Tag: Philosophy

In the comments someone of dubious distinction brought up my Ali Shariati article as a way to suggest -- what I don't know, thus the distinction of "dubious. I think there is a vague and amabiguous assertion that I am latently anti-Shi'a. It isn't the first time my Ali Shariati article has been brought up in this manner (it has been brought up by the same person on three different times in three different screenames).

Fact is, that Ali Shariati does not represent Shi'a Islam, any more than Iqbal represents Sunni Islam. They are great thinkers within their respective areas but that neither makes them authoritative nor untouchable. When I get the time I'll analyze Iqbal (I know Haroon is planning on it). I have insisted that Ali Shariati went off the deep end at some point and his philosophy came to embody the worst of 20th French revolutionarism.  In trying to  merge  Shi'a Islam with his yes, nihilist, philosophy, he hurt Shi'a Islam. Not only that, he then went onto to redescribe actual gradual reformers as revolutionaries, which is both wrong and disingenuous.

Shariati was very important in my development. He gave me an intelligent Islam when I didn't find anything else that was persuasively written. I read just about everything he had written and treated it as gospel. However, I rejected Shariati's dark themes -- revolution, suicide, political annihilation. My rejection of Shariati does not mean that I think Shi'a Islam is flawed. I have nothing against Shi'a Islam. I think Shariati misused the idea of Sufi self-negation. He used Shi'a-Sufi tropes and applied them to politics. This makes for appalling results. One day I will write about Shariati and Camus -- someone Shariati looked up to -- and analyze how little of Camus' positive qualities Shariati actually embodied. In my mind, Shariati was a lot like Qutb: so concerned with freedom that he did not once stop and think what ramifications his ideas were going to have.

In his essay "Humanity & Islam" Shariati ends by arguing that the highest form of living is to die for another. Sorry, I thought it was to love God. You will not find in Islam another vision of man more conducive to romantic Marxist revolutionarism. Ultimately. he wanted to create a Muslim ubermensch (super man). You will not find a more utilitarian vision of man anywhere else in the great Islamic corpus. Some select quotes all from the last one third:

Love consists of of giving up everything for the sake of a goal and asking nothing in return.

Shouldn't goal be God?

This requires one to make a great choice. What is that choice? To choose to die -- or some other objective -- so another can live and some ideals can be realized.

Isn't the choice between choosing good over evil rather than death over life? Isn't living "ethically" more important than living in pursuit of "ideals."

It is a love which, beyond rationality and logic, invites us to negate and rebel against ourselves in order to work towards a goal for the sake of others. It is in this stage that a free human is born, and this is the most exalting level of becoming an insan.

So, the highest level of lliving is beyond rationality and logic, fine with me at the personal level. I understand it because I am a novelist. However, I'm sorry, but this is unacceptable at the political level. When in politics you exist beyond rationality and logic you also exist beyond the rule of law. Completely unacceptable. Finally, our aim should not be to so hate ourselves that we negate and rebel against ourselves. We should be able to affirm ourselves while recognizing that we are limited beings who make mistakes. 

We humans have been invited to this world with a duty and a responsibility to devise a plot. What plot? A scheme in which humankind, God, and love, are involved to initiate a new creation and a new insan.

That speaks for itself. Equivocation of Man, God, and Love, with man at the forefront. Even Shi'a Sufis do not believe this. I'm not even going to touch the discussion about a "new creation" and a "new insan."

I would encourage people who want to defend Shariati to read Nietzsche, Camus, and Emerson. Until then I have nothing to say.

Cross-posted from: Wa Salaam: A Muslim-American Journal

We live our lives trying to protect and sustain what we value. But there is a quality in the relationship between the threatened object and the threat or danger that can bring about remarkable results that stretch the human capacity to the point of renewal. This has been theorized in many abstract forms however, Friedrich Holderlin suggested that a power existed in this relationship when the famous German poet wrote,

"But where danger is, grows the saving power also." (F. Holderlin)

Cross-posted from: Wa Salaam: A Muslim-American Journal

"The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has adopted new guidelines for the Catholic church in America. The guidelines adopted Tuesday in Baltimore address who can receive the Holy Eucharist, how the church should minister to gay parishioners and upheld the church's strict ban on the use of contraception." (R. Martin, NPR) Audio