Why, God?
by MAUREEN DOWD, nytimes.comDecember 25th 2012
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When my friend Robin was dying, she asked me if I knew a priest she could talk to who would not be, as she put it, “too judgmental.” I knew the perfect man, a friend of our family, a priest conjured up out of an old black-and-white movie, the type who seemed not to exist anymore in a Catholic Church roiled by scandal. Like Father Chuck O’Malley, the New York inner-city priest played by Bing Crosby, Father Kevin O’Neil sings like an angel and plays the piano; he’s handsome, kind and funny. Most important, he has a gift. He can lighten the darkness around the dying and those close to them. When he held my unconscious brother’s hand in the hospital, the doctors were amazed that Michael’s blood pressure would noticeably drop. The only problem was Father Kevin’s reluctance to minister to the dying. It tears at him too much. He did it, though, and he and Robin became quite close. Years later, he still keeps a picture of her in his office. As we’ve seen during this tear-soaked Christmas, death takes no holiday. I asked Father Kevin, who feels the subject so deeply, if he could offer a meditation. This is what he wrote:
How does one celebrate Christmas with the fresh memory of 20 children and 7 adults ruthlessly murdered in Newtown; with the searing image from Webster of firemen rushing to save lives ensnared in a burning house by a maniac who wrote that his favorite activity was “killing people”? How can we celebrate the love of a God become flesh when God doesn’t seem to do the loving thing? If we believe, as we do, that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, why doesn’t He use this knowledge and power for good in the face of the evils that touch our lives?
The killings on the cusp of Christmas in quiet, little East Coast towns stirred a 30-year-old memory from my first months as a priest in parish ministry in Boston. I was awakened during the night and called to Brigham and Women’s Hospital because a girl of 3 had died. The family was from Peru. My Spanish was passable at best. When I arrived, the little girl’s mother was holding her lifeless body and family members encircled her.
They looked to me as I entered. Truth be told, it was the last place I wanted to be. To parents who had just lost their child, I didn’t have any words, in English or Spanish, that wouldn’t seem cheap, empty. But I stayed. I prayed. I sat with them until after sunrise, sometimes in silence, sometimes speaking, to let them know that they were not alone in their suffering and grief. The question in their hearts then, as it is in so many hearts these days, is “Why?”
The truest answer is: I don’t know. I have theological training to help me to offer some way to account for the unexplainable. But the questions linger. I remember visiting a dear friend hours before her death and reminding her that death is not the end, that we believe in the Resurrection. I asked her, “Are you there yet?” She replied, “I go back and forth.” There was nothing I wanted more than to bring out a bag of proof and say, “See? You can be absolutely confident now.” But there is no absolute bag of proof. I just stayed with her. A life of faith is often lived “back and forth” by believers and those who minister to them.
Implicit here is the question of how we look to God to act and to enter our lives. For whatever reason, certainly foreign to most of us, God has chosen to enter the world today through others, through us. We have stories of miraculous interventions, lightning-bolt moments, but far more often the God of unconditional love comes to us in human form, just as God did over 2,000 years ago.
I believe differently now than 30 years ago. First, I do not expect to have all the answers, nor do I believe that people are really looking for them. Second, I don’t look for the hand of God to stop evil. I don’t expect comfort to come from afar. I really do believe that God enters the world through us. And even though I still have the “Why?” questions, they are not so much “Why, God?” questions. We are human and mortal. We will suffer and die. But how we are with one another in that suffering and dying makes all the difference as to whether God’s presence is felt or not and whether we are comforted or not.
One true thing is this: Faith is lived in family and community, and God is experienced in family and community. We need one another to be God’s presence. When my younger brother, Brian, died suddenly at 44 years old, I was asking “Why?” and I experienced family and friends as unconditional love in the flesh. They couldn’t explain why he died. Even if they could, it wouldn’t have brought him back. Yet the many ways that people reached out to me let me know that I was not alone. They really were the presence of God to me. They held me up to preach at Brian’s funeral. They consoled me as I tried to comfort others. Suffering isolates us. Loving presence brings us back, makes us belong.
A contemporary theologian has described mercy as “entering into the chaos of another.” Christmas is really a celebration of the mercy of God who entered the chaos of our world in the person of Jesus, mercy incarnate. I have never found it easy to be with people who suffer, to enter into the chaos of others. Yet, every time I have done so, it has been a gift to me, better than the wrapped and ribboned packages. I am pulled out of myself to be love’s presence to someone else, even as they are love’s presence to me.
I will never satisfactorily answer the question “Why?” because no matter what response I give, it will always fall short. What I do know is that an unconditionally loving presence soothes broken hearts, binds up wounds, and renews us in life. This is a gift that we can all give, particularly to the suffering. When this gift is given, God’s love is present and Christmas happens daily.
© 2012 The New York Times Company.The Problem of Suffering: Muslim Theological Reflections
huffingtonpost.com | Sep 18th 2010 7:51 PMM: "Glorified be God who is above committing evil."
A: "No, glorified be God in whose dominion nothing occurs without God's permission."
M: "Does God will that God be disobeyed?"
A: "Could God be disobeyed against God's will?"
M: "If God denies me guidance and decrees my perdition, does God commit a good or an
evil act?"
A: "If God denies you something that belongs to you, then God commits an evil act. But if God denies you something that belongs to God, then God simply singles out for God's mercy whomever God pleases."
The problem of evil, especially human suffering, exercised classical Muslim theologians as much it does Western philosophers, theologians and scientists today. The issue then was basically the same as it is now: If God is All-Good and All-Powerful, how do we explain the existence of evil? The theological school known as Mu'tazilism emphasized God's all-goodness and argued that since God is All-Good, God cannot be the source of evil. Rather, it is humans who inflict suffering on other humans, entirely on their own. In fact, the Mu'tazilites argued, beyond the original act of creation, humans are not at all dependent on God to do what they do but actually create their own acts! By contrast, the Ash'arite school emphasized God's All-Powerfulness and argued that if God did not control all the affairs of the universe, something other than God could bring about things that went against God's will. For them, whatever occurs had to occur because God willed it. Otherwise, God would be neither All-Powerful, in complete control, nor, ultimately, God.
Both schools sought to absolve God of responsibility for evil. The Mu'tazilites did this by placing evil human acts entirely outside God's power and wholly in the hands of humans (which left them to explain things like earthquakes, floods and cancer). The Ash'arites, meanwhile, argued that if God is truly the All-Powerful Owner of the universe, God must be able to do with creation as God pleases, and no one can sit in judgment over what God does with God's own "property." In fact, the Ash'arites accused the Mu'tazilites of fudging the issue by falsely privileging the human perspective on what actually constitutes good and evil. They denied that humans were the center of some objective moral universe and pointed out that every moral judgment that humans might make could be matched by an opposite judgment by other humans. In this context, human suffering might be evil from the perspective of humans. But this would be no more an objective basis for indicting God than would be the argument of plants and animals against humans for eating them!
Of course, such arguments did not satisfy everyone. The founder of the Traditionalist school once asked rhetorically: If God is wholly unconnected to evil, what role can God play in lifting it? The Maturidite school, meanwhile, went even further. Not only did its founder accept that God could create evil, he actually turned evil's existence into a proof of God's existence! According to him, had the universe come into being on its own, it would have produced nothing that jeopardized its integrity or well-being. Thus, the very existence of evil implies autonomous choice on the part of something that stands outside the system -- God. Yet, while God can, according to the Maturidites, create evil and human suffering, God cannot and does not create evil that does not ultimately serve a wise purpose.
In all of this, Muslim theologians never isolated a single attribute of God (All-Powerful, All-Good, All-Wise, All-Merciful) as the sole basis of God's actions. While Mu'tazilites privileged God's all-goodness, this was tempered by their recognition of God's wisdom, power, autonomy, patience and other attributes. Ash'arites appear stoic in privileging God's all-powerfulness, but only if they are seen as negating God's goodness, mercy, justice and other attributes. In fact, when Ash'arites speak of God's ability to do whatever God pleases, they are only speaking of what God can do. What God actually does will be based not solely on God's brute power but on the total composite of God's attributes. The same applies to Traditionalists and Maturidites.
This strikes me to be perhaps among the most important differences between classical Muslim and many modern, non-Muslim Western discussions on evil and suffering. While the latter seem to isolate a single attribute -- all-goodness, all-lovingness, all-powerfulness -- and decide the issue on that basis alone, the former simply emphasize a single attribute but cling to a more complex composite of divine "character." In this light, the mere existence of evil and suffering could not dispose of the God question. For even if every instance of human suffering could tell us something about the existence and nature of God, every instance of human happiness and well-being must tell us something of equal proof-value about the nature and existence of a complex, multifaceted Creator.
Muslim theologians summed up this dual reality in the notion of living life between the two poles of hope and fear -- hope that the irresistible choices of an all-powerful God would be ultimately tempered by mercy, compassion and love, and fear that they might not. Of course, the very notion of fear is a major problem for religious discourse today, as "organized religion" has so notoriously used it to exploit and subjugate believers. But just because one is paranoid does not mean that one is not being followed. In the end, we are all afraid, if not of God, death, and eternal damnation then of the earthly Hell of loveless objectification, disrespect and nobodyness, a fear that can subject us to régimes of fantasy and exploitation no less debilitating, and no less blasphemous, than religious tyranny and treachery.
But is theology in the end really a match for the brutalities and disappointments of life -- an earthquake, the death of a child, 9/11, the betrayal of a friend, spouse or sibling, the seemingly schizophrenic turning of one's entire society against one? In these moments, it seems to matter little whether one is a Mu'tazilite, Ash'arite, Maturidite or Traditionalist. For, while good theological answers may empower one to understand catastrophe, understanding alone is rarely enough to neutralize the pain of loss or regret. What I need here is solace and reconciliation with the fact of my creatureliness; the courage, honesty and dignity to acknowledge that I am not in control; yet the insight and fullness of soul to see in the enormity of what has happened that I am just as eligible for enormous good as I am for enormous tragedy. Here my reach is ultimately for something "outside the system," something capable of breaking all the rules, of defying the laws of probability and chance -- for me! This is the beginning of the theological impulse.
Yet, while, the theological impulse, however crude, may be the beginning of my relationship with God, it is only the beginning. And I must be careful not to mistake the menu for the meal. Whether I emphasize God's goodness or justice, God's power or wisdom, these mental abstractions will only take on concrete meaning for me in the context of my actual relationship with God. Ultimately, if the real goal of theology is to promote a living relationship with God and not simply to paint a pretty picture of God, perhaps the real value of what it has to say about evil and suffering resides not so much in how it mars or enhances idealized images of God but in how it enriches or impoverishes the human relationship with God.
For a more detailed look at Muslim theology, see my On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam (Oxford, 2002) or, especially on suffering, my Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering (Oxford, 2009).
Satan and mystics
frontlineonnet.com | May 5th 2012![](http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2909/images/20120518290907801.jpg)
FOR centuries, the motif of Iblis (Satan) as a figure to be admired, rather than despised, has continued in Sufi lore and Islamic literature. Of course, Iblis also retained his place in religious belief as the damned one. The lay Muslim and the ulema point to the Quranic verses which describe the fall of Satan from the exalted position he once occupied as Azazil, the archangel, and Satan's confrontation with Adam and Eve leading to their expulsion from heaven. The Sufi resents any suggestion that his faith in the Quran is weaker than that of the maulvi. But he reads the text differently.
God formed Adam from clay and breathed into him His spirit. He ordered the angels to bow before this unique creation made of clay but with the divine spark within. All obeyed, except Iblis. He argued: “I would never prostrate myself before a mortal whom Thou has created out of clay and mould. I am better than he: Thou created me of fire and, him Thou created of clay.” Satan is banished from Paradise for his defiance, and a divine curse rests in him until Judgment Day. But he is given a respite until then so that he can tempt and test man.
The fall of the angel preceded the fall of man. Adam and Eve were asked to live in the garden where God provided for them in abundance. He denied them the produce of only one tree. Iblis tempted them to eat just that. They lost their innocence and were driven to an earthly existence carrying with them the seeds of human aggression and fratricide.
Iblis was sworn to serve as the enemy of man. The Quranic account bears a close resemblance to that in the Bible.
Dr Peter J. Awn of the Department of Religion in Columbia University was the first to explore the theme with a wealth of learning in his work Satan's Tragedy and Redemption: Iblis in Sufi Psychology (E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1983). Whitney S. Bodman, Associate Professor of Comparative Religion, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, discusses his work and proceeds to make his own fascinating exploration of the Quranic verses, the classic Commentaries, the writings of old mystics and modern writings including those of the poet-philosopher Iqbal. The diversity of interpretations of Iblis in modern works, he holds, “is foreshadowed in the diversity of the Quranic story itself. The Quran does not tell a simple story of Iblis but weaves a complex and suggestive narrative that allows for a range of diverse and divergent interpretations. Muslims through the ages have found within that range the opportunity to explore various nuances of the age-old issue of theodicy. The Quran indeed not only allows this exploration but also invites and encourages it.”
The mathnawis of Fariduddin Attar and Jalaluddin Rumi, one of the greatest mystic poets of all time, are rich in allusions to Iblis. In his devotion, Iblis can still hope for God's mercy. Attar wrote: “My heart was filled with His glory;/ I was a confessor of His unity./ Nevertheless, without cause, in spite of all this devotion,/ He drove me from His threshold without warning/… Since without cause I was driven away by Him,/ I can also, without cause, be called back by Him./ Since in God's actions there is no how and why, it is not right to abandon hope in God./ … Since, without cause, You bestowed the gift of existence,/ In the same way, without cause, drown me in Your generosity.”
In the Quran, God assures man that He is “closer to you than your jugular vein.” But He warns also that “truly Satan flows in man's very bloodstream”. He thrives on man's nafs, the lower soul, which leads him astray.
WANG JIAN/AP![](http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2909/images/20120518290907802.jpg)
WHIRLING SUFI DANCERS at an annual ceremony to mark the death anniversary of Jalaluddin Rumi, in Konya, Turkey. The mathnawis of Rumi, one of the greatest mystic poets of all time, are rich in allusions to Iblis.
Satan's fate illustrates the results of pride and intellectual conceit. He revelled in logic, little realising its limitations. “He did not realise that one who bowed to Adam in accordance with God's command was truly bowing to God himself.” Rumi's lines on this failing reflect the Sufi disdain for the intellect as the sole guide in the spiritual progress of man: “He possessed intellect, but since he possessed not the passionate yearning of faith, He saw in Adam only a clay form. Even if you possess the fine points of knowledge, O worthy fellow, that will not open your two eyes to pierce the unseen.”
But, it is to Mansur Al-Hallaj, who went to the gallows declaiming that he was the Truth (God), that one must turn to discover the first elaborations of the complex tragedy surrounding the personality of lblis. For Mansur, lblis is a tragic victim. Condemned he was, but perfect in his devotion to God and preferred self-destruction to a compromise with his faith. To man, lblis is teacher no less than tempter.
Mansur devotes a whole chapter in his Tawasin to lblis. “There was no monotheist like lblis among the inhabitants of the heavens. When the essence revealed itself to him in stunning glory, he renounced even a glance at it and worshipped God in ascetic isolation…. God said to him, ‘Bow.' He replied, ‘To no other.' He said to him, ‘Even if my curse be upon you?' He cried out, ‘To no other.'”
A few centuries later, Sarmad spoke in the same vein. He was a Jewish convert to Sufism who met the same fate as Mansur. Aurangzeb ordered him to be beheaded on the steps of Jama Masjid, Delhi, where his tomb is. Sarmad wrote in one of his quatrains: “Go, learn the method of servantship from Satan: Choose one qibla and do not prostrate yourself before anything.” Satan emerges as a strikingly colourful, almost attractive, figure in Iqbal's Javid-Namah. In another poem, Iqbal has Gabriel and Iblis exchanging taunts and reproaches. Gabriel tells Iblis: “You lost the loftiest position by your denial. What prestige can angels now enjoy in the eyes of the Almighty?” Iblis retorts what a daring and stormy life he leads on earth in contrast to Gabriel's uneventful existence in heaven. The concluding lines read: “If ever you find yourself alone with God, ask Him: Who has coloured the story of Adam with his own blood? I prick the conscience of the Almighty like a thorn. You can only declaim, Oh God! Oh God!”
It is an erudite and fascinating book. Its author's summing up is perfect. “The burdens of discernment and the power of desire, even desire for God, lead mortals into a wilderness of God's own design. Although will and righteousness direct us towards the final destination, that same will and righteousness also lead us astray. Like al-Hallaj's Iblis, we cannot assume that God's command, often interpreted through human medium and contextualised in time and space, with God's will, which is eternal, are the same. The very recognition that there is a difference is the fertile soil of tragedy. We choose, discern, reason, decide, and suffer the consequences, trusting in God's mercy. While it is tempting, in the human search for the straight path, to dismiss tragedy as a failure of faith in God's good mercy, in fact, it is in the tragic that we recognise that the straight path is not well lit. We choose, and suffer the consequences. That is the path.”
23.03.2006 Navid Kermani's "Metaphysical Revolts" Is the Creator a Sadist?
"Globalzation Is a Very Ambivalent Process"
Navid Kermani says that an increase in globalization will not automatically lead to an increase in democratization. In our interview, the renowned German-Iranian publicist draws a balanced view of globalization and global conflicts
Islamists’ Harsh Justice Is on the Rise in North Mali
![](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/12/28/world/africa/Mali/Mali-articleLarge.jpg)
BAMAKO, Mali — Moctar Touré was strapped to a chair, blindfolded, his right hand bound tight to the armrest with a rubber tube. A doctor came and administered a shot. Then Mr. Touré’s own brother wielded a knife, the kind used to slaughter sheep, and methodically carried out the sentence.
“I myself cut off my brother’s hand,” said Aliou Touré, a police chief in the Islamist-held north of this divided nation. “We had no choice but to practice the justice of God.”
Such amputations are designed to shock — residents are often summoned to watch — and even as the world makes plans to recapture northern Mali by force, the Islamists who control it show no qualms about carrying them out.
After the United Nations Security Council authorized a military campaign to retake the region last week, Islamists in Gao, Mr. Touré’s town, cut the hands off two more people accused of being thieves the very next day, a leading local official said, describing it as a brazen response to the United Nations resolution. Then the Islamists, undeterred by the international threats against them, warned reporters that eight others “will soon share the same fate.”
This harsh application of Shariah law, with people accused of being thieves sometimes having their feet amputated as well, has occurred at least 14 times since the Islamist takeover last spring, not including the recent vow of more to come, according to Human Rights Watch and independent observers.
But those are just the known cases, and dozens of other residents have been publicly flogged with camel-hair whips or tree branches for offenses like smoking, or even for playing music on the radio. Several were whipped in Gao on Monday for smoking in public, an official said, while others said that anything other than Koranic verses were proscribed as cellphone ringtones. A jaunty tune is punishable by flogging.
At least one case of the most severe punishment — stoning to death — was carried out in the town of Aguelhok in July against a couple accused of having children out of wedlock.
Trials are often rudimentary. A dozen or so jihadi judges sitting in a circle on floor mats pronounce judgment, according to former Malian officials in the north. Hearings, judgment and sentence are usually carried out rapidly, on the same day.
“They do it among themselves, in closed session,” said Abdou Sidibé, a parliamentary deputy from Gao, now in exile here in the capital, Bamako. “These people who have come among us have imposed their justice,” he said. “It comes from nowhere.”
The jihadists are even attempting to sell the former criminal courts building in Gao, Mr. Sidibé said, because they no longer have any use for it. In Timbuktu, justice is dispensed from a room in a former hotel.
Many of the amputation victims have now drifted down to Bamako, in the south, which despite suffering from its own political volatility has become a haven for tens of thousands fleeing harsh conditions in the north, including the forced recruitment of child soldiers by the Islamists.
Moctar Touré, 25, and Souleymane Traoré, 25, both spoke haltingly and stared into the distance, remembering life before the moments that turned their worlds upside down and made them, as they felt, useless. They gently cradled the rounded stumps that now serve as arms, wondering what would come next.
The two young men had been truck drivers before Gao was overrun last spring. Both were accused of stealing guns; both said they merely acted out of patriotic feeling for the now-divided Malian state, with the intention of helping it regain the north.
In September, Mr. Traoré said, he was summoned from his jail cell after three months of a brutal prison term in which he was often fed nothing. Acquaintances had denounced him to the Islamist police; he was stealing the extremists’ weapons at night, he said, and burying them in the sand by the Niger River.
As ten other prisoners watched, he was ordered to sit in a chair, and his arms were tightly bound to it. With a razor, one of his jailers traced a circle on his forearm. “It pains me to even think about it,” he said, looking down, cradling his head in his remaining hand.
Mr. Touré’s brother, Aliou, the police chief, sawed off his hand. It took three minutes. Mr. Traoré said he passed out.
“I said nothing. I let them do it,” he said.
Moctar Touré had his hand amputated several weeks later. He said it took 30 minutes, though he fainted in the process, awakening in the hospital bed where the Islamists had placed him afterward.
Mr. Touré said his brother had insisted that the sentence be carried out.
“They asked my own brother three times if that was the sentence,” Mr. Touré said. “He’s the commissioner of police in Gao, and he wants to die a martyr,” Mr. Touré said quietly. “He joined up with the Islamists when they came to Gao.”
Aliou Touré, reached by telephone in the Sahara, said the decision was a simple one.
“He stole nine times,” he said of his brother. “He’s my own brother. God told us to do it. God created my brother. God created me. You must read the Koran to see that what I say is true. This is in the Koran. That’s why we do it.”
Moctar Touré had a different story. The Islamists had pressed him into joining their militia, he said, but the training was brutal and Mr. Touré quit. One day they saw him carrying some guns, and they accused him of wanting to subvert the new order. He was jailed.
Sweat streamed down Mr. Touré’s forehead as he recalled the terrible memories, sitting on a bench at a busy bus station here, 600 miles from Gao.
The Islamists had called out five prisoners that morning; four were to be witnesses. They took them all to an unused customs post at the edge of Gao, and Mr. Touré was ordered to wash himself. The Islamists told him what his sentence was to be.
“I was helpless,” he said. “I was completely tied up.”
Now, Mr. Touré spends his days hanging out at the bus station near a cousin’s house. Mr. Traoré hopes to learn a new trade, given that “I can’t be a driver anymore,” he said.
Mr. Touré, for his part, is in despair. “I have no idea what I am going to do,” he said. “I’m completely lost. Night and day, I ask myself, ‘What is going to happen?’ Nobody has helped me.”
The people in Gao have protested the amputations several times, according to Human Rights Watch, even halting them once by throwing stones at the Islamic police and blocking the entrance to the main square.
“To come to Gao and inflict these sentences they call Islamic, I say it is illegal,” said Abderrahmane Oumarou, a communal councilor there, reached by telephone after last week’s amputations.
As for the Islamists’ justice, “I don’t give credit to their accusations,” Mr. Oumarou said. “You can’t replace Malian justice.”
Mr. Oumarou said the Islamists had been busy lately writing “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” in Arabic on the former Malian administrative buildings in Gao.
“Their accusations are false,” he said. “They said weapons were stolen. But these are lies.”
Mansur Hallaj: The Sufis Willful Erosion Of Self
16/04/2012 - Author: Fahad Faruqui - Source: HuffingtonPost.com
For some, Mansur al-Hallaj was a magician, a heretic and a lunatic, who publicly claimed to be one with the One and deserved to be executed for heresy. But to his sympathizers he was a Sufi saint, who was martyred almost 1,100 years ago, on March 26, 922, allegedly for his ecstatic utterance.
The legends surrounding Hallaj are many. Despite the 2,000 pages written by Louis Massignon, we still don't know much about him and there's no way to validate the claim that he ever uttered the words "ana'l-haqq" (I am the Truth), which many believe was the cause of his arrest, followed by nine-year long trial, leading to his public execution.
The are many fictional stories about him that ensued after his execution, including one told by Farid al-Din `Attar, who claims that Hallaj's one-time teacher, Junayd Baghdadi, changed his Sufi robes and put on a turban of a judge to condemn his disciple to death for heresy. But according to Carl Earnst, author of "Words of Ecstasy in Sufism," this is one of the many unfounded legends about Hallaj.
"The only problem with this story is that Junayd died in 910, and the execution took place in 922," he said. "We see another hostile account when Amr al-Makki was reciting the Qu'ran and the story goes that Hallaj said: 'I can write something like that.' And at that point Amr leaves him in disgust. And there are other stories that he looked at a woman, therefore, it was an illegal glance and he was condemned to die. So, people have come up with various romantic, imaginative explanations of his early life."
Since Hallaj's writings were burned to ashes, we can only conjure an image of the Sufi from his only surviving work, Tawasin, which is a collection of short pieces, of which the dialogue between Hallaj, Iblis (Satan) and the Prophet Moses, may God be pleased with him, is most famous.
A short poem that is said to be about Iblis describes the dilemma of Hallaj:
God threw a man into the sea, with his arms tied behind his back,
And said to him: careful! Careful! Or you'll get wet in the water!
(translated by Eric Schroeder)
For Hallaj, Iblis was a "true monotheist," so how could he worship God and still bow down before Adam in prostration?
The Quran tells us that God ordered Iblis to do so, but he refused (Quran 2:34). He then went on to blame God for misleading him and vowed to stray man from the straight path (Quran 7:16, 15:39). "The explanation Hallaj gives," said Professor Ernst, "was that God had given secret hint (ishara) to Iblis that he should not bow down and so he disobeyed, but internally he was the most loyal servant and willing to suffer punishment of being estranged from God and being punished by God in order to demonstrate his loyalty."
Though unorthodox, Hallaj makes Iblis's encounter with God sound like a tragedy.
As far as Hallaj crying out "ana'l-haqq" in public is concerned, notable Sufi masters held it was a result of his spiritual state that is incomprehensible to a layman. A Shadhili-Darqawi shaykh, Muhammad Harun Riedinger, rightly pointed to a metaphor Ghazali employs to explain the limitations of rational mind at comprehending mystical experiences:
"It is like an impotent man asking his friend how his wedding night was and getting the reply: 'Oh, I was in the 7th heaven.' How can the impotent asker 'understand' the bliss of his friend?"
Sufis generally do not consider that Hallaj was claiming to be God, but that his ego had been annihilated. "As `Attar pointed out, when the burning bush said to Moses, 'I am God,' it was not the bush speaking, but God manifesting through it. In the same way, it was God speaking through the voice of the annihilated Hallaj," said Professor Ernst.
Hallaj's spiritual intoxication yielded "theopathic locutions," where God speaks in the first person through a saint. And according to Timothy Winter, lecturer of Islamic Studies at Cambridge University, this "phenomenon is not confined only to mainstream Sufism, but where it is, it is regarded as the consequence of 'fana', the maqam or station of Annihilation. When the personhood of the saint is stripped away by mujahada (spiritual discipline), the reality of the Divine ground of being is manifest."
Al-Ghazali does not discredit the truth content of Hallaj's state but maintains that since only God is the Truth, and it is only He, who has the right to proclaim it and thus the "I" was not Hallaj's self speaking.
Ghazali however held that Hallaj's execution was justified since he had revealed the Divine secret in public.
Hallaj was not sentenced to death for uttering "ana'l-haqq." After his arrest, he was accused of various things, but, according to Professor Ernst, he was pinned down after his prosecutors discovered a document in the handwriting of Hallaj that recommended that those who were unable to afford Hajj pilgrimage could construct a model of Kaaba at home and perform circumambulation (tawaf) and give alms to poor and feed some orphans and they would have completed the Hajj.
"At that point one of the judges turned to Hallaj and said in Arabic 'damuka halal,' that is, your blood may legally be shed. In other words, now we have you," said Professor Ernst, a specialist in Islamic Studies. "But then Hallaj said that I found this in the writings of Hasan al-Basri, so that was a kind of technicality, but he was given no opportunity to explain or repent."
Hallaj was prosecuted at a time when the Abbasid caliph was extremely weak and did not have the ability to make a unilateral decision. In fact, the Abbasids were so weak that they completely removed from power a little over two decades later, in 945, by the Shiite Buyid dynasty coming in from the Caspian.
This raises suspicion on why a Sunni caliph allowed the trial to go on for nine years when the Hanbalis and other conservatives revered Hallaj as a pious man, who prayed 2,000 (yes, 2,000) units of voluntary prayers at a time. "Only the Shiites were critical of him, mainly because he proposed an alternative authority," said Professor Ernst. "When asked, what is your madhab (religious sect)?, Hallaj would say: I pick the most difficult rulings from all schools of law and follow that."
The question of why certain Sufis were executed can only be understood by the politics. While speaking of Sufism, we don't naturally think of politics, we simply assume that a lover of God was martyred by a hardliner, but Mr. Ernst says there is more to it: "You have to look at the political contest and it is only when the political authorities find it useful to persecute an unusual figure that's when the incident takes place."
It seems that diverting attention from crippling internal problems, like corruption within the government, to something ridiculously trivial is an ancient tactic.
But from a Sufi perspective, it is futile to analyze the outward series of events that led to Hallaj's execution. "Martyrdom does not belong in this realm," Shaykh Riedinger notes. "If God is pleased with His bondman and wants to bestow the crown of martyrdom on him, He puts him into such an outward scenario -- political or other wise -- that will eventually lead up to the situation, where the Divine intent is realized."Other political killings of Sufis:
- `Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani, a Persian mystic, who was executed in 1131 by the Suljuks.
- Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi, aka Shaikh al-Maqtul (the Murdered Shaykh), was executed in Aleppo in 1191 by Salah ad-Din Ayyub's son al-Malik al-Zahir.
- Mas`ud Bakk was put to death in Delhi, India, by Firuz Shah Tughluq in the 1390s.
- Imadaddin Nasimi, a Azerbaijani sufi-poet, was skinned alive in 1417.
- Shah Inayat was executed by Yar Muhammad Kalhoro in 1718. This was part of a popular uprising similar to a peasant revolt, so it could equally be considered political.
- Sarmad Kashani was beheaded on Emperor Aurangzeb's orders in 1661 for writing a poetry that was considered heretical.
يقول الحافظ ضياء الدين المقدسى، قال: كتب بعضُهم إلى أبى الوفاء بن عقيل يقول له: صِف لى أصحابَ الإمام أحمد على ما عرفتهم، فكتب إليه يقول: هُم قوْم خُشُنٌ، تقَلّصتْ أخلاقهم عن المخالطة، وغلظت طباعهم عن المداخلة، وغلب عليهم الجدّ، وقلَّ عندهم الهزل، وغربتْ نفوسهم عن ذل المراءاة، وفزعوا عن الآراء إلى الروايات، وتمسكوا بالظاهر تحرّجًا عن التأويل، وغلبت عليهم الأعمال الصالحة، فلم يدققوا فى العلوم الغامضة، بل دققوا فى الورع، وأخذوا ما ظهر من العلوم، وما وراء ذلك قالوا: الله أعلم بما فيها، من خشية باريها. لم أحفظ على أحد منهم تشبيهًا، إنما غلبت عليهم الشناعة لإيمانهم بظواهر الآى والأخبار، من غير تأويل ولا إنكار. والله يعلم أننى لا أعتقد فى الإسلام طائفة محقة، خالية من البدع، سوى من سلك هذا الطريق. والسلام.
كأن الشيخ الجليل يصف واقعنا، فهو لا ينقد تدين الناس وإخلاصهم، وإنما ينقد انغلاقهم، وقد عبر عن ضرورة إضفاء لمسة من العقلانية إلى تفكيرهم، وهو ما سعى إليه ولكن واجهه عتاة الانغلاق ورعاته من أقطاب المذهب الحنبلى، فرموه بالتهمة التقليدية لكل من يخالف أوهامهم فى امتلاك الحق بالكفر والزندقة، وطالبوه بترك الجلوس مع أصحاب العلوم العقلية، وهو ما رفضه الإمام ابن عقيل يقول يريد أصحابنا الحنابلة منى هجران جماعة من العلماء، وكان ذلك يحرمنى علما نافعا، قلت -الذهبى-: كانوا ينهونه عن مجالسة المعتزلة، ويأبى.
ثم ما لبث الأمر أن تطور من تكفير إلى إهدار للدم، حين وجدوه يترحم على الحلاج فى كتاب له، فلم يعوا أن انفتاحه على الآخر جعله يتفهم موقفه وأورثه قدرا من السماحة وتقبل الآخر، وهذه الأخيرة رذيلة كبرى عند منغلقى الحنابلة منذ القدم لذا أحلوا دم مجددهم.
لقد صار الإمام ابن عقيل مدرسة جديدة وسطى بين المدرستين المتصارعتين، فهو حنبلى المذهب والمعتقد وعقلانى الفكر والعلم، يقول العماد الحنبلى فى «الشذرات» «إن أصحابنا -الحنابلة- كانوا ينقمون على ابن عقيل تردده إلى ابن الوليد وابن التبانى شيخى المعتزلة، وكان يقرأ عليهما فى السر علم الكلام واطلعوا له على كتب فيها شىء من تعظيم المعتزلة والترحم على الحلاج، وغير ذلك، ووقف على ذلك الشريف أبو جعفر وغيره، فاشتد ذلك عليهم وطلبوا أذاه فاختفى ثم التجأ إلى دار السلطان». ويقول ابن قدامة المقدسى الحنبلى فى كتابه «تحريم النظر فى كتب الكلام» «وكان أصحابنا يعيرون ابن عقيل بالزندقة وقد أهدر الشريف أبو جعفر -كبير الحنابلة فى عصره- دمه وأفتى هو وأصحابه بإباحة قتله»، اختفى ابن عقيل عنهم وظل طريدا لأربع سنين والحنابلة يطلبونه لقتله إلى أن حدثت حادثة مفزعة يرويها المقدسى بقوله: «وكان ابن عقيل يخفى مخافة القتل، فبينما هو يوما راكب فى سفينة فإذا فى السفينة شاب يقول تمنيت لو لقيت هذا الزنديق ابن عقيل حتى أتقرب إلى الله تعالى بقتله وإراقة دمه، ففزع وخرج من السفينة، وجاء إلى الشريف أبى جعفر فتاب واستغفر»، لقد خرجت الأمور عن كل حدود العقل وجيَّش الحنابلة شبابهم ضد ابن عقيل وباتوا فى سباق للعثور عليه والتقرب إلى الله بدمه، فأدرك الحنبلى العقلانى ابن عقيل خطورة الموقف وأراد إنهاءه فجاءهم مظهرا توبته لتهدأ الأمور، وكتب لهم توبة واعتذارا ليوقفوا هذا الجنون، بينما ظل على معتقده فى السلفية العقلانية البعيدة عن النصوصية الجامدة المتحجرة، ولم يكتشفوا ذلك إلا بعد موته حين وجدوا كتبا بها مدحه للعقلانيين، يروى ابن العماد «ولما مات رحمه الله فى سنة إحدى وستين اطلعوا له على كتب فيها شىء من تعظيم المعتزلة والترحم على الحلاج وغير ذلك».