Islamic Humanism

An alternative for thinking Islamic theology today

ANTONIO DE DIEGO GONZALEZ !

Junta Islamica de Espafia

fi FORO DE PENSAMIENTO ISLAMICO IBN MASARRA

One of the great challenges of Islam, as a din and as a civilizational model, is to re- turn to humanism. In the last two centuries there has been a global move- ment that has brought humanity to a crossroad: individualism, materialism and nihilism are three of its products. The Cre- ation of Allah, the Most High, has been reduced to an exploitable quantity while the world faces an environmental crisis that is intimately linked to the spiritual cri- sis we endure. Human beings have forgotten their role as Allah's Caliphs (vicegerents) to instead become a new Pharaohs who think they have power, but in fact, they have nothing. The forgetful- ness of humanism, along with ethics (akhlaq) and moral values, is a reality that we may pay dearly in the coming decades.

The philosophy of Modernity and, later, the postmodernity, from its constructivism and social cynicism, has managed to hide the metaphysical thought that, builds the spiritual experience: good, beauty and truth. These are transcendentals that most spiritual traditions have identified with at- tributes of the divine.

"Antonio de Diego Gonzalez (1986). He is vice-president and imam-khatib of Junta Islamica de Espafia and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Universidad Pablo de Olavide (Seville, Spain). PhD. in Philosophy (University of Seville, 2016). He is executive director of Fundacion Las Fuentes and the Ibn Masarra Forum of Islamic Thought in Cordoba. He is the author of a large number of publications on Islamic history and thought, including the books Sufismo Negro (2019) and Populismo Islamico (2020).

There have been ideologies, in recent years, that have tried to eliminate meta- physical and symbolic thought —imaginal thought, as Henry Corbin? would say— in pursuit of a longed-for progress, with to- tally messianic ideologies and with the project of reaching the end of history whatever the cost, of reaching a paradise on earth. An end of history that would mean the apparent triumph of the human being over the metaphysical, the triumph of reason against evil and unreason, but history would end up showing us that both projects lacked ethics and empathy to- wards diversity. Projects which ultimately lacked spirituality to achieve an objective that is, without a doubt, beyond the worldly world (dunya).

Both, modern and postmodern thought are opposite and equal, these were techni- fied ideologies, projected to turn nature and people into a sort of machines. A de- sire that turned physical nature, which ceased to be symbol and metaphor, into a simple, totally dominatable mechanical system. If we were capable of dominating and subduing nature, how could we not do the same with human beings? It was only necessary to apply pure ideology and thus with everything, the result has been the tri- umph of populism.’ Postmodern thought undervalues the role of the human being, his ethics and, above all, his spirituality. Postmodern thought has too much of the person, as a moral and spiritual evolution of the human being and is uncomfortable with humanism.

The crisis of humanism, on a global scale, also goes hand in hand with a lack of moral empathy towards "the other" and a questioning of the sacred dimension of hu- man life as a "transcendental existent". Modern thought has been reduced to an- thropocentrism the profound experience of living in creation. While postmodern

thought simplified to simple "finite and quantitative existence" what traditional humanism and personalism consider a "deep ontological reality", a reality with a fundamental metaphysical weight in Cre- ation (khalq). However, this is how this matter is expressed in the Qur’an:

And when thy Lord said to His an- gels, "I will set up a caliph in the land", they said, "You will set up one who will corrupt it and shed blood, while we exalt you with praise and sanctify you. And He said, "Surely I know that which ye know not. (Qur’an, 2: 222)

This ayah, moreover, exposes the unfath- omable nature (quddusiyya) of the decision of Allah, the Most High towards the human being: the human being above his mistakes is placed by Him, may His names be exalted. That is why the human being transcends the biological sphere — as the French philosopher Emmanuel Mounier explains in his famous work on personalist philosophy*— to surpass him- self and become a "person", through a voluntary and conscious evolutionary act, to, subsequently, try to communicate it through love.

Islam understands love (hubb) as the seed, with all its potentiality, that can make the sane heart (lubb) green, that can become the way of communication and connec- tion with others. Or at least this is the way it has been proposed over the centuries in the Islamic tradition. This kind of love, the hubb, is constructive and raises the possi- bility of empathizing through the cosmic rhythm (agalb, which shares root with heart: qalb) that Allah, the Most High, marks in His creation.

And it should not surprise us that it is the human being who is the subject that

* See his great work L'imagination créatrice dans le soufisme d'Tbn ‘Arabi (1958), in which he approaches the mystic from Murcia with a brilliant hermeneutics of the symbol and a fascinating mystical geography where

the sensitive and the intelligible meet.

3 See De Diego Gonzalez, Populismo Isldmico (2020).

“Mounier, Le Personalisme, p. 85.

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perceives and measures of all this experi- ence. The caliph of Allah is the person, who has already become aware of his own consciousness, in the consciousness of the infinitude of Allah (taqwa). For he knows —as Ibn ‘Arabi tells us in a reflection on the origins and creation of the human body— that his caliphate is on earth, but neither in the heavens nor in the Garden to come.°

In the din of Islam, the decadence of hu- manism has been accompanied by a degradation of theological and intellectual production. It is a kind of doctrinal mate- rialism and a false literalism that hides an essentialist and ideological proposal very typical of Modernity. The last two centu- ries —with luminous exceptions in the peripheries of the Arab world as West Af- rica or Indian Subcontinent— have offered short-sighted and impoverished vi- sions of what Islam can offer. The ritual, with all its symbolic complexity, was re- duced to a simple daily praxis, while the intellectual was subjugated by the political and ideological. The human being, as the centre of the Islamic spiritual experience, has been supplanted by a self-interested vi- sion of the community directed towards a populist end and giving an apparent sense of security in the face of the challenge of the spiritual journey (sayr).

Islam, for hundreds of thousands of people in the world, is no longer an individual process of recognizing (ta‘rif) the signs of Reality (haqiqa), but a subjugation to a worldly power that claims to have an in- terpretation of what is divine (ilahiya). A process in which reason (‘aql) ceases to be useful to the din from desires (ahwan) and sentimentality, so typical of blind imita- tion (taqlid), becoming tools of social control. And, if we look at the Sunna, the social ethics of the Prophet ™ was so far removed from that, for in his political life he never used these kinds of strategies. In- terestingly, Islam, from its birth, presented itself as a holistic reality that was not

> Tbn ‘Arabi, Futuhat, Vol. 1, p. 374.

intended to be imposed by force, but for believers to recognize it (ta'rif) as the fitra, the primordial nature, realizing, paradoxi- cally, its material finitude and its metaphysical infinitude.

However, also in the din of Islam, human- ism has been replaced by ideology. An ideology makes people believe that it is about justice or the social dimension, but it lacks empathy and is based on its own communitarianism and nationalistic inter- ests. In it the human being as a person does not matter when it becomes a value, a number, and the same with nature. This has caused considerable damage in the Is- lamic world.

However, orthodox Islamic theology has been incapable of reacting to this reality and, in the last fifty years, there are hardly any theological developments that can re- spond to the decadence of humanism and its derivatives: environmental problems, bioethical challenges, ethics of coexist- ence, etc. It seems as if Islam has become stagnant in the scholastic and museistic experience of the Holy Word, and few un- derstand that both the Qur’an and the Sunna are realities to be lived fully and be- yond ideologies and worldly politics. They are paths to be built and constructed.

Could humanism be a way for Muslims to- day to rediscover and recognize the spiritual and social dimension of Islam? This is something I propose to discuss in this paper from three different spheres: the person, the social world and the lived world, three basic points to begin a great spiritual revolution.

The person (shajsun) is the centre of spir- itual experience in Islam. It is true that Allah is the centre of Reality (haqiqa), but it is the person who experiences it and to whom the revelation was descended. He is

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no longer the biological human being, but an existent who has become conscious of the Reality of the sacred (mutaqin). At the same time, he is confronted with the sym- bols through which the sacred manifests itself and, moreover, he benefits from it immediately or under a promise of salva- tion.

The absolute model of person is the prophet Muhammad “, whom tradition identifies with al-insan al-kamil (the per- fect man), is the one who had even embodied the descended revelation itself (tanzil). And in the face of that gift of the sacred, he transmitted it to mankind as a new (bashira). The human being when he becomes a person, as it happened to the Messenger ™, needs to annihilate his ego (nafs) and give through love (hubb) build- ing both in intimacy and_ socially. Therefore, this experience is never selfish because this subject is annihilated by Allah, the Most High, it only seeks to re- produce the gift given through rahma (potential matriciality) in the likeness of the divine. A rahma that is projected into the future that comes into tension with the eternal present of Allah, may all His names be exalted.

Omid Safi in his anthology Radical Love (2018) raised how all this approach was not alien to the Islamic tradition, as it had been developed in Sufism (tasawuff), which with names like Rumi or Ibn ‘Arabi, among others, had realized all this and had developed it doctrinally and, more intimately, as a path of travel. A path of travel that these same authors, espe- cially the Sufi master Ibn ‘Arabi, had to complement with the juridical protection that Islam offered both to the individual and to society: the sharia.°

Khaled Abou El Fadl, for his part, points out that Modernity had a very negative in- fluence on the Islamic epistemological structure and generated a puritanical and

° Tbn ‘Arabi, Futuhat, Vol. 8, pp. 160-171. ’ Abou El-Fadl, Reasoning with God, pp. 271-276.

normative reading as opposed to a theol- ogy where the ancient transcendentals, especially beauty, prevailed.

So, literalist and essentialist tendencies, es- pecially Salafism and Wahhabism, institutionalized a morality of prohibition and a politics of institutionalized ugliness masked in virtue and austerity.’ This situ- ation was enough to displace the person as the subject of the Islamic experience, obvi- ously limiting the possibility of developing an Islamic humanism.

At that point, the believer ceased to be an asset, a focal point, and became the target of criticism, the criminal, wrongdoer of all evil. Salafist theologies presented the hu- man being as a deviant, fallen being, far from what "a Muslim should be" living — according to them— in a corrupt world. The nature of the person, for the Salafists, is not that of a creative potentiality but of a corrupting potentiality that must be stopped by returning to a past time, to a lost paradise. In this way, the believer does not enjoy a present time, but lives in an eternal nostalgia. Normally these theolog- ical proposals go hand in hand with a communitarian vision of the political, that is, a nationalistic experience that reduces empathy with the global world. For this reason, in this way of living Islam, the be- liever remains halfway to achieving fulfilment and, above all, to reaching spir- itual fulfilment. The believer is often weighed down by a puritanical moral out- look and the fear of acting freely takes hold of him. Hence this proposal, based on the previous theological orientation, has been fertile ground for a type of ideology —as Khaled Abou El Fadl explains— that seeks to redeem the sins of "the others" with violence, whether symbolic or physi- cal. This arises from frustration with a world that provokes an unhealthy nostal- gia for what morally should be and, unable to change it, must carry out a cathartic act:

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an execution or a bombing.® It is the an- nulment of the "other", of the person who must walk his own path and make mis- takes to get up again. The absence of empathy and rahma towards the other is a sign that the person and his dignity, as cre- ated by Allah, is of no importance to him.

To return to an Islamic theology of the person (shajsun) means to revalue the hu- man being not as a "corrupt being" but as a "being with creative potential", as stated in the Qur’anic verse quoted in the previ- ous epigraph. He is not just a passive being, but a "being-towards-Allah". The human being has limitations, failures, but Allah, the Most High, keeps for Himself something that we do not know what it is. This is part of the mystery, so necessary in a theological approach. The Qur’an says: "We created the human being by mould- ing him in the most beautiful way and then We made in him the lowest of the low (Qur’an 95: 4-5)". But, on the other hand, the human being can reflect and enhance that rahma that Allah, the Most High, has for creation and, at the same time, be able to translate it to others. That is the mu- hammadian model that Islam proposes, in which the remembrance (tadhkira) of Allah builds the actions if the human be- ing recognizes that he is not only himself, but that he is part of a creation. Therefore, ethics (akhlaq) is innate to the human be- ing and does not end in normativity but is projected as an act of creation (khalq). The human being is sacred insofar as he comes from a divine creation, hence his actions (‘amal) are as important and as his inten- tions (niya).

The person (shajsun), from the Islamic ex- perience, cannot be built without spirituality or ethics (akhlaq). It needs both to achieve its completeness, both are the two parts of the shahada: the divine presence and human praxis. In the same way that spirituality, at least in Islam, is not only mystical, but involves a rituality

® Abou El-Fadl, Reasoning with God, pp. 268-269. ° Corbin, L'imagination créatrice, 1958.

(‘ibada) that is remembrance of Allah (dhikr). These practices are the formers of the path of transformation, the change of consciousness towards Creation (khalq) through ritual praxis such as prayers (salat) or fasting (sawm) with a clear voca- tion of personal purification. After this, the subject begins the journey to become a person with a very particular ‘ibada: the zakat, which is, in itself a profound act of purification of personal goods and social justice, which leads the individual to live the akhlaq (ethics). And this is where spir- ituality and ethics meet in the Sunna, the second part of the shahada from the free- dom that gives a believer the complete surrender (tawakkul) to Allah, the Most High.

It is of little use for us to know and be learned with the ancient texts if we are then incapable of interiorizing them, of doing —as Henry Corbin explains throughout his work’— ta‘wil, hermeneu- tic exegesis with our heart (qalb), interiorizing and transforming ourselves with the sacred word of the Qur’an.

For this reason, materialism and individu- alism are set aside when we approach the person from the person, because we can- not quantify that person or his or her experience. Each person is unique, excep- tional and must build himself. Once he begins this journey, he must apply these experiences, more than knowledge, to so- ciety. The community of believers (jama‘at) will only be possible if this trans- formation has taken place, otherwise it will be another type of political commu- nity, but not a community of sincere believers. For it demands a profound re- sponsibility towards the other that even if I cannot know him completely —para- phrasing the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas — I have to serve him.

But it is not a servitude of recognition (‘ubudiyya), but one that is done out of

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love (mahabba) and out of full empathy. This is not just an experience for believers but is universal. This is how the generous Qur’an mentions the matter to us:

Verily those who are pacified and believing, obedient and sincere, pa- tient, humble, generous, fasting, and modest, who remember Allah so much, whether they are men or women, Allah keeps for them for- getfulness of their faults and an exalted reward. (Qur’an, 33: 35)

This qur’anic ayah speaks about the paci- fied (muslimin) and the believers (mu’minin) as people who have become and "Allah keeps for them the oblivion of their faults and a lofty reward", a reality that we can understand as a profound plenitude, beyond the material. Beyond cultures, imposed morals and interested ideological readings.

The person (shajsun), so full of taqwa, takes his caliphate towards the Creation (khalq). And it is from there that he tries to remind, being a servant (‘abd), that Cre- ation of the command of Allah, the Most High, to sayyidina Adam (as) and of the Messenger *, facing a thousand hostili- ties, but with the certainty that he fulfils His command. It is impossible for the community and the social to function if that human being does not recognize his brothers as people with the capacity to as- sume the command and, at the same time, a defiant moral autonomy that leads them to walk the straight path (sirat al-mus- taqim). Assuming this, assuming the person makes life neither absurd nor empty, but sacred and enveloped with a unique mission that Allah, the Most High, has written for all of us.

No matter how much we perfect the inner work, that we give ourselves to the

purification (tazkiyya) of our ego (nafs) and even, already established as a person (shajsun), we contemplate others as such without the community (jama‘at), without the social world we are nothing. Without this community, Islamic humanism would be non-existent. Islam is a social din, the Sunna emphasizes it to us, and the Qur’an confirms it. It is not an ordinary group, but the community demands deeper processes of empathy and fraternity, for it is not about politics but about alignment of in- tentions.

The community that emerges from the Sunna of the Messenger “ is a challenge in these times where individualism and lack of solidarity is gaining space. How- ever, Islam proposes a social space in which to live and rejects, outright, asceti- cism, celibacy, monasticism and other "negative excesses". These are not options within the Sunna of the Prophet “, they are not viable for a full social life. It is not about denying a person's life (shajsun), once he has become one, but about shar- ing it with others, it is not about, for example, restricting sexuality or affective life, on the contrary, it is about aligning it towards Creation (khalq). Thus explains the imam al-Kasani, an important Hanafi jurist, that both spouses have a mutual right —based on the Sunna— to sexual en- joyment except for the exceptions provided for in the sharia.'° And the fact is that conjugal or family life is the first step of the social sphere of the human dimen- sion of life. So, with all aspects of social life, because the sincere believer under- stands that the social sphere co- participates with his personal sphere —alt- hough it does not invade it— and, in most cases, improves it. This is another reason why the din of Islam is eminently human- istic because the social sphere becomes a preferential space for personal develop- ment. The believer, while perfecting himself as a person in privacy, socializes, shares, builds, and improves his relation- ships in the public space.

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Justice (‘adl) is the key value in under- standing all this, but equally so is humility (khushw’). Without both, a person's social experience is wasted. And at the same time, we have to try to reflect the divine rahma, which is able to green that waste- land of experience. Because the rahma is the potential matriciality so that those ac- tions are blessed even if they seem far from what we mean by spirituality. Hence, so- cial ‘ibadah such as zakat or hajj is as purifying as personal ‘ibadah: prayers or fasting. The social ‘ibada purifies and im- proves us by projecting rahma into the public space. The social, the public, adapts to the human being with the 'ibada and achieves that the rahma is, finally, shared in coexistence. The sharia is presented as the path to follow, the method to coexist with the diversity that the Most High has given us.

That is why the social space is a place where we live together. We live together, we think together, and we build together. We cannot run away from it. That is why a good approach is humanism, which in- vites us to live the fullness, to experience totality and to understand that in front of us there are people with the same depth as us. They are not just indeterminate num- bers, but beings with potential, with spirit and with the capacity to transform. It is more than a moral space, it is an authentic vital space where to be free with Allah, the Most High, surrendered to Him.

Convivencia, like that practiced by our An- dalusian ancestors, starts from understanding the other, from accepting their otherness and from respecting what He has dictated. But how can this be done in a world with an enormous lack of spir- ituality?

Sincere spirituality is the link between the individual and the social as it acts as a symbolic translator. It is this that enables us, as full persons (shajsunin) and

believers (mu’minin), once purified and oriented towards ‘ibada, to share these ex- periences for and with others. This experience is what we might call Islamic humanism, it is what enables us to go be- yond ourselves to understand that the sacred, revelation and symbol cannot just remain within us, but is a shared heritage. And, at the same time, it is a mechanism in the face of the tyranny of unreason and the reign of taqlid, of blind imitation, which is so much in vogue in this post- modern world. It is spirituality that invests tradition so that it becomes a necessary reference, it is ma'rifa (recognition, deep knowledge) that allows us to look again and recognize the multiplicity of the hu- man and its convergence in the experience of tawhid (uniqueness) that believers rec- ognize in the din of Islam.

The prophetic experience, the Sunna, inte- grated, like few others, in addition to these spiritual experiences, the experience of in- terculturality and diversity. Islam, in its beginnings and in its classical develop- ments, was never nationalist or communitarian, it is not a spiritual experi- ence based on a pact but on the transmission of a universal and symbolic message for all humanity.

It is not enough to say that only we are the chosen ones, but we work so that this sal- vation —in the worldly world through the Sunna and in the world to come through actions— can be intuited by every person on earth through our akhlaq (ethics) and our adab (manners). Therefore, the social sphere is essential as it constitutes the space where spirituality takes real space, the mystical ceases to be elevated and be- comes concrete to be the present of Allah on earth.'' It is of no use to be mystical, if afterwards the heart does not burst before the injustice towards others and towards the Creation (khalq) with which Allah, the Most High, has blessed us.

" From Diego Gonzalez, Khutbas of Dar al Rum, pp. 197-198.

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This is why the human being, and his so- cial projection must approach the living world as something sacred, as a reflection of the sacred, of the quddusiyya (unfath- omability) of the command of Allah, the Most High. Our commitment, our actions, our decisions only benefit and harm our- selves, as the Qur’an says:

And no one will bear the burden of another, but if anyone is overbur- dened, he shall not be helped, even if he is a family. Only warn those who are humble before their Lord in secret and establish their salat. Whoever purifies himself, purifies himself for his own benefit. And it is towards Allah the ultimate destina- tion. (Qur’an, 35: 18)

Prophet Muhammad * was charged only to warn us those who were left and was ex- plicitly told, as the above verse confirms, that in Islam no one can intercede or bear the burden of what others did. This is true humanism: the responsibility is one's own, but the impact and legacy are everyone's in this worldly world, in this lived world.

The living world is our responsibility, there cannot be an authentic humanism which does not have a sincere and deep look at our immediate reality. Once we as- sume our personal work and its social correlate, after rethinking the concept of community and understanding that with- out coexistence there is no way to Allah, it is time to face the lived world. A world formed by chemistry and physics, by ani- mals and plants, by a visible reality so strong that it envelops us, protects us, and threatens us, a reality before which we are amazed. For if there was diversity in soci- ety, the human being is surprised by the diversity in nature:

" Tbn ‘Arabi, Futuhat, Vol. 1, pp. 379-387.

It is He Who descends water from heaven: from it you drink, and with it emerges the pasture for your cat- tle, with it grows grain, olive trees, palm trees, vines, and all fruits. A Sign is, indeed, for people who med- itate. It rules the night and the day, the sun and the moon, and the stars for your benefit. A Sign is indeed for the people who meditate. And for you he hath multiplied on earth many colors. A Sign is indeed for the people who accept the admoni- tion. (Qur’an, 16: 10-13).

It is a beautiful multiplicity to know His greatness, to allow ourselves to be in awe of His designs, to understand that without this world we could not exist. Humanism towards the lived world supposes recog- nizing this multiplicity as necessary for the human being and recognizing the great- ness that he possesses thanks to His mandate. It is an apparently simple exer- cise, but it hides a great show of humility. In Islam, humanism means, precisely, ad- mitting that we are not the centre of the Universe, but, on the other hand, that we are a primordial reality and responsible for Creation. So, responsibility weighs more than metaphysical protagonist itself.

Therefore, in the journey towards the per-

son (shajsun) there is a moment of humility, of recognizing the Creation (khalq) and of becoming aware of the liv- ing world. Otherwise, we arrive at the paradox and nightmare of Modernity: since the world we live in is pure machine, we have little value to give it and much use to make of it. We can quantify everything and thus it loses its value.

Ibn ‘Arabi said in his Futuhat that the Earth —the essence of this living world of which we spoke— had been molded from the vivified clay left over from the creation of Adam (as).’” It shares life with what is most precious in the human being, in this symbolic sense, the Earth shares in human

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nature and it is Ibn ‘Arabi himself who ex- horts the human being to respect it as a sister, leaving implicit a hadith that he ex- plains to us:

Do not hate one another, do not envy one another, do not forsake one another, so be servants of Allah as brothers. It is not lawful for you to be angry with your brother for more than three days (Sunan Abu- Dawud, 4910).

Ibn ‘Arabi suggests this should give us an opportunity for thought. Because in the following lines, with a beautiful poem, he warns us that the human being tends to fight against himself and the Earth itself and is ungrateful to creation. And the fact is that this is a blessed space, ready to be discovered, to be lived, to which we give little importance due to our lack of aware- ness towards deep knowledge (ma‘rifa). It is the Earth that serves us, and we should serve it. Symbolically the Earth has infi- nite possibilities, infinite baraka given by Allah, the Most High. And it is the divine law —according to Ibn ‘Arabi— that pro- vides it the opportunity to consider it. It is pure symbolism, in beautiful words, what Ibn ‘Arabi transmits to us in Futuhat that questions a finite vision. And although it is a symbolic, allegorical plea, it allows us to see what is in that deep Earth so closely linked to our mundane world. Can we re- duce our world to simple materialism?

However, many philosophers and scien- tists, over the centuries, have added to that vision, belittling the metaphysical experi- ence of the lived world in search of an idea, a material vision, or simply control in a desire to quantify Creation. Thus, so many contemporary ideologies challenge, with an extractive perspective, our respon- sibility to the world. Haughty visions towards nature, incapable of building something beyond. And yet, the Qur’an says:

And it is He who made gardens with vineyards and others without them,

date palms and so many different ce- reals grove, olive groves and pomegranate trees so similar, so dif- ferent. When they bear fruit, eat them, but give a little on the day of harvest. And do not waste it, for in- deed He loveth not those who waste it. (Qur’an, 6: 141)

Creation, the living world, is our responsi- bility as it has been entrusted to us by Allah, the Most High. The caliphate of the human being is to become aware that the living world is to be listened to and pro- tected in the same way as we would do with ourselves, as did, in his time, the Messenger of Allah . Indeed, Allah, the Most High does not love those who waste His Creation for their own benefit, for the harm they create only harms themselves. Thus, the Qur’an says: "Evil only harms oneself and no one shall bear the burden of others (Qur’an, 6: 164)".

And this, like a circle that returns to its be- ginning, indicates to us that the lack of savouring (dhawgq) of the lived world is due, fundamentally, to a lack in its con- struction as a person (shajsun) and, therefore, the inability to understand the importance of the common _ good (maslaha) at the social world. How can we build ourselves, singular and plural at the same time, if we are not able to contem- plate the lived world? How is it possible that we wait for the beauty that is to come if afterwards we are not able to contem- plate the instant?

The lived world has no material limits if the believer wants to understand and alt- hough it is an accumulation of signs —and this is emphasized throughout the Qur’an— it converges into a symbol. Our responsibility to this lived world is total, it is fundamental to following the din of Is- lam as a path of fulfilment and return to Allah, the Most High. Spirituality and eth- ics, that converges in the Sunna, are the necessary tools to realize all this. And it is now that we should develop a methodol- ogy, an approach so that this becomes an

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experience for everyone, an experience of wholeness.

The main idea of this text was a question, which asked whether we should return to humanism in Islam. And the fact is that this work, which is a document of analy- sis, does not pretend to be a truth but a beginning to start questioning each one of us about the situation of our din. How- ever, I would like to give some sort of conclusions on the above three points that could serve as a methodology.

Although some consider that Islam would need a process of Reform, in the style of that which took place in Protestant Chris- tianity, I do not believe that with a return to Tradition from a sincere and humble hermeneutic. However, that return cannot come without perceiving that tradition and humanism in the Islamic din are inti- mately linked. The union of the two is an overcoming of ontological impoverish- ment in the consideration of the three realities is a basic and minimal condition. And this is essential because the future of the din, and above all its credibility, is at stake.

First, humanism is an opportunity for all of us who call ourselves believers in a world in crisis because it represents the re- turn and care for the person (shajsun), the revaluation of the social space as a univer- sal community and, finally, the care for the earth are aspects that the Qur’an and the Sunna had already warned about. Vi- tal attitudes force us to position ourselves and purify ourselves (tazkiyya) to subse- quently live them. Humanism, as such, means regaining control of our caliphate in worldly life (hayat al-dunya) and appre- ciating every moment, being grateful to

' Tgbal, Bang-i-Dra, pp. 28-29. "4 Corbin, L ‘imagination créatrice, p. 224. 'S Iqbal, Bang-i-Dra, p. 28.

-10-

the divine, but without being trapped (jadhba) in this dimension.

Therefore, humanism cannot be built without a balancing of the reason (‘aql) and the heart (qalb). The great poet and scholar Muhammad Iqbal said in a beau- tiful poem that narrates the confrontation between the reason and the heart, and in which, finally, the heart obtains a final vic- tory because of its divine nature and its capacity to understand more subtle reali- ties.'° But this final victory of the heart, that ofa heart that receives the mundus im- aginalis described by Corbin™, is not possible without the reason that questions it: "I am like the Khadir in the blessed stages, / I am like the interpreter of the Book of Life and it is through me that,

shining, the Divine Glory winnows".'°

The human being needs both realities to subsist in each of the places (maqamat) on which we pass in our life. Iqbal, who was a great humanist, knew that the reconcili- ation of both was necessary to be able to build because reason alone tends towards ideology and idolatry (shirk) and the heart alone tends towards jadhba, which in the Islamic tradition is known as being "spirit- ually raptured" and inaction. It is not a matter of living in mysticism, but of apply- ing this attitude of spiritual awareness to daily life.

Secondly, tradition —understood as the legitimate transmission of knowledge from master to disciple— is a key part of this. It is not simply the transmission of any knowledge, but that which has a trans- cendent character for the believer. For Muslims the Tradition is in the Sunna and in all those who have revived it (tajdid) up to the present day. But, today, many ques- tion this tradition, accusing it of being innovative and preferring conjunction be- tween authoritarian ideology and essentialist literalism. It is epistemological

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materialism towards the Islamic din, the symptom of the great sickness from which our community suffers.

The imam al-Maturidi already advises us, eleven centuries ago, in his Kitab al-Ta- whid (Book of Monotheism) about the dangers of those who make the din based on univocal authority and imitation (taqlid) instead of evidence and reason (‘aql).'° Then common-sense rules and freedom from reason is produced for oth- ers. Freedom built upon the reason is connected to trust and full awareness in Allah. I find this point very interesting be- cause of how important the concept of human freedom is, even, over the idea of morality itself to many of today’s Islamic theologians. Imam al-Maturidi points out that many people have forgotten that the human being has been created to make an effort from reason and confront reality from his reason (‘aql) as an ‘ibada towards Allah, the Most High, for He from His rea- son rules our reality.'’

The theology of al-Maturidi sounds strange in the face of a contemporary Is- lam that often is fatalistic and irrational, more interested in maintaining power and morality than making life easier for believ- ers. This is not humanism, and it does not build from the person but from the politi- cal subject. The great scholars of Theology (kalam) and the Masters of Islamic spirit- uality warned that a very important balance was needed between the theologi- cal and the political so as not to fall into pure tyranny, so as not to forget the source of Power.

The fact that we often speak of metaphys- ics does not necessarily mean that it is irrational. In my opinion this is a central point, because sometimes we make biased readings of authors like Ibn ‘Arabi to whom we label as "mystic", and we forget that in them there is a rational-philosophi- cal structure and above all a hermeneutic

'© Al-Maturidi, Kitab al-Tawhid, pp. 2-7. "7 Al-Maturidi, Kitab al-Tawhid, pp. 15-16.

athe

structure of the world. It is reason (‘aql) that perceives and the heart (qalb) that in- terprets, but always in a middle way. For, once again, another symptom of this ill- ness of the Islamic world is the contempt for the symbol and for hermeneutics.

People do not wish to interpret, they are not interested in making ta‘wil by con- fronting the living text of creation as Ibn ‘Arabi and many others have done, hence al-Maturidi's rebuke of blind imitation (taqlid) and that fatalistic irrationalism we spoke about earlier. Contemporary theol- ogy is more interested in Hell and Power than in responsibility before the lived world or before the "other" who stands in front of the believer.

Humanism, as I have tried to outline it, only comes when we are aware of the value of otherness, of the strange, of the diversity that Allah, the Most High, has created for us. Humanism only becomes present with the assumption of our free- dom as a divine gift and respect for the freedom of others, humility before the di- versity in us, in society and in the lived world and that belief is an exercise beyond the aesthetic and moral.

At this way, we could make a real revolu- tion, building a new ummah in its deepest sense as matria (motherland), disposing of our own sincerity (sidigiyya) and trust (Amana) in the world around us. We are to home of the "other" who beholds us, and, in turn, it is society that is the home of both as the world, the Earth, is the place of society. The responsibilities are mutual and bidirectional, humanism only directs us towards the strategy that stands on the pillar placed by Allah, the Most High.

This attitude facilitates an Islamic din full of individual freedom, a committed con- science, and a return to a healthy tradition, to the Sunna, where personal work is a constant purification (tazkiyya) in the face

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of the ego (nafs) and the character that we self-impose on ourselves as Muslims.

A democratic Islamic din —in the sense of a sharing of the power of the spiritual and ethical caliphate— and generous towards others, together with an ethic projected to- wards the world as a symbol of Allah, the Most High. Beyond faces and clothes, be- yond cultures and political visions. Such ethics is but to become aware of what is happening, to remember (tadhkira) our duty and to be humbler in front of His Re-

ality (haqiqa).

Islamic theology, today, should be a tool for improvement and not oppression, it should help and raise people and not chain or bind them, the Qur’an and the Sunna should not give fear but light to the seeker. It is not about running away from this world, nor is it about trying to dominate it, much less to be perfect, but the key is to live again, to value again and to savour again what Allah, the Most High, has given us. The prophetic Sunnah is life, it is a smile'®, it is gratitude (shukr) and it is, finally, ‘ibada towards the Most High.

In an age of fear, shadows and idols, our best chance is to return to seek the light of Allah who guides us unconditionally and who is always with us.’ In this dehuman- ized age the light is the first thing to be extinguished to make way for the priests of Pharaoh with their magic tricks.

Islamic humanism requires calm, time and study, situations that in our world are not productive, in a world of restlessness (qalaq). Islamic episteme requires a reviv- ification (tajdid) in the Sunna of the text, of action and even of one's own body, be- fore facing reality. Thus, we know that with knowledge (‘ilm) one lives, with deep knowledge (ma‘rifa) one recognizes and with wisdom (hikma) one travels.

'8 Jami' al-Tirmidhi, 1970.

" De Diego Gonzalez, Khutbas of Dar al Rum, pp.

°° Sahih al-Bukhari, 4826.

66-70.

To regain time is basic to make a theology that is not mediated by others, but that comes for ourselves. But equally, this must go beyond form and formalism to enter the core of the problems to understand that this is a civilizational crisis that puts us in check.

Thus, we can eliminate dogmas and self- imposed truths, betting on a new juridical reason that considers the three previous spheres beyond the idols. And only a the- ology from the transcendentals, supported by reason (‘aql) and the heart (qalb), can offer a solid and credible way out of mate- rialism and the asphyxiation of the idolatrous quantification of time. Because that time is Him.”

And the same with another key concept: freedom. For it is not a simple moral or ex- istential value but a process —for a believer in the din— in which after having assumed the consciousness of Allah (ta- qwa) and seeing the world from this position (maqam), the rahma, so neces- sary, to coexist with Reality (haqiqa) as it is, bursts into us. Freedom to be in Allah, the Most High, to be individuals in a vast network with other individuals and reali- ties.

The return to an enlightened and human- ist Islam is an urgent need to be able to invest in theology that cares for and ac- companies people, beyond their religious affiliation, that calls for social justice and dignity for the needy, that demands care for the Earth as a sister extension of the human being himself and that purifies a world limited in the realm of quantity and the material. It is a way of feeling the full- ness of His Creation (khalq).

The Sunna invites us to do the "great ji- had" Gihad al-akbar), in the deepest and most spiritual sense of the word, which is nothing more than striving to purify our

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ego (nafs) so that it does not interfere with our journey (sayr) towards Allah. Only love (hubb), manifested as that constant humble ‘ibada, makes the Garden bloom, in anticipation, in every sane heart (lubb), only that love which like a small seed can generate something that earthly power cannot. And so, when the day that is to come (akhira) arrives, we can give an ac- count that our caliphate made the lives of others and ourselves better, that we strove to feel taqwa, which was not fear but the awareness that Allah, the Most High, was always present. For in the end, we are only asked to remember (tadhkira) and perform that action as dhikr so that we do not for- get who we really are: the children of Adam (as).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank Humera Syeda, Zakira Seyda and Umar Dinah for their comments, corrections and help in improving the English version of this pa- per.

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