Baptism of Fire

Three fellows reading up on the Middle East to figure out what is going on.

A bandwagon of sisters and a brother tracing European history into the depths of other civilizations until they have utterly confused themselves.

M: “Free will. Our theme for tonight is free will.”

C: “Why is that?”

M: “Because I have been reading Shariati again. It is slowly dawning upon me that our culture was never alone. We were reflecting upon and being reflected onto other cultures simultaneously. For instance, Jewish philosophy seems to have had its own stages of enlightenment and modernity. Who knows in which realm these ideas started first?

Shariati constructs many ideas that are well-known to us, but in the final outcome he ends up concluding things we in our atheism-first culture finds lopsided.”

G: “62% of Americans are Christian and 67% of Europeans are too. “Atheism” is wishful thinking on your behalf.”

M: “And that is where our culture appears even more strange… Our institutions and laws are secular. Religion is a private matter. In fact, our very philosophies on identity, self, our ontology and epistemology all derive from secular thinking.”

G: “Freedom of religion is a core tenet of our non-religious principles. European history was shaped by people who viewed religion like personal tastes.”

M: “Shariati uses the story of Adam to germinate an awareness in his audience that God injected into the mud, or dust as we have it, a spark of free will. That we have responsibility for creation because we have what God has: Free will.”

C: “Religion is usually about obedience.”

G: “Obedience is like its kin, submission to dogma, the very opposite of free will.”

M: “Still, here is Ali Shariati telling people that responsibility for one’s own society, people and world begins with accepting our grander nature, our kinship with the ultimate free will.

The similarities with existentialism are striking. Shariati’s awareness of self-responsibility doesn’t stand back from existentialism in any way, even though he gladly embraces the idea of a God.”

ALI SHARIATI - MAN AND ISLAM - (from Word Doc found on Columbia.edu)

Man is composed, then, of two contradictory elements, mud and the spirit of God; and his splendor and importance derive precisely from the fact that he is a two‑dimensional creature. The distance between his two dimensions is the distance between clay and the spirit of God.

Every man is endowed with these two dimensions, and it is his will that enables him to decide either to descend toward the pole of sedimentary mud that exists in his being, or to ascend toward the pole of exaltation, of God and the spirit of God. This constant striving and struggle takes place in man’s inner being, until finally he chooses one of the poles as the determinant for his destiny.

M: “Shariati goes to full length to confront these two forces within man – our struggle with ourselves becomes our very struggle to become conscious beings.”

It is by means of his will that man attains superiority overall other creatures in the world. He is the only being able to act counter to his own instinctual nature, something no animal or plant can do.

[…]

For example, you will never encounter an animal voluntarily engaging in a two‑day fast, or a plant committing suicide out of grief.

He is free to be good or to be evil, to resemble mud or to resemble God. Will is, then, the greatest property of man, and the affinity between God and man is apparent from this fact.

M: “What we usually think of as a cosmic battle between good and evil in the form of Satan’s challenge to God’s sovereignty in Shariati’s view is really about our inner battles:”

In contrast with other religions that posit God and the Devil to exist within nature in Mutual combat, Islam teaches that only one force exists in nature ‑ the force of God.

But within man, Satan wages war against God, and man is their battlefield.

M: “Thus the central theme really becomes the battle of man’s divine nature with his mud-like nature, his animal nature. "

The dualism of Islam, unlike religious of the past, posits the existence of two “deities,” two hypostases, in the inner being and disposition of man, not in nature.

Nature knows only of a single hypostasis; it belongs to the realm, and is subject to the will, of a single power, the power of God.

In Islam, Satan is not a contestant with God; he is a contestant against man, or rather against the divine half of man. And since man is a two‑dimensional creature composed of God and of clay, he has need of both elements.

G: “Funny though that today religious people are in a defensive position. Society permits them to have a personal belief similarly to how they can freely choose which rug they prefer in their living room.”

M: “That’s what I mean. Religion is a free choice to lower your level of consciousness. Shariati turns that on its head by saying awareness of the human condition stems from reading the Quran and reorienting your idea of existence in accordance with the realities of the founding myths.”

C: “Could this also explain the lack of »revolutionary potential«, as I believe it is called, in religion in general?”

M: “Exactly. Shariati tries to pry out from the hands of the existing Islamic world the combustible material in his religion that can serve as an engine for change.”

From the point of view of Islam, man is the only being responsible not only for his own destiny but also for the fulfillment of a divinely entrusted mission in this world; he is the bearer of God’s Trust in the world and in nature.

[…]

Man is not only the viceregent of God in this world and on this earth, but also‑as the Qur’an makes clear‑the keeper of His Trust. Now what is the meaning of the Trust? Everyone says something different. Maulana Jalal ad‑Din Rumi says that the Trust means man's will, his free will, and this is also my opinion.

G: “Existentialism with obligations.”

C: “I wasn’t aware that Iranian political philosophy sounded so recognisable to Western ears.”

M: “Shariati is extremely palatable to us. I find him refreshing, especially under the weight of propaganda against Iran.”

G: “How many revolutions can we think of that in some ways did not end up in a different kind of tyranny, worse than what they were supposed to alleviate?”

C: “… Do you include the years of essentially civil war? Many revolutionary administrations have to fight to stay in power under circumstances that look like a continuation of the civil war before an accepted political system settles.”

G: “Machiavelli spoke of this. He reminds us how much it matters that people have accepted the situation as it is, if status quo has been maintained long enough.”

M: “At any rate, existentialism is not a bad comparison. We would expect that the Islamic theology matched the Christian here. Perhaps it does, we will have to ask the local clergy about that. The usual cliche that non-Christians like me can think of revolves around original sin. Sin (the flesh) tempt us, but we must break free of temptation.”

C: “Like a lobotomy saves us from our troublesome brain.”

G: “You mean, either we stick with the urges and desires or we walk into a derelict ghost town that used to be but is no more.”

M: “What a sad way to depict salvation.”

C: “Hah! Salvation…!”

G: “You’re young. Age is the ultimate saviour, freeing us from all urges and desires. Every day you step closer to heaven in a hospital.”

M: “The word today is a mere decoy. Imagine that you could daily witness how baser urges foiled your plans. No course in life, your house falls apart, your plans come to naught.”

C: “A good communist would rather say that blaming yourself for class inequalities comes from swallowing the dominant ideology.”

M: “Shariati changes direction on that Christian ethics and combines the two. Responsibility means rise against oppression”

The Prophet of Islam also possesses two contrasting aspects, aspects which would be contradictory in other men, but in him have been joined in a single spirit. For he was a man constantly engaged in political struggle against his enemies and the disruptive forces in society, concerned with building a new society and a new civilization in this world; and also a guide leading men to a particular goal; that is, also a man of prayer, piety and devotion.

C: “Existence is pain then. We must neither be materialists or yearn for the beyond. We must remain in constant struggle, instability.”

M: “In a way, yes. As he sees it, Islam offers no rest.”

The tragedy is that history tells a different tale. History tells us that all societies and civilizations were oriented exclusively either to the hereafter and renunciation of this world, or to this world of dust.

[…]

China began by being oriented to this world, by giving primacy to pleasure

Then came Lao Tse, bringing a religion exclusively oriented to the hereafter […]

He was succeeded by Confucius, who reoriented society toward this world […]

India, the land of rajas and legends, was oriented to the other world by the teachings of the Vedas and the Buddha, devoting itself to abstemiousness, monasticism and mysticism.

In Europe, ancient Rome devoted itself to murder and bloodshed […]

Then came Jesus, who directed society to concentrate on the hereafter […]

Today we see that European civilization is so worldly in its orientation, and so exclusively defines the purpose of man’s life as pleasure and enjoyment, that, as Professor Chandel has put it, the life of contemporary man consists only of making the tools of life. This is the idiocy of the contemporary philosophy of man, the result of a purpose‑free technology.

As is apparent from the philosophy of man in Islam, he is a two‑dimensional being and needs, therefore, a religion which will also be two‑dimensional and exert its force in the two different and opposing directions that exist in man’s spirit and human society. Only then will man be able to maintain his equilibrium. The religion needed is Islam.

C: “So, what we are saying so far is that the Iranian revolution is the result of a hybridisation of sociology, structuralist history and Islam?”

M: “This is Shariati. While historians do ascribe to him a major influence on the revolution, I think we need to add more sources.”

G: “I for one would like to read that constitution.”

M: “I need to read more of his texts to establish a link between the constitution and the texts.”

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