** This interview took place on 10 August
2000 and was published in the (now-banned)
journal Aftab, No. 15, April-May 2002.
In an article entitled ‘The Expansion of Prophetic Experience’,
Abdulkarim Soroush suggested, among other things, that, as the
Prophet’s experience grew over time, he became more skilled at being
a prophet and conveying his message. The following interview is
about Dr. Soroush’s theory of the expansion of Prophetic experience.
Q. Regarding the idea that
there is no distinction between the Prophet’s words and God’s words,
you said that the Prophet’s multifarious proximity to God [qorb-e
farayezi va navafeli] meant that God had become the Prophet’s
ears and eyes and the Prophet’s discourse was God’s discourse, and
that, as Mowlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi put it: ‘This was a lover who
could do no wrong.’ In other words, since the Prophet’s hands,
tongue and eyes had become godly, whatever he did was effectively
counselled by God.
You also said: Had there
been no Abu-Lahab and his wife, would the Masad Sura[1]
have been revealed? And, with this example, you underlined that
this was an experience that expanded over time and that, as events
occurred around the Prophet, these phenomena were set in the Koran –
over time. It was because there was someone by the name of
Abu-Lahab that he was mentioned in the Koran. It was because the
problem of the slander against Aisha[2]
actually occurred that it was reflected in the Koran.
The fact of the matter is
that our society is in the process of grasping and digesting these
remarks and views. Many of these ideas are unsettling and give rise
to a host of questions.You say at one point: ‘It was revelation that
complied with the Prophet, not the Prophet who complied with
revelation.’
There are verses in the
Koran that present Gabriel as a very powerful teacher and in a much
more immense light than this. He’s portrayed as having enormous
stature: ‘This is naught but a revelation revealed, taught him by
one terrible in power, very strong.’[3]
Or, elsewhere: ‘Truly this
is the word of a noble Messenger having power, with the Lord of the
Throne secure, obeyed, moreover trusty.’[4]
These verses really grant
Gabriel an immense stature and position and convey a sense of
teaching. In particular, they convey the notion of trustiness in
revelation. How can these verses be consistent with Gabriel
complying with the Prophet? Do your suggestions not lower Gabriel’s
stature to less than it ought to be?
Elsewhere in the Koran, we
have: ‘Move not thy tongue with it to hasten it; Ours it is to
gather it and to recite it.’[5]
According to this verse, during revelation, the Prophet would try to
recite the verses quicker than they arrived. Malik-Bin-Nabi has
been cited as saying that the Prophet, peace be upon him, used to
repeat the verses so that they would be stored in his memory. The
Prophet is explicitly advised here that ‘there is no need to repeat
the verses’. Hence, the Prophet was barred from the mechanism of
repetition, which occurs in ordinary human beings. It is exactly as
if a vessel has been placed in trust inside the Prophet and he’s
even been barred from guarding the vessel. Hence, the idea that
‘revelation used to emanate from the Prophet’ is not in keeping with
the above verses. Instead, these verses convey a sense that
something untouched and whole has been conveyed to the Prophet as a
trust and that he then recounted this divine bequest to others.
Also, based on your model
and your exposition of the process of revelation, what happens to
all the instances in the Koran where the Prophet himself is being
spoken to and cautioned? ‘He frowned and turned away,’[6]
or ‘and had We not confirmed thee, surely thou wert near to
inclining unto them a very little,’[7]
or ‘perchance thou art leaving part of what is revealed to thee’[8].
All these verses are
addressed to the Prophet. In fact, they are all evidence indicating
that the Prophet was conveying to others exactly what he was
receiving, like a trust.
The question that arises is:
How do these points tally with the theory of ‘The Expansion of
Prophetic Experience’?
A. I first raised the basic
idea of the expansion of Prophetic experience, in a brief and
condensed form, a few year ago when I was speaking to some Iranian
students in Britain. When I returned to Iran, I expanded it and,
ultimately, presented the relevant article, along with a number of
other articles, in the form of a book. As I wrote in the
introduction to the book, The Expansion of Prophetic Experience
can be viewed as Volume 2 of The Contraction and Expansion of
Religious Knowledge.
In The Contraction and
Expansion of Religious Knowledge, I’d mainly discussed the
interpretation and annotation of the text, and in The Expansion
of Prophetic Experience, I analysed the actual process of
revelation and the way in which the text, which we endeavour to
interpret, emerged and materialized, because the way in which a text
comes into being affects the meanings that we obtain from it. For,
just as I said in The Contraction and Expansion of Religious
Knowledge too, in order to understand a text, we unavoidably
rely on our presuppositions. These presuppositions are very varied,
ranging from our theories about human beings to cosmology, to
history and so on. One of the presuppositions that plays a potent
role in our interpretation of a text and our discovery of its
meaning is our knowledge of and theory about the genesis of the
text.
We can therefore say that
The Expansion of Prophetic Experience expresses one example of
the presuppositions that affect our understanding of a text. I tried
to explain there what the relationship is between the Prophet and
the text that he produced; the text that we heard from him and now
have as a keepsake. This has a significant impact on the meaning
that we obtain from the text and this impact raises this ultimate
question: ‘What religious-devotional duty does this construal of the
Koran – as a Prophet-produced text – lay before us?’ This is a
totally logical question, which arises from the logic of the
discussion. I will first refer to and offer some explanations about
the initial parts of the discussion and then we’ll reach the final
parts.
I don’t know how many of you
have read The Islamic Perspective which we wrote years ago
for the high school curriculum. I said there that the way that we
obtain knowledge is by sketching pictures, in the sense that we
always see aggregates of things and then we throw garments over them
or we sketch pictures that comprise some of the evidence and data.
For example, when you hear various remarks about one of your
friends, these remarks are like data that you’re provided with and,
on the basis of the data, you sketch a picture and you say: ‘This
is a picture of my friend.’ In other words, if all the remarks are
true, they all fall under this or that theory. The data as an
aggregate shows that the person whom we’d so far considered a friend
turns out to have been an enemy or a spy or some such thing. We
always proceed in this way. Of course, the pictures are changeable
and, when we obtain new data, we may amend or complete a picture.
Or we may reject it altogether and replace it with a completely new
picture. These pictures play a prominent role in the way we
accumulate knowledge; they raise questions for us, they take us
forward step by step, they predict things and they help us discover
new data.
We proceed in this same way
when it comes to the Prophet, peace be upon him. (I’m speaking to
you now about what goes on behind the scenes. What you have in
The Expansion of Prophetic Experience is effectively the results
that I obtained from the picture that I sketched.) Don’t bring your
Islamic beliefs into play for the moment. As phenomenologists would
put it, put brackets round them. Look at this issue in a neutral
way, like you would look at Confucius or Marx, for example. In
other words, look at the Prophet of Islam, who was someone who had a
deep impact on the world, without bringing in your own emotional and
mental proclivities. The Prophet of Islam made some contentions.
We’ve all heard these contentions. The truth of someone’s
contentions can never be proved on the basis of the contentions
themselves. If they are to be affirmed or denied, it has to be on
the basis of external evidence.
The Prophet of Islam maintained
that he was a prophet. And he was completely certain about his
mission. And this complete certainty made him very brave in
practice. In other words, he never desisted from his mission
despite a whole range of obstacles, oppositions and enmities. This
evidence shows that there is an inner strength and that a powerful
mental conviction keeps him standing firm and doesn’t allow him to
retreat. The Prophet used to say: I obtain the things that I
understand via a process known as ‘revelation’. Regarding
revelation, he used to say that it came to him from an other-worldly
being by the name of God and that there was a mediator by the name
of Gabriel. This is all in the Koran. The verses that you recited
convey these ideas.
Now, let us take one step
back. The Prophet of Islam believed and maintained – as do his
followers – that God is beyond time and place and is formless, with
no particular language or skin colour. And that He doesn’t have any
of the characteristics that we human beings have. He is completely
unique. But when this same God spoke to the Prophet, he would, on
the Prophet’s own contention, speak in Arabic. In other words, He
would leave the realm of language-lessness and use a specific
language. When this same God spoke to other Prophets, He would speak
to them in their language. In other words, when He spoke to Jesus
or Moses, peace be upon them, He would speak in their language.
Prophets didn’t say that God contacts us in very mysterious ways and
at that level language is irrelevant, but when we speak to you, we
use your language. The Prophet of Islam certainly made no such
claim. The Prophet’s followers, too, believe that precisely these
words, in Arabic and in the form of precisely these sentences which
we currently have in the Koran, were recited to the Prophet and he
would convey them to his people. We have to register this
information and evidence and say that God’s action was
‘particularlized’, in the sense that it took on the colour of the
environment and that, when it came to the Prophet, it wasn’t
colourless, quality-less and formless, but was completely in the
shape and size of the society in which the Prophet lived.
The second piece of evidence or
data that we have is that – as you said – we see events in the Koran
which occurred during the time of the Prophet, such as the tale of
the accusation levelled against Aisha, the Abu-Lahab affair, the
wars that the Prophet experienced and many other events and minor or
rare occurrences.[9]
During the Prophet’s lifetime, the people would ask the Prophet
questions about various things and the relevant answers are in the
Koran, in brief or at length. These questions and answers and
things that occurred in the course of the Prophet’s social and
political life form a large portion of the verses in the Koran.
Another piece of data or
evidence tells us that what we see in the Prophet’s revelation is
very close to and interlinked with developments in the Prophet’s
life, whether private or public. It was not as if some things had
been prepared in advance – regardless of what took place in society
and regardless of the questions that people raised – and were
poured, in this pre-prepared form, into the Prophet’s mind,
consciousness and heart for him to convey to the people. The
teachings were very much in keeping with the events that were taking
place in the Prophet’s life. (I place great emphasis on the term ‘in
keeping with’.) The construal that I used in The Expansion of
Prophetic Experience is instantiated here. That is to say, the
Prophet’s relationship with his people was one of dialogue: he would
say something and then hear something; then, he would say something
in keeping with what he’d heard and so on. It was not as if the
Prophet said: ‘My students or my audience are neither here nor
there and what they say and what goes on in their minds don’t
concern me. I will say what I have to say unilaterally.’
Another piece of data is a
point that I made in the article ‘Accidentals and Essentials’. We
can see many non-Arabic words in the Koran. There are more than 200
such words and they are exactly the words that were in use in that
region and among the Arab tribes of the time. They are not words
that have come from elsewhere with which the Arabs were unfamiliar,
words that were incomprehensible to them. On the contrary, they
were words that the Arabs used all the time.
If you look at many of the
rulings that have been articulated in the Koran, such as the rulings
on slaves and on the hijab, and if you look at the Arab society of
the time, you’ll recognize that the rulings are very similar to what
was then current in Arab society; there’s nothing - or very little –
that’s new. The new rulings barely amount to 1 per cent; 99 per
cent consist of the rulings that were then current among Arabs.
This point has also been made by some faqihs [experts in Islamic
jurisprudence]. Some historians have also noticed it and remarked
on it. Mr. Mohammed Arkoun has said in his writings that many of
the rulings in fiqh [Islamic jurisprudence] – especially the rulings
that appear in the Koran – such as multiple wives, did not originate
with the Prophet of Islam. The basic idea that a man can take
several wives was current practice in Arab society and you see this
reflected in Islamic rulings. Many of the rulings of fiqh existed
in exactly this form or in a slightly different form among the
Arabs, so that, when you look at these rulings, you can see that
they were not iconoclastic at all, in the sense of going far beyond
anything that existed at that time in Arab society; on the contrary,
they’re very close to the way things were. Even where you do see
relatively new rulings, they don’t go dramatically beyond what
existed at the time. For example, Arabs didn’t apportion any
inheritance to girls, but, in Islam, inheritance is apportioned to
girls too – half the amount that is apportioned to boys. In other
words, what was considered justice at the time was more or less
adhered to and what was considered cruelty and injustice was shunned
and castigated.
Now take these pieces of data
and sketch a picture around them in order to explain them and to say
why they are as they are. As we said, our picture-based knowledge
works like this. We put the evidence together and, on the basis of
the evidence, we suggest a theory.
Look at how Darwin’s theory
came about. Darwin was in the possession of some pieces of evidence
about the living world: that some creatures existed in the past and
had now become extinct; that there were some things known as
fossils, which consisted of rocks on which there were images of
living creatures and plants and so on; in terms of raising animals,
too, he could see that by breeding animals in a deliberate way, it
was possible to guide their development and to ensure that animals
had preferred and desired attributes. If we leave animals in the
wild, different results ensue, but we can produce particular breeds
of sheep, horses and cows. A number of other pieces of data can
also be added to these: in some far-flung island you may find an
animal that you won’t find anywhere else, but, in other places,
where there has been traffic to and from an island, we see, for
example, that the creatures that exist there can also be found
elsewhere; when we go to a desert, we find plants that have
needle-like leaves, whereas, in other places, we see that trees have
big, broad leaves; and so on.
Darwin put all this data
together. He also made a long journey in the Beagle, the famous
ship, and gathered the appropriate material. If we wanted to sketch
a picture to encompass and explain all this information, we could
sketch a picture that says that there’s no single theory; that God
wanted to create creatures in a particular way up to a particular
century and not to create them thereafter. As to plants that have
needle-like leaves, God wanted to create plants that had needle-like
leaves. And, where there are plants with broad leaves, God wanted
to create plants that had broad leaves. As to fossils, we could say
that these are mysteries that God has placed in creation to test
human beings’ intelligence and acumen.
Darwin offered another
picture. He said: ‘Let’s take a different approach! We won’t deny
the existence of God but we’ll imagine that His intervention is not
that direct; we’ll imagine that His intervention is
behind-the-scenes, so to speak. Why don’t we say that there’s been a
kind of adaptation to the environment where these phenomena are
concerned? So, leaves are needle-like in warm climates because this
prevents the evaporation of the water stored by the plants. If a
creature is the same green colour as a tree, it’s so that it will be
safe from predators.’ We could say: ‘God wanted this creature to be
green,’ or ‘God wanted that plant’s leaves to be needle-like.’ But
it is also possible to say: ‘In this world, creatures adapt to their
environment.’ This theory also serves to explain many things. For
example, we can conclude that creatures that were unable to adapt
became extinct. In this way, we no longer have to say: ‘God decided
to create some creatures at one point in time and, then, He changed
His mind and decided to create some other creatures.’
This was Darwin’s picture. In
this picture, instead of attributing each individual event to God’s
will, we bring them all under a single heading, such as adaptation
to the environment, for example. You can see that ‘picture-based
knowledge’ has many applications in science.
Let’s return to our main
subject. You can take each piece of data that I mentioned about the
Prophet and revelation independently and attribute it, separately,
to God. You can say: ‘God wanted the Prophet to speak Arabic;’ ‘God
wanted to speak about some events in the Koran and not to speak
about some other events;’ and ‘God wanted to give official
recognition to some or most of the rulings that were current in Arab
society and to endorse them and make Muslims duty-bound to act on
them.’ In each instance, we can respond in this same way, ‘God
wanted it to be like this,’ and not establish any link between them
and not say that they all fall under a single picture. On this
basis, we’ll maintain the view that every single one of these
phenomena was a product of God’s direct will and that He must have
deemed it best to act as He did in each instance. On the basis of
this viewpoint, if God had wanted to and if He’d deemed it best, he
would have revealed the Koran to the Prophet in Greek. Then, the
Prophet would have handed a Greek book to the Arabs and said: ‘It
was best like this! Go and learn Greek and read my book and use it
to the extent that you understand it.’ But it was God’s will to
speak Arabic to His Prophet. This is one kind of explanation, which
attributes events individually to the will of the Almighty and
includes a hidden best interest/benefit in everything which is
beyond our ken but which was taken into account by God.
We can also theorize
differently, a theorizing very similar to what I present in The
Expansion of Prophetic Experience (inspired by Darwin’s
theory): Why don’t we say about the phenomenon of revelation that
there’s an adaptation to the environment? So, we could propose the
following explanation: ‘Revelation is a phenomenon that adapts
itself to the environment and takes on the colour of the environment
in every way.’ We are using ‘environment’ in a general sense here,
embracing the events that took place in Arab society at the time;
the development of the Prophet’s personality; occurrences in the
course of the Prophet’s life and the political and social conflicts
that he encountered; the language spoken in the Prophet’s society;
and so on. This, too, is a picture that we can sketch. This model
has placed all the pieces of data that I mentioned alongside one
another, painted them all with the same brush and issued a single
ruling for them. It doesn’t make any of them, separately, hinge on
God’s will. I don’t want to go into the philosophical reasons
behind it all; otherwise, we could express all of this in the
language of metaphysics and philosophy too.
In The Expansion of
Prophetic Experience and the discussion of ‘Essentials and
Accidentals in Religion’, I have in fact followed this second
picture; i.e. adaptation to the environment. That is to say, I
don’t believe that God willed each of the phenomena that I mentioned
individually and deemed that each one was best for some particular
reason, which may or may not be conceivable to us. I haven’t
thought about it in this way. I chose a different route and this is
how the theory of the expansion of Prophetic experience came about.
I don’t believe that God knew
that this or that person would ask this or that question of the
Prophet and had a verse prepared in advance, so that, the minute the
person asked the question, the verse could be revealed to the
Prophet on the spot. We can imagine instead that the Prophet would
be asked a question and the very fact that the question had been
asked produced that which was presented to the questioner as the
answer. The same can be said of a specific ruling expressed in
response to a specific event.
So far, I’ve set out the issue
and explained that one can look at this aggregate of events in two
different lights. Now, you may ask me: ‘So who was Gabriel?’ The
question of Gabriel and the way in which revelation came to the
Prophet is a question of mechanics. I don’t think that it changes
the substance of the matter. Philosophers have offered various
theories about the manner in which the supernatural or the
metaphysical communicates with the natural or the physical. But
this doesn’t change the substance of the matter in any way. We’re
trying to explain the natural process here. I, at any rate, don’t
consider this an important problem in explaining the phenomenon of
the Prophethood because the question of Gabriel concerns the
metaphysical process. A great deal can be said about this; for
example, that the means of sending revelation is an angel or
whatever.
So, when you look at the
natural process, you’ll see a kind of adaptation to the
environment. And you can sketch the picture that I suggested for
it. So far, I’ve been speaking about the theory itself and the
evidence that you can marshal for it. In response, some of our
friends cite verses from the Koran to suggest that the theory may be
incorrect. This evidence is worth hearing – in and of itself. At
any rate, if our picture is a true and comprehensive picture, it has
to explain this data from the Koran, otherwise it won’t be
significant and defensible.
First, let me point out
something about one of the important instances which was mentioned
in those verses in connection with the historical issues that appear
in the Koran. In fact, if you look carefully, you’ll realize that
the historical issues that are mentioned in the Koran are the
historical issues with which Arabs were grappling. No mention is
made in the Koran of a prophet by the name of Zoroaster. But, for
example, a tribe by the name of the Magi, which lived in Iran at
that time and had contacts with the Arabs, is mentioned once or
twice. Most of the prophets who are mentioned in the Koran are
Israelite prophets, whom the Arabs had heard of and were more or
less familiar with. There is a verse which says: ‘…you pass by
their ruins morning and evening,’[10]
meaning: you know about them, because they lived in your midst
before and your ancestors were familiar with them, so you have some
bits of information about them.
No mention is made in the Koran
of things that are happening in other parts of the world and the
religions, sects and creeds that exist in other regions. I take
this as evidence favouring the theory of adaptation to the
environment and the idea that the verses are in keeping with the
Arab environment of the time. Sometimes, when we’ve participated in
dialogues between religions, we’ve come across this point. The
Christians say that the Christian beliefs that are mentioned in the
Koran are not the beliefs of all Christians and that their view
about the Trinity is not at all what you read in the Koran; that
which is in the Koran is the view of a particular tribe which lived
in Arabia at the time of the Prophet.
I remember a session in
Birmingham, in Britain, seven or eight year ago – which was also
attended by some ulema from Qom. There, a Jesuit happened to ask
me: ‘If we don’t subscribe to the view stated in the Koran, are we
still unbelievers as far as Islam is concerned? We don’t say that
God is the Third of Three and most Christians don’t hold to this
kind of Trinity.’[11]
I told him: ‘No, in that case, you can’t be considered unbelievers
on the basis of what the Koran has said.’ As it happened, one of
the Qom ulema, Ayatollah Ma’refat, was there too and he said: ‘If
you don’t say this, then the verdict of unbelief doesn’t apply to
you.’
In recounting the beliefs of
other groups of people, the Koran has presented precisely the
beliefs that were current in Arab society at the time and it has not
in any way referred to the varieties within these beliefs – for
example, within Judaism. You can say in this respect: ‘There must
have been a good reason why God believed that that specific
Christian sect’s belief was, as a matter of fact, much more
important than other Christians’ beliefs and that’s why He put His
finger on it and recounted that specific belief.’ It is possible to
say this. But it would be more reasonable and more natural for us
to say that, just as the Arabic language, which was the language
spoken in the Prophet’s environment, is reflected in the Koran, so
too are these beliefs, because they existed in that environment; or
this or that event, because it occurred in that environment. In this
way, we’ve preserved and strengthened the idea that the Koran was in
keeping with the environment and the notion of a dialogue-like
relationship with the environment and the people.
Hence, the first point is that
all the prophets who’ve been mentioned in the Koran and whose
religions and miracles have been spoken about in the holy book are
prophets and religions who were known to the Arab society of the
day; they were not totally alien to that environment and to the
Arabs’ beliefs and acquaintance.
The second point is that, when
we discuss revelation, we’re engaging in a discussion that is
external to revelation; we’re looking, from the outside, at an
event known as revelation, which occurred in Arab society and in the
Prophet’s consciousness. If we offer evidence in support of or
against a particular contention, all the evidence must be external
to revelation; to refer to something within revelation in order to
prove or disprove a contention about it is methodologically
unsound. In other words, you can’t appeal to this or that verse
that was uttered by the Prophet or say that this or that verse is
inconsistent with that theory. The theory that we would have
offered from outside revelation would apply equally to all the
verses, as long as the theory is correct. Then, if it is correct,
we have to annotate the verses on the basis of the theory and
annotate them in a way that does not alter the theory.
In fact, the conflict doesn’t
exist even on the face of things. Move down a step from the
process of revelation and look at the process of dreaming. What’s
your impression of dreaming? Sometimes you dream that someone comes
to you and tells you something and teaches you something that you
seem not to have known otherwise. They may recite a poem to you and
you may remember the poem when you wake up. They may even tell you
about an event in the future and that event may actually occur. In
other words, it might be a true dream. All these things do occur
and it’s not something bizarre or inconceivable. It was the same
with the Prophet. We have a religious narrative that cites the
Prophet as saying that a true dream is one of the 46 elements of
prophethood.
Revelation and dreams are made
of the same fabric. If you want to understand what revelation is,
you should turn to its friend and companion, i.e. dreams, and
cross-examine it.
Al-Ghazzali said somewhere that
devils, too, convey revelations to people: ‘The devils inspire
[make revelations to] their friends to dispute with you.’[12]
Devils’ revelations appear at times of temptation. Al-Ghazzali
said: ‘If you want to know what revelation is, take a close look at
the satanic temptations that you sometimes feel. By looking at
them, you can get a slight sense of what revelation is like,’
because the Koran itself has used the same word for devils’
revelations.[13]
When Satan tempts us, it is as
if He is making a revelation to us. We’re not prophets and we
become targets of satanic temptations. The enticements and internal
conflicts that we sometimes feel, inclining us to commit improper
deeds, are in fact revelations of a kind. What does this revelation
do to you? It makes something appear before your eyes and places
theories in your mind which make you think that some deeds are good,
because people are drawn towards deeds that they’ve justified in
their minds in one way or another. You’ll never do something which
you, at the same time, consider totally wrong and reprehensible.
When someone commits a sin, they’ve turned a reprehensible deed into
a good deed in their own minds and provided some kind of a
justification for it. This is what satanic temptations - which,
according to Al-Ghazzali, are of the same fabric as revelation – do
to people.
In order to understand
revelation well, try analysing the temptations that you sometimes
feel. When there’s something bad that you’re really tempted to do,
look closely at what is drawing you towards that bad deed. See the
kind of pretexts that you devise, the tortuous justifications that
you come up with, the extents that you go to convince yourself. You
marshal all your knowledge, all your theories and all you mental
reserves to turn a deed that you shouldn’t commit into a deed that
you should commit. For example, when you want to speak ill of
someone behind their back or when you want to trample on someone’s
right, and so on. Of course, once someone indulges in these kinds
of deeds a few times, they won’t even need Satan’s inspiration any
more, because, by continuing this behaviour, the individual sinks
into temptation and doesn’t need to be tempted by anyone any
longer.
By the same token, just as the
analogy of ‘satanic revelation’ is derived from the Koran, prophets
were subject to ‘angelic temptations’. They would have true
dreams. Virtuous ideas would be awakened within them and, then,
they would undergo discoveries and veils would fall away from their
eyes.
In fact, remove the expression
‘prophetic experience’ and replace it with ‘prophetic discovery’.
Prophetic experience is nothing but this. Bear in mind that some
people may not have a very good understanding of ‘experience’. Our
mystics have used the term ‘discovery’ extensively. ‘The complete
Muhammadan discovery.’ The Prophet discovered truths and secrets,
but his discovery was a complete discovery, in the sense that it was
not hazy. He would see secrets or truths clearly and
comprehensively. Others, too, discover things, but their discovery
is not complete; it is partial and hazy.
When the Prophet undergoes
discoveries, he gradually attains a transformed personality that
perceives things clearly. He sees everything clearly, understands
their implications and speaks about them. And it is perfectly fine
if, when someone is speaking about something, at times, it seems to
them as if someone is whispering these things into their ear or that
they are seeing someone. And this is what we call revelation in the
strict sense of the word. The notion that ‘this was a lover who
could do no wrong’ applies in every respect here. In other words,
because the Prophet had a polished, honed, fortified and exalted
personality, all his words sprang from a fount that was pure and
pristine.
All this taken together
explains what I said about revelation complying with the Prophet.
That is to say, it was in keeping with the Prophet’s personality, in
keeping with the Prophet’s language, in keeping with the Prophet’s
environment, in keeping with the events that occurred in the
Prophet’s lifetime, in keeping with the temperament and mind of his
people, in keeping with their proverbs, in keeping with the meaning
that they’d poured into their words, in keeping with the capacity of
their language and outlook. In effect, revelation would adapt
itself to these things. As Rumi put it, when the sea is poured into
a jug, the sea per force complies with the jug.[14]
The sea doesn’t stop being the sea, but what reaches us is what’s in
the jug and, unavoidably, the sea complies with the jug’s dimensions
and capacity. How could it be otherwise? At the end of the day, if
the sea wants to come into our house, it has to enter our house in
these kinds of containers. If the sea wants to be our guest, it has
to fit itself into our containers.[15]
Our share of the sea depends on
the containers that we take to it. This is what it means to say
that revelation complies with the Prophet’s personality,
environment, life and external and internal experiences. Another
way of saying this is that the supernatural/metaphysical basically
can’t enter the natural/physical unless it takes on the
characteristics and temperament of the physical. The supernatural
can’t step into the natural unless it is poured into natural
containers and manifests itself in a natural form.
It seems to me very natural
that the Prophet of Islam had dreams – or something like dreams -
whereby the tale of prophets were recounted to him. Prophets were
very privileged and fortunate people, because those who told them
these tales told true tales. That is to say, we believe that these
tales were true. If you ask anyone who doesn’t believe in
revelation, they won’t be of this view.
Let me also say something about
religious rulings. My impression is that the legislator of the
rulings of fiqh was the Prophet. The Prophet himself was the
lawmaker in these cases and, of course, God endorsed the Prophet’s
lawmaking. The Prophet’s fundamental concern in lawmaking was to
move the rulings and laws of his society from ‘the injustice of the
day’ to ‘the justice of the day’ – not an ahistorical justice. In
other words, to take society away from what was considered injustice
at the time and to direct it towards what was considered justice at
the time.
In our religious rulings, the
custom and practice of the Prophet’s society have been taken very
seriously. But we have no reason to believe that the custom and
practice of the Prophet’s society was the best possible custom and
practice in history. There was no other option after all. A set of
conventions had to be taken for granted and rulings made on the
basis of that model. But this doesn’t mean that that set of
conventions was the best or that it contained the best regulations,
or that the best history or the best understanding of being were to
be found there, or that the best scientific theories were current
then. Not at all!
Any prophet had to carry out
his task with the concepts that existed in the society of his day,
just as he had to fight with a sword – not with tanks and artillery,
because there were no tanks and artillery. He couldn’t invent
concepts that didn’t exist yet and to teach them to people or ask
people to use concepts that weren’t available yet. Hence, the
rulings of fiqh are temporary unless proven otherwise. All the
rulings of fiqh are temporary and belong to the Prophet’s society
and societies like it, unless proven otherwise, in the sense that
there would have to be definite reasons demonstrating that they had
been legislated for all times and not just for those particular
conditions. Of course, I know that most faqihs are of the opposite
view; that is to say, they believe that all the rulings are eternal
unless proven otherwise. But if my analyses are correct, we have to
accept the consequences and implications.
Q. The simple society of one
thousand four hundred years ago, the custom and practice of which
wasn’t necessarily the best custom and practice, received messages,
which led it to achieve a kind of spiritual, psychological, economic
and social excellence. The question is: Of what benefit are those
messages to us? In fact, if every prophet brings a message for the
society of their own time – in keeping with the geography, culture
and mental development of the people of their own age – then, what
is the substantive meaning of Muhammad being ‘the Seal of the
Prophets’? After all, he brought a law for his own time which, as
it happened, was suited to that time but may not be applicable
today. And perhaps 80 per cent of those teachings have no
applicability for our society today. And it is the same with other
prophets. So, there’s no need for us to call these figures prophets
at all. Whenever a great reformer, with dedication to humanity, has
appeared, they have taken society forward, but this was limited to
their own time and is not applicable to other societies because
their messages are temporary not permanent. Is that right?
At the same time, based on
your theory, the notion that what was permissible [halaal]
according to Muhammad is permissible until the end of time and what
was impermissible [haraam] according to Muhammad is
impermissible until the end of time no longer holds.
The other point is that, on
the one hand, the Koran is a holy book, and, on the other hand, this
same Koran was revealed to a society, environment and culture which
has now changed and which was different from our culture. The
question is: What kind of holy book can the Koran be for us today?
And where do God’s bounds
fit into the theory of the expansion of prophetic experience? Given
that the Koran states: ‘These are the bounds of God,’ and given that
some of these bounds [hudud] and social rulings – such as on
divorce or fasting – are stipulated in the Koran, how can you
explain this based on the picture that you sketched?
Moreover, on the basis of
this way of looking at the Koran, monotheism would need to be
construed in a different way. It would also seem that, on the basis
of your theory, anyone can become a messenger and a prophet and lead
a society.
A. First, as I’ve said in
The Expansion of Prophetic Experience, too, prophetic experience
- or experiences similar to prophets’ experiences - does not cease
and always exists. Even if we don’t take the course of rational
argumentation, Shi’is, at least, hold this view of the infallible
Imams. They believe that although they weren’t prophets and didn’t
have the mission of prophethood, they did have prophetic experiences
and the experience of discovering things about the world. Hence,
even on the basis of Shi’i reasoning, the pronouncement about
prophetic experience and its continuation is an official
pronouncement and Shi’i theology fully endorses it. In Sunni
literature, too, although they don’t recognize any infallible
religious leaders apart from the Prophet, they do believe that
mystics have this capacity.
As to whether anyone can become
a prophet, we have to concede that someone may become a prophet to
their own mind and undergo particular states, raptures and
elations. But Islamic society will deal harshly with such
individuals if they stake a claim to prophethood. When the Prophet
said, ‘There will be no prophets after me,’ he was ordering his
followers to close this gate and not to believe anyone who claimed
prophethood thereafter. And he also advised people who experienced
this condition not to communicate it to anyone. Anyone may – in
their own personal relationship with God – have particular
experiences and feel that they have been assigned particular duties
by God and that they no longer have a duty to comply with this or
that religion. I have the impression that some distinguished
figures – such as Shams-e Tabrizi – experienced conditions close to
this. But they never claimed to be prophets or to have their own
particular religions and rulings. They would keep it all to
themselves and respect outward appearances. Hence, they fall
outside the scope of our discussion.
Everyone has their own personal
relationship with God and will be held accountable for it. If anyone
feels that they can no longer follow the religion of the Prophet of
Islam and have some other duty, this is between themselves and God.
And people who don’t have this feeling will also be held accountable
for their actions. Nevertheless, prophet-like experiences obviously
continue because the manifestations of God never end. We can’t say
that God manifested Himself to the Prophet of Islam and that this
gate was closed forever thereafter. This manifestation is perpetual
and it will continue to be experienced by people in keeping with
their capacities.
As to your question about how
the Prophet can be of any use to us if all that can be said about
him is that he lived at a particular time and said good things and
sparked constructive developments, and that there was no shortage of
such good reformers and the Prophet of Islam was one of them - but
of what use is he to us? Look, we can say this about any great
reformer or thinker; this isn’t something that’s confined to
prophets. The fact that the Koran is of use to us does not mean
that we should take someone out of their own time and transport them
to some other time. This is precisely what we mean by ijtihad
[formulating judgments about religious matters on the basis of
reason and the principles of fiqh]. It means that you should be
able to breathe life into the past, not that you should repeat
things in a parrot-like fashion. We do this in all areas of
thought. Whenever it’s a question of following some school of
thought, we operate in this way. Regardless of whose follower you
choose to be, you can’t, at any rate, behave exactly as they do.
You have to translate their actions into your actions. This
translation is the same thing as practising ijtihad.
The next point is: Exactly
what about the Prophet are we are meant to be following? That which
formed the kernel of the Prophet’s religion and characterized his
mission were the initial messages that he brought to his people.
First and foremost, the Prophet brought a new world-view. Then he
wove a code of moral conduct and laws around this world-view. In
other words, religion was a three-storey building or a three-layered
aggregate. If you look at the Meccan verses, which were the first
to be revealed to the Prophet, you’ll see that the main emphasis is
on monotheism and the hereafter, and, alongside God and the
hereafter, there are also moral recommendations. First, obey God:
‘So let them worship the Lord of this House.’[16]
And then there are verses about those who ‘forbid almsgiving’[17]
and prevent care for the poor and so on. The rulings relating to
fiqh were not revealed in Mecca but, later, in Medina. These
rulings are religion’s outermost layer, which was added to religion
last of all. And the Arabs, who gained strength from the Prophet’s
call and creed, extended it and took it to other countries and stole
other people’s hearts. This stealing of people’s hearts was not
related to the rulings of fiqh. We mustn’t imagine that it was the
fact that the Prophet was able to bring regulations concerning
menstruation and childbirth and rulings on slave-owning, marriage
and divorce that astounded other societies; what captivated the
Arabs and enraptured others was those same main, core messages of
Islam. The Prophet’s prime message was that we should worship God.
In response to what you said
about that which is permissible according to Muhammad, I have to say
that it’s true that that which was permissible according to Muhammad
is permissible until the end of time and that which was
impermissible is impermissible until the end of time, but the whole
question is: What are this permissible and impermissible?
For 12 centuries, Shi’i faqihs
did not perform Friday prayers. Some of them simply considered it
impermissible. This is in circumstances in which Friday prayers are
stipulated in the Koran. Although they believed that that which is
permissible according to Muhammad is permissible until the end of
time, they still said: Friday prayers are impermissible for the time
being in view of the absence of an infallible Imam. Don’t ever look
at the appearance of phrases and concepts. There is a clear ruling
on Friday prayers in the Koran: ‘Believers, when you are summoned to
Friday prayers, hasten to the remembrance of God.’[18]
Most Shi’i faqihs – with rare exceptions during the Safavid period –
had suspended this ruling and did not perform it. And some of them
even believed that performing it was impermissible. In our own time
and in many other times, faqihs have suspended the implementation of
Islamic punishments [hudud]. The late Khansari believed that
sentences such as cutting off offenders’ hands or beheading
offenders should not be implemented. He used to say that these
sentences did not relate to our day.
So, it’s true that Muhammad’s
permissible is permissible until the end of time, but considering
something permissible or impermissible hinges on provisos and
conditions and someone may believe that these provisos and
conditions no longer hold and say that we should wait until the end
of time. As you said, the Koran states: ‘These are the bounds of
God.’ Correct! But the whole question is when and under what
conditions and on the basis of what criteria must God’s bounds [hudud]
be observed. We always have to practise ijtihad afresh.
This is the crux of ijtihad. This is what Shah Vali Allah of
Delhi meant by his remark when he said: ‘The Prophet built a society
because he could not do otherwise.’ In fact, the Prophet
acknowledged in this way that he would have proceeded in the same
way in the midst of any other people. Hence, we, too, must model
ourselves on him. But this is not to say that we must copy things in
a parrot-like fashion. Everyone has to think carefully about how
these general principles should be implemented in their own society
and in their own day. The value of the Prophet’s actions is the
value of a model, not the value of something that remains uniform
for all time. Of course, I accept that our faqihs usually don’t
think like this and don’t act and issue fatwas on this basis. But,
when you examine the Prophet’s work historically and in depth, you
realize that he brought about a change in his own society.
Since we’ve accepted the
Prophet’s call and teachings, we think that he has nothing more to
say to us and that we’ve accepted what he had to say; whereas the
relationship between a disciple and a guide – like the relationship
between a patient and a doctor – is always dialectical. When the
doctor examines a patient, he gives him medicine and treats him, and
the patient gradually becomes well. Then, this healthy patient
cannot claim, Since I’m healthy, I don’t need a doctor. We have to
say to him, You’re the same person who needed a doctor when he was
ill. But the relationship between a doctor and a patient is
basically such that the doctor tries to overturn the doctor-patient
relationship so that the patient doesn’t remain ill. It’s the same
in the teacher-student relationship, where the teacher tries to
overturn the relationship so that the student doesn’t remain a
student forever and becomes a learned person.
The Prophet appears in a
society that has a misshapen identity and strives to change this
identity. When the identity does change, the people shouldn’t say:
‘We don’t need you anymore since we now have the identity that you
wanted us to have.’ Our need for the Prophet is for him to shatter
our former identity and to give us the gift of a new identity so
that we’ll continue to have this identity. It is the same over the
subsequent generations. In other words, whenever a deviation
arises, they have to refer to that initial model again and rectify
themselves. Of course, in religiosity, our relationship with
prophets is not merely a relationship with their teachings; it is a
relationship with their personalities too. This is the meaning of
spiritual dominion, which we aren’t discussing now. But the
Prophet’s fundamental teachings are in the realms of beliefs,
morality and laws. The slightest of the Prophet’s teachings are the
fiqh-related teachings and rulings, which, as it happens, form the
most accidental part of religion. The most historical part of
religion and the outermost layer of religion, as an aggregate, are
the rulings of fiqh.
Q. Based on the theory of the expansion of prophetic experience,
the Prophet was a human being like other human beings; he had
experiences and, over time, these experiences grew, expanded and
were perfected. So far so good. But if we also include the Koran in
these growing and expanding experiences, then problems arise. The
main problem that comes to mind is that it has been said about the
revelation made to the Prophet that it took place on a single
occasion. In other words, based on the Qadr Sura, the Koran was
revealed on the Night of Qadr [Night of Destiny]. But this seems to
be inconsistent with your theory or, at least, we can’t fit it into
the theory.
A. Look, when we speak about
revelation and God’s words, we assume a particular metaphysics. It
is very important what this metaphysics is. I had the feeling from
your remarks that you were suggesting that, if we say that the Koran
consists of the Prophet’s words then this or that problem will
arise; whereas if we say that it consists of God’s words, then
things will turn out differently. I really don’t know how and where
you place this distance between God and the world. A metaphysics
that puts such a distance between God and His creatures must, first,
state its presuppositions and, second, state its reasons. In the
picture that I sketch, in terms of the cosmology and the question of
God and His creatures and the relationship between the two, I don’t
recognize this kind of distance, nor should one recognize it. What
I mean to say is that there is no such verdict in the Islamic
world-view or at least in Islamic philosophy. We must be completely
clear about this.
In something written by one of
our ulema, I saw that it had been said that the voice that Moses
heard from the tree came from outside the tree, not from the tree
itself. This is an astounding thing to say. Where God is
concerned, there’s no difference between inside the tree and outside
the tree. To speculate about whether this voice, this revelation
emanated from within the Prophet or whether it was inculcated from
without only means something in relationship to us. We are the ones
who speak in terms of within and without and see a difference
between the two. When it comes to God, whom we believe is
everywhere - and no place is more suited to Him than another and no
place is closer to Him than another - it makes no difference whether
we say that God spoke from within the Prophet or from without the
Prophet. As Rumi put it, tallness and shortness pertain to us; it
is meaningless to think in these terms about God.[19]
Length, width and depth, and
near and far relate to physical objects and the world of physical
objects. Neither these dimensions of space nor dimensions of time,
such as past and present, make any sense in relation to God. We
don’t have morning and night when it comes to God. That is to say,
there’s no past and present.[20]
Length and width, and near and
far don’t apply to God. God is inside the Prophet just as much as
He is outside the Prophet. Gabriel, too, is inside the Prophet just
as much as outside the Prophet. The idea that an angel flaps its
wings like a bird or a praying mantis and comes to the Prophet is
not right. As I said, the metaphysical encompasses the physical and
this encompassing is completely pervasive and it doesn’t distinguish
between one location and another. Hence, Gabriel or God is just as
much inside the Prophet as outside. A human being’s spirit doesn’t
have an inside or an outside anyway.
When we speak about inside and
outside and distances between things, we’re speaking about physical
objects. We need to alter our mental image here. In other words,
we need to abandon the model that we’ve obtained from the world of
physical objects. This isn’t a suitable model and may lead us
astray and distort the image and the picture that we have of what
takes place in the world and in the metaphysical world. It is the
same with Gabriel and the angel who is said to have brought
revelation to the Prophet. Even the people who say this - and
philosophers - believe that an angel has no face and no form. The
world of angels is not the world of appearances and ghosts and
bodies. Hence, the form and the face that it takes are in the
Prophet’s mind, not real (I’ve mentioned this in The Expansion of
Prophetic Experience).
Rumi said that, when Mary saw
the angel, the angel told her that he was a very complicated being;
that he was both within and without; that he was both objective and
subjective; both an external fact, like a crescent in the sky, and
not an external fact, like an imaginary notion in the mind.[21]
In other words, in relation to the angel, inside and outside were
one and the same. He was not like other things; not like this room
or this piece of fruit where you can speak of inside or outside. In
other words, he was telling her not to think in terms of these
models, because they didn’t apply.
Anyhow, we need to have a
correct sense of the way that the metaphysical encompasses the
physical. All of the physical/natural is in the heart of the
metaphysical/supernatural and no part of the metaphysical is closer
to or further away from the physical; it is always equidistant to
the physical/natural. And first and foremost this applies to God,
and we’re not concerned with the rest of the metaphysical just now,
because there may be disagreement over it. But, when it comes to
God, there can be no disagreement and this verdict is definite.
Let’s imagine that God’s words
are those that Gabriel conveys to the Prophet, not what the Prophet
thinks for himself. Then, we still have to ask ourselves: Who
conveys these words to Gabriel? Does another angel whisper the
words into Gabriel’s ears or does Gabriel understand some things for
himself and find words ready-made in his mind and, then, act as a
mediator and convey them to the Prophet? In the end, we have to
stop somewhere and believe that a being arrives at some notions in
an unmediated way and recognizes that these notions are godly. Now,
if you don’t assume that the Prophet is a being of this kind, who
hears words in an unmediated way, you have to arrive at a point in
the chain where there’s no mediator. We can’t say that Gabriel,
too, has his own Gabriel and that that Gabriel has another Gabriel
ad infinitum. In this system and in this mental model, we have to
reach a point where we say that a being (call the being what you
will) is in the possession of some notions and recognizes that these
notions are godly. According to Koranic verses, there are several
kinds of revelation: ‘It belongs not to any mortal that God should
speak to him, except by revelation, or from behind a veil, or that
he should send a messenger and he reveal whatsoever He will, by His
leave.’[22]
These are all varieties of
revelation: Direct revelation, mediated revelation and unmediated
revelation. This is correct. But the point is that this
mediated-ness alone is not the criterion for godliness. I don’t
deny that revelation may be mediated but mediated-ness must not be
taken as the criterion for godliness. The Prophet himself may
arrive at a thought or a judgment or a discovery (I prefer to use
the word ‘discovery’) and this discovery may be godly and it may be
called revelation. There’s nothing wrong with this. What the
mechanism is for arriving at this discovery doesn’t really affect
the substance of revelation. It makes no difference what the
mechanism is. You can say, an angel tells him. You can say, the
Prophet himself had special qualities. I’ve brought all these
things under the heading of the Prophet having God’s endorsement.
The Prophet was a being whose thinking was under God’s supervision
and was guided by God. And the words that he spoke were completely
methodic, systematic and under special guidance. I don’t think
there’s any problem in this respect.
In sum, we don’t have any
problem with the godliness of revelation. When we say that
revelation was related to the Prophet’s time and place, to the
history and the age, none of this detracts from its godliness,
because it means that the Prophet, under God’s guidance, said what
God wanted him to say at any particular point in time and on any
particular occasion.
Godliness doesn’t mean that
whatever someone says and whatever they do is beyond time and place
– this is supernatural-ness. You’re speaking about
supernatural-ness and supernatural-ness is different from
godliness. Nature is godly too; as is the
metaphysical/supernatural. Godliness is broader than
supernatural-ness. Yes, the metaphysical/supernatural is beyond
time and place. That is to say, if we were angels, we’d obviously
have a different relationship to the world. And now that we’re
within time and place, we have a different relationship. But we’d
be godly in either case. That is to say, whether we were angels or
human beings, we’d still be God’s creations and, in either case, the
reins of our affairs, our existence and our survival would be in His
hands.
The Prophet’s work, his
existence, his revelation, his mission are all godly. In other
words, they’re under God’s supervision and guidance. But they
aren’t beyond time and place, because the Prophet himself wasn’t
beyond time and place. After all, the Prophet appeared in a
particular century, not in all centuries. He appeared in a
particular place, not in all places. He was born to a particular
mother and father, not to all mothers and fathers. He spoke in a
particular language, not in all languages. He was speaking with a
particular group of people, not with all people. And so on and so
forth.
Since the Prophet was bound by
a body, he’d stepped into the world of nature and everything in the
world of nature is per force natural. In other words, it carries
the stamp of naturalness on its forehead and does not transgress
this boundary; it isn’t supernatural. Even the spirit, which is
believed by philosophers to be metaphysical/supernatural, has become
natural once it has entered this world. In other words, it has
become entrapped by the body. If the spirit wants to see, it has to
see through these same physical eyes and, if it wants to hear, it
has to hear through these physical ears. Philosophers believe that
the spirit can hear. And the spirit is not a body. It doesn’t have
ears, eyes and legs. But, when it comes to this world, its conduct
is bound by our limbs and bodies; it can’t act independently.
Our spirit can’t fly. If we go
travelling, our spirit travels with us and, if we don’t, it doesn’t
either. It’s not as if the spirit says, I’m a celestial and
supernatural being and I disregard these physical restrictions. It
is the same with revelation. According to the picture drawn by the
Koran, Gabriel, too - whenever he appeared to the Prophet and wished
to speak to him - spoke in Arabic, not in every language. In other
words, the angel, too, accepted nature’s restrictions. The angel,
too, would go to Hijaz, in Arabia, to speak to the Prophet, not to
some other continent. What I mean to say is that the angel accepted
that the Prophet was under certain restrictions and that he, too,
would therefore have to submit to these restrictions. This is the
general metaphysics of revelation.
So, we have to remember that,
in all these discussions, there’s a presupposition that we mustn’t
overlook. The presupposition is that we are in the world of nature
and everything about us is natural. Everything about us has the
colour and characteristics of nature. Everything bears the stamp of
time, place, era and environmental conditions. But this by no means
entails that the relevant body is not godly and that it is human
through and through. It doesn’t negate God’s guidance and
supervision.
On the question of whether the
Koran was revealed on a single occasion or over time, as a matter of
fact, as I said, one of the positive results of the theory of the
expansion of prophetic experience is that it allows these two
versions to coexist easily and straightforwardly; whereas other
people run into many difficulties on this issue. It’s been said
that the Koran descended once to the worldly firmament, once to the
immortal mansion; that it descended on the Night of Qadr and that it
then, gradually, descended from the immortal mansion to the
Prophet’s heart. Very strange things have been said which don’t
even have any clear meaning.
When it is said that the Koran
was revealed all at once it means that the Prophet’s personality
became Koranic on the Night of Qadr. The Night of Qadr was the
night on which the Prophet attained his quest. The Prophet lived an
abstemious life for about 40 years and, at the age of 38 – or 40
according to some accounts – he suddenly became enlightened, like
the Buddha, on a single night. He received a revelation and the
veils suddenly fell away from his eyes. The Prophet saw that night,
which fell in the month of Ramadan, as the Night of Qadr and he
later gave it this name. That night was in fact his own night of
destiny, the night of union, the night on which he arrived at his
destination and became a prophet. It was the night on which all his
asceticism and effort bore fruit.
The Prophet used to go to a
cave on Mount Hira for retreats and he would sleep there. I can
picture it well. He would gaze at the star-filled sky and sink into
thought. Suddenly, one night, everything lit up. It was his Night
of Qadr and his night of union. It was the night on which the Koran
was revealed to him and he declared it the Night of Qadr for
evermore. The Prophet understood very well that the Night of Qadr
was ‘worth a thousand months’. If you endure a thousand months of
asceticism to arrive at a night like this, this night will be worth
those thousand months. ‘A thousand months’ simply conveys the sense
of multitude; he could just as easily have said ‘a thousand years’.
So, if you endure austerity for a long time, work hard and keep
waiting until, one night, the beloved comes to you, then that night
is the Night of Qadr and the night of union.
On that night, the Prophet, in
effect, became Koranic. In this sense, the Koran was revealed to
him in its entirety. He became a personality from which the Koran
henceforth emanated. His personality became a wealth on which he
could draw for the rest of his life. Hence, this Koran was revealed
to the Prophet all at once. In other words, the Prophet became a
prophet all at once and, then, he gradually spent this wealth and
conveyed to the people the verses of the Koran as they came to him.
In the other construals that I mentioned, combining these two
versions of events cannot be achieved clearly and meaningfully.
Q. There are verses in the
Koran that clearly convey a sense that there is something outside
the Prophet, constantly watching and supervising him and constantly
cautioning him about any kind of departure from the given model.
For example, the admonitions that I mentioned: ‘He frowned and
turned away,’ ‘and had We not confirmed thee, surely thou wert near
to inclining unto them a very little,’ and ‘perchance thou art
leaving part of what is revealed to thee’.[23]
Or where the Prophet is asked not to move his tongue before the
revelation is completed. In other words, the intention is to halt,
in a way, the normal functioning of memory and memorizing in the
Prophet. In this way, he’s told: Entrust yourself fully to our
words.
Another point is that you
said somewhere that, since the Koran expanded over time, it could
have been much longer than it is. In other words, based on your
construal, if more events had occurred in the Prophet’s life, then,
the Koran would have been longer. And people have said in reaction
to this that the Koran could, therefore, also have been shorter;
if, for example, the Prophet had lived fewer years or had
experienced fewer events. These people have asked you, in turn, to
say what ‘Today I have perfected your religion for you and I have
completed my blessing upon you,’[24]
means. The common interpretation of this verse is that, at one
point, the Koran says, Today, what We have revealed to you has been
completed. This completion means that the process had to reach this
point; in other words, today, when it has reached this point, it has
been completed. Hence, if it was any shorter than it is, then
‘Today I have perfected your religion for you,’ would not have
occurred. So, surely, the Koran had to have a specific length in
order to be perfect and complete?
A. As you said, there are
phrases in the Koran that are addressed directly to the Prophet.
You mentioned a few of them, but there are many more. However, I
don’t understand in what way this is inconsistent with what I said.
No one is denying that the Koran was revealed to the Prophet or that
the Prophet felt that someone was speaking to him. Even people
inferior to prophets have feelings of this kind, never mind about
prophets. You and I may have dreams in which we see someone
speaking to us. It has happened to me many times. Someone may
recite a poem to me. And I’ve written some of these poems down
later. The poems are not my poems. They aren’t anyone else’s poems
either. They are entirely new. In other words, I can attribute
them to myself, because they haven’t been composed by anyone
before! Be that as it may, they’ve been composed by someone who has
recited them to me in my dreams.
Or take the conjuring up of
spirits. It has happened many times. You’ve seen the Arabic book
The Human Being is a Spirit not a Body. It’s an important
book, published in two volumes. It describes the different types of
contacts with spirits. It begins with a very long ode. The author
of the book, who is a professor at the Ayn al-Shams University in
Egypt, has written that, after the death of Ahmed Shawqi, the
Egyptian master poet, they conjured up his spirit and the spirit
recited a long ode, which appears in the book. He writes that they
presented the ode to Arab literary experts. They all confirmed that
it could only be by Shawqi. The ode did not exist before Shawqi’s
spirit was conjured up and no one else could have composed it.
What the mechanism is for
conjuring up spirits doesn’t concern us now. If the above story is
true, it means that, in an incident that was not a normal incident –
that is to say, it wasn’t speaking or thinking or composing poetry
as we normally know it – someone has conveyed to the mind of a
mediator, who wasn’t in a normal state, some material in the form of
a poem; a very eloquent and excellent poem, which we can now read.
What I’m saying is that this part of it is nothing extraordinary.
It happens to ordinary people too.
The Arabs themselves believed
at the time of the Prophet that poems were conveyed to poets’ minds
by mediators. Mr. Nasr Hamid Abu-Zayd, who has been subjected to
many attacks in Egypt, has a good book by the name of Mafhum
al-Nass. He’s spoken in this book about this same idea of the
historicity of the Koran. One of the main points he makes is that
many of the concepts that appear in the Koran are concepts with
which the Arabs were familiar. I’ve made the same point in ‘The
Prophetic Mission and the Crisis of Identity’. So, the Arabs did
not quarrel with the Prophet over these things. In other words,
when the Prophet said, I receive revelations and an angel brings
these revelations, no one was surprised and they didn’t tell the
Prophet, in protest, that he was saying strange things. They
believed that such things did occur. They believed that poets
received revelations and that something like an angel or a devil
revealed poems to poets. So, they weren’t at all surprised and
didn’t quarrel with the Prophet over this. It was all very natural
and acceptable to them.
Perhaps ordinary Arabs – or at
least some of them – had similar experiences. That someone should
feel that they are being spoken to, admonished, ordered, encouraged
or discouraged to do or not to do something - there’s nothing
surprising about this and it occurs in ordinary life too. We simply
look at it differently in the Prophet’s case because we consider him
a Prophet. If we didn’t consider him a Prophet, we’d attribute it
to his imagination, in the way we do with ordinary people. But
since we consider him a Prophet, we believe that the states that he
experienced were under God’s supervision and guidance; that it had
been ordained that people would receive counsel and guidance via
this man; and that, by and large, history was to be guided in a
particular direction. But the basic fact of the matter is
comprehensible and non-problematic.
Q. Was it a kind of
soliloquy, whereby the Prophet murmured to himself?
A. No, it’s not a soliloquy.
As I said, when you see someone speaking to you in your dream, we
can’t call it a soliloquy. In many instances, what is being said is
unexpected. You aren’t the actor, you’re the recipient. That is to
say, something happens to you without your volition.
When we say that these things
were linked to the Prophet’s personality, it doesn’t mean that he
used to invent them himself; it means that they were linked to his
capabilities and his spiritual wealth.
Q. In fact, the Prophet’s undergoes an illumination, which
constantly pervades him and directs him. Is that no so?
A. Yes.
Q. The numerical wonder of the Koran – of course, some of it may be
disputed – but a large part of it is indisputable and shows that
there are certain laws involved. Part of this wonder, by the name
of the numerical wonders, has been discovered for us and people have
managed to uncover it, but there may be many others which have yet
to be discovered. Can we say that God wanted some of these things
to be revealed in this form and to be presented and preserved in
this same form or not?
A. What do you mean when you
say, God wanted it? The fact that God wanted it or didn’t want it
doesn’t explain anything here. If the Koran had 10,000 verses
instead of the 6,000 and a bit verses that it has now, we’d still
say that God wanted it to be 10,000 verses. If, instead of 6,000,
it had 600 verses, we’d still say that God wanted it to be 600
verses. We have no way of knowing what God wanted. This ‘God
wanted it’ is always a kind of explanation after the event or, as
philosophers of science put it, a post hoc explanation. If we could
offer an explanation before the event and then compare the event
with our explanation after it had actually occurred, then, we could
draw a tangible conclusion.
What do we say about nature
now? We believe that nature was created by God. The angle of a
light ray’s incidence and the angle of reflection are equal in
nature now. If they were unequal, we’d still say that God wanted it
this way. I mean that this theory of God wanted it like this won’t
solve anything. This goes back to the relationship between science
and metaphysics. If this relationship is thoroughly clarified,
then, some of these questions will be answered; otherwise, not.
Don’t ever use, the will of God, what God wanted and so on as
theories for explaining natural events. The relationship between
God’s will, God’s knowledge and all of God’s attributes with all
natural phenomena is equal.
Scientific explanations are not
explanations after the event; they explain what ought to happen
before it happens. On the basis of the theory of the equality of a
ray’s angle of incidence and angle of reflection, we say that the
next time you shine a light at a 50-degree angle, the angle of
reflection will definitely be - and has to be - 50 degrees. But we
can never say such a thing about God’s will and God’s knowledge and
His other attributes. There have been 124,000 prophets. We say
that it was God’s will that there should have been 124,000
prophets. If there had been 125,000 prophets, we’d still say that
it was God’s will that there should have been 125,000. And if there
had been only 100 prophets, we’d still say that that was God’s will
and what God wanted.
In a book written by one of our
clerics, the author asks: Why were there 12 Shi’i Imams? Then, he
answers his own question by saying: Because God’s intention was
fulfilled with 12 Imams. I wrote to him and said: What kind of
answer is this! If there had been 17 Imams, you’d still say the
same thing: Why were there 17 Imams? Because God’s intention was
fulfilled with 17 Imams!
You can’t explain anything by
saying that it was God’s will. This is an important point. I’m not
saying that God’s will is not involved; I’m saying that it can’t be
used to explain events. If the Prophet had lived half as many years
as he did, we’d say that it was God’s will that it should have been
like that. If he’d lived twice as long as he did, if there had been
more verses than there are, if there had been fewer verses, however
things were, we’d still say, It was God’s will.
Even if the traits that we
attribute to the Koran – for example, the numerical accords and
relationships between the verses – did not exist, we’d still say,
God wanted it like this. We’re not going to get anywhere with this
kind of answer and notion, and we’re not going to establish anything
in this way. If you like, after whatever I say, you can just add,
‘God wanted it like this’ or ‘It was God’s will’; this will solve
your problem.
So, let me say, If it had been
God’s will, then Koran would have been longer than it is. Unless you
maintain that it’s impossible for God to have willed it other than
it is. Then, I would say to you, Have you ever been a god or a
god’s assistant? Otherwise, how does one know that God willed
anything to be other than what it is? If God had willed it, the
Koran would have been longer. If God had willed it, the Koran would
have been shorter. If this ‘It was God’s will’ makes you happy,
just place it after all my theories and the problem will be solved
and finished. But do bear in mind that this ‘It was God’s will’
provides a false gratification. You shouldn’t resort to it. You
should just look at the natural phenomenon of the birth of the
Koran. Of course, however it was born, you could say that it was
God’s will for it to be born like that. And there’s nothing wrong
with saying this.
When it comes to the Prophet,
the Koran and the materialization of revelation, there’s no problem
regardless of the way in which we speak about the natural
circumstances of these events, because the underlying assumption is
that the ceiling of God hangs over all of them. However the Koran
had turned out, it would still have been under God’s supervision.
If it didn’t have the traits that it now has, it would still have
been God’s will. And now that it does have them, it’s still God’s
will.
In order to know that an
utterance is godly, we have to look at its contents and substance;
at the tell-tale scent of revelation, in the way that, as I said,
Al-Ghazzali detects it. This is our guide and it is this that’s
lasting. This is what someone has to convey to us as the lesson
that the Teacher has given us. We believe that God also had other
prophets, who were lesser prophets than the Prophet of Islam. Well,
this, too, is God’s will. We believe that their revelations did not
have the strength that the Prophet of Islam’s revelation has. So,
God can send revelations that are less strong and less comprehensive
than the Koran. This, too, is God’s will. In other words, if the
Koran’s scope and perfection were less than they are now, we’d still
be able to say that that’s how God wanted it. And now that they are
as they are, it is still how God wanted it.
As to the question about the
perfection and completeness of the Koran and the Al-Ma’ida verse
that states, ‘Today I have perfected your religion for you and I
have completed my blessing upon you,’ I’ve explained about this
verse in The Expansion of Prophetic Experience. Yes, religion
has a stage of perfection, but this stage relates to religion’s
essentials, not its accidentals. In other words, the Koran could
have been much shorter than it is and still achieve perfection,
because the Koran’s accidentals don’t play a role in its
perfection. That is to say, if the Prophet had fought fewer wars
than he had by the time this verse was revealed or if, for example,
the tale of the accusation levelled against Aisha had never happened
and had not appeared in the Koran, the Koran would have been no less
perfect.
The Prophet’s mission and the
conveyance of the message were completed and perfected when the main
messages of the Koran had been conveyed. Of course, there are also
accidentals, which may or may not have been included without harming
the Koran’s perfection. And, as you said, there were many other
accidentals at the time of the Prophet which don’t appear in the
Koran. The Koran wasn’t meant to be a comprehensive chronicle of
everything that happened after all. Things that were related to the
message or could help explain the message or sensitive questions and
events have been included – and some have not been included; but the
Prophet’s main message had to be included.
In fact, it seems that the
Prophet generally proceeded in the following way: he would begin
with the beliefs; then, he would put a coating of morality over the
beliefs; and, then, a legal/fiqhi coating over that. See for
yourself: in Mecca, the first verses that the Prophet brought were
about monotheism, God and the hereafter. Great emphasis was placed
on these two issues. Alongside this, some moral issues were also
highlighted: ‘Woe to those who pray but are heedless of their
prayers, who make a show of piety but forbid almsgiving.’[25]
These kinds of instructions didn’t have a legal/fiqhi dimension at
all.
The Prophet’s message was, in
fact, completed when these three layers of religion were presented
in brief and not in a very expanded form and at length. The
Prophet’s work in Medina largely consisted of laying the legal
foundations, lawmaking and specifying the secondary principles of
religion to the required extent. Hence, religion was perfected, in
the sense that its design was perfected, not in the sense that all
its particular components were put in place; exactly like when a
building’s design and structure have been determined. But no one
has said that all the particulars were revealed to the Prophet or
that the perfection of religion implied an all-embracing scope.
Moreover, many commentators are
of the view that this was not the last verse that was revealed to
the Prophet and that there were many verses after this. If
perfecting meant that there should be no more verses thereafter, why
were more verses revealed after the verse about the perfection and
completion of religion? Hence, the perfecting was a perfecting of
the essentials. In other words, the main structure of religion had
been presented in brief and religion was a three-layered structure.
In the centre, there is a kernel consisting of beliefs and a world
view; over this, there is a coating of morality; and, then, over
these two layers, there is a coating of laws and fiqh. And they
were all made of the fabrics that existed in that age. The two
latter layers were, according to the construal of our mystics, a
shell; like an oyster shell for protecting the kernel or the pearl
that lies inside. They serve as the protectors. And the protection
is necessary both to prevent the kernel from falling into the hands
of the unworthy and to pass it on to future generations.
In this way, the Prophet’s
mission was completed. That is to say, he put the structure at the
people’s disposal. And, in the words of the late Shah Vali Allah,
this structure is a model; i.e. future generations must work on the
structure with ijtihad. They must take their basic model
from the Prophet and build the rest themselves.
Q. Can we say that that part of the Koran or religion that falls
under the essentials is not time- and place-bound, but that that
part of it that falls under the accidentals is time- and
place-bound?
A. It depends on what you mean
by time and place. If by time and place you mean utterances that
relate to a particular period in time, then, yes, it is as you say.
There are some utterances that belong to a particular period in time
and, when that period passes, the utterances become dated. But this
isn’t what I mean when I speak of the Koran being time-bound and
place-bound. When I say that the Koran is historical, I mean that
its entire birth and genesis took place in particular historical
circumstances, and that all its roots and veins are in its own age,
whether its essentials or its accidentals; in this sense, there is
no difference between the two. And my model is the Arabic language;
both the Koran’s essentials and its accidentals have been expressed
in Arabic.
No author or thinker can escape
the tools and instruments of their own time. The Prophet had to use
these concepts and moulds. He didn’t have any choice. He expressed
everything in the language and in the culture of the time. When we
speak about essentials and accidentals, we don’t mean that some are
transient and others aren’t; the accidentals, too, may be of
permanent use. But what we have to do is to carry out a cultural
translation.
The essentials are the
Lawmaker’s main intentions. The accidentals were the incidents and
events that occurred, and sometimes it was necessary that they
should be mentioned and a conclusion drawn from them. But both the
essentials and the accidentals can always teach us things, on the
condition that we carry out a cultural translation.
Here, essentials and
accidentals don’t mean non-transitory and transitory or time- and
place-bound. What we mean is that, when a creature comes into being,
it cannot be unneedful of the elements of its own time. It cannot
step into the arena of existence without benefiting from these
elements. Future generations must be aware of this point so that
they can strip off the coating and pull out the pearl that is hidden
inside. This is what it means when it is sometimes said that they
must be treated as myths, but we don’t use this term now.
Q. Based on what you’ve
said, why must we be duty-bound by the practices – social practices
and practices relating to worship - that prophets decreed? If we
arrive at that formless and undefined matter ourselves in a
different age, we may, naturally, discover other things. For
example, why must we, in the 20th century, perform the
ritual prayer in the way that the Prophet did? We can sit and
meditate – and there are many different ways of meditating and
achieving spiritual rapture these days.
Or why do we need to fast
like the Prophet did? We can purify ourselves by other means. If
we arrive at that formless matter ourselves, can we establish duties
for ourselves or must we still abide by the duties decreed by the
Prophet?
If the Prophet had received
his prophetic mission a hundred or a thousand years later, we
wouldn’t have the things that we have in the Koran today, except for
the points about monotheism and the hereafter, of course. In other
words, the social practices would be different and, naturally, the
Koran would be different. Hence, since we don’t live in the time of
the Prophet, we can have other duties. In other words, we can
change the social practices and, in view of the fact that we don’t
live in the Prophet’s time today, we can have other duties and
laws. But would these laws still be godly?
A. The question of rites and
rituals, laws, customs and manner of worship has a long tale, and,
of course, the theory of the expansion of Prophetic experience
doesn’t touch on this one way or the other. In other words, I
haven’t entered into this debate. You can’t extract anything from
the theory of the expansion of Prophetic experience that suggests
that fiqh is or is not lasting, or that it can or cannot be put into
practice today. In order to establish this, we’d need to turn to
other premises and preliminaries. It depends on our take on the
nature of fiqh and the Lawmaker’s intention.
Fiqh has been subdivided in
different ways. The way I subdivide it is like this: 1. The things
that fall under the heading of justice and injustice are categorized
as Islamic social practices. In other words, when you can say that
this or that deed, this or that conduct, this or that reaction is
just or unjust – anything that can take this adjective falls under
the heading of social practices, political practices, etc.; in other
words, they’re not considered to be practices that relate to
worship; 2. the things that do not fall under the heading of
justice and injustice are called acts of worship or practices
relating to worship. Of course, this is not how faqihs subdivide
things, but, in order to say what I want to say, I have to use these
categories.
Take food and drink, for
example: the rulings about what we are allowed to eat and drink and
what we aren’t allowed to eat and drink; what is allowed [halaal]
and what is not allowed [haraam]. These don’t fit under the
heading of justice and injustice. It is a matter of personal duties
and knowing what to eat and what not to eat. Here, it is a question
of practices that relate to worship. The hajj, prayers, fasting,
ablutions and so on fall into this category.
On the practices relating to
worship, if we’ve understood well the meaning of the prophethood,
things proceeded in the following way: First, the Prophet reached
certain states of excellence and perfection; then, these states led
him to perform particular practices; then, he taught us these
practices so that we could attain those states. In other words,
what were effects in the Prophet’s case become causes for us.
Imagine that some thoughts take
hold in your mind which lead you to withdraw from others, to lower
your head and eyes, maybe even to shut your eyes. You sit in
silence for a while and want others to be silent too in order to
resolve what is happening in your mind and, then, to go back to your
normal state. In fact, your silence, your withdrawal and so on are
the effects of those thoughts. When those thoughts take hold and
enthrall you, that kind of behaviour naturally follows. Then,
afterwards, you come and teach me. You say, If you want to think
correctly, you must really concentrate, you must be silent, you must
sit silently somewhere, you mustn’t allow distracting thoughts into
your mind. In other words, you propose as causes to me the things
that were effects for you. This was not the starting point for
you. In your own case, it is the strong mental state that
automatically takes your mind away from all distractions. It is the
thoughts in your head that make you fall silent. But, because
you’ve had this experience, you tell me, If you want to achieve
clear thoughts, if you want to resolve a problem, concentrate, be
silent, withdraw to a quiet place and so on.
For example, when you are deep
in thought, you don’t even think about drinking or eating. And,
then, you may say to me, If you want to think well and solve
problems well, don’t eat very much and so on. You present to me as
a cause that which was the effect of your experience. You advise
me to adopt this kind of behaviour so that I attain that state.
To put it much more simply,
prophets attained certain states of excellence. Then, they
discovered some acts of worship. Subsequently, they told us to
perform these acts of worship so that we could attain those states.
In other words, acts of worship were effects for prophets but, for
us, they are causes that produce those states of excellence.
As the disciples of prophets,
we need these experiences very much, because one meaning of being a
disciple of a prophet is to partake in their experiences. It was
the Prophet’s experience that fasting was an excellent practice.
Fasting exists in all religions. Or that drinking alcoholic drinks
is very bad – this exists in all religions. Even in Buddhism,
alcoholic drinks are forbidden. All these venerable individuals had
realized that alcoholic drinks impede exalted spiritual
experiences. All these venerable individuals had realized that you
need to be empty of food if you want to be filled with spiritual
light.
So, we need the prophets. In
fact, it is probably in this sphere that we need them most. They’ve
placed special worship-related experiences before us and told us,
Follow these paths! Rising in the middle of the night to perform
acts of worship was something that all the prophets did. No great
man of spirituality ever achieved anything without such vigils. In
the Koran, too, God says to the Prophet: ‘Keep vigil all night, save
for a few hours; half the night or even less, or a little more. And,
with measured tone, recite the Koran, for we are about to address to
you words of surpassing gravity. It is in the vigils in the night
that impressions are strongest and words most eloquent.’[26]
These night-time occurrences
are more durable. In the night, there is silence and the mind can
concentrate; the attachments that tie down the spirit during the day
fall away or loosen and one is much more receptive to messages and
to more powerful and clearer discoveries. This is what the Prophet
commands. This is a command that has been given to all prophets or
a discovery that has been made by all prophets. They’ve realized
themselves that there are gifts to be received in the dark of the
night: ‘In the day-time, you are hard pressed with the affairs of
this world.’[27]
At night, when these affairs abate and when people leave you in
peace, you must perform your main task.
These are things that we must
learn from the prophets. In the sphere of acts of worship, there
are hidden interests and benefits. In other words, mechanisms are
proposed to us and we don’t know why they take the form that they do
and why they produce particular results. But, since some
individuals have experienced these things, we respect their
experiences.
However, it is a completely
different matter when it comes to justice and injustice. In setting
out the social rulings that relate to justice and injustice, the
Prophet took the people of his own age from that day’s injustice to
that day’s justice, from that day’s ignorance to that day’s
knowledge; not from the day’s injustice to ahistorical justice, not
from the day’s ignorance to ahistorical knowledge. This is what the
Prophet did, in effect, in the legal, social and political rulings
and everything relating to justice and injustice. This is what all
prophets have done. However, here, it is the model that is
important to us. In some cases, we follow the Prophet’s model and,
in other cases, we follow his exact experience; it all depends on
the category.
On women’s rights, men’s
rights, inheritance, blood money, talion, everything relating to
politics, the state, social rulings, buying and selling, marriage,
divorce and everything relating to fiqh, what the Prophet did in
effect was to push aside what was described as injustice in his day
and to present something that was recognized as justice in his day.
Justice and injustice are entirely time-bound.
To put it in a different, more
general way, there are no hidden benefits in Islam’s socio-political
rulings; all the benefits are visible. In other words, no one can
say, Do this but don’t concern yourself with its benefits.
Socio-political rulings have visible benefits and, if no benefits
are visible, the relevant ruling is null and void. This is a
fallacy committed by some of our faqihs. When they’re asked, Sir,
why is this or that law on women’s rights or inheritance or politics
as it is? - they reply, Why do the ritual prayers take the form that
they do? In other words, they suggest that, just as we accept the
prayers in the form that they are without asking why – and it will
become clear on Judgment Day what the benefits were – it is the same
when it comes to politics, the state, commerce and so on; whereas
this is not the case. These two things fall into two different
categories. The worship-related practices have hidden benefits and
don’t fall under the heading of justice and injustice. In the case
of buying and selling and the like, there are no hidden benefits and
they fall under the heading of justice and injustice; they have
visible benefits.
We want commerce and politics
for this world. No one call tell us, Do whatever you’re told in the
name of religion and submit to it, even if you’re crushed by it,
because its benefits will become clear on Judgment Day. This is an
unacceptable thing to say. Here, too, we must practise ijtihad.
That is to say, we must go from our time’s injustice to our time’s
justice. This is the way in which we need the prophets.
** Translated
from the Persian by Nilou Mobasser
[1] The 111th sura in the
Koran.
[9] We were in the Netherlands recently
and this issue came up there. As you know, in Al-Ahzab
Sura, there are many verses about the Prophet’s wives and
his family. In one verse, God says the following about the
women whom the Prophet may marry: ‘We have made lawful for
thee… any woman believer if she gives herself to the Prophet
and if the Prophet desire to take her in marriage, for thee
exclusively, apart from the believers.’ This verse was
revealed at a time when a woman had given and presented
herself to the Prophet. In some of our religious
narratives, Aisha has been quoted as saying to the Prophet
when this verse was revealed: How well God looks after you;
how quickly He sends verses that are pleasing to you.
[11] The Koran states: ‘They are
unbelievers who say, “God is the Third of Three.”’
(Al-Ma’idah, 73)
[14] Mathnawi, Vol. 2, 20.
[15] It has been said that God asked a
beggar who’d been raised from the dead on Judgment Day:
‘What have you brought?’ The beggar said: ‘O God! When we
were in the world, whenever we asked your miserly servants,
they’d give us nothing and say: “God will provide, God is
munificent.” Now that we’re here, you’re asking us what
we’ve brought, but we’ve come here to receive!’ God
replied: ‘No, I didn’t mean what have you brought in that
sense. I meant what size container have you brought, so
that we know how much to give you. Have you brought a jug?
Have you brought a pouch? Have you brought a sack?’
[19] Mathnawi, Vol. 4, 533.
[20] On this placelessness and
timelessness, see, for example, Mathnawi, Vol. 3,
1151-52.
[21] Mathnawi, Vol. 3, 3773.
[23] See footnotes 7-9 above.
|