• TYRIMAI •Sufism in the Light of Orientalism
Algis Uþdavinys,
This article offers a discussion of the problems regarding different
interpretations of Sufism, especially those promoted by the 19th century
Orientalists and modern scholars. Contrary to the prevailing opinions of those
European writers who “discovered” Sufism as a kind of the Persian poetry-based
mysticism, presumably unrelated to Islam, the Sufis themselves (at least before
the Western cultural expansion) regarded Sufism as the inmost kernel of Islam
and the way of the Prophet himself. The title of our paper
is rather paradoxical and not without irony, especially bearing in mind the
metaphysical connotations of the word “light” (nur in Arabic), which is used here, however, in the trivial
ordinary metaphorical sense and has nothing to do with any sort of mystical
illumination. It certainly does not mean that Orientalism would be regarded as
a source of some supernatural light, although the “light of knowledge”, upon
which the academic scholarship so prides itself, may be understood simply as
one hermeneutical perspective among others, thereby establishing the entire
cluster of interpretative tales, or phenomenological fictions which are
nonetheless sufficiently real within their own imaginative historical, if not
ontological, horizons. The
scholarly term “Sufism” (with the “-ism” ending characteristic of the
prestigious tableaux of modern Western ideological constructions) was
introduced in the 18th century by the European scholars, those who
were more or less connected to the late 18th century policies of the
East India Company. It appeared in the context of certain ideological and
cultural predispositions as well as highly selective and idealized expectations.
This context included the myth of the philosophical wisdom of the ancient Persians,
invented or rather revived by the Neozoroastrian reformers in Moghul The
discovery and publication of such semi-phantasmagoric Neozoroastrian texts as Dabistan al-Madhahib (The School of Religions) and Dasatir (rendered as The Sacred Writings of the Ancient Persian
Prophets), which stemmed from the school of Adhar Kayvan and had very
little to do with real Zoroastrism, supported the distorted but fascinating
view that Iranians possessed a distinguished metaphysical heritage which they
had entirely forgotten. Therefore, no wonder the newly discovered “Sufism” is
regarded as a fundamentally Persian spiritual phenomenon to be traced back to
the estimated Indian roots. At
that time (the beginning of the 19th century) the attention and enthusiasm
of the European scholars gradually shifted from the “solemn mysteries and initiations
of ancient With
the rise of the Romanticism, the East in general and India in particular became
a site of attraction to those who were interested in their national and
cultural identity and searched beyond the heritage of the classical Greek and
Judeo-Christian heritage. According to Romantic philosophers (who nonetheless
affirmed a universal humanity), the primary source of all intellectual
development should be traced back to the ancient Indian or Indo-Iranian
monistic milieu, imagined as the starting-point of an exalted metaphysical
tradition which perfectly resonated with their own fundamental assumptions and
was directed against the materialistic philosophy of the Enlightenment. At
least partially, they followed the paradigm established by Schlegel, namely,
that “the highest Romanticism” must be seeked in the Orient which validates the
ideas of a single monistic God and some universal esoteric essence of all great
mythological and religious traditions, i.e. confirms a sort of the perennial
philosophy which rests on the transcendental wholeness and spiritual essence of
the natural world. Since
nothing spiritual was expected from the hated Islamic civilization, the
simplified and misleading picture of which was maintained through the ages and
uncritically equated with the Turkish despotism, the newly discovered Sufism
(at first associated mainly with the supposed liberties of Persian poetry) was
sharply separated from the Islamic religion as such. C. W. Ernst argues that
precisely at the same time the Arabic term islam,
itself originally being rather of secondary importance, was introduced by the
Orientalists as the chief denotion term of the din al-haqq, or din Ibrahim.
The Arabic word din is not simply
equivalent of the Latin religio, but
describes the essential human duty, obligation, debt, custom, judgement, and
divine guidance that is accepted with submission (islam). C. W. Ernst says: “Historically,
Europeans had used the term ‘Muhammadan’ to refer to the religion of the
Prophet Muhammad, although Muslims regard that as an inappropriate label. The
term ‘Islam’ was introduced into European languages in the early nineteenth
century by Orientalists such as Historically,
the European (both Christian and secular) attitude towards Islam was mostly
negative, based on the pre-judicious stereotypes and current Islamophobia which
required to exclude Muslims from Western civilization altogether. Contrary to the
dry and “spiritually impotent” Arabic religion, Sufism appeared as a kind of
universal mysticism dressed in the colorful Persian garbs – a sort of
free-thinking, wine-drinking, erotic and pantheistic spirituality which ultimately
stems from the so-called Indo-Germanic creative spirit. In short, it has
nothing to do with the dry and legalistic religion of Islam. This
view was promoted by the famous scholars related to the East India Company,
such as Sir William Jones (The Sixth
Discourse. On the Persians, 1807), Colonel Sir John Malcolm (The History of Persia, 2 vols., 1815),
and Lt. James William Graham (A Treatise
on Sufism, or Mahomedan Mysticism, 1819). Thus the Western concepts of
Sufism and Islam were consciously separated at the point of their emergence
into and popularization through the current discourse of the Orientalists,
though early in the 19th century the knowledge of Sufism itself was
very poor, incorrect and largely limited to its marginal manifestations in the
Moghul spiritual universalism or rather eclecticism. To quote C. W. Ernst once again: “Although
European scholars assumed that Sufism therefore had to derive from Indian yoga
or some other extra-Islamic source, Sufi spiritual circles used a religious
vocabulary based almost entirely on Arabic and Islamicate sources. […] Modern
Muslim reformists subsequently mirrored the Europeans in regarding Sufism as
something apart from Islam; the difference lay in the reformists’ negative
evaluation of Sufism as an innovation and a foreign intrusion into Islam, while
the Orientalists saw Sufism as something positive. Yet this negative attitude
of reformist Muslims toward Sufism is relatively recent; for most of Islamic
history, this form of spirituality and mystical practice has been a major
feature of Muslim societies”.[2] Consequently,
although at-tasawwuf (now rendered
and popularized as Sufism), for the majority of Muslims before the 18th
century was inextricably linked with the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad, being
simply a sincere form of devotion and the religious science of divine realities
and mystical knowledge which originated with the Prophet himself, the
Orientalists of the 19th century re-interpreted it as the
anti-dogmatic (therefore anti-Islamic) monistic or pantheistic movement. Hence
this movement is characterized as negating of any constrictions of sacred laws,
rites, and customs, even of all external religion as such, and promulgating the
inner freedom through the ecstatic union with the divine. This attractive picture
of the extra-Islamic sect of free-thinkers and lovers was in accord to the
Romantic approach to religion and, ultimately, to the universalized Protestant
sensibilities. One
should not forget that from the 16th century onwards Since
the early Orientalist hermeneutical perspective turned at-tasawwuf into Sufism and interpreted it in the terms of romantic
universalism – which itself may be viewed as an Orientalized prolongation of
the pre-modern Christian theological, social, and scientific debates – a short
investigation of Orientalism is required before we should turn to Sufism again. Although
Orientalism in a certain metaphysical sense may be related to the Pythagorean
and Platonic tradition (as “a perennial Platonic trait”, according to John
Walbridge[4])
and to the Neoplatonic fascination with ancient wisdom of the Eastern civilizations
– exotic lands of wisdom, spices, and fabulous sages – such terms as “Orient”
and “Orientalism” have gone out of scholarly fashion recently. It would be too
naïve to imply that all those who lived eastwards from the Mediterranean
shores of “A
closely related question concerns the dangers of treating the Orient itself as
a single undifferentiated entity. Crucial terms such as ‘East’, ‘Orient’, and
‘West’ become devices for reducing endless complexities and diversities into
manageable and falsifying unities, a semantic artifice which has encouraged us
to think in terms of the contrasting of East and West in some eternal
transcendent opposition”.[5] Hence,
“Orientalism” is a highly problematic term, especially in the context of the
contemporary political tensions and plots produced by the international Zionism
as well as ideological counter-attacks launched by the Westernized Orientals
themselves, often equipped with the Psychoanalitic, Marxist, and Postmodernist
weapons. The
term “Orientalism” itself first appeared in the third decade of the 19th
century in Now
the fashionable current tide, supported by the silly-minded European humanists
and therefore rarely perceived as self-destructive, regards “Orientalism” as a
pejorative term – merely an ideologically motivated “epistemic construction”.
This sheerly negative and rather politicized attitude is largely based on the
bald rhetoric proclaimed by Edward Said, the Westernized Palestinian
propagandist and demagogue, namely, that “the value, efficacy, strength,
apparent veracity of a written statement about the Orient therefore relies very
little, and cannot instrumentally depend, on the Orient as such.” Accordingly,
by displacing any such “real thing” as the Orient, “that Orientalism makes
sense at all depends more on the West than on the Orient, and this sense is
directly indebted to various Western techniques of representation”.[6] It
follows that “the Orient” is constructed as a “system of ideological fictions”
whose chief purpose consists in legitimizing Western cultural and political
superiority. Such hypnotizing perspective, largely based on the Marxistly
tinted post-Enlightenment ideals of scientific detachment and liberalism,
itself is characteristically “Western” and paradoxically neglects the
historical evidence that hermeneutical attitudes of the so-called Western
imperialism, in their essence, differ little from those of any other state or
empire, if not a village, be it in ancient Assyria, China, Russia, Abbasid
califate or elsewhere. In addition, one can speak (really, not only
metaphorically) of the social imperialism of modern democracy, the mental
imperialism of Postmodernism, the totalitarian imperialism of mass-media magic
and so on. As Harry Oldmeadow correctly observes: “An
obvious irony, which seems to have escaped the attention of some of the more
fervent and over-heated critics of Orientalism, is that assault on the Western
fabrication of the Orient is itself a product of the Western intellectual
heritage of which they are such strident critics. In Said’s case the irony is
sharpened by the fact that the ‘defense’ of the Islamic civilization is conduct
by a rootless intellectual of Protestant upbringing who is quite unable to
conceal his own distaste for the religion that provides the very raison d’etre of the civilization in
question. Moreover, his argument is rooted in ideas and values (secular
humanism, high culture) which are irredeemably Western and modernistic, and
thus quite out of tune with those values that Muslims themselves hold most
dear”.[7] If
the Orient (first and foremost the traditional Eastern thought, metaphysics,
symbolism, mysticism, spiritual exercises and sacred art) is thoroughly fabricated
by the bad Western guys and therefore must be abolished for the sake of the
so-called profane positivistic objectivity, eventually nothing remains that
could be valued as an attractive spiritual paradigm. In fact, Orientalistic
studies often were motivated by the quest for truth and knowledge and
constituted part of the counter-culture directed against the predominated
Western attitudes, be they imperialistic, positivistic, or rationalistic. However,
in spite of frequent accusations for the supposed irrationality and wanting to
escape into unreality, the Orientalism of the 18th–19th centuries
was associated with the affirmation of intellect and reason, in contrast to the
perceived irrationalities of European ideologies and institutions, such as the
aggressive and simple-minded Christian missionary activities. The East ought to
be happy if it still remains spiritually attractive in spite of all disillusion
that derives from the immediate encounter with the modernized East along with
its countless stupidities. Now
if we come back to Sufism and those numerous Orientalistic interpretations as
regards its origin and nature, we can discern several different hermeneutical
trends and attitudes. However, if one is inclined to accept blindly the
Foucauldian principle that knowledge can never be “innocent” and follow the
Saidian prejudices based on “the Parisian oracles of Postmodernism”,[8]
one all too easily would be locked in facile mental games. Consequently,
Orientalism of any kind – which cannot be simply identified with the ruling
imperialistic ideologies, but covers all scholarly studies – would be
demolished. There
is no any sane method of so-called “disinterested scholarship” which would
enable to argue, for example, that Hamilton A. R. Gibb, W. Montgomery Watt and
Louis Massignon are Orientalists, but William C. Chittick, Seyyed Hossein Nasr
and Michael A. Sells are not, or vice versa. And if any interpretation is an
oppressive ideological construction (so that the question of truth, be it
hermeneutical, logical, phenomenological, linguistic, metaphysical or
imaginative, is put aside altogether) what compels one to believe the
assertions of those who are marching behind the banners of anti-Europeanism,
anti-elitism, anti-Orientalism and liberally motivated anti-Traditionalism
which rejects metaphysics, sacred law and order? As
regards Sufism, its separation from Islam or its recognition as an integral
part of the latter is a matter not so much of “Orientalism” (as if the term
itself would be transformed into an ideologically-motivated substance, polluted
beyond recognition), but of the concrete historical circumstances, dominating
philosophical attitudes, and spiritual constitution of the interpreter himself,
i.e. his archetypal preparedness (as Ibn al-‘Arabi would say), his intellectual
intuition, intention, knowledge and the scope of creative imagination.
Therefore, as there are different levels of being, understanding, creativity,
spiritual exegesis, and imagination, so there are different levels and kinds of
Orientalism which in its entirety includes not only such early European
scholars as Sir William Jones, Friedrich August Deofidus Tholuck, and E. H. Palmer,
but also Henry Corbin, Frithjof Schuon, Annemarie Schimmel and, finally, Edward
Said himself. But
what about real or imagined Sufism? Perhaps the problem is mainly that of a
particular spiritual vision, hermeneutical perspective, and method of
interpretation. According to Titus Burckhardt, the Sufi doctrines can be
understood only from the inside through the intellectual penetration which
transcends the limits of discursive thought. He says: “This
it is which explains why almost every erudite European who has studied Sufism
has mistaken its true position. Men of modern culture are no longer accustomed
to think in terms of symbols and so modern investigations are unable to
distinguish between what, in two analogous traditional expressions, belongs to
the external form and what is the essential element, and for that very reason
the erudite European is led to see borrowings by one tradition from another
where in fact there is only a coincidence of spiritual vision, and fundamental
divergencies where it is only a question of differences in perspective or in
mode of expression. It is inevitable that such confusions should arise since a
university training and bookish knowledge are in the West deemed sufficient
authority for concerning oneself with things which in the East remain naturally
reserved to those who are endowed with spiritual intuition and who devote
themselves to the study of these things in virtue of a true affinity under the
guidance of those who are the heirs of a living tradition”.[9] However,
it is rather paradoxical that the classical Sufi thought (including the oral
instructions transmitted by the concrete shaykhs) is very little (if at all)
concerned with the so-called “transcendent unity of religions” as it is
understood by the contemporary Traditionalists who (though viewing Sufism from
“within”), in fact, employ the Western metaphysical techniques of esoteric
interpretation. The
great majority of the Sufis themselves (except of those partially related to
the Moghul eclecticism and influenced by the 19th century
Orientalistic scholarship) regard at-tasawwuf,
or Sufism, as the very kernel (al-lubb)
of Islam and trace it back to the Quranic revelation and the Sunnah. Of course,
historical developments of Sufi doctrines and practices are much more
complicated than they are usually presented by the idealized Sufi tales and
standard hagiographies, therefore perhaps one could speak of many Sufisms, at
least, of many different branches, styles, and methods of the same spiritual
stream whose unity is maintained as the principal requirement of its own
“metaphysical genre” that ensures legitimity. The
Sufi path itself (in spite of its Neoplatonic, Hermetic, and Gnostic
connotations) is viewed as an esoteric or inward (batin) aspect of Islam, to be distinguished from its exoteric or
external (zahir) side. The popular
but uncritical tendency to render the word al-batin
as “esoteric” derives from the spiritual hermeneutics of the Western
Romanticism and Occultism. In this case it simply refers that at-tasawwuf as direct contemplation and
tasting (dhawq) of divine realities
is distinguishable from the fulfilling of the socio-political religious laws. In
fact, there are three ascending stages of ad-din
revealed to the Prophet: 1) al-islam
(submission); 2) al-iman (faith); and
3) al-ihsan (perfect virtue,
excellence). The realm of al-ihsan is
equated with Sufism, understood as a way (tariqah)
which connects an external submission and the Prophetic law (shari‘ah) to the inner truth (haqiqah). Accordingly, the third stage (al-ihsan) implies not only an inner
faith and a total disengagement from worldly concerns, but also a sort of
divine knowledge (ma‘rifah). The true
arif, or gnostic, is no longer in
possession of himself: his human attributes are annihilated in the state of fana’ and replaced by the divine
attributes in the state of baqa’ to
such extent that God Himself can speak through his mouth, saying “I am Truth” (ana’l-haqq). The
state of ihsan consists “of
worshiping Allah as if you see Him,
for if you do not see Him, He sees you”, according to the famous hadith. Hence, the man in a state of islam is the muslim, in a state of iman –
the mu’min, and in a state of ihsan – the muhsin. The muhsin is
regarded as the perfect khalifah who
rediscoveres “the most beautiful form” in which he was originally created. His
heart becomes like a well-polished mirror in which the divine Face can be
reflected. This “reflective” nearness to God is the ultimate goal of Sufi
practices thereby a Muslim devotee, faqir,
becomes a friend (wali) of God. The
word faqir (like its Persian
equivalent darwish) comes from faqr, meaning “poor”, and serves to
designate the Muslim Sufi whose paradigm is the following Quranic verse: “O
men, you are the poor (al-fuqara’)
before God, He is the Rich” (Qur’an
XXXV.115). The
Muslim faqir must realize that he is
completely dependent in relation to God, thereby achieving the state of ideal
poverty and inner detachment. To become a perfect receptacle of the divine
Names and Attributes means restoration of the primordial proximity, sometimes described
as union (ittihad), between the
creature and the Creator. The science (‘ilm)
of ihsan is the key to the spiritual
path of fana’ (annihilation of human
attributes) and baqa’ (subsistence in
the divine Attributes). Both the law (shari’ah
as an indispensable foundation) and the path (tariqah) ultimately repose on the Qur’an and Sunnah of the Prophet.
According to Victor Danner: “Sufism
bases itself on the Qur’an and the Sunnah, mystically interpreted. This leads
to the conclusion that the Qur’an is really the first and foremost mystical
text of Islam and that the Prophet is the first and the greatest of the Sufi
sages and saints, even through the term sufi,
in reality, is of later origin”.[10] This
attitude regarding the Sufi path radically differs from that professed by the
Orientalists of the 19th century who, as a rule, viewed Sufism as an
essentially extra-Islamic phenomenon. However, nobody could accuse V. Danner
(who is an Orientalist anyway) that his understanding is nothing more than a
tissue of mendacious fabrications on behalf of the Western imperialism. As
early as the beginning of the 20th century, Reinold A. Nicholson,
the famous British Orientalist, described Sufism as “the religious philosophy
of Islam”, aimed at “the apprehension of divine realities” and therefore
translatable as “mysticism”, in spite of the earliest Sufis having been
ascetics rather than mystics. Thus he says: “So
far, there was no great difference between the Sufi and the orthodox Muslim
zealot, except that the Sufis attached extraordinary importance to certain Koranic
doctrines, and developed them at expense of others […].”[11] Understood
as “mysticism” (although this term is also problematic), Sufism is a teaching
about the divine reality (haqiqah)
and a method to realize tawhid, the
central Quranic doctrine of unity. This method is based on the initiatic pact (bay‘ah) and consists in the remembrance
of God (dhikr Allah). The pact of
Divine Contentment (bay‘at al-ridwan),
mentioned in the Qur’an (XLVIII. 10),
guarantees the transmission of the Muhammadan grace (barakah muhammadiyyah) and constitutes the protocol of conduct (adab) between the Prophet and his
companions as well as between the Sufi shaykh (as a representative of the
Prophet) and his disciples. The
Muhammadan barakah enables to open
the “eye of the heart” (‘ayn al-qalb)
whose knowledge is not discursive or “attained” (husuli), but “presential” (huduri),
i.e. this knowledge has the immediacy and directness of sensual knowledge but
concerns the intelligible or spiritual realities. Therefore at-tasawwuf itself is regarded as the
heart of Islam (qalb al-islam),
though it represents the outlook which is the most inward (batin) in relation to the external and legalistic framework of the
Islamic religion, at the same time being able to absorb many pre-Islamic
(Syrian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, especially Stoic and Neoplatonic) ideas
and doctrines provided that they 1) express the analogous spiritual truths, 2)
may be reinterpreted in the Quranic terms and 3) integrated into the fabric of
Sufi symbolism. The
term tasawwuf is related to the Greek
word sophia by Abu Rayhan al-Biruni
(c.973–1048), but most likely it derives from the Arabic word suf, meaning “white wool” and referring
to the type of clothing liked by the Prophet and his early followers, or at
least by the early Muslim ascetics in “All
the metaphysical doctrines of the East and some of those of the West have
frequently been labeled as pantheistic, but in truth pantheism is only to be
found in the case of certain European philosophers and in some Orientals who
were influenced by Western thought of the XIX century. Pantheism arose from the
same mental tendency which produced, first, naturalism and then materialism.
Pantheism only conceives of the relationship between the Divine Principle and
things from the point of view of substantial or existential continuity, and
this is an error explicitly rejected by every traditional doctrine”.[12] In
order to compare 1) the systematic metaphysical and philosophical pictures of
Sufism (be they correct or incorrect), produced by the Orientalistic
scholarship from the early Romantic and Modernist to the late Traditionalist
writers (many of whom are the initiated Sufis themselves, including Jean-Louis
Michon, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings, Frithjof Schuon, William C. Hittick,
Michael Chodkiewicz, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Sachiko Murata) with 2) those rather
strange, aphoristic and seemingly inconsistent descriptions abundantly found in
the classical Sufi literature, we should provide certain typical examples of
how tasawwuf was understood and
presented in the time of al-Junayd of Baghdad, Abu-l-Qasim ‘Abd al-Karim
al-Qushayri, or al-Hujwiri. So, what is Sufism? “Sufism
is that God makes you die to yourself and live in Him”. “Sufism
is patience before God’s commands and prohibitions, contentment and submission
to destiny’s course” “Sufism
consists of two things: looking in one direction and living in one way” “Sufism
is the heart standing with God, with nothing in between”. “Sufism
is to adhere to and act by the Qur’an
and the example of the Prophet, abandoning self-will and innovation, honoring
and respecting the masters, regarding both the esteem and anger of others as
nothing; it is the regular recitation of litanies and the avoidance of all liberal
interpretations (of the Qur’an and
tradition)”. “Sufism
is wakefulness, attentiveness, and discernment in fending off all fantasy and
nonsense”. “Sufism
is to grasp the realities, speak of the subtleties, and despair of everything
else in creation”. “Sufism
is one-pointed concentration and solitude (with God)”. “Sufism
is to watch closely one’s states and to maintain adab” “Sufism
is patience in the face of fate, acceptance from God’s hand, and voyages
over deserts and mountains”. “Sufism,
all of it, is various forms of adab.
Each moment, each station, and each state has its proper action. To adhere to
the behavior that is proper to the moment is to attain the measure of the great
Sufis; he who fails in this adab can
never imagine nearness to God, nor that God might accept his behavior”. “Sufism
is to eat sparingly, to be at ease with God, and to flee from creatures”. “It
has been said that Sufism is purification of the heart from conformity with the
habits of creatures; separation from those moral qualities belonging to
‘nature’ (the imprints and impressions of the lower world) by transforming
them, purging them of deviations, and basing them upon a ‘golden mean’ without
either exaggeration or neglect; wiping out all human attributes through
spiritual warfare, ascetic practice, and involvement with spiritual
attributes”. “Sufism
is to abandon one’s own opinion and submit to God’s will”. “Sufism
is to walk towards God on God’s feet”. “Sufism
is to know One, desire One, see One, and become One”.[13] The
bewildering amount of different, sometimes mutually excluding statements and
maxims regarding the nature of tasawwuf,
often resulting from the legitimate spiritual rhetoric and pious exaggeration,
provides an illustration of the rich tradition faced with the supernatural and
its marvelous aspects. It is difficult to escape a paradoxical suspicion that
the early Sufis would be entirely perplexed if they could read the works about
Sufism produced by the contemporary Orientalistic scholarship, be it critically
deconstructive or “metaphysically objective”. Probably they would reject this
kind of research altogether as incorrect or irrelevant, even if it tries to
express and confirm the “inner perspective” of Sufism itself, interpreting it
in philosophical terms of transcendence and immanence, esoterism and exoterism,
and constantly referring to certain “perennial wisdom” which, however, is not
in every respect tantamount to the din
Ibrahim of the ancient Arabs. Therefore
one ought to recognize not only the historical distance between the so-called
classical Sufism and contemporary scholarship with its critical sense and need
for logical satisfaction, but also comprehend that all scholarly discourses of
Orientalism partially depend on a particular hermeneutical perspective and
highly selective creative imagination. To separate Sufism from Islam altogether
or to show it as the heart of Islam is one thing. Quite another thing is to
realize that even those Traditionalist writers as F. Schuon and T. Burckhardt,
who defend Sufism as the inner kernel of Islam and at the same time speak of
the universal esoterism, tacitly stand on the rational foundations of Western
scholarship related to the idealistic German philosophy, Romantic Orientalism
and the critical standards of the Enlightenment which they otherwise rashly
criticize and ridicule. This
discrepancy between the traditional Sufi style of self-presentation and the
systematic (be it critical or uncritical) contemporary thought is clearly
understood by F. Schuon himself who, however, interprets it as a contrast of
the “symbolistic nature of Eastern dialectic” (along with Semitic insistance on
the subjective accidents and religious emotionalism) versus both the Platonic
and Vedantic concern with an “objective intellection”, which preserves critical
sense, but ultimately also depends upon inspiration. F. Schuon argues as
follows: “When
comparing the literatures of West and East, one often has the impression that
the critical faculty of Orientals and that of Westerners are situated on
different planes; Westerners cannot help feeling shocked by certain
peculiarities and inconsequences in the dialectic of Orientals; for example,
the fact of supporting a good thesis by weak arguments or of ignoring strong
arguments or of exploiting them insufficiently, not to mention a tendency to
exaggerate… The superlativism of Arab dialectic consists in emphasizing a
quality or a defect by means of a logically unacceptable hyperbole, while
keeping silent about the particular relationship which makes the superlative
intelligible; now this superlativism is not unconnected with the importance
which in the Arab and Islamic mentality is attached to the image of the sword
and to the experience of instantaneity… the thought is comparable to a
sword-stroke; it is an act rather than a vision”.[14] What
kind of conclusion may be drawn from all what has already been said by the
different Orientalists? The only timid conclusion would be as follows: all
kinds of interpretation are based on certain metaphysical, ontological, or
political premises and the particular hermeneutical lines of presentation.
Therefore the constructed and reconstructed philosophical world-views (in spite
of their historicity and even empirical evidence) may be partially described as
“scholarly imagined traditions”, or rather one should speak of the “imaginative
rhetoric about imagined traditions”. However, the crucial thing is to remember
that both “objective” and “subjective” scholarly imagination, understood in
such particular historical as well as metaphysical, poetical, and alchemical
sense, sometimes proves to be more efficient and real than the positivistically
impoverished “reality” of “naked facts”. [1] Carl W. Ernst,
Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary
World, [2] Ibid., 166. [3] Mohammed
Sharafuddin, Islam and Romantic
Orientalism. Literary Encounters with the Orient, [4] John Walbridge,
The Wisdom of the Mystic East. Suhrawardi
and Platonic Orientalism, [5] J. J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment. The Encounter
between Asian and Western Thought, [6] Edward Said, Orientalism, [7] Harry
Oldmeadow, Journeys East. 20th
Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions, [8] Ibid. [9] Titus Burckhardt, An Introduction to Sufism, trans. D. M. Matheson, Wellingborough: Crucible, 1980, 10–11. [10] Victor Danner,
The Early Development in Sufism. Islamic
Spirituality. Foundations, ed. S. H. Nasr, [11] Richard A. Nicholson,
The Mystics of Islam, [12] T. Burckhardt, 1980, 28. [13] All quatations
are selected by Javad Nurbakhsh in his Sufism.
Meaning, Knowledge, and Unity, [14] Frithjof
Schuon, Logic and Transcendence, trans.
Peter N. Townsend, [ Aukðtyn ]
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