want of a garden is a trade, not worship.
The various orders (tariqah/silsila) of Tasawwuf have often been criticized as they involve a kind of exaggerated relationship between a Shaikh (master) and a mureed (disciple) in which the later “blindly follows” the earlier by a “slavish imitation”. Even religious people, influenced by contemporary thought, criticize it. It is true that Islam is submission to God and not to someone else but before that one has to learn submission itself and it is not an easy or an overnight process at all as it is harsh on the nafs. The purpose behind such a relationship is learning the “art of submission” which once learned makes following Islam in totality easy on the nafs. Otherwise a genuine Shaikh never goes against Quran and Sunnah in both speech and action.
Secondly, since the Shaikh has walked the path, he knows exactly all the traps and webs of both Satan and nafs and how to avoid and conquer them as well. Thus he makes the aspirant’s journey much easier. The traveler’s spiritual progress is accelerated as a result. Those who do not follow anyone remain stagnant in tarbiat (training of nafs) and islah (self-rectification). When a 1000 things told by a Shaikh are followed, since he is only human, there maybe 10 wrong things as well but who would deprive himself of the benefit of the other 990?
“Every Sufi order is descended from the Prophet. The rite of initiation (bait) is a crucial moment in the history of Islam when, sitting beneath a tree, he called on his Companions to pledge their allegiance to him over and above the pledge they made at their entry into Islam. The prototype of the pact between Master and disciple is mentioned in the Quran[XLVIII:18]: God was well pleased with the believers when they pledged allegiance unto thee beneath the tree. He knew what was in their hearts and sent down the Spirit of Peace upon them and hath rewarded them with a near victory”.
Islamic Education, Culture and Civilization is incomplete without the concept of adab. One may explain everything about Islam in the most convincing manner but he cannot become a scholar unless he has adab for those above him in knowledge, taqwa or experience. Today we come across students and professors of Islamic studies who reject Sufism simply because they cannot understand it. Rather than considering their own lowliness, they reject something followed by the greatest Muslims in history, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The only explanation behind this severe lack of adab is arrogance.
This raises a very serious question. Is there anyone other than the holy prophet who was so pious or knowledgeable that he was infallible? No. Ghazali or Ibn-al-Arabi or Rumi or even the Sahaba (Companions) didn’t have that right at all. But the point that modernists miss is that only those who themselves reach that or near that level have the right to refute them, not us. The hierarchy among scholars cannot be broken; one cannot jump without crossing the intermediate levels. When someone of the caliber of Ibn-e-Taimiyah criticizes Sufism, then it is intellectual difference worthy of respect. But people like us have no choice but to be silent when we don’t understand a Sufi or find him contradictory to Quran due to our own low understanding of Quran.
What it is about Sufis that they deserve knowledge and experiences of a different level altogether? Here, they can be clearly differentiated from other religious people. Religious people may follow all the compulsory acts and abstain from all prohibited acts but when it comes to negating oneself, no one tolerates anything that hurts his pride among others. There is no veil between man and God thicker and most hard to lift than his own ego. No one wants to be considered inferior at any cost and would do anything to avoid such an opinion among peers. What makes Sufis the greatest after the prophets is their willingness to suffer humiliation for God because of their ishq (intense love) for Him. They, because of their humbleness, attain indifference to how much people look down upon them. Their selflessness is their highest virtue and their key to unlock the Divine mysteries kept hidden from everyone else.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
1st Ever Heart Surgery & More on Heart
When, as related by Anas in Sahih Muslim, Gabriel came down and ripped his chest open and took out the heart. He then extracted a blood-clot out of it and said: "That was the part of Satan in thee." And then he washed it with the water of Zamzam in a gold basin. After that the heart was joined together and restored to its place.
Hamza Yousaf has drawn some very interesting parallels between the miraculous first heart surgery of the Prophet and modern-day heart surgery. Angels, who performed it are made of light and today heart surgery is performed with the use or laser light. When the veins and arteries connecting the heart to the body are cut, the heart continues to beat for a while but will eventually die. In order to keep it alive, it is necessary to slow down its metabolism and in modern surgery this done by placing it in ice-cold saline (salty) water. Historically, Zamzam water had more salt content 1400 years ago as compared to today. According to Ibn Sa’d the water used by angels was ice-cold. Anas bin malik RZA saw the imprints of sutures in the middle of prophet’s chest.
Joseph Pearce in Evolution’s End says that the Heart is governed by a higher order of energy (or a soul in islamic belief). The behaviour of people getting heart-transplants often dramatically reflect certain behaviors of the late donors. Experiments were done on two cells taken from the heart and observed through a microscope. In the 1st experiment in which they are isolated from one another they simply fibrillate until they die. However when similar cells are brought near to each other they synchronize and beat in unison:
"They don’t have to touch they communicate across a spatial barrier Our heart made up of many billions of such cells operating in unison is under the guidance of a higher , non localized intelligence so we have both a physical heart and a higher universal heart and our access to the latter is… dramatically contingent on the….. former"
Hamza Yousaf has drawn some very interesting parallels between the miraculous first heart surgery of the Prophet and modern-day heart surgery. Angels, who performed it are made of light and today heart surgery is performed with the use or laser light. When the veins and arteries connecting the heart to the body are cut, the heart continues to beat for a while but will eventually die. In order to keep it alive, it is necessary to slow down its metabolism and in modern surgery this done by placing it in ice-cold saline (salty) water. Historically, Zamzam water had more salt content 1400 years ago as compared to today. According to Ibn Sa’d the water used by angels was ice-cold. Anas bin malik RZA saw the imprints of sutures in the middle of prophet’s chest.
Joseph Pearce in Evolution’s End says that the Heart is governed by a higher order of energy (or a soul in islamic belief). The behaviour of people getting heart-transplants often dramatically reflect certain behaviors of the late donors. Experiments were done on two cells taken from the heart and observed through a microscope. In the 1st experiment in which they are isolated from one another they simply fibrillate until they die. However when similar cells are brought near to each other they synchronize and beat in unison:
"They don’t have to touch they communicate across a spatial barrier Our heart made up of many billions of such cells operating in unison is under the guidance of a higher , non localized intelligence so we have both a physical heart and a higher universal heart and our access to the latter is… dramatically contingent on the….. former"
Friday, June 12, 2009
Science of the Heart–Amazing Discovery
The body-soul split has beguiled some of the most sophisticated minds since ages. We know through the spiritual masters of all traditions that the soul, too, has organs. Let us consider the mind-brain problem. The mind is the brain of soul whereas the brain is the brain of body. One is material and the other is non-material. We knew that the 2 are fully interrelated but never knew how. However, computer technology has made it easy to understand it through an analogy. The software is like the mind whereas the hardware is like the brain. Although intelligence itself belongs to the software (non-material) but it cannot perform its function without it’s information processor i.e the hardware (material).
Thus the mind (spiritual) is the software aspect whereas the brain (biological) is the hardware aspect.
Similarly, whenever the Quran, Sunnah, Sufis and Islamic scholars talked about the heart as being an organ of ultimate knowledge, they referred to the spiritual heart (qalb). The spiritual heart (qalb) was known to be intelligent but the processing of that intelligence was unclear because the biological heart didn’t seem to possess any traits like the biological brain. It couldn’t be anything more than a blood-pump. However, since the two hearts function in totality, it was inevitable that modern Science would one day discover that the biological heart is much more than just a blood-pump. This is exactly what has been proved recently.
But before that, let us look at the remarkable pumping efficiency of the heart.
The heart beats about 100,000 times a day, forty million times a year and it beats non-stop throughout a lifetime. It pumps two gallons of blood per minute and over 100 gallons per hour. The vascular system that is transporting this life-giving blood around the body is over 60000 miles long, which is twice the circumference of the earth. From the moment it begins beating (around week twelve of gestation) until the moment it stops, the human heart works tirelessly. In an average lifetime, the heart beats more than two and a half billion times without ever pausing to rest. It is astonishing that scientists see all this and yet don’t acknowledge its creator.
However, science has now conceded that the heart is not just a pumping organ. Recently, a new medical field in Neuroscience known as Neurocardiology has emerged, which studies the science of the nervous system in the heart. J. Andrew Armour, M.D., Ph.D., is a pioneer in the field of Neurocardiology for his groundbreaking research in the area of anatomy and function of the heart’s intrinsic nervous system.
He has uncovered the presence of the neurons in the heart; the same type of cells that are also present in the human brain. There are as many as 40000 neurons in the heart. Furthermore, the nervous system of the heart is made up of these neurons which are capable of processing information without the help of neurons from the brain. The neurons of the heart obtain information from the rest of the body and make appropriate adjustments and send back this information from the heart to the rest of the body including the brain. In addition to this, these neurons possess a kind of short-term memory which allows them to function independently of the central nervous system. These findings prompted Armour to refer to the nervous system of the heart as the “brain in the heart” and he draws the following conclusions about the functions of the heart as a result of his research:
“The heart possesses its own little brain, capable of complex computational analysis on its own. Data clearly indicate that the intrinsic cardiac nervous system acts as much more than a simple relay station for the extrinsic autonomic projections to the heart. An understanding of the complex anatomy and function of the heart’s nervous system contributes an additional dimension to the newly emerging view of the heart as a sophisticated information processing centre, functioning not only in concert with the brain but also independent of it.”
The heart communicates with the brain in 4 different ways. Firstly, its nerve cells or neurons transmit information to the brain. It is called neural traffic and research has shown that the heart sends more neural traffic to the brain than the other way round. Secondly, the heart has been found to secrete a very powerful hormone called Atrial Natriuretic factor (ANF) that has a profound effect on many parts of the body including those portions of the brain that are involved in memory, learning and emotions. Thirdly, with every heartbeat, pressure waves are generated and when these travel through the arteries to the brain, there are recordable changes in the electrical activity of the brain. Finally, the heart has an electromagnetic energy field 5000 times greater than that of the brain and this field can be measured with magnetometers up to 10 feet beyond the physical body. Since the heart’s energy field is greater than that of the brain, it can be assumed to have a profound effect on the brain’s functions. It must be borne in mind that as the heart is the only organ in the body that pulsates so its effects will reach each part of the body at every moment.
Even though the timing of the heartbelt can be influenced by the brain (through the autonomic nervous system), the source of the heartbeat is present within the heart. There appears to be no need for nerve connections between the heart and the brain. That is why, when a person has a heart transplant, all the nerve connections between the heart and brain are cut but that doesn’t stop the heart from working when it is placed in the new person’s chest.
Usually, a person’s heart is about the size of his own fist. As the body develops, the heart grows at the same rate as the fist. Hence a baby’ heart and fist are about the same size at birth. In the womb, however, that similarity is not always true. During the first few weeks after conception, the foetal heart occupies most of its mid-section. The ratio of the heart size to body size is nine times greater in the foetus than in the infant. It is common knowledge now that the heart of the unborn child develops and starts pumping long before the brain comes into existence. Even though the actual event which triggers the beating of the heart cells of a baby is not known, it is suspected as Paul Pearsall, Ph.D. writes, that “the mother’s heart energy conveyed in primal sound waves contains the information that is the code that jump-starts our life.” Once the heart begins to beat, it continues to beat throughout a lifetime (auto rhythmic beating function) even when the brain stops working in cases like ‘brain death’. Brain death is described as a condition when brain activity has stopped forever. Hence even when the brain dies, the heart can still live. But when the heart dies (unless we find a replacement for the heart), the brain cannot live. Thus, the brain needs the heart for its survival more than the other way around.
What has emerged scientifically has been the subject of sages and saints throughout all ages.
Is intuition a source of intelligence? People can create art or even become great artists with neither learning or studying art nor an arts degree. How? They call it artistic sense. But what is artistic sense? Artistic sense is nothing but intuitive intellect or intuition invested for art. The rationalists recognize it in the domain of Arts but shun it when it comes to religion. It is their intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy. Without intuition no one can compose music or write poetry. However, note that these talents are not dependent upon the purity of (spiritual) heart as they have nothing to do with higher knowledge but they certainly prove the intelligence of heart as intuition belongs to heart.
Thus the word heart should, no more, sound mushy or sentimental among intellectuals. All this brings us back to the veracity of Islam!
Thus the mind (spiritual) is the software aspect whereas the brain (biological) is the hardware aspect.
Similarly, whenever the Quran, Sunnah, Sufis and Islamic scholars talked about the heart as being an organ of ultimate knowledge, they referred to the spiritual heart (qalb). The spiritual heart (qalb) was known to be intelligent but the processing of that intelligence was unclear because the biological heart didn’t seem to possess any traits like the biological brain. It couldn’t be anything more than a blood-pump. However, since the two hearts function in totality, it was inevitable that modern Science would one day discover that the biological heart is much more than just a blood-pump. This is exactly what has been proved recently.
But before that, let us look at the remarkable pumping efficiency of the heart.
The heart beats about 100,000 times a day, forty million times a year and it beats non-stop throughout a lifetime. It pumps two gallons of blood per minute and over 100 gallons per hour. The vascular system that is transporting this life-giving blood around the body is over 60000 miles long, which is twice the circumference of the earth. From the moment it begins beating (around week twelve of gestation) until the moment it stops, the human heart works tirelessly. In an average lifetime, the heart beats more than two and a half billion times without ever pausing to rest. It is astonishing that scientists see all this and yet don’t acknowledge its creator.
However, science has now conceded that the heart is not just a pumping organ. Recently, a new medical field in Neuroscience known as Neurocardiology has emerged, which studies the science of the nervous system in the heart. J. Andrew Armour, M.D., Ph.D., is a pioneer in the field of Neurocardiology for his groundbreaking research in the area of anatomy and function of the heart’s intrinsic nervous system.
He has uncovered the presence of the neurons in the heart; the same type of cells that are also present in the human brain. There are as many as 40000 neurons in the heart. Furthermore, the nervous system of the heart is made up of these neurons which are capable of processing information without the help of neurons from the brain. The neurons of the heart obtain information from the rest of the body and make appropriate adjustments and send back this information from the heart to the rest of the body including the brain. In addition to this, these neurons possess a kind of short-term memory which allows them to function independently of the central nervous system. These findings prompted Armour to refer to the nervous system of the heart as the “brain in the heart” and he draws the following conclusions about the functions of the heart as a result of his research:
“The heart possesses its own little brain, capable of complex computational analysis on its own. Data clearly indicate that the intrinsic cardiac nervous system acts as much more than a simple relay station for the extrinsic autonomic projections to the heart. An understanding of the complex anatomy and function of the heart’s nervous system contributes an additional dimension to the newly emerging view of the heart as a sophisticated information processing centre, functioning not only in concert with the brain but also independent of it.”
The heart communicates with the brain in 4 different ways. Firstly, its nerve cells or neurons transmit information to the brain. It is called neural traffic and research has shown that the heart sends more neural traffic to the brain than the other way round. Secondly, the heart has been found to secrete a very powerful hormone called Atrial Natriuretic factor (ANF) that has a profound effect on many parts of the body including those portions of the brain that are involved in memory, learning and emotions. Thirdly, with every heartbeat, pressure waves are generated and when these travel through the arteries to the brain, there are recordable changes in the electrical activity of the brain. Finally, the heart has an electromagnetic energy field 5000 times greater than that of the brain and this field can be measured with magnetometers up to 10 feet beyond the physical body. Since the heart’s energy field is greater than that of the brain, it can be assumed to have a profound effect on the brain’s functions. It must be borne in mind that as the heart is the only organ in the body that pulsates so its effects will reach each part of the body at every moment.
Even though the timing of the heartbelt can be influenced by the brain (through the autonomic nervous system), the source of the heartbeat is present within the heart. There appears to be no need for nerve connections between the heart and the brain. That is why, when a person has a heart transplant, all the nerve connections between the heart and brain are cut but that doesn’t stop the heart from working when it is placed in the new person’s chest.
Usually, a person’s heart is about the size of his own fist. As the body develops, the heart grows at the same rate as the fist. Hence a baby’ heart and fist are about the same size at birth. In the womb, however, that similarity is not always true. During the first few weeks after conception, the foetal heart occupies most of its mid-section. The ratio of the heart size to body size is nine times greater in the foetus than in the infant. It is common knowledge now that the heart of the unborn child develops and starts pumping long before the brain comes into existence. Even though the actual event which triggers the beating of the heart cells of a baby is not known, it is suspected as Paul Pearsall, Ph.D. writes, that “the mother’s heart energy conveyed in primal sound waves contains the information that is the code that jump-starts our life.” Once the heart begins to beat, it continues to beat throughout a lifetime (auto rhythmic beating function) even when the brain stops working in cases like ‘brain death’. Brain death is described as a condition when brain activity has stopped forever. Hence even when the brain dies, the heart can still live. But when the heart dies (unless we find a replacement for the heart), the brain cannot live. Thus, the brain needs the heart for its survival more than the other way around.
What has emerged scientifically has been the subject of sages and saints throughout all ages.
Is intuition a source of intelligence? People can create art or even become great artists with neither learning or studying art nor an arts degree. How? They call it artistic sense. But what is artistic sense? Artistic sense is nothing but intuitive intellect or intuition invested for art. The rationalists recognize it in the domain of Arts but shun it when it comes to religion. It is their intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy. Without intuition no one can compose music or write poetry. However, note that these talents are not dependent upon the purity of (spiritual) heart as they have nothing to do with higher knowledge but they certainly prove the intelligence of heart as intuition belongs to heart.
Thus the word heart should, no more, sound mushy or sentimental among intellectuals. All this brings us back to the veracity of Islam!
Monday, May 18, 2009
How to bring an Islamic Revolution?
1400 years ago, perhaps the biggest and most influential movement in recorded history shook the world unlike ever before. A Western historian has paid tribute to the man responsible for it in the most beautiful manner:
“Who can challenge the greatness of Muhammad when it comes to the grandeur of his vision, the scarcity of his means and yet the astounding results he achieved”- Jacques Maritain
I do not believe in glorifying our past with sentiments when our present is so unbelievably pathetic. The question that I want to raise is that, considering times have changed so much, can we once again bring a change with the same methods as adopted earlier? In Pakistan, first, there are the secularists who know only about how the world works and talk about science and technology alone. Then, there are the religious revivers who are simplistic minded who know only about how God works and talk about piety alone. There is nothing in Islam that is outdated or incomplete from any angle but it does need fresh interpretations in every age to avoid conflicts.
Most people fail to see that Islamic revolution didn’t reach its completion in the life of holy prophet (pbuh). What the prophet did comprised the first half of the whole process. He changed the lives of people by changing their deeds which in turn he did by changing the state of their hearts. The second half was accomplished by none other than the great Hazrat Umar. It was for a reason that the prophet said, “if there would have been any prophet after me, it would have been Umar”. Umar RZA changed the running system (nizaam) and established a truly Islamic state as an unmatchable leader and a perfect administrator. Thus Islamic revolution started with the prophet but actualized fully with the 2nd caliph because it consisted of 2 phases- changing lives and changing the system.
When we closely analyze the work being done for the revival of Islam in Pakistan , we come across 2 conclusions: a) The work of 1st phase is extremely high quantitatively but extremely low in quality b) there is almost no work at all for the 2nd phase. Let us first discuss phase 1.
There are 2 types of quality in propagating Islam- the spiritual and the intellectual- in our golden era, people like Ghazali or Rumi possessed both of them; in our era people lack both of them although even one of them can contribute a lot. People like Tariq Jameel or Zulfiqar Naqshbandi due to their intense love for Allah (ishq-e-ilahi) and inner purification (tazkia-e-nafs) have changed the lives of innumerable people without reliance on Science or Philosophy at all. People like Dr Zakir Naik, on the other hand, have done the same due to their intelligence alone. Sadly, most propagators of Islam in Pakistan have neither spirituality nor brains. Thus their huge quantity in number leaves no impact on masses or elites. The fact that people, too, on the other side, do not want to change is fully true but this qualitative aspect of the 1st phase cannot be ignored at all. For the lack of spiritual quality, we may blame the maulvis and other preachers but for the lack of intellectual quality we can only blame the educated/literate lot for having no contribution at all.
It is however the 2nd phase which needs most attention and concern. There is simply no effort to Islamize the extremely corrupt and unislamic system. Since people, at the end of the day, are bound to earn their livelihoods through the same filthy system, they are forced to be unislamic in their character, attitude, and temperament. Consequently, the efforts of phase 1 fail because people know they cannot apply those religious, moral & spiritual values in what they call as “practical life”. Thus secularism wins and gets stronger everyday. Last year, in one of my most vital articles, “Shattering the Myth”, I first discussed 4 major categories of people who are truly successful and then later added a fifth one as well. Readers who want to know how the material, worldly, economic, technological needs of Ummah can be met without being dunyadaar should refer to the 1st category of that article. But what I really want to bring into light is the 5th category:
Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi said that if a person thinks he can contribute to Islam more if he has a say in the society and he attains a status only for that purpose so that he later uses it for a higher cause, it is deen not dunya. A strong example is of someone who wants to inject Islam in the education system but can only do so if he has a high rank.
There is a difference between having love of ranks and sitting at ranks for the right reasons. Let me explain why this concept is so important in the modern age. It is here we have to understand that times have changed and in order to make Pakistan a truly Islamic country we have to be a lot more practical by accepting the harsh realities of life.
No one cares a damn about how much passion you have for Islam, your sacrifices for islam, how much have you suffered for islam, how much you know Islam, how well you can think, speak and write on Islam or your level of piety. When it comes to bringing a small reform in the system which would benefit islam, you can only do it if you are someone. If Iqbal could meet leaders and elites of Muslim countries to talk about Islam, he was only listened to because he was someone. No one is going to take a religious man seriously who proposes an Islamic change in the system unless he is someone. You can only become someone by 2 ways- either by sheer brilliance or by being a big asshole. Since Islam doesn’t allow you the later, you have to be the earlier, there is no other way. People should never succumb to family/social pressure and waste their skills, abilities and talents by working in a field they have no interest in. However, all this is worthwhile only if done not for personal glory but for islam.
It is here the issue gets very complex for 4 reasons. First, whenever someone attains gnosis from Allah, the first impact on him is that there remains no love of this world in is heart. Although this is one of the highest virtues but this has a negative aspect as well. It becomes almost impossible to remain motivated at work and it all seems very ephemeral to be serious at. Thus religious people lose the drive to be someone and never end up at a high rank. Secondly, since it is not a clean ride to the top unless you are brilliant, they avoid competition for obvious reasons. Thirdly, since one should practice what one preaches, religious people find it very hard to try to be someone while they tell others not to pursue the material world because people will never understand their intentions and hence label them as a hypocrite or of double-standard. Fourthly, as a spiritually weak Muslim, it is highly possible that in the process of becoming someone, the love of this world enters your heart and wastes your deeds.
I understand why truly religious people like to remain so underground. Talent alone doesn’t get you anywhere-you have to do so many other things which are in direct contradiction to deen- showing-off, boasting, presenting yourself as someone, taking yourself seriously, seeking fame & self-projection. Although I myself find it almost impossible to do such things but my question is that when people do all these things for the wrong cause and get there way, why shouldn’t we use these same things for the right cause?
When we talk about altering the system, no change is as essential as changing the Education System. Although I would like to dedicate a full separate article on that but would mention a very important point nonetheless. We can only change Education Syllabus if we have enough content to replace the existing one. That is only possible if we have brilliant thinkers, writers, poets, scholars and intellectuals who are truly religious as well. No matter how much capability you possess, people running the system will see only your designation or qualification or fame because they are too busy to read your work- it is simply a cruel and irrational world. Thus it is high time that religious people change their approach and understand this much alone that dunya is defined as dunya only when its done for the love of dunya not when done for the sake of deen- the very 1st hadith of Bukhari tells us actions are judged by intentions.
To elucidate my point, let me give you a personal example. I write articles, poetry, lyrics and blog-posts depending upon which genre of writing can express which thing in the best manner. Since my aim is only to deliver a message to people I know, I don’t care a damn about the technical aspect of whatever I write. But I know that this approach is not going work for long because unless I don’t learn the art of poetry and the professional rules of writing articles, I will never be published and if I wont be published, I would never be taken seriously in the future for the real goal.
I have all the respect in the world for tableeghi jamaat, different silsilas of Tasawuf, ulama karaam, deeni madaris but they should know that they are contributing to phase 1 alone and an inquilaab is impossible without phase 2. One shouldn’t do the work of deen for sawaab/ajar alone but should also be bothered about whether it is leaving an impact or not. Here I cannot help but quote the great Einstein:
“There is nothing that is a more certain sign of insanity than to do the same thing over and over and expect the result to be different”.
It is an undeniable fact that we live in a 3rd world country where most people cannot even think beyond their basic needs and they are free from all sorts of blame. That is why it is the pathetic and worthless attitude of the elite class of my country which bites me to the most. Being born in the elite class of Pakistan, the only thing that I have seen throughout my 27 years of life is how people spend their whole lives sitting in expensive drawing rooms discussing the political scenario, news and gossip and showing their "concern" in this useless manner but when it comes to doing, they have no passion. They form the other extreme as compared to the maulvis who have loads of jazba but no vision at all.
My motto and slogan in life is, “Revolutions are brought only when passion meets vision”.
“Who can challenge the greatness of Muhammad when it comes to the grandeur of his vision, the scarcity of his means and yet the astounding results he achieved”- Jacques Maritain
I do not believe in glorifying our past with sentiments when our present is so unbelievably pathetic. The question that I want to raise is that, considering times have changed so much, can we once again bring a change with the same methods as adopted earlier? In Pakistan, first, there are the secularists who know only about how the world works and talk about science and technology alone. Then, there are the religious revivers who are simplistic minded who know only about how God works and talk about piety alone. There is nothing in Islam that is outdated or incomplete from any angle but it does need fresh interpretations in every age to avoid conflicts.
Most people fail to see that Islamic revolution didn’t reach its completion in the life of holy prophet (pbuh). What the prophet did comprised the first half of the whole process. He changed the lives of people by changing their deeds which in turn he did by changing the state of their hearts. The second half was accomplished by none other than the great Hazrat Umar. It was for a reason that the prophet said, “if there would have been any prophet after me, it would have been Umar”. Umar RZA changed the running system (nizaam) and established a truly Islamic state as an unmatchable leader and a perfect administrator. Thus Islamic revolution started with the prophet but actualized fully with the 2nd caliph because it consisted of 2 phases- changing lives and changing the system.
When we closely analyze the work being done for the revival of Islam in Pakistan , we come across 2 conclusions: a) The work of 1st phase is extremely high quantitatively but extremely low in quality b) there is almost no work at all for the 2nd phase. Let us first discuss phase 1.
There are 2 types of quality in propagating Islam- the spiritual and the intellectual- in our golden era, people like Ghazali or Rumi possessed both of them; in our era people lack both of them although even one of them can contribute a lot. People like Tariq Jameel or Zulfiqar Naqshbandi due to their intense love for Allah (ishq-e-ilahi) and inner purification (tazkia-e-nafs) have changed the lives of innumerable people without reliance on Science or Philosophy at all. People like Dr Zakir Naik, on the other hand, have done the same due to their intelligence alone. Sadly, most propagators of Islam in Pakistan have neither spirituality nor brains. Thus their huge quantity in number leaves no impact on masses or elites. The fact that people, too, on the other side, do not want to change is fully true but this qualitative aspect of the 1st phase cannot be ignored at all. For the lack of spiritual quality, we may blame the maulvis and other preachers but for the lack of intellectual quality we can only blame the educated/literate lot for having no contribution at all.
It is however the 2nd phase which needs most attention and concern. There is simply no effort to Islamize the extremely corrupt and unislamic system. Since people, at the end of the day, are bound to earn their livelihoods through the same filthy system, they are forced to be unislamic in their character, attitude, and temperament. Consequently, the efforts of phase 1 fail because people know they cannot apply those religious, moral & spiritual values in what they call as “practical life”. Thus secularism wins and gets stronger everyday. Last year, in one of my most vital articles, “Shattering the Myth”, I first discussed 4 major categories of people who are truly successful and then later added a fifth one as well. Readers who want to know how the material, worldly, economic, technological needs of Ummah can be met without being dunyadaar should refer to the 1st category of that article. But what I really want to bring into light is the 5th category:
Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi said that if a person thinks he can contribute to Islam more if he has a say in the society and he attains a status only for that purpose so that he later uses it for a higher cause, it is deen not dunya. A strong example is of someone who wants to inject Islam in the education system but can only do so if he has a high rank.
There is a difference between having love of ranks and sitting at ranks for the right reasons. Let me explain why this concept is so important in the modern age. It is here we have to understand that times have changed and in order to make Pakistan a truly Islamic country we have to be a lot more practical by accepting the harsh realities of life.
No one cares a damn about how much passion you have for Islam, your sacrifices for islam, how much have you suffered for islam, how much you know Islam, how well you can think, speak and write on Islam or your level of piety. When it comes to bringing a small reform in the system which would benefit islam, you can only do it if you are someone. If Iqbal could meet leaders and elites of Muslim countries to talk about Islam, he was only listened to because he was someone. No one is going to take a religious man seriously who proposes an Islamic change in the system unless he is someone. You can only become someone by 2 ways- either by sheer brilliance or by being a big asshole. Since Islam doesn’t allow you the later, you have to be the earlier, there is no other way. People should never succumb to family/social pressure and waste their skills, abilities and talents by working in a field they have no interest in. However, all this is worthwhile only if done not for personal glory but for islam.
It is here the issue gets very complex for 4 reasons. First, whenever someone attains gnosis from Allah, the first impact on him is that there remains no love of this world in is heart. Although this is one of the highest virtues but this has a negative aspect as well. It becomes almost impossible to remain motivated at work and it all seems very ephemeral to be serious at. Thus religious people lose the drive to be someone and never end up at a high rank. Secondly, since it is not a clean ride to the top unless you are brilliant, they avoid competition for obvious reasons. Thirdly, since one should practice what one preaches, religious people find it very hard to try to be someone while they tell others not to pursue the material world because people will never understand their intentions and hence label them as a hypocrite or of double-standard. Fourthly, as a spiritually weak Muslim, it is highly possible that in the process of becoming someone, the love of this world enters your heart and wastes your deeds.
I understand why truly religious people like to remain so underground. Talent alone doesn’t get you anywhere-you have to do so many other things which are in direct contradiction to deen- showing-off, boasting, presenting yourself as someone, taking yourself seriously, seeking fame & self-projection. Although I myself find it almost impossible to do such things but my question is that when people do all these things for the wrong cause and get there way, why shouldn’t we use these same things for the right cause?
When we talk about altering the system, no change is as essential as changing the Education System. Although I would like to dedicate a full separate article on that but would mention a very important point nonetheless. We can only change Education Syllabus if we have enough content to replace the existing one. That is only possible if we have brilliant thinkers, writers, poets, scholars and intellectuals who are truly religious as well. No matter how much capability you possess, people running the system will see only your designation or qualification or fame because they are too busy to read your work- it is simply a cruel and irrational world. Thus it is high time that religious people change their approach and understand this much alone that dunya is defined as dunya only when its done for the love of dunya not when done for the sake of deen- the very 1st hadith of Bukhari tells us actions are judged by intentions.
To elucidate my point, let me give you a personal example. I write articles, poetry, lyrics and blog-posts depending upon which genre of writing can express which thing in the best manner. Since my aim is only to deliver a message to people I know, I don’t care a damn about the technical aspect of whatever I write. But I know that this approach is not going work for long because unless I don’t learn the art of poetry and the professional rules of writing articles, I will never be published and if I wont be published, I would never be taken seriously in the future for the real goal.
I have all the respect in the world for tableeghi jamaat, different silsilas of Tasawuf, ulama karaam, deeni madaris but they should know that they are contributing to phase 1 alone and an inquilaab is impossible without phase 2. One shouldn’t do the work of deen for sawaab/ajar alone but should also be bothered about whether it is leaving an impact or not. Here I cannot help but quote the great Einstein:
“There is nothing that is a more certain sign of insanity than to do the same thing over and over and expect the result to be different”.
It is an undeniable fact that we live in a 3rd world country where most people cannot even think beyond their basic needs and they are free from all sorts of blame. That is why it is the pathetic and worthless attitude of the elite class of my country which bites me to the most. Being born in the elite class of Pakistan, the only thing that I have seen throughout my 27 years of life is how people spend their whole lives sitting in expensive drawing rooms discussing the political scenario, news and gossip and showing their "concern" in this useless manner but when it comes to doing, they have no passion. They form the other extreme as compared to the maulvis who have loads of jazba but no vision at all.
My motto and slogan in life is, “Revolutions are brought only when passion meets vision”.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Heaven & Hell
Neither there’s a garden nor a fire
Both are idols I broke without fear or desire
One you seek and of the other you’re afraid
It isn’t worship but only a wise trade
If virtue is born from reward or loss
A long journey you still need to cross
Love of the world you call a veil
and immortality alone you choose to hail?
if hoor is what your eyes seek at night
worthy you aren’t for glimpsing Divine Light
your heart flutters for heavenly wine
of Him, didn’t you find a better sign?
If your palace was dressed with taint
Would you still remain a saint?
In eternal bliss you wish to stay
one forbidden fruit drove Adam away
Sinners too dread the bite of a snake
If not for Him, your deeds are but fake
Oh fool
See neither heaven nor hell
When you’ll find Him
You’ll have better tales to tell!
Both are idols I broke without fear or desire
One you seek and of the other you’re afraid
It isn’t worship but only a wise trade
If virtue is born from reward or loss
A long journey you still need to cross
Love of the world you call a veil
and immortality alone you choose to hail?
if hoor is what your eyes seek at night
worthy you aren’t for glimpsing Divine Light
your heart flutters for heavenly wine
of Him, didn’t you find a better sign?
If your palace was dressed with taint
Would you still remain a saint?
In eternal bliss you wish to stay
one forbidden fruit drove Adam away
Sinners too dread the bite of a snake
If not for Him, your deeds are but fake
Oh fool
See neither heaven nor hell
When you’ll find Him
You’ll have better tales to tell!
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Knocking on Heaven’s Door
Who will go to heaven? Who will go to hell? Why and on what grounds do people go to heaven or hell? How does God judge us? What makes people pious or sinner? Can a human judge another human? Will only the Muslims go to heaven? What about Jews and Christians? Can an atheist or an agnostic be forgiven?
I can guarantee that all of us think about these questions but never get convincing answers from anyone at all. In Pakistan, sadly, either there are those with right beliefs without logics or those with wrong beliefs with logics. We badly need people with right beliefs accompanied with logics and that is exactly what I am trying to do.
A human being is judged by God according to 3 factors- how much truth he was exposed to, how much of the exposed truth he followed and how much further seeking he did for the unexposed truth. There is no absolute scale at all- it is totally based on relative marking. Family upbringing, circumstances, environment, society, life experiences and all those forces that act upon us to make who we are form a major portion of the criteria of judgment. A person born in an actor’s home will obviously be different from someone born in a strictly religious family. Do you think God will not take this into consideration? Will God be cruel to judge the actor’s son on the same scale? Suppose the one born in the religious family becomes an alim whose life is all about piety whereas the actor’s son only prays 5 times a day with the rest of his life having nothing to do with piety. It is possible that, in the eyes of God, both may be equally pious.
What is the case of someone who grew up alone in a jungle with no one to tell him about the truth and died without iman? On one hand, God will certainly be extremely lenient in His judgment but on the other hand it is not a certainty that he will be forgiven. Why? Because there is the divine spirit of God in man which becomes the inner voice known as conscience and it always calls man towards the truth. Even in the absence of an external communication to truth, it acts as an internal communicator. The fact that man consciously and intentionally rejects this call throughout his life will make him fully accountable in the hereafter. It is a subtle but an unignorable aspect of man.
What about people who spent their life seeking the truth but never found it? The Quran tells us that if anyone truly seeks the truth, it is impossible that God will deprive him of it. The fact that people claim to be truth-seekers but do not reach it shows that there is something seriously wrong in them. What is it? Last year, I dedicated a full article (Why the modern man cannot grasp religion) to explain why there are people who are rationally extremely intelligent but fail to reach the truth. The human heart is the centre of knowledge of God. Its intelligence is dependent on its purification which in turn is dependent on our deeds, intentions and desires. When its pure, it not only reveals the truth much more than the brain but also guides the intellect in the right direction. When its impure, it not only conceals the truth but also directs the intellect to falsehood. There are many Quranic verses which repeatedly say that those who deny the truth have (spiritually) diseased hearts.
The difference between an atheist and agnostic is that where the earlier is an outright rejecter of God’s existence, the later is in between atheism and belief. Where the chance of salvation is zero for the earlier, there is a small probability for the later which I will discuss at the end. However, both can get hadayat within this life and there have been many such cases as well.
Simplistic minded people say that it is the deeds alone which make someone good or bad but deeds have no fixed value of their own. Suppose two people commit the act of theft. One of them steals with an empty stomach since 2 days; the other steals with a filled stomach. Since both committed a sin, the value of this deed is unconditionally –ve in both cases but where the earlier did it out of starvation, the later did it for only greed. Hence, if the value in the earlier case is -X, it would be -10X in the later case. Thus the later one has done a much more evil deed than the first although the deed itself was the same. Similarly, to retain virginity in USA is much more pious than in Afghanistan for obvious reasons.
What would really surprise my readers is that a more wrong act can have higher value than a less wrong act. How? Suppose a girl is born in a family full of veiled females and she is the only one who wears shalwar kameez without covering her head. Another girl, who was born in a family of females wearing mini-skirts and tight tops, choose to wear pants and shirts instead because she found her family’s practice indecent. Note that the earlier girl followed her nafs by not following a part of religion fully exposed to her whereas the later girl had to oppose her nafs by not following the wrong practice of her family. On the outside, the earlier is more decently dressed but on the inner, God knows that, the later deserves more appreciation; so, here, the act of more decent clothing has a more negative value - strange but true!
A person who does more good deeds in number than someone else maybe less pious. How? There is an outer as well as inner aspect of religion i.e the quality rather than quantity of deeds. The purity of intention (ikhlaas) and the state of heart (kaifiat) involved is what makes all the difference. Ihsan is that you do a deed as if you are watching God or atleast He is watching you. Thus a person’s piety is not judged by how many good deeds he does but rather how he does them. A ritualistic attitude devoid of love, passion and sincerity deprives today’s Muslims from the essence of religion. No wonder even people’s prayers in the mosque do not change them at all.
There are so many faces of religion. Different people are good and bad at different aspects of religion. Some are very kind to others whereas some are very cautious about haraam/halaal. What most people in Pakistan do not realize is that God judges people according to deen in its totality. A girl without hijab can be much better than the one with hijab because that is one specific deed out of many. God has a thousand ways to judge you.
As we have clearly discussed so far, because of so many external and internal factors that govern someone and his deeds, it is logically impossible for a human to judge another human. Human beings are far more complex than we think they are. A person’s psychology, emotions, past history, inner motives and surrounding conditions cannot be fully evaluated without error even by his ownself, let alone by someone else. We cannot put ourselves in the boot of someone else and know whether we would have done something more pious than he in that situation. We only see the outer outcome in the form of a deed but what is going inside someone at the moment and what he has undergone throughout his life before this moment is known to God alone.
Right and Wrong are unconditionally right and wrong because that is the sole role of revelations. But the value of how +ve or how –ve a specific deed is, is not as simple as people take it. Since whether a person is good or bad can only be known by the final value of all the +ves and all the –ves of his life, it is only God who can calculate its right value. When we say that Musharraf was wrong in doing this and that, we are justified if our criterion is revelation but since we cannot calculate the exact value of how right and how wrong he was, we cannot say whether he will go to heaven or hell.
A very important message of the Quran is that sinners do not go to hell. Allah has said that he loves those who repent; a person can only repent if he has sinned otherwise why he would repent. Allah knows very well that humans are weak and are bound to sin because of nafs, satan and environment but if they only have the humility and humbleness to ask for forgiveness, they can attain salvation. It is the arrogant sinners who go to hell because their fault is that they not only sin but do not even consider themselves as wrong. It is this combination that leads people to hell and they certainly deserve it because where it is very difficult to avoid sin, it is unbelievably easy to consider oneself wrong and pray for forgiveness afterwards. If people cannot even do that, they deserve hell without any sympathy and sentiments for them.
It is astonishing to see the extremely small number of Muslims today who get taufeeq from Allah in their lives. It depicts both a lack of craving for the truth as well as a lack of unshakable faith in what is revealed. Our tongues may say we believe but our hearts defy them. We Muslims forget that heaven is not our birth right but we have to fight against our nafs to win it.
According to Quran, everyone is born as a Muslim, irrespective of family. Thus a person born in a Christian/Jew family is not a Christian/Jew till he accepts their beliefs in his heart. The same applies to sects within Islam. I remember being seriously offended by someone who called Jinnah as deviant because, according to him, Jinnah was an Ismaili. I said to him that even if he was born in an Ismaili family (which iam not even sure about), we cant call him an ismaili because we don’t know whether he believed in ismailism by heart. In fact, once someone asked Jinnah, “Are you a Shia or a Sunni?” to which he, in his typically blunt manner, gave the most perfect answer, “Hazoor SWS kia thay? Jo wo thay meh bhe wohi hu”. This proves he was a Sunni because he believed in it not because of his family.
What about the destiny of Jews and Christians? The Quran has clearly said that those who followed their own scriptures and prophets before Muhammad will obviously go to heaven but what about non-Muslims after the advent of Quran? Here, the mainstream scholars say that only if they were never communicated the truth, they may be forgiven but not otherwise. The modernist scholars like Ghamdi say they can also enter paradise. I am certainly on the side of the earlier one but both miss an important point which may even apply to agnostics too. Suppose a person was in the process of seeking the truth when he died. He was in the right direction but didn’t get to the destination. He was on his way but not yet there. Such a person can also be forgiven. We have an anecdote from the life of prophet about such a non-Muslim and the prophet said he died as a Muslim. The reason is that such a person can receive the kalma on his death despite that he never converted before it. Hence, I conclude with saying that the best and least controversial answer is only Allah knows!
I can guarantee that all of us think about these questions but never get convincing answers from anyone at all. In Pakistan, sadly, either there are those with right beliefs without logics or those with wrong beliefs with logics. We badly need people with right beliefs accompanied with logics and that is exactly what I am trying to do.
A human being is judged by God according to 3 factors- how much truth he was exposed to, how much of the exposed truth he followed and how much further seeking he did for the unexposed truth. There is no absolute scale at all- it is totally based on relative marking. Family upbringing, circumstances, environment, society, life experiences and all those forces that act upon us to make who we are form a major portion of the criteria of judgment. A person born in an actor’s home will obviously be different from someone born in a strictly religious family. Do you think God will not take this into consideration? Will God be cruel to judge the actor’s son on the same scale? Suppose the one born in the religious family becomes an alim whose life is all about piety whereas the actor’s son only prays 5 times a day with the rest of his life having nothing to do with piety. It is possible that, in the eyes of God, both may be equally pious.
What is the case of someone who grew up alone in a jungle with no one to tell him about the truth and died without iman? On one hand, God will certainly be extremely lenient in His judgment but on the other hand it is not a certainty that he will be forgiven. Why? Because there is the divine spirit of God in man which becomes the inner voice known as conscience and it always calls man towards the truth. Even in the absence of an external communication to truth, it acts as an internal communicator. The fact that man consciously and intentionally rejects this call throughout his life will make him fully accountable in the hereafter. It is a subtle but an unignorable aspect of man.
What about people who spent their life seeking the truth but never found it? The Quran tells us that if anyone truly seeks the truth, it is impossible that God will deprive him of it. The fact that people claim to be truth-seekers but do not reach it shows that there is something seriously wrong in them. What is it? Last year, I dedicated a full article (Why the modern man cannot grasp religion) to explain why there are people who are rationally extremely intelligent but fail to reach the truth. The human heart is the centre of knowledge of God. Its intelligence is dependent on its purification which in turn is dependent on our deeds, intentions and desires. When its pure, it not only reveals the truth much more than the brain but also guides the intellect in the right direction. When its impure, it not only conceals the truth but also directs the intellect to falsehood. There are many Quranic verses which repeatedly say that those who deny the truth have (spiritually) diseased hearts.
The difference between an atheist and agnostic is that where the earlier is an outright rejecter of God’s existence, the later is in between atheism and belief. Where the chance of salvation is zero for the earlier, there is a small probability for the later which I will discuss at the end. However, both can get hadayat within this life and there have been many such cases as well.
Simplistic minded people say that it is the deeds alone which make someone good or bad but deeds have no fixed value of their own. Suppose two people commit the act of theft. One of them steals with an empty stomach since 2 days; the other steals with a filled stomach. Since both committed a sin, the value of this deed is unconditionally –ve in both cases but where the earlier did it out of starvation, the later did it for only greed. Hence, if the value in the earlier case is -X, it would be -10X in the later case. Thus the later one has done a much more evil deed than the first although the deed itself was the same. Similarly, to retain virginity in USA is much more pious than in Afghanistan for obvious reasons.
What would really surprise my readers is that a more wrong act can have higher value than a less wrong act. How? Suppose a girl is born in a family full of veiled females and she is the only one who wears shalwar kameez without covering her head. Another girl, who was born in a family of females wearing mini-skirts and tight tops, choose to wear pants and shirts instead because she found her family’s practice indecent. Note that the earlier girl followed her nafs by not following a part of religion fully exposed to her whereas the later girl had to oppose her nafs by not following the wrong practice of her family. On the outside, the earlier is more decently dressed but on the inner, God knows that, the later deserves more appreciation; so, here, the act of more decent clothing has a more negative value - strange but true!
A person who does more good deeds in number than someone else maybe less pious. How? There is an outer as well as inner aspect of religion i.e the quality rather than quantity of deeds. The purity of intention (ikhlaas) and the state of heart (kaifiat) involved is what makes all the difference. Ihsan is that you do a deed as if you are watching God or atleast He is watching you. Thus a person’s piety is not judged by how many good deeds he does but rather how he does them. A ritualistic attitude devoid of love, passion and sincerity deprives today’s Muslims from the essence of religion. No wonder even people’s prayers in the mosque do not change them at all.
There are so many faces of religion. Different people are good and bad at different aspects of religion. Some are very kind to others whereas some are very cautious about haraam/halaal. What most people in Pakistan do not realize is that God judges people according to deen in its totality. A girl without hijab can be much better than the one with hijab because that is one specific deed out of many. God has a thousand ways to judge you.
As we have clearly discussed so far, because of so many external and internal factors that govern someone and his deeds, it is logically impossible for a human to judge another human. Human beings are far more complex than we think they are. A person’s psychology, emotions, past history, inner motives and surrounding conditions cannot be fully evaluated without error even by his ownself, let alone by someone else. We cannot put ourselves in the boot of someone else and know whether we would have done something more pious than he in that situation. We only see the outer outcome in the form of a deed but what is going inside someone at the moment and what he has undergone throughout his life before this moment is known to God alone.
Right and Wrong are unconditionally right and wrong because that is the sole role of revelations. But the value of how +ve or how –ve a specific deed is, is not as simple as people take it. Since whether a person is good or bad can only be known by the final value of all the +ves and all the –ves of his life, it is only God who can calculate its right value. When we say that Musharraf was wrong in doing this and that, we are justified if our criterion is revelation but since we cannot calculate the exact value of how right and how wrong he was, we cannot say whether he will go to heaven or hell.
A very important message of the Quran is that sinners do not go to hell. Allah has said that he loves those who repent; a person can only repent if he has sinned otherwise why he would repent. Allah knows very well that humans are weak and are bound to sin because of nafs, satan and environment but if they only have the humility and humbleness to ask for forgiveness, they can attain salvation. It is the arrogant sinners who go to hell because their fault is that they not only sin but do not even consider themselves as wrong. It is this combination that leads people to hell and they certainly deserve it because where it is very difficult to avoid sin, it is unbelievably easy to consider oneself wrong and pray for forgiveness afterwards. If people cannot even do that, they deserve hell without any sympathy and sentiments for them.
It is astonishing to see the extremely small number of Muslims today who get taufeeq from Allah in their lives. It depicts both a lack of craving for the truth as well as a lack of unshakable faith in what is revealed. Our tongues may say we believe but our hearts defy them. We Muslims forget that heaven is not our birth right but we have to fight against our nafs to win it.
According to Quran, everyone is born as a Muslim, irrespective of family. Thus a person born in a Christian/Jew family is not a Christian/Jew till he accepts their beliefs in his heart. The same applies to sects within Islam. I remember being seriously offended by someone who called Jinnah as deviant because, according to him, Jinnah was an Ismaili. I said to him that even if he was born in an Ismaili family (which iam not even sure about), we cant call him an ismaili because we don’t know whether he believed in ismailism by heart. In fact, once someone asked Jinnah, “Are you a Shia or a Sunni?” to which he, in his typically blunt manner, gave the most perfect answer, “Hazoor SWS kia thay? Jo wo thay meh bhe wohi hu”. This proves he was a Sunni because he believed in it not because of his family.
What about the destiny of Jews and Christians? The Quran has clearly said that those who followed their own scriptures and prophets before Muhammad will obviously go to heaven but what about non-Muslims after the advent of Quran? Here, the mainstream scholars say that only if they were never communicated the truth, they may be forgiven but not otherwise. The modernist scholars like Ghamdi say they can also enter paradise. I am certainly on the side of the earlier one but both miss an important point which may even apply to agnostics too. Suppose a person was in the process of seeking the truth when he died. He was in the right direction but didn’t get to the destination. He was on his way but not yet there. Such a person can also be forgiven. We have an anecdote from the life of prophet about such a non-Muslim and the prophet said he died as a Muslim. The reason is that such a person can receive the kalma on his death despite that he never converted before it. Hence, I conclude with saying that the best and least controversial answer is only Allah knows!
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