Re: Sufism Exposed.
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Here is an excerpt from this, the beginning of Chapter V (pp 76, 77).
You should note that the
1) The thesis is about Persian Sufism in particular.
2) The latter part of it gives Quranic references used by the Sufis in general.
3) Never for once has Iqbal spoken of Sufism in a negative tone in the entire thesis.
Do you agree? If not, please reply by quoting references from the text that indicate otherwise.
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... Much has been written about the origin of Persian Suifiism; and, in almost all cases, explorers of this .most interesting field of research have exercised their ingenuity in discovering the various channels through which the basic ideas of Sufiism might have travelled - from one place to another. They seem completely to have ignored the principle, that the full significance of a phenomenon in the intellectual evolution of a people, can only be comprehended in the light of those preexisting intellectual, political, and social conditions
which alone make its existence inevitable. Von Kremer and Dozy derive Persian Sufiism from the Indian Vedanta; Merx and Mr. Nicholson derive it from Neo-Platonism; while Professor Browne once regarded it as Aryan reaction against an unemotional Semitic religion. It appears to me, however, that these theories have been worked out under the influence of a notion of causation which is essentially false. That a fixed quantity A is the cause of, or produces another fixed quantity B, is a proposition which, though convenient for scientific purposes, is apt to damage all inquiry, in so far as it leads us completely to ignore the innumerable conditions lying at the back of a phenomenon. It would, for instance, be an historical ,error to say that the dissolution of the Roman Empire was due to the barbarian invasions. The statement completely ignores other forces of a different character that tended to split up the political unity of the Empire. To describe the advent of barbarian invasions as the cause of the dissolution of the Roman Empire which could have assimilated, as it actually did to a certain extent, the so-called cause, is a procedure that no logic would justify....
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Somehow, you forgot to mention these excerpts.
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The latter half of the 8th Century presents, besides the political revolution which resulted in the overthrow of the Umayyads (749 A.D.), persecutions of Zendiks, and revolts of Persian heretics (Sindbah 755-6; Ustadhis 766-8; the veiled prophet of Khurasan 777-80) who, working on the credulity of the people, cloaked, like Lamennais in our own times, political projects under the guise of religious ideas. Later on in the beginning of the 9th Century we find the sons of Harun (Ma'man and Amin) engaged in a terrible conflict for political supremacy; and still later, we see the Golden Age of Islamic literature seriously disturbed by the persistent revolt of the Mazdakite Babak (816-838). The early years of Ma'mun's reign present another social phenomenon of great political significance - the Shu'ubiyya controversy (815), which progresses with the rise and establishment of independent Persian families, the Tahirid (820), the Saffarid (868), and the Samanid Dynasty (874). It is, therefore, the combined force of these and other conditions of a similar nature that contributed to drive away spirits of devotional character from the scene of continual unrest to the blissful peace of an everdeepening contemplative life. The Semitic character of the life and thought of these early Muhammadan ascetics is gradually followed by a large hearted pantheism of a more or less Aryan stamp, the development of which, in fact, runs parallel to the slowly progressing political independence of Persia.
(2.) The sceptical tendencies of Islamic Rationalism
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which found an early expression in the poems of Bashshar ibn Burd - the blind Persian sceptic who deified fire, and scoffed at all non-Persian modes of thought. The germs of Scepticism latent in Rationalism ultimately necessitated an appeal to a super, intellectual source of knowledge which asserted itself in the Risala of Al-Qushairi (986). In our own times - the negative results of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason drove Jacobi and Schleiermacher to base faith on the feeling of the reality of the ideal; and to the 19th Century sceptic Wordsworth uncovered that mysterious state of mind "in which we grow all spirit and see into the life of things".
(3.) The unemotional piety of the various schools of Islam - the Hanafite (Abu Hanifa d. 767), the Shafiite (Al-Shafi'i d. 820), the Malikite (Al-Malik d. 795), and the anthropomorphic Hambalite (Ibn Hambal d. 855) - the bitterest enemy of independent thought - which ruled the masses after the death of Al-Ma'mun.
(4.) The religious discussions among the representatives of various creeds encouraged by Al-Ma'mun, and especially the bitter theological controversy between the Asharites and the advocates of Rationalism which tended not only to confine religion within the narrow limits of schools, but also stirred up the spirit to rise above all petty sectarian wrangling.
(5.) The gradual softening of religious fervency due to the rationalistic tendency of the earlyAbbasid period, and the rapid growth of wealth which tended
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to produce moral laxity and indifference to religious life in the upper circles of Islam.
(6) The presence of Christianity as a working ideal of life. It was, however, principally the actual life of the Christian hermit rather than his religious ideas, that exercised the greatest fascination over the minds of early Islamic saints whose complete unworldliness, though extremely charming in itself, is, I believe, quite contrary to the spirit of Islam.
Such was principally the environment of Sufiism, and it is to the combined action of the above conditions that we should look for the origin and development of Sufiistic ideas. Given these conditions and the Persian mind with an almost innate tendency towards monism, the whole phenomenon of the birth and growth of Sufiism is explained. If we now study the principal pre-existing conditions of Neo-Platonism, we find that similar conditions produced similar results. The barbarian raids which were soon to reduce Emperors of the Palace to Emperors of the Camp, assumed a more serious aspect about the middle of the Third Century. Plotinus himself speaks of the political unrest of his time in one of his letters to Flaccus(1). 'When he looked round himself in Alexandria, his birthplace, he noticed signs of growing toleration and indifferentism towards
1 "Tidings have reached us that Valerian has been defeated, and is now in the bands of Sapor. the threats of Franks and Allemanni, of Goths and Persians, are alike terrible by turns to our degenerate Rome." (Plotinus to Flaccus; quoted by Vaughan in his Half-hours with Mystics, p. 63.)
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religious life. Later on in Rome which had become, so to say, a pantheon of different nations, he found a similar want of seriousness in life, a similar laxity of character in the upper classes of society. In more learned circles philosophy was studied as a branch of literature rather than f or its own sake; and Sextus Empiricus, provoked by Antiochus's tendency to fuse scepticism and Stoicism was teaching the old unmixed scepticism of Pyrrho - that intellectual despair which drove Plotinus to find truth in a revelation above thought itself. Above all, the hard unsentimental character of Stoic morality, and the loving piety of the followers of Christ who, undaunted by long and fierce persecutions, were preaching the message of peace and love to the whole Roman world, necessitated a restatement of pagan thought in a way that might revivify the older ideals of life, and suit the new spiritual requirements of the people. But the ethical force of Christianity was too great for Neo-Platonism which, on account of its more metaphysical(1) character, had no message for the people at large, and was consequently inaccessible to the rude barbarian who, being influenced by the actual life of the persecuted Christian adopted Christianity, and settled down to construct new empires out of the ruins of the old. In Persia the influence of culture - contacts and
1 The element of ecstacy which could have appealed to some minds, was thrown into the background by the later teachers of Neo-Platonism, so that it became a mere system of thought having no human interest. Says Whittaker : "The mystical ecstacy was not found by the later teachers of the school easier to attain, but more difficult ; and the tendency became more and more to regard it as all but unattainable on eirth." Neo-Platonism, p. 101.
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cross-fertilisation of ideas created in certain minds a vague desire to realise a similar restatement of Islam, which gradually assimilated Christian ideals as well as ;Christian Gnostic speculation, and found a firm foundation in the Qur'an. The flower of Greek Thought faded away before the breath of Christianity; but the burning simoon of Ibn Taimiyya's invective could not touch the freshness of the Persian rose. The one was completely swept away by the flood of barbarian invasions; the other, unaffected by the 'Tartar revolution, still holds its own.
This extraordinary vitality of the Sufi restatement of Islam, however, is explained when we reflect on the all-embracing structure of Sufiism. **The Semitic formula of salvation can be briefly stated in the words, "Transform your will" - which signifies that the Semite looks upon will as the essence of the human soul. The Indian Vedantist, on the other hand, teaches that all pain is due to our mistaken attitude towards the Universe. He, therefore, commands us to transform our understanding implying thereby that the essential nature of man consists in thought, not activity or will. But the Sufi holds that the mere transformation of will or understanding will not bring peace; we should bring about the transformation of both by a complete transformation of feeling, of which will and understanding are only specialised forms. **His message to the individual is - "Love all, and forget your own individuality in doing good to Says Rumi: "To win other people's hearts
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is the greatest pilgrimage; and one heart is worth more than a thousand Kabahs. Kabah is a mere cottage of Abraham; but the heart is the very home of God." But this formula demands a why and a how - a metaphysical justification of the ideal in order to satisfy the understanding; and rules of action in order to guide the will. Sufiism furnishes both. Semitic religion is a code of strict rules of conduct; the Indian Vedanta. on the other hand, is a cold system of thought. Sufiism avoids their incomplete psychology, and attempts to synthesise both the Semitic and the Aryan formulas in the higher category of Love. On the one hand it assimilates the Buddhistic idea of Nirvana (Fana - Annihilation), and seeks to build a metaphysical system in the light of this idea; on the other hand it does not disconnect itself from Islam, and finds the justification of its view of the Universe in the Qur'an. Like the geographical position of its home, it stands midway between the Semitic and the Aryan, assimilating ideas from both sides, and giving them the stamp of its own individuality which, on the whole, is more Aryan than Semitic in character. It would, therefore, beevident that the secret of the vitality of Sufiism is the complete view of human nature upon which it is based. It has survived orthodox persecutions and political revolutions, because it appeals to human nature in its entirety; and, while it concentrates its interest chiefly in a life of self-denial, it allows free play to the speculative tendency as well.
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I will now briefly indicate how Sufi writers justify their views from the Quranic standpoint. There is no historical evidence to show that the Prophet of Arabia actually communicated certain esoteric doctrines to `Ali or Abu Bakr. The Sufi however, contends that the Prophet had an esoteric teaching - "wisdom" - as distinguished from the teaching contained in the Book, and he brings forward the following verse to substantiate his case: "As we have sent a prophet to you from among yourselves who reads our verses to you, purifies you, teaches you the Book and the Wisdom, and teaches you what you did not know before(1).” He holds that "the wisdom" spoken of in the verse, is something not incorporated in the teaching of the Book which, as the Prophet repeatedly declared, had been taught by several prophets before him. If, he says, the wisdom is included in the Book, the word "Wisdom" in the verse would be redundant. It can, I think, be easily shown that in the Qur'an, as well as in the authenticated traditions, there are germs of Sufi doctrine which, *owing to the thoroughly practical genius of the Arabs:D *, could not develop and fructify in Arabia, but which grew up into a distinct doctrine when they found favourable circumstances in alien soils. The Qur'an thus defines the Muslims: "Those who believe in the Unseen, establish daily prayer, and spend out of what We have given them(2),” But the question arises as to the what and the where of the
- Sura 2 v. 146.
2.Sura 2 v. 2.
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Unseen. The Qur'an replies that the Unseen is in your own soul - "And in the earth there are signs to those who believe, and in yourself, - what! do you not then see (1)" And again - "We are nigher to him (man) than his own jugular vein(2)." Similarly the Holy Book teaches that the essential nature of the Unseen is pure light - "God is the light of heavens earth(3)." As regards the question whether this Primal Light is personal, the Qur'an, in spite of many expressions signifying personality, declares in a few words -"There is nothing like him(4)."
These are some of the chief verses out of which the various Sufi commentators develop pantheistic views of the Universe. They enumerate the following four stages of spiritual training through which the soul - the order or reason of the Primal Light - (" Say that the soul is the order or reason of God(5).") has to pass, if it desires to rise above the common herd, and realise its union or identity with the ultimate source of all things:
(1) Belief in the Unseen.
(2) Search after the Unseen. The spirit of inquiry leaves its slumber by observing the marvellous phenomena of nature. "Look at the camel how it is created; the skies how they are exalted; the mountains how they are unshakeably fixed (6)."
- Sura 51 v. 20, 21.
2.Sura 50 v. 15.
3.Sura 24 v. 35.
4.Sura 42 v. 9.
- Sura 17: v. 87.
- Sura 88 : v. 20.
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(3) The knowledge of the Unseen. This comes, as we have indicated above, by looking into the depths of our own soul.
(4) The Realisation. This results, according to the higher Sufiism from the constant practice of Justice and Charity - " Verily God bids you do justice and good, and give to kindred (their due), and He forbids you to sin, and do wrong, and oppress(1)".
It must, however, be remembered that some later Sufi fraternities (e.g. Naqshbandi) devised, or rather borrowed(2) from the Indian Vedantist, other means of bringing about this Realisation. They taught, imitating the Hindu doctrine of Kundalini, that there are six great centres of light of various colours in the body of man. It is the object of the Sufi to make them move, or to use the technical word, "current", by certain methods of meditation, and eventually to realise, amidst the apparent diversity of colours, the fundamental colourless light which makes everything visible, and is itself invisible. The continual movement of these centres of light through the body, and the final realisation of their identity, which results from putting the atoms of the body into definite courses of motion by slow repetition of the
1.Sura 16 : v. 92.
2."Weber makes the following statement on the authority of Lassen :-"Al-Biruni translated Patanjali's work into Arabic at the beginning of the 11th Century, and also, it would appear, the Sankhya sutra though the information we have as to the contents of these works does not harmonise with the Sanskrit originals." History of Indian Literature, p 239.
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various names of God and other mysterious expressions, illuminates the whole body of the Safi; and the perception of the same illumination in the external world completely extinguishes the sense of "otherness". The fact that these methods were known to the Persian Sufis misled Von Kremer, who ascribed the whole phenomenon of Sufiism to the influence of Vedantic ideas. Such methods of .contemplation are quite un-Islamic in character, and the higher Sufis do not attach any importance to them.
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While Iqbal suggests that these Vedantic influences are not present in 'higher sufis', what ever that means, it does not detract from the point that most sufis are tomb worshippers.
good job, next we should send all Brelvis to India as well :k: rock on quas, you are onto something.
Barelvis and Deobandis are limited to the Indo-Pak subcontinent only. Sufism is a global phenomenon on the other hand. The scholars who run 
