Abstract
Mystics distill scriptural messages in their respective traditions into a convergence into the Divine. Mystical experiences across the board tend to be transformative due to the awe that ensues from a holistic vision of the ultimate oneness beyond all separations. For Muslim mystics this is the realization of Tawheed, which is the crux of Islam. This bespeaks of an inherent interreligiosity within the mystical vision. This chapter will explore two Muslim mystics and their interreligiosity to argue for the mystical approaches as the most conducive toward peace and tolerance in our increasingly diverse societies. These mystics from different eras and regions are the medieval Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi and the modern Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. “Every community faces a direction of its own, of which He is the focal point. Vie, therefore, with one another in doing good works. Wherever you may be, God will gather you all unto Himself …” (Quran, 2:148).
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Notes
- 1.
Such letters in parentheses stand for shortened forms of Arabic supplications traditionally spoken or written after the names of prophets, angels, saints, and so on, that is, AS, Sal., and RA, among others.
- 2.
They will be henceforth referred to as Bawa and Ibn Arabi, respectively.
- 3.
It is important to note that the meanings will be an approximation at best, as such terms have profound spiritual significance at multiple levels which is revelatory as one delves deeper into the mystical realm. Arabic terms will be italicized throughout this chapter, and terms with mystical connotations will be either capitalized or within inverted commas. Scholars usually translate Insan-e-kameel as the Perfect Man. However, since Insan literally means human and since all humans regardless of gender have the potentiality to realize into that, I chose to translate it also as the Perfect Human. Nevertheless, since most scholars use “man” generically, connoting all human beings to differentiate it from the gendered term rajul, the human male, both the expressions will be used interchangeably in this chapter.
- 4.
William Chittick aptly states “the governing axiom of the Islamic worldview, tawhid, or the assertion of unity,” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society, 48, 2010, p. 1. In this chapter, a few Arabic terms such as this one will be both italicized and capitalized due to their significant connotations.
- 5.
The terms tawakkul and abd, translated as surrender/submission and slave, respectively, appear to be challenging for westerners to comprehend, as they tend to view those through the lens of defeat and enslavement. Some of my western colleagues would not accept the military cum slavery implications, failing to see the humanitarian cum depth psychology connotations of the concepts. Apparently, they could not see that the submission is not to any other human, but to the Divine, or to put it esoterically, to our true self. Eastern minds view it as liberation through cutting attachments to the temporal and thereby freeing oneself from one’s ego. The all-consuming ego prevents one from what Buddha stated as the “awakening” and Muslims view it as the awakening to the Truth of the only Real (Huq). Hence the surrender or submission is not to another human, but in a manner of speaking to one’s true self, per se.
- 6.
The inclusiveness is pervasive throughout the Qur’an. Only a few verses are provided here 2:62, 127–133; 3:51–52, 84; 6:161–163; 10:83–84, 90.
- 7.
The Five Pillars of Islam are the declaration of faith in Tawheed, technically termed as Shahada or witnessing; salah, the five times daily ritual prayers; the paying of the annual zakah on liquid assets; sawm, the annual month-long fasting in the lunar month of Ramadan; and finally, if possible, the once-a-lifetime pilgrimage of Hajj. Beginning with the awareness of the Oneness of Tawheed, the rituals are geared towards cultivating an awareness of the deeper self through the five-times prayer, community-awareness by discouraging hoarding and encouraging investment in the community, gradually enlarging the circle by the humanitarian awareness of hunger, deprivation, etc., through fasting, and finally the physical equivalent of the awareness of our interconnectivity through the gathering during hajj. Needless to say, these are at the very basic level. The meanings and effects of these go far deeper to eventually reveal the esoteric dimensions when cultivated with an awareness of taqwa and tawakkul. Without the latter two, one can lose connection to the larger and deeper levels and get attached to the rituals themselves bordering on idolatry.
- 8.
Prophets in Islam are viewed as guides sent since the beginning of creation to provide a moral framework based on justice and compassion or Adl and Ihsaan, respectively, for which the prophets themselves set the model by words and deeds. Hence the importance of the Sunnah tradition with the term Hadith being specific to Muhammad (Sal.).
- 9.
See Ibn Arabi’s The Meccan Revelations (New York: Pir Press, 2005), Vol. I., pp. 221–222. See also the notes 116–118, particularly 116, regarding Tawhid on p. 337.
- 10.
The Prophetic tradition refers to the legislative roles from Adam to Muhammad (Sal.) at the exoteric dimension. Their esoteric roles expand into the universal and interconnectivity to the past and posterity with guides who are considered saints of different traditions.
- 11.
See Suha Taji-Farouki’s Beshara and Ibn Arabi: A Movement of Sufi Spirituality in the Modern World (Oxford: Anqa Publishing, 2010) 177–181.
- 12.
“Ma’rifa,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/marifa.
- 13.
See Ibn Arabi’s The Alchemy of Human Happiness, trans. Stephen Hirtenstein (Oxford: Anqa Publishing, 2017), 55 including the notes, particularly note 32.
- 14.
Dhat is also pronounced as Zat.
- 15.
See Chittick’s “Doorway to an Intellectual Tradition” in the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn‘Arabi Society 59 (2016), 3–6. Also see the opening poem for Chapter 317 in Chittick’s “Two Chapters from the Futuhat al-Makkiya,” and sections 5, 5.1 and 5.2 in Chittick’s “Ibn Arabi,” 2019. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ibn-arabi/.
- 16.
See Chittick’s “The Anthropology of Compassion,” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society 48 (2010): 1–17.
- 17.
See the Qur’an 2:132–133; 3: 51–52, 84; 6:163; 10:84. The premise of the essential truth of all faith traditions coming from the same source is again connected to the heart, as Chittick aptly states, “faith demands acknowledging the truth in the heart (al-tasdiq bi’l-qalb), not blind acceptance” (“Doorway to an Intellectual Tradition” p. 9).
- 18.
The term is capitalized as it is a proper noun for the followers of Muhammed (Sal).
- 19.
The Hadith traditions are the records of what the Prophet Muhammad said and are separated from the revelations from God that came through the angel Gabriel, which is the Qur’an. They range from the profound to the mundane and include his acts. The Sufis are anchored to those known as the Hadith-e-Qudsi. These are said to have been revealed directly to the Prophet’s heart without any intermediary and were orally passed down. The seekers in the ma’rifa way tend to tune into those.
- 20.
Leonard Lewisohn, “Sufism’s Religion of Love, from Rābi‘a to Ibn ‘Arabī,” ed. Lloyd Ridgeon, The Cambridge Companion to Sufism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 150–80.
- 21.
See Ibn Arabi’s Divine Sayings: 101 Hadith Qudsi (Oxford: Anqa Publishing, 2008), 70.
- 22.
See Ibn Arabi’s The Openings Revealed in Makkah: al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah. Book 3 (New York: Pir Press, 2019), 331–332.
- 23.
As James Morris puts it in “Divine Calling, Human Response,” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society 53, 2013, the qalb is “each human being’s essential spiritual reality” (2013, 12).
- 24.
The heart as qalb has profound spiritual connotative significance in the Qur’an, as differentiated from the heart or Fuad, as which can be the anatomical one or the seat of emotions.
- 25.
See Chittick’s “Ibn ‘Arabî” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2019) sections 3.3, “Imagination” and 5.2: “The Stages of Ascent.” Regarding the natural orientation of humans to the Divine, the devolution into separations and the returning evolution to the Divine, see also Austin translated Ibn Arabi’s The Bezels of Wisdom about “reintegration and concentration,” 31.
- 26.
The little there is on Bawa centers more on the anthropological angle featuring the community of western disciples. There is a dearth of research on his teachings, and of what there is, most appear to lack the vision necessary to comprehend the inner dimensions of mystical thought.
- 27.
Gisela Webb, “Negotiating Boundaries: American Sufis,” in The Cambridge Companion to American Islam, ed. Juliane Hammer and Omid Safi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 197, 207.
- 28.
Saiyida Zakiya Hasna Islam, “Bawa Muhaiyaddeen: A Study of Mystical Interreligiosity,” Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 2017. Proquest (10287100), 179–181.
- 29.
- 30.
Webb (2013, p. 203).
- 31.
Sabur, Shukur, Alhamdulliah can be somewhat translated as Patience, Gratitude, and All Praise to God, respectively. These are significant terms with deep spiritual connotations in the Muslim tradition. Bawa’s discourses were permeated with those.
- 32.
Muhaiyaddeen, The Map (Philadelphia: The Fellowship Press, 2006), 14.
- 33.
Islam (2017, pp. 130–132).
- 34.
The spiritual significance of this act is similar to St. Francis of Asisi’s stripping his clothes off before the bishop, to be garbed in the clothes of the Church.
- 35.
See Islam (2017, p. 103). “The first encounter of the natives of the land with the newcomer is always depicted dramatically, such as them riding into the region astride a Bengal tiger or standing on a pair of swiftly swimming crocodiles, or riding on the back of a gigantic fish in the strong river currents. Metaphorically it bespeaks of the symbiotic relationship of such spiritual entities with nature.”
- 36.
This was similar to what was happening in the twelfth- to thirteenth-century Abbasid court in Baghdad.
- 37.
It is important to note here that the messages of all Muslim mystics are infused with the Qur’an. However, with mystics like Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (RA), it is not evident because he spoke in Tamil.
- 38.
Ibn Arabi, The Openings Revealed in Makkah: al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah, Book 3, ch. 32 (New York: Pir Press, 2019), 215.
- 39.
It is important to note that Khayal, translated by William Chittick as the Creative Imagination, arises not from the mind, but from the heart as qalb.
- 40.
See the introduction to Ibn Arabi’s The Bezels of Wisdom (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1980), pp. 16–17.
- 41.
See Eric Winkel’s translation of Ibn Arabi’s The Openings Revealed in Makkah: al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah, Book 3, ch. 40 (New York: Pir Press, 2019), 334–337.
- 42.
Aligning with the dhat or essence, enables one to transcend their temporality and thereby the “thing-ness,” per se, of the phenomenal world.
- 43.
See Chittick quoting Qûnawî, “The true Perfect Man is the barzakh between Necessity and possibility, the mirror that brings together in its essence and level the attributes and properties of Eternity and new arrival… He is the intermediary between the Real and creation (emphasis added),” in “Ibn ‘Arabî” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2019); section 6.2, The Perfect Man.
- 44.
It is important to remember the connotation of abd here. It is the ability to overcome the egotistical mind and center oneself in the vitally central qalb or heart. The disappearance/effacement of the ego-self is the awakening to the Truth. Thus, the concept of abd is not the enslavement to another human being, but a liberation through the sacrifice of the ego and submission to the Divine, or the Real, which is a no-thing—being in-divinis, per se.
- 45.
This assertion of there being just the One and nothing else is verbalized by the significant initial part of the shahada, the declaration of faith that is the first pillar of the Five Pillars of Islam.
- 46.
Ibn Arabi, The Openings Revealed in Makkah: al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah, Book 3, chapter 35 (New York: Pir Press, 2019), 265.
- 47.
Robert J. Dobie, Logos & Revelation: Ibn Arabi, Meister Eckhart, and Mystical Hermeneutics (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 14.
- 48.
See Muhaiyaddeen’s Four Steps to Pure Iman (Philadelphia: Fellowship Press, 1979).
- 49.
See Ibn Arabi’s The Openings Revealed in Makkah: al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah, Book 3, 265 (New York: Pir Press, 2019), 285.
- 50.
The Quranic Arabic names for Moses and Jesus are Musa and Isa, respectively, hence attributive terms Musawi and Isawi derive from those and are pervasive in Ibn Arabi’s writings, i.e., see The Openings Revealed in Makkah: al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah, 285–293.
- 51.
Ibn Arabi’s The Openings Revealed in Makkah: al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah, 285.
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Islam, S.Z.H. (2023). Beyond Separations: Mystics Merging Across Time and Space. In: Shafiq, M., Donlin-Smith, T. (eds) Mystical Traditions. Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Mysticism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27121-2_11
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