When the Lights Hurt the Eyes

Ref DRUMZ #: 400

[Harimau: LOL no kidding... though id give them more credit. Melrose place? What about seinfeld? George=ganesh...]

Actually, I have never seen Melrose Place. But since most of the goddesses/celestial nymphs etc., have the figure of Heather Locklear (according to stone sculptures and bronze figures), I decided to use Melrose Place. None of the Earth Mother figures for us Hindus... you know what I mean: women with HUGE bottoms AND thunder thighs as seen in terra-cotta figurines from Mesopotamia or Moenja-daro/Harappa. Ugh! Also, there is quite a lot of lusting after goddesses and celestial nymphs by gods and sages (rishis), so I thought Melrose Place would be more appropriate. Plus Hinduism had to accommodate everything it encountered in the subcontinent and so whatever strange stories the local-yokels had also got into some of the mythology.

What with Ganesh, the seven-headed serpent, demons of both sexes with various deviations from the human form, we are set for a long-running TV series. It would certainly beat Pokemon in terms of the number of action figures (that is dolls for boys) and that should bring joy to those corporate types who drool at the possibility of marketing to the 6-year-old crowd, of which there is a perennial supply... I wonder why.

Anyway, time to pack my bags and check out airline tickets to SFO.

PS. You are right about Ganesh. While his head got replaced by that of an elephant (the first animal to wander by after Shiva had cut of his son`s head and promised his wife to bring him back to life by attaching the first head he could get), the jolly old fellow seems to have decided to match his body with his head and to have gone for binge-eating at the local smorgasbord.

DRUMZ #400
``Hinduism makes much more sense when one is high (im being serious). Thats the only conscious state in which u can feel timelessness (theres only the present, nothing else).Its also clearly delineates between your lower and higher self. Its like your higher self steps back and lets your lower self run things (this made much more sense last night)...``

DRUMZ, I`m afraid thats backwards. Its the higher self which needs to run things for the lower self and get its lower self ducks in line. A lower self at cross purposes with the higher self is supposed to only increase confusion and clouding of the mind and intellect, leading to demoralization and unhappiness.

btw, good luck with your exams and may the distractions cease and desist while you go after the beast !

re: Drumz # 400

About the confusion between the real and the unreal (Man and God), there is a very nice couplet that captures the mystical sense very beautifully. Like many of these dohas, the following has many meanings -

``Saree beech naree hai, ki naari beech saari hai;

Naaree hi ki saaree hai, ki saree hi ki naaari hai.``

At one level, the meaning is clever but mundane -

The poet sees a woman in a saree and wonders whether it is the saree wrapping the woman or the vice versa.

At another level, though, the poet captures the confusion between the real and the unreal, the ``substance`` and the ``clothing`` very well.

LOL...I know, this is getting a bit too ``out there.``

Very good luck to you on your exams. Remember, those exams are no Maya :)

Sadna: no need to explain, I have exams on friday... Yeah which is God, which is man, good Q. The egyptains had a pun for this. Anibus was thei God with a dog face (when followers become leaders)... Anyways I find the purpose question to be more pressing during these times of famine and disaster. There better be some real important reason for all this to do down.

PS: Im going off on a tangent here, but Hinduism makes much more sense when one is high (im being serious). Thats the only conscious state in which u can feel timelessness (theres only the present, nothing else). Its also clearly delineates between your lower and higher self. Its like your higher self steps back and lets your lower self run things (this made much more sense last night)...

sattar: Good point. There`s some theory out there which states that alexander took the shahada in egypt...

Harimau: LOL no kidding... though id give them more credit. Melrose place? What about seinfeld? George=ganesh...

Prem: Yeah i hear that. They say the more info one knows, the less enlightened he`ll will be. Im not really trying to get an answer (cuz there isnt one), just seeing what other think about this.

Tahmed: one more thing, Egypt is far more connected with christianity then islam. The egyptian God was depicted as the sun because the sun gives life to us all. Now look at the christian God. How many times is it called sun like (bright, light). There are some who suggest that Jesus was actually osirus from egypt (both were god`s son who were crucified and ressurected).

Hamzad: I did not mean they directly worship Muhammed but u must admit there`s a lot of idol worship around him (...why I like perwaiz). Muslims keep looking back to mecca as if it was a perfect society, this is why there is little reform in Islam. We have this defeatist attitue ``how can i do better then the prophet of islam?``

I dont agree that there is a true meaning to Allah. If u look at ancient israel, the nation was divided into a north and south. The north believed in YHWH while the south believed in El. This is why the Bible has two different creation stories.

Israel`s struggle with God was not a physical fight, but akin to a jihad in Islam, when we strive to be righteous. Elohim/Ibrahim have the masculine suffix Him. The word elohim is very interesting. `Eloh` is a female singular while Him is a masculine plural. Kinda like the yin/yang. You`re very right about jews being influenced by every society they met. About the pyramids, there is no evidence that jews were taken as slaves in egypt.

The pataan theory seems very interesting. much of their culture seems to be jewish. Scripture is more symbolic then literal. The 12 tribe`s may simply symbolize mans struggle on earth. See the number 12? 12 imams, 12 disciples, 12 months, signs, labours of hercules...

PS: That article was amazing. It touched on everything especially symbolism. A correction would be that the mysteries originated in egypt as was the concept of ``know thyself.`` What they would do is select some disciples and first teach them the lesser mysteries full of symbolism. Those deemed worthy would be taught the higher mysteries (symbolism explained). Sufism, Vedanta hinduism, christianity, judaism are all rivers leading to one ocean.

Tahmed: You`re absolutely right about gehennem (hebrew/arabic). Most Rabbis should be able to do the math on this one. The jews actually didnt believe in heaven or hell. They believed in Shoel, which was a mass ressurection of people after they died. No eternal punishment nonsense. Islam borrows heavily from judaism and a bit from zoroastrianism. (ever heard that on the day of judgement youll have to walk on a rope and if that rope can`t support u, youll fall down? Thats zarathustra, not muhammed`s saying). The jews are great assimilators, they inhereted the heaven and hell concept after their hellenization-Greek contact). Muhammed Asad brilliantly addresses the issue of how there is no such thing as heaven and hell in Islam...

Im really big on egypt. I havent heard the cat thing about muhammed. I believe Abu Hurirah`s name means ``father of the cats.`` Cats were given divine properties in egypt (cats dont adhere to time, they do whatever...). A lot in islam comes from egpyt. Moses own name comes from the egyptian Moshe. Abraham was known to frequent egypt (u can break down his name ab-Father, Ra-sun God and Ham-the name for egypt kemet, after one of noahs three sons: HAM). Many islamic rites are depicted in heiroglyphs there including salat. Our garb during hajj comes from egypt. Many historians say that Moses was actually akhenatin (the first monotheistic prophet).

I dont think lah connects but if u break it down, ALLAH, ELLAH, then u get the root El, the name of God in judaism. El is also the name of the SOURCE in Egypt (the source has exactly the same connotations as brahma in hinduism).

Bapu: Thats a good piece on western philosophy. Most dont know that reincarnation was described in the new testament, before they cut it out.

For Prem,Hobbity,& DRUMS

René Guénon

by Martin Lings

The following is a transcript of a lecture given in the autumn of 1994 at the Prince of Wales Institute in London and sponsored by the Temenos Academy.

As regards the early part of the life of René Guénon our knowledge is very limited because of his extreme reticence. His objectivity, which is one aspect of his greatness, made him realize the evils of subjectivism and individualism in the modern world, and impelled him perhaps too far in the opposite direction; he shrank at any rate from speaking about himself. Since his death book after book has been written about him and the authors have no doubt felt often extremely frustrated at being unable to find out various things and as a result, book after book contains factual errors.

What we do know is that he was born at Blois in France in 1886, that he was the son of an architect; he had a traditional Catholic upbringing and at school he excelled in philosophy and mathematics. But at the age of 21 he was already in Paris, in the world of occultism, which was in full ferment at that time, about 1906-08. And the dangers of that world were perhaps counteracted for him by the fact that it was more open to wider perspectives. It seems to be about this time, in Paris, that he came in contact with some Hindus of the Advaita Vedanta school, one of whom initiated him into their own Shivaite line of spirituality. We have no details of time or place and he seems never to have spoken about these Hindus nor does he seem to have had further contact with them after one or two years. But what he learned from them is in his books and his meeting with them was clearly providential. His contact with them must have been extremely intense while it lasted. His books are just what was and is needed as antidote to the crisis of the modern world.

By the time he was nearly 30, his phenomenal intelligence had enabled him to see exactly what was wrong with the modem West, and that same intelligence had dug him out of it altogether. I myself remember that world in which and for which Guénon wrote his earliest books, in the first decade after the First World War, a monstrous world made impenetrable by euphoria: the First World War had been the war to end war. Now there would never be another war; and science had proved that man was descended from the ape, that is, he had progressed from apehood, and now this progress would continue with nothing to impede it; everything would get better and better and better. I was at school at that time and I remember being taught these things with just one hour a week being taught the opposite in religious lessons. But religion in the modem world had long before then been pushed into a corner. From its corner it protested against this euphoria, but to no avail.

Today the situation is considerably worse and considerably better. It is worse because human beings have degenerated still further. One sees far more bad faces than one did in the 20s, if I may say so, at least, that is my impression. It is better because there is no euphoria at all. The edifice of the modern world is falling into ruin. Great cracks are appearing everywhere through which it can be penetrated as it could not be before. But it is again worse because the Church, anxious not to be behind the times, has become the accomplice of modernity.

But to return to the world of the 20s, I remember a politician proclaiming, as who would dare to do today, ``We are now in the glorious morning of the world.`` And at this same time, Guénon wrote of this wonderful world, ``It is as if an organism with its head cut off were to go on living a life which was both intense and disordered.`` (from East and West first published in 1924).

Guénon seems to have had no further contact with the Hindus and no doubt they had returned to India. Meantime, he had been initiated into a Sufi order which was to be his spiritual home for the rest of his life. Among the ills which he saw all around him he was very much preoccupied with the general anti-religious prejudice which was particularly rife among the French so-called intelligentsia. He was sure that some of these people were nonetheless virtually intelligent and would be capable of responding to the truth if it were clearly set before them. This anti-religious prejudice arose because the representatives of religion had gradually become less and less intelligent and more and more centered on sentimental considerations. In the Catholic Church especially, where the division of the community into clergy and laity was always stressed, a lay figure had to rely on the Church, it was not his business to think about spiritual things. Intelligent laymen would ask questions of priests who would not be able to answer these questions and who would take refuge in the idea that intelligence and pride were very closely connected. And so it is not difficult to see how this very anti-religious prejudice came into being especially in France.

Now Guénon put himself the question: Since these people have rejected Christianity would they be able to accept the truth when expressed in the Islamic terms of Sufism, which are closely related to Christian terms in many respects? He decided that they would not, that they would say that this is another religion; we have had enough of religion. However Hinduism, the oldest living religion, is on the surface very different from both Christianity and Islam, and so he decided to confront the Western world with the truth on the basis of Hinduism. It was to this end that he wrote his general Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines. The French was published in 1921 to be followed in 1925 by what is perhaps the greatest of all of Guénon`s books, Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta.

He could not have chosen a better setting for his message of truth to the West because Hinduism has a directness which results from its having been revealed to man in a remote age when there was not yet a need to make a distinction between esoterism and exoterism, and that directness means that the truth did not have to be veiled. Already in Classical Antiquity the Mysteries, that is esoterism, were for the few. In Hinduism however they were the norm and the highest truths could be spoken of directly. There was no question of `Cast not your pearls before swine` and `Give not holy things to dogs`. The sister religions of Hinduism, for example, the religions of Greece and Rome, have long since perished. But thanks to the caste system with the Brahmins as safeguarders of religion we have today a Hinduism which is still living and which down to this century has produced flowers of sanctity.

One of the points to be mentioned first is the question of the distinction which has to be made at the divine level and which is made in all esoterisms but cannot be made exoterically, that is, in religions as given to the masses today -- the distinction between the Absolute and the beginnings therein of relativity. The Absolute which is One, Infinite, Eternal, Immutable, Undetermined, Unconditioned, is represented in Hinduism by the sacred monosyllable Aum, and it is termed Atmâ, which means Self, and Brahma which is a neuter word that serves to emphasize that it is beyond all duality such as male and female. And it is also termed Tat (That), just as in Sufism, the Absolute is sometimes termed Huwa (He). Then we have what corresponds in other religions to the personal God, Ishvara, which is the beginning already of relativity, because it is concerned with manifestation, the term that Hindus use for creation, and creation is clearly the beginning of a duality -- Creator and created. Ishvara is at the divine level, yet it is the beginning of relativity.

In all esoterism one finds the same doctrine. Meister Eckhart came into difficulties with the Church because he insisted on making a distinction between God and Godhead -- Gott und Gottheit. He used the second term for the Absolute, that is for the Absolute Absolute, and he used God for the relative Absolute. It could have been the other way around, it was just that he needed to make some difference. In Sufism one speaks of the Divine Essence and the Essential Names of God such as The One, The Truth, the All-Holy, The Living, and the Infinitely Good, al-Rahmân, which contains the roots of all goodness and which is also a name of the Divine Essence. Below that there are the Names of Qualities, like Creator, the Merciful, in the sense of one who has Mercy on others, and that is clearly the beginning of a duality. In every esoterism this distinction is made even at the level of the Divinity. It cannot exist below esoterism because it would result in the idea of two Gods; a division in the Divinity would be exceedingly dangerous in the hands of the mass of believers. The Divine Unity has to be maintained at all costs.

Now Guénon, in this book, traces with all clarity the hierarchy of the universe from the Absolute, from the personal God, down to the created logos, that is buddhi, which is the word which means intellect and which has three aspects -- Brahmâ (this time the word is masculine), Vishnu and Shiva. Strictly speaking in the hierarchy of the universes these devas (this is the same word linguistically as the Latin deus), have the rank of what we would call archangels. Hinduism is so subtle however that though they are created they can be invoked as Names of the Absolute because they descend from the Absolute and they return to the Absolute. They can be invoked in the sense of the Absolute Brahmâ, in the sense of Atmâ, in the sense of Aum.

The Hindu doctrine, like Genesis, speaks of the two waters. The Quran speaks of the two seas, the upper waters and the lower waters. The upper waters represent the higher aspect of the created world, that is, of the manifested world, corresponding to the different heavens in which are the different paradises. It is all part of the next world from the point of view of this world. The lower waters represent the world of body and soul, and all is a manifestation of the Absolute.

In Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta, Guénon, having traced the manifestation of man and having shown what is the nature of man in all its details, then proceeds to show how, according to Hindu doctrine, man can return to his absolute source. It ends with the supreme spiritual possibility of oneness with the Absolute, a oneness which is already there. A Brahmin boy at the age of eight is initiated by his father and the words are spoken into his ear, ``Thou art That,`` meaning thou art the Absolute, tat vam asi. This shows how far we are from religion as understood in the modern world. But that truth which is called in Sufism the secret, al-sirr, is necessary in all esoterism in the present day, otherwise it would not deserve the name esoterism.

Another aspect of Hinduism which made it the perfect vehicle for Guénon`s message is the breadth of its structure. In the later religions it is as if Providence had shepherded mankind into a narrower and narrower valley: the opening is still the same to heaven but the horizontal outlook is narrower and narrower because man is no longer capable of taking in more than a certain amount. The Hindu doctrine of the samsâra, that is, of the endless chain of innumerable worlds which have been manifested, and of which the universe consists, would lead to all sorts of distractions. Nonetheless, when one is speaking of an Absolute, Eternal Divinity, the idea that that Infinitude produced only one single world in manifesting itself does not satisfy the intelligence. The doctrine of the samsâra does, on the other hand, satisfy, but the worlds are innumerable that have been manifested.

Another point in this respect is that Hinduism has an amazing versatility. It depends first of all on Divine Revelation. The Vedas and the Upanishads are revealed; the Bhagavad Gita is generally considered as revealed but not the Mahâbhârata as a whole, this ``inspired`` epic to which the Gita belongs. In Hinduism this distinction between revelation, sruti, and inspiration, smriti, is very clearly made, as it also is in Judaism and in Islam: The Pentateuch, that is, the first rive books of the Old Testament, were revealed to Moses, the Psalms to David, the Qur`ân to Muhammad. That is something which Christians as a rule do not understand. They have difficulty in realizing, in the Old Testament for example, the difference between the Pentateuch and the Books of Kings and Chronicles which are simply sacred history, inspired no doubt, but in no sense revealed. For Christians the revelation is Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh; the concept of ``the Word made book``, which is a parallel revelation, does not enter into their perspective.

Hinduism also has the avatâras, and that a Christian can well understand, that is, the manifestations, the descents, of the Divinity. Of course a Christian would not recognize the descents of the Hindu avatâras because for the average Christian there has only ever been one descent and that is Christ Himself, but Hinduism recognizes the descent as an inexhaustible possibility and it names ten avatâras who have helped maintain the vitality of the religion down to the present day. The ninth avatâra which is called the foreign avatâra is the Buddha himself because, although he appeared in India, he was not for Hindus but clearly for the Eastern world. The breadth of Hinduism is seen also in its prefiguration of exoterism which is the recognition of the Three Ways. These are still Ways back to God -- the three margas -- the way of knowledge, the way of love, and the way of action -- three ways which correspond to the inclinations and affinities of different human beings.

Another point which makes the terms of Hinduism so right for giving Europeans the message is that they have as Aryans an affinity with Hinduism because they are rooted in the religions of Classical Antiquity which are sister religions to Hinduism; their structure was clearly the same as the structure of Hinduism. Of course they degenerated into complete decadence and have now disappeared. Nonetheless our heritage lies in them and Guénon gives us, one might say, the possibility of a mysterious renascence in a purely positive sense by his message of the truth in Hindu terms. This affinity must not be exaggerated however, and Guénon never advised anybody who was not a Hindu, as far as I know, to become a Hindu.

His message was always one of strict orthodoxy in one esoterism, but at the same time of equal recognition of all other orthodoxies, but his purpose was in no sense academic. His motto Was vincit omnia veritas, Truth conquers all, but implicitly his motto was `Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you`. Implicit in his writings is the certainty that they will come providentially to those who are qualified to receive his message and they will impel them to seek and therefore to find a way.

Guénon was conscious of having a function and he knew what belonged to this function and what did not belong to it. He knew that it was not his function to have disciples; he never had any. It was his function to teach in preparation for a way that people would find for themselves, and this preparation meant filling in gaps which are left by modern education. The first of these gaps is the failure to understand the meaning of the transcendent and the meaning of the word intellect in consequence, a word which always continues to be used, but the intellect in the traditional sense of the word, corresponding to the Sansrit buddhi, had simply been forgotten in the Western world. Guénon insisted in his writings on giving this word its true meaning which is perception of transcendent realities, the faculty which can perceive the things of the next world, and its prolongations in the soul are what might be called intellectual intuitions which are the preliminary glimmerings before intellection in the full sense takes place.

One has the impression that Guénon must have himself had an intellectual illumination at quite an early age. He must have perceived directly spiritual truths with the intellect in the true sense. He fills in gaps by explaining the meaning of rites, the meaning of symbols, the hierarchy of the worlds. In modern education the next world is left out altogether whereas in the Middle Ages students were taught about the hierarchy of the faculties and correspondingly the hierarchy of the universe.

Now I must for the moment speak on a rather personal level, but perhaps it may not be without interest. When I read the books of Guénon in the early thirties it was as if I had been struck by lightning and realized that this was the truth. I had never seen the truth before set down as in this message of Guénon`s that there were many religions and that they must all be treated with reverence; they were different because they were for different people. It made sense and it also was at the same time to the glory of God because a person with even a reasonable intelligence when taught what we were taught at school would inevitably ask, well what about the rest of the world? Why were things managed in this way? Why was the truth given first of all to only the Jews, one people only? And then Christianity was ordered to spread over the world, but why so late? What about previous ages? These questions were never answered, but when I read Guénon I knew that what he said was the truth and I knew that I must do something about it.

I wrote to Guénon. I translated one of his first books, East and West, into English and I was in correspondence with him in connection with that. In 1930 Guénon left Paris, after the death of his first wife, and went to Cairo where he lived for twenty years until his death in 1951. One of my first ideas upon reading Guénon`s books was to send copies to my greatest friend who had been a student with me at Oxford, because I knew he would have just the same reaction as I had. He came back to the West and took the same way that I had already found, a way of the kind that Guénon speaks of in his books. Then being in need of work he was given a lectureship at Cairo University, and I sent him Guénon`s poste restante number. Guénon was extremely secretive and would not give his actual address to anybody; he wanted to disappear. He had enemies in France and he suspected that they wished to attack him by magic. I do not know this for certain but I know that Guénon was very much afraid of being attacked by certain people and he wished to remain unknown, to sink himself into the Egyptian world where he was, the world of Islam. And so my friend had to wait a long time before Guénon agreed to see him. But when the meeting finally took place Guénon became immediately attached to him, and told him that he could always come to his house whenever he liked.

In the summer of 1939 I went to visit my friend in Cairo and when I was there the war broke out. I had a lectureship in Lithuania at that time and, being unable to return there, I was forced to stay in Egypt. My friend, who had become like a member of Guénon`s household, collecting his mail from poste restante and doing many other things for him, took me to see Guénon. A year later I was out riding in the desert with my friend when his horse ran away with him and he was killed as the result of an accident. I shall never forget having to go to tell Guénon of his death. When I did he just wept for an hour. I had no option but to take my friend`s place. I had already been given the freedom of the household and very quickly I became like one of the family. It was a tremendous privilege of course. Guénon`s wife could not read and she spoke only Arabic. I quickly learned Arabic so I was able to talk to her. It was a very happy marriage. They had been married for seven years without children and Guénon, who was getting fairly old -- he was much older than she was -- had had no children with his first wife, so it was unexpected when they began to have children. They had four children altogether. I went to see Guénon nearly every day. I was the first person to read The Reign of Quantity, the only book he wrote while I knew him since the other books had all been written earlier. He gave it to me chapter by chapter. And I was able also to give him my own first book when I wrote it, The Book of Certainty, which I gave him also chapter by chapter. It was a very great privilege to have known such a person.

During this time a rather important question was resolved. The Hindus with whom Guénon had made contact in Paris had given him a wrong idea, not a strictly Hindu idea, about Buddhism. Hinduism recognizes the Buddha as the ninth avatâra of Vishnu but some Hindus maintain that he was not an avatâra, that he was just a revolted kshatriya, that is a member of the royal caste, against the Brahmins and it was this latter view which Guénon had accepted. Consequently he wrote about Buddhism as though it was not one of the great religions of the world. Now Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon and Marco Pallis altogether decided that they would remonstrate with Guénon about this point. Guénon was very open to being persuaded and in 1946 I took Marco Pallis to see him with the result that he agreed that he had been mistaken and that the mistakes must be rectified in his books. Marco Pallis started sending him lists of many pages that needed correction.

Guénon almost never went out except when he came to visit us. I would send a car to fetch him and he would come with his family to our house about twice a year. We lived at that time just near the pyramids outside of Cairo. I went out with him only once and we went to visit the mosque of Sayyidnâ Husayn near al-Azhar. He had a remarkable presence; it was striking to see the respect with which he was treated. As he entered the mosque you could hear people on all sides saying, `Allâhumma salli `alâ Sayyidnâ Muhammad,` that is, `May God rain blessings on the Prophet Muhammad`, which is a way of expressing great reverence for someone. He had a luminous presence and his very beautiful eyes, one of his most striking features, retained their lustre into early old age.

With his book on the Vedanta ranks his book on symbols, entitled Fundamental Symbols: The Universal Language of Sacred Science, which was published after his death from all the articles which were written about symbols in his journal, Études Traditionelles. It was marvelous to read these articles when they came out month after month, but this book takes us back almost to prehistoric times as does Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta but in a wider sense. Everything is a symbol of course, it could not exist if it were not a symbol, but the fundamental symbols are those which express eloquently aspects of the Supreme Truth and the Supreme Way. For example, one of these aspects of both the Way and the Truth is what is called the `axis of the world`, the axis which runs through all the higher states from the center of this state. That is the meaning of what is called the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is symbolized by many particular trees: the oak, the ash, the fig and others throughout the world. The axis is the Way itself, the way of return to the Absolute. It is also symbolized by man-made things: the ladder, the mast, weapons like the lance, and the central pillar of edifices. As architects know, many buildings are built round a central axis which is not in fact there, which is not materialized. Very often in traditional houses the hearth is the center of the house and the chimney through which the smoke rises is another figure of the axis. And things which are normally horizontal are symbols of the axis: a bridge is also a symbol of the world axis. Witness the title Pontifex, the maker of the bridge, which is given to the highest spiritual authority of the Church -- the bridge, which is the bridge between Heaven and earth.

Another fundamental symbol is the river. There are three aspects to the river: the crossing of the river symbolizes the passage from this world to a higher world, always, but then there is the river itself. There is the difficulty of moving upstream which symbolizes the difficulties of the spiritual path, of returning to one`s source against the current. There is also the symbolism of moving in the other direction to the ocean, of returning finally to the ocean; that is another symbol of the Way. In this book amongst many other symbols, Guénon also treats of the symbolism of the mountain, the cave, the temporal cycle. In the temporal cycle the solstices of summer and winter are the gates of the gods according to Hinduism. The gate of the gods is the winter solstice, in the sign of Capricorn; the gate of the ancestors is the summer solstice, in the sign of Cancer.

As I have said, Guénon did not like to talk about himself and I respected his reticence, I did not ask him questions and I think he was pleased with that. To sum up what his function was, one might say that it was his function, in a world increasingly rife with heresy and pseudo religion, to remind twentieth century man of the need for orthodoxy which itself presupposes firstly a divine intervention, and secondly a tradition which hands down with fidelity from generation to generation what Heaven has revealed. In this connection we are deeply indebted to him for having restored to the world the word orthodoxy in the full rigor of its original meaning, that is, rectitude of opinion, a rectitude which compels the intelligent man not merely to reject heresy, but also to recognize the validity of all those faiths which conform to those criteria on which his own faith depends for its orthodoxy.

On the basis of this universality, which is often known as religio perennis, it was also Guénon`s function to remind us that the great religions of the world are not only the means of man`s salvation, but that they offer him beyond that, even in this life, two esoteric possibilities which correspond to what were known in Graeco-Roman Antiquity as mysteria pava and mysteria magna, the `Greater Mysteries` and the `Lesser Mysteries`. The first of these is the way of return to the primordial perfection which was lost in the fall. The second, which presupposes the first, is the way to gnosis, the fulfillment of the precept, `know thyself`. This one ultimate end is termed in Christianity deificatio, in Hinduism, yoga, union, and moksha, deliverance, in Buddhism, nirvana, that is, extinction of all that is illusory. And in Islamic mysticism, that is Sufism, tahaqquq, which means realization and which was glossed by a Sufi sheikh as self-realization in God. The Mysteries and especially the Greater Mysteries are explicitly or implicitly the main theme of Guénon`s writing, even in The Crisis of the Modern World and The Reign of Quantity. The troubles in question are shown to have sprung ultimately from loss of the mysterial dimension, that is, the dimension of the mysteries of esoterism. He traces all the troubles in the modern world to the forgetting of the higher aspects of religion. He was conscious of being a pioneer, and I will end simply by quoting something he wrote of himself, ``All that we shall do or say will amount to giving those who come afterwards facilities which we ourselves were not given. Here as everywhere else it is the beginning of the work that is hardest.``



Dr. Martin Lings taught for many years at the University of Cairo before becoming Keeper of Oriental Manuscripts at the British Library. The author of numerous books including The Eleventh Hour, Symbol and Archetype, and Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources, he is an authority on tradition and on Sufism in particular.

Prem & DRUMS.

Razors` Edge,by Somerset Maugham very good.Even better to watch the movie(60s/70s I think)--ends in Kashmir!

C.S.Lewis,another tall figure.He is played by Anthony Hopkins in ``....``(cant remember now) made in the 1990s---superb,sweet-sad,depressing movie,---------a must!

Drumz,

The question of the ``purpose of life`` is probably even more complex than that of the ``nature of life.`` :)

When I get a little more time I will share with you, again, my own layman`s understanding. As the Buddha said, these issues don`t really help much, but I know very well - those of us who like to follow the most difficult path of Gnana (knowledge) do need to do our best to know.

Regards.

CORRECTION:-----my post 387

Hobbity!

The site is www.nasr.org

All others also welcome to access it and benefit!

ESpecially die-hard RATIONALISTS.

tahmad---384.

No concept in the Abrahamic faiths is related to idolatory practices.Hence its iconoclastic power.It nullifies everything,LA,to clean the slate and write something radical & revolutionary.This has been the case since Adam,the first muslim.

What you are talking about,IMO,is the Parsee(Pehlvee)concept of dozakh & Firdous.The letter is from Paradosaa(eng.Paradise) which is a generic word for garden.Similary must be,i guess dozakh.There is another concept called barzakh,if you can recall----a kind of waystation for souls,generally shown in english movies(heaven can wait eg).

The origin of Jahannam I do not know myself and couldn`t locate either.Janna,as you know is from the arabic salaasee mujjarrad /JNN ...meaning that which is hidden from view.Corresponding words are Jinn(Genies),Juneen(Genes,Genetics),Junoon & MajnooN(brain-bug) etc etc.As you can see it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Firdous origin.So I believe must be Jehanna.

PS:I hope you will be able to enjoy & appreciate the following shair(by an almost unknown--Lais Qureishi)

Kyaa koi jahannam thhaa pas e pardah e afkaar?

ikk lums e guraizaan sey huay sholaa bajaan humm.

meaning:

Sometimes our thoughts,rationality,take us so close to heresy that we can almost feel the hell-fire searing our mind.

So ``was there some kind of hell as a back-drop to my thoughts,that as I was brushed by it,was afire``

PS:my suggestion that if you are into self-study & want to be an interpretor yourself then please get hold of Lughaat e Quraan by Pervaiz(no I am not a pervaizee & I do not have the dictionary myself but would want to).Use it as an aid,as another viewpoint.WE can all learn & enjoy from what others have done...and they are all towering giants.Ants like myself are happy to just hang around them.

Too late to enroll in a madressah;).(written to irritate you.Please get irritated).

Ref DRUMZ #: 378

[Can someone explain Brahma and its relation to the demigods? Is there sort of a heavenly society out there?]

Yeah; if you read Hindy mythology it seems like an early version of Melrose Place. Get someone to explain how Ganesha got his elephant head. Depending on which part of India, you get different stories.

Coming to think of it, I think I should just translate those stories into movie scripts; what with modern animatronics, I am sure we can get an extremely realistic Ganesha on the screen. And He would be a damned sight better than Jabba the Hutt. Anyway, most of the Star Wars crap is recycled mythology of several different civilizations.

I guess it is time for me to make a trip to Skywalker Ranch to see if I can meet with George Lucas about a new movie series.

Bapu (#383):

Yes, Quran has declared that prophets have been sent to all nations of the world. Also, thinking from a slightly different angle, it would not make sense if God created humans, gave them free-will, will hold them accountable for their actions one day, without guiding them about right and wrong. Indeed divine guidance has been provided through prophets, who conveyed the message of God Almighty to their respective nations.

Ahmadi-Muslims believe that Socrates was a prophet of Allah for the Greek nations. In his book, “Revelations, Rationality, Knowledge, and Truth”, Mirza Tahir Ahmad Sahib (Head of the Ahmadi-Muslim community) has discussed Socrates in more detail … interesting read. Besides Socrates … Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Confuscius, Zaratushtra, and others are also considered divine prophets by Ahmadis.

It is further interesting to note that all religions, in their pristine form, had a common message: worshipping One God, and having love and compassion for all of God’s creations. It is only later, that this message got modified as it passed through time and across various geographical regions. This explains the apparent differences between the teachings of various religions, all claiming to be revealed by the Almighty God.

I wish that mullahs, instead of threatening others with “jihad by sword”, understood this message and tried to integrate it into their lives. After all, Muslims claim to be the followers of the Prophet who came to unite all nations under one unified message, … the message of Quran. It would help if we, instead of squabbling over the differences, try to appreciate the common traits of various religions, and try to better understand the source of their teachings.

Asad

Bhardwaj-----386

What professor Dutt is saying is correct but also nothing new.

Iqbal considered nation-state,defined in geographical terms and setting roots to it, tantamount to idolatory.Even for hindus.

Nevertheless,as invariably happens in certain circles both in India & Pakistan,a spin is put on it as if he was against partition.Not at all.He was least concerned with mechanics.This subject has been hashed & rehashed so much that such report by an academic todays smacks of toadying upto the AMU & trying to flog a dead horse.

In laymans` terms he was not against muslims acquiring property as opposed to stay as annexe- tennants or in the servant quarters.

The point it that an obssession with greencards or US-friendship should not be at the expense of compromising upon Islamic principles & practice.

His vision for a vibrant,dynamic,forward-looking Ummah is increasingly coming into focus for others to witness as well.

Hobbity:

Regarding your enquiry about William chittick et el.

Please search the web for following names:Chittick,guenon,schuon,nasr.

www.nasr.org will introduce you to Hossein Nasr.All these muslim thinkers are bringing about a quiet revolution in the western mind and exercise a tremendous clout in the intellectual realm.

Just reading Nasr`s biography will blow away(I hope!)your mind.

PFRESS RELEASE

ALIGARH, Nov. 29 - Noted historian Professor V.N. Dutta of Kurukshetra University said that the great Urdu Poet, Dr. Mohd. Iqbal was opposed to territorial nationalism. He wanted the Muslims to be free from the geographical limits inspired by the British Government and he emphasized the necessity of a separate Muslim cultural identity.

Professor Dutta was delivering the second Professor Ather Ali Memorial Lecture on ``Iqbal, Jinnah and the Partition of India`` at Aligarh Muslim University. Prof. Dutta said that Iqbal gave a blue print for the solution of the Hindu-Muslim question. Iqbal did not contemplate a separate Muslim state but a North-West Muslim region within a loose Indian Federation comprising the Muslim-majority provinces but excluding Indian States, with full residuary powers by transferring such powers to the Centre as it deemed fit.

Prof. Dutta said that Iqbal advisied Jinnah to rebut Jawaharlal Nehru`s `aesthetic socialism` on the ground that the Muslim problem was not economic, but cultural. As a visionary Iqbal crowed the dawn of Pakistan of which Jinnah became an accessory by his tactical skills as a first class politician. Iqbal would thus go down in history as a herald of Pakistan and a political mentor of Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

In his presidential address, AMU Vice-Chancellor, Mr. M. Hamid Ansari said that Iqbal was not Only a great Urdu poet but a political philosopher. He was an instrument to create a good society, good citizen and good Muslim.

Noted historian Prof. Irfan Habib said that partition was a great tragedy. He said that the two nation theory cannot be justified by both Hindu Maha Sabha and the Muslim League.

In her welcome address, Prof. Shireen Mousavi, Secretary of the Aligarh Historians Society said that Ather Ali always strenuously opposed the communal perception of history. She said that Ather Ali was the founder member of the Indian History Congress and served as Secretary. He was one of the four distinguished authors of the Report to the Nation as the Babri Masjid, Ayodhya (1990), which was published in many Indian languages.

Prem #374
Thanks for the anuvAdam, thats a good one. sheel means good conduct, I believe.

PS: Have you been competing against tea leaves lately? :)

DRUMZ #378
``Whats the meaning? Whats the point of life? ``

DRUMZ, this is a question which invariably turned up to trouble me as a burning issue whenever exams approached, I donot know why :)

I personally believe this question cannot be answered with certainty, because its answer cannot be verified or corroborated and hence its a matter of faith.

I believe the Hindu philosophy says that our inherent finiteness limits our comprehension of infinity, implying that some questions are beyond answering until Self-realization. It also says, I believe that the absolute is also a bhogkartha or enjoyer of creation, through his creatures, or an audience/participator in `leela` or the playing out of prakriti, meaning the absolute affirms life and vice versa.

On the other hand, IMO, even the essentially anthropological `mirror question` of why man created God(if one chooses to see it that way) cannot be answered with certainity or verifiablity either, I believe. Extrapolations on the meaning of life and man based on rationality and hard information impose their own limitations on man`s self-image,IMO. If the concept of a multisplendored wellthought-out God carries the power to make man less of a tree hanger with a beeper and more `Godlike` in his own defination, then finally which is God and which is man :)?

DRUMZ #379 On the subject, I read somewhere that the word ``Gehennem`` (meaning ``hell``, and used in urdu, arabic, hebrew) is after a place that actually existed in ancient jerusalem. Something to do with executed prisoners being tossed there and the place was considered to be the pits (dead bodies and so forth). I wonder if you or hamzad or others more learned than myself came across this.

ALso, on Allah, the dictionary simply says Al is the arabic ``the`` and Lah is God (as in ``You the man!!``) - any connection of Lah to Ra (the ancient Egyptian sun God? And any connection between the common theory that the Prophet loved cats (this being among the many irrelevant and dumb theories prevalent among us muslims) and the fact that cats were venerated in ancient Egypt (with plenty of cat mummmies still sitting around in Cairo Museum).

Were the Greek philosophers Muslim?

by

Macksood Aftab

Some of the most influential personalities in human history are those of the Greek philosophers and scholars, such as Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. The Ancient Greeks worshipped many gods, but now there is evidence that some of the most influential of the Greeks may have been Muslim or very close to it.

Plato, for example, is considered the founder of modern monotheism. Even though he lived in Greece, in western philosophy the origin of monotheism is traced back to Plato. Plato`s philosophy later played a large role in the development of Christian as well of Islamic thought. After the fall of Greece, the neo-platonistic tradition was kept alive in the then flourishing Islamic world.

Socrates was Plato`s teacher. Almost all of his writings were destroyed, but from the records we have left, we find that encouraged the youth of Athens to question their ideas of gods (for which he was sentenced to death) and overall seems to be very Islamic in tone.

Plato`s principal student was Aristotle. Aristotle`s principles dominated the world for a millennium after his death. One example is the creation of logic. Never before in the history of mankind was logic discussed or taken as a science. There is absolutely no evidence of this before the time of Aristotle. This is astonishing to many historians, because they claim that every event in human history is based on an event that occurred before it. For example, Einstein`s theory of relativity was based on works of previous scientist of the 19th and previous centuries. But never has anything or any philosophy been created ex nihilo -- out of nothing. Only the messengers of God can introduce entirely new knowledge or science. Therefore, in a way the creation of logic can be considered a kind of divine act. And indeed, Aristotle was in fact regarded as an ancient prophet by certain Medieval Islamic scholars and certainly as an intellectual messenger by the rest. Much of Ibn Sina`s philosophy is based on the work of Aristotle.

Aristotle, furthermore, was the teacher of Alexander the Great. It has been argued by many Islamic scholars that the mention of the ``Two-horned one`` or Zul-qarnain in the 18th Chapter of the Holy Quran is actually referring to Alexander the Great. In this chapter he is presented as a righteous servant of God.

The Quran says that God has sent messengers to all nations, and it would seem illogical if God did not send prophets to the thriving civilization of the ancient Greeks. Given this and the fact that Alexander`s teacher was Aristotle, whose teacher was Plato, and whose teacher was Socrates, linking them all to certain common beliefs, which could, in light of the above evidence, surely be Islam.

Drumz #378,#379

If you want to get a global view of philosophy of religion,since Islam & before the 7th century ,you may .Islam more is a way of life ,a believe system ,more sort of submission & not philosophers like here through ages who were explorer of thaught ,reason & questioning ,which is not part of any religionbut a pursuit of Philosophical science.

Religion is faith & doesnt expect any change in its core belief .

Ancient and Early Medieval

Later Medieval

Modern German Philosophers

Modern British and American Philosophers

Nineteenth-Century Developments



Ancient and Early Medieval

Plato viewed as the highest of all things the good that was above all being and all knowledge, identified it with the divine nous, and attempted to raise the human spirit into the realm of ideas, into a likeness with the Godhead; which taught men to rise to the highest by a process of abstraction disregarding particulars and grasping at universals, and conceived the good of which it spoke not in a strictly ethical sense, but as, after all, the most utterly abstract and indefinable, entirely eluding all attempts at positive description. Neoplatonism went the furthest in this conception of the divine transcendence; God, the absolute One, was, according to Plotinus, elevated not only above all being, but also above all reason and rational activity. He did not, however, attempt to attain to this abstract highest good by reasoning or logical abstraction, but by an immediate contact between God and the soul in a state of ecstasy.

This tendency was shared by a school of thought within Judaism itself, whose influence upon Christian theology was considerable. The more Jewish speculation, as was the case especially at Alexandria, rose above an anthropomorphic idea of God to a spiritual conception, the more abstract the latter became. In this connection Platonism was the principal one of the Greek philosophical systems toward w c this Jewish theology maintained a receptive attitude. According to Philo, God is to on, `` that which is `` par excellence, and this being is rather the most universal of all than the supreme good with which Plato identified the divine; all that can be said is that God is, without defining the nature of his being. Between God and the world a middle place is attributed by Philo to the Logos (in the sense of ratio, not at all in the Johannine sense), as the principle of diversity and the summary of the ideas and powers operating the world.

When the Gnostics attempted to construct a great system of higher knowledge from a Christian standpoint, through assimilating various Greek and Oriental elements, and worked the facts of the Christian revelation into their fantastic speculation on general metaphysical and cosmic problems, this abstract Godhead became an obscure background for their system; according to the Valentinian doctrine, it was the primal beginning of all things, with eternal silence (sige) for a companion.

In the development of the Church`s doctrine with Justin and the succeeding apologists, and still more with the Alexandrian school, the transcendental nature of God was emphasized, while the Scriptures and the `religious conscience of Christendom still permitted the contemplation of him as a personal and loving Spirit. Theology did not at first proceed to a systematic and logical explanation of the idea of God with reference to these different aspects. Where philosophical and strictly scientific thought was active, as with the Alexandrians, the element of negation and abstraction got the upper hand. God is, especially with Origen, the simple Being with attributes, exalted above nous and ousia, and at the same time the Father, eternally begetting the Logos and touching the world through the Logos. In opposition to this developed a Judaistic and popular conception of God which leaned to the, anthropomorphic, and also a view like Tertuilian`s` which, under the influence of Stoic philosophy, felt obliged to connect with all realities, and thus also with God, the idea of a tangible substance. In this direction Dionysius the Areopagite finally proceeded to a really Neoplatonist theology, with an inexpressible God who is above all categories, both positive and negative, and thus is neither Being nor Not-being; who permits that which is to emanate from himself in a descending scale coming down to things perceived by the senses, but is unable to reveal his eternal truth in this emanation. With this doctrine is conconnected, after the Neoplatonist model, an inner union with God, an ecstatic elevation of the soul which resigns itself to the process into the obscure depth of the Godhead. The ethical conception of God and redemption thus gives place to a physical one, just as the emanation of all things from God was described as a physical process; and as soon as speculation attempts to descend from the hidden God to finite and personal life, this physical view connects itself with the abstract metaphysical.

In the West there was long a lack of scientific and speculative discussion of the idea of God. Augustine, the most significant name in Western theology, sets forth the conception of God as a self-conscious personal being which fitted in with his doctrine of the Trinity; but as his own development had led him through Platonism, the influence of that philosophy is found in the idea of God which he developed systematically and handed down. He conceives God as the unity of ideas, of abstract perfections, of the normal types of being, thinking, and acting; as simple essential in which will, knowledge, and being are one and the same. The fundamentally determinant factor in the conception of God by the Augustinian theology is thus pure being in general.

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Later Medieval

Scotus Erigena, who gave Dionysius the Areopagite to Western theology, though Augustine was not without influence upon him, fully accepted the notion of God as the absolute Inconceivable, above all affirmation and Erigena. all negation, distinguishing from him a world to which divine ideas and primal forms belong. He emphasizes the other side of this view-that true existence belongs to God alone, so that, in so far as anything exists in the universe, God is the essence of it; a practical pantheism, in spite of his attempting to enforce a creative activity on the part of God. The influence of this pantheistic view on medieval theology was a limited one; Amalric of Bena , with his proposition that God was all things, was its main disciple.

In accordance with its fundamental character, scholasticism attempted to reduce the idea of God into the categories which related to the laws of thought, to being, in general, and to the world. It began by adapting the Aristotelian terms to its own purposes. God, or absolute being, was to Aristotle the primum mobile, regarded thus from the standpoint of causation and not of mere being, and also a thinking subject. The ideas and prototypes of the finite are accordingly to be found in God, who is the final Cause. God, in Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, is not the essential being of things, but he is their esse effective et exemplariter, their primum movens, and their causa finalis. Aristotelian, again, is the definition of God`s own nature, that be is, as a thinking subject, actus purus, pure, absolute energy, without the distinction found in finite beings between potentiality and actuality. In opposition to Thomas, Duns Scotus emphasized in his conception of God the primum ens and primum movens, the element of will and free causation. The arbitrary nature of the will of God, taught by him, was raised by Ockham to the most important element of his teaching about God. Upon this abstract conception of the will of God as arbitrary and unconditioned depend the questions (so characteristic of scholasticism from Abelard down) as to whether all things are possible to God.

About the end of the thirteenth century, by the side of the logical reasonings of scholasticism, there arose the mystical theology of Eckhart, which attempted to bring the Absolute near to the hearts of men as the object of an immediate intuition dependent upon complete self-surrender. The Neoplatonic conception of the Absolute is here pushed to its extreme, and Dionysius has more influence than Thomas Aquinas. The view of God`s relation to the world is almost pantheistic, unless it may be rather called acosmistic, regarding the finite as naught. This is Eckhart`s teaching, although at the same time he speaks of a creation of the world and of a Son in whom God expresses himself and creates. This God is regarded as goodness and love, communicating himself in a way, but not to separate and independent images of his own being; rather, he possesses and loves himself in all things, and the surrender to him is passivity and self-annihilation. The ruling ideas of this view were moderated by the practical German mystics and found in this form a wide currency. On the other hand, pantheistic heretics, such as the Brethren of the Free Spirit combined antinomian principles with the doctrine that God was all things and that the Christian united with God was perfect as God.

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Modern German Philosophers

The independent metaphysical systems of the philosophers, which embraced God and the world, did not at first make any profound impression on the thought of theologians. Spinoza`s pantheism was by its very nature excluded from consideration; but the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff, with its conception of God as a supremely perfect, personal Being, in whom all possible realities were embraced in their highest form, and with its demonstration of God`s existence, offered itself as a friend to Christian doctrine, and was widely influential. In so far, however, as the theologians adopted any of its conclusions, it was with little clearness of insight or independent thought as to the relation of these metaphysical concepts to the Christian faith or as to their own validity.

A new epoch in German philosophy, with which theology had and still has to reckon, came in with Kant. Confidence in the arguments by which God`s existence had been proved and defined was at least shaken by his criticism, which, however, energetically asserted the firm foundation of moral consciousness, and so led up to God by a new way, in postulating the existence of a deity for the establishment of the harmony required by the moral consciousness between the moral dignity of the subjects and their happiness based upon the adaptation of nature to their ends. Fichte was led from this standpoint to a God who is not personal, but represents the moral order of the universe, believing in which we are to act as duty requires, without question as to the results.

But for a time the most successful and apparently the most dangerous to Christian theology was a pantheistic philosophical conception of God which took for its foundation the idea of an Absolute raised above subject and object, above thinking and being; which explained and claimed to deduce all truth as the necessary self -development of this idea. With Schelling this pantheism is still in embryo, and finally comes back (in his ``philosophy of revelation ``) to the recognition of the divine personality, with an attempt to construct it speculatively. In a great piece of constructive work the philosophy of Hegel undertook to show how this Absolute is first pure being, identical with not-being; how then, in the form of externalization or becoming other, it comes to be nature or descends to nature; and finally, in the finite spirit, resumes itself into itself, comes to itself, becomes self-conscious, and thus now for the first time takes on the form of personality. For Christian theology the special importance of this teaching, was its claim to have taken what Christian doctrine had comprehended only in a limited way of God, the divine Personality, the Incarnation, etc., and to have expressed it according to its real content and to the laws of thought.

The conservative Hegelians still maintained that God, in himself and apart from the creation of the world and the origin of human personality, was to be considered as a self-conscious spirit or personality, and thus offered positive support to the Christian doctrine of God and his revelation of himself. But the Hegelian principles were more logically carried out by the opposite wing of the party, especially by David Friedrich Strauss (in his Christliche Glaubenslehre, Tubingen, 1840) in the strongest antithesis to the Christian doctrine of a personal God, of Christ as the only Son of God and the God-Man, and of a personal ethical relation between God and man. Some other philosophers, however, who may be classed in general under the head of the modern speculative idealism, have, in their speculations on the Absolute as actually present in the universe, retained a belief in the personality of God.

The realist philosopher Herbart, who recognized a personal God not through speculations on the Absolute and the finite, but on the basis of moral consciousness and teleology, yet defined little about him, and what he has to say on this subject never attracted much attention among theologians. The Hegelian pantheistic `` absolute idealism,`` once widely prevalent, did not long retain its domination. Its place was taken first in many, quarters, as with Strauss, by an atheistic materialism; Hegel had made the universal abstract into God, and when men abandoned their belief in this and in its power to produce results, they gave up their belief in God with it. Among the post-Hegelian philosophers the most important for the present subject is Lotze, with his defense and confirmation of the idea of a personal God, going back in the most independent way both to Herbart and to idealism, both to Spinoza and Leibniz. Christian theology can, of course, only protest against the peculiar pantheism of Schopenhauer, which is really much older than he, but never before attained wide currency, and against that of Von Hartmann. The significance for the doctrine of God of the newer philosophical undertakings which are characterized by an empiricist-realist tendency, and based on epistemology and criticism is found not so much in their definite expressions about God-they do not as a rule consider him an object of scientific expression, even when they allow him to be a necessary object of faith-as in the impulse which they give to critical investigation of religious belief and perception in general.

Theology, at least German theology, before Schleiermacher showed but little understanding of and interest in the problems regarding a proper conception and confirmation of the doctrine of God which had been laid before it in this development of philosophy beginning with Kant. This is especially true of its attitude toward Kant himself and not only of the supranaturalists who were suspicious of any exaltation of the natural reason, but also of the rationalists, who still had a superficial devotion to the Enlightenment and to Wolffian philosophy. In Schleiermacher`s teaching about God, however, the results of a devout and immediate consciousness were combined with philosophical postulates. In his mind the place of all the so-called proofs of the existence of God is completely supplied by the recognition that the feeling of absolute dependence involved in the devout Christian consciousness is a universal element of life; in this consciousness he finds the explanation of the source of this feeling of dependence, i.e., of God, as being love, by which the divine nature communicates itself. For his reasoned philosophical speculation, however, on the human spirit and universal being, the idea of God is nothing but the idea of the absolute unity of the ideal and the real, which in the world exist as opposites. (Compare Schelling`s philosophy of identity, unlike which, however, Schleiermacher acknowledges the impossibility of a speculative deduction of opposites from an original identity; and the teaching of Spinoza, whose conception of God, however, as the one substance he does not share.) Thus God and the universe are to him correlatives, but not identical-God is unity without plurality, the universe plurality without unity; and this God is apprehended by man`s feeling, just as man`s feeling apprehends the unity of ideal and real.

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Modern British and American Philosophers

In Great Britain and America the idea of God has undergone many vicissitudes. In the period of Deism , 1650-1800, the doctrine of God was profoundly affected by certain modern questions which were already emerging: the scientific view of nature as a unity, the denial of the principle of external authority, the right and sufficiency of reason, and the ethical as compared with the religious value of life. The deists yielded to none of their contemporaries in affirming that God was personal, the cause of the fixed providential order of the world, and of the moral order with its rewards and punishments both here and hereafter. The cosmological was the only theistic argument. God`s wisdom and power were expressed neither in supernatural revelation nor in miracle. His nature was perfectly apprehensible to man`s reason. He was, however, absolutely transcendent, i.e., not merely distinct from but removed from the world, an absentee God. This process of thought reached its negative skeptical result in David Hume; the being of God could be proved neither by rational considerations nor by the prevailing sensationalist theory of knowledge. Outside of the deists, the demonstration of the being and attributes of God by Samuel Clarke was thoroughly representative of the time. Something must have existed from eternity, of an independent, unchangeable nature, self-existent, absolutely inconceivable by us, necessarily everlasting, infinite, omnipotent, one and unique, intelligent and free, infinitely powerful, wise, good, and just, possessing the moral attributes required for governing the world. Bishop Butler (Analogy of Religion) held as firmly as the deists the transcendence of God, and if he made less of the cosmic, ethical, and mysterious than of the redemptive side of the divine nature, this is to be referred not to his underestimate of the redemptive purpose of God, but to the immediate aim of his apologetic. Accepting the fundamental tenet of Matthew Tindal , i.e., the identity of natural and revealed religion, he shows that the mysteries of revealed religion are not more inexplicable than the facts of universal human experience. Thus he seeks to open a door for God`s activity in revelation-prophecy, miracles, and redemption A new tendency in the idea of God appears in William Paley. The proof of the existence and attributes of the deity is teleological. Nature is a contrivance of which God is the immediate creator. The celebrated Bridgewater Treatises follow in the same path, proving the wisdom, power, and goodness of God from geology, chemistry, astronomy, the animal world, the human body, and the inner world of consciousness. Chalmers sharply distinguishes between natural and revealed theology, as offering two sources for the knowledge of God. In this entire great movement of thought, therefore, God is conceived as transcendent. God and the world are presented in a thoroughly dualistic fashion. God is the immediate and instantaneous creator of the world as a mechanism. The principal divine attributes are wisdom and power; goodness is affirmed, but appears to be secondary: its hour has not yet come.

In America during the same period Jonathan Edwards is the chief representative of the idea of God. His doctrine centers in that of absolute sovereignty. God is a personal being, glorious, transcendent. The world has in him its absolute source, and proceeds from him as an emanation, or by continuous creation, or by perpetual energizing thought. As motive for the creation, he added to the common view-the declarative glory of God-that of the happiness of the creature. On the basis of causative predestination he maintains divine foreknowledge of human choice-a theory pushed to extreme limits by later writers, Samuel Hopkins and Nathanael Emmons. His doctrine of the divine transcendence was qualified by a thorough-going mysticism, a Christian experience characterized by a profound consciousness of the immediate presence, goodness, and glory of God. His conception of the ethical nature of God contained an antinomy -which he never resolved; the Being who showed surpassing grace to the elect and bestowed unnumbered common favors on the nonelect in this life, would, the instant after death, withdraw from the latter every vestige of good and henceforth pour out upon them the infinite and eternal fury of his wrath. Edwards` doctrine of God and its implications later underwent, however, serious modifications. In the circle which recognized him as leader, his son reports that no less than ten improvements had been made, some of which, e.g. concerning the atonement, directly affected the idea of God. Predestination was affirmed, but, instead of proceeding from an inscrutable will, following Leibniz, rested on divine foreknowledge of all possible worlds and included the purpose to realize this, the best of all possible worlds (A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, New York, 1900; S. Harris, God, the Creator and Lord of All, ib., 1896). The atonement was conceived as sufficient but `not efficient for all (C. Hodge, Systematic Theology, Philadelphia, 1865), or, on the other hand, as expressing the sincere purpose of God to redeem all sinners (A. E. Park, The Atonement; Introductory Essay, Boston, 1859). Divine sovereignty was roundly affirmed; for some it contained the secret of a double decree, for others it offered a convincing basis for the larger hope.

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Nineteenth-Century Developments

During the nineteenth century a new movement appeared in English thought. Sir William Hamilton held that God was the absolute, the unconditioned, the cause of all (Philosophy of the Unconditioned, in Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1829). But since all thinking is to condition, and to condition the unconditioned is self-contradictory, God is both unknown and unknowable. Following in the same path H. L. Alansel (Limits of Religious Thought, London, 1867) found here the secret by which to maintain the mysteries of the faith of the church in the Trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, and other beliefs. Revelation was therefore required to supplement men`s ignorance and to communicate what-human intelligence was unable to discover. Hence the dogmas concerning God which had been found repugnant or opaque to reason were philosophically reinstated and became once more authoritative for faith. In his System of Synthetic Philosophy Herbert Spencer (First Principles, London, 1860-62) maintains on the one hand an ultimate reality which is the postulate of theism, the absolute datum of consciousness, and on the other hand by reason of the limitations of knowledge a total human incapacity to assign any attributes to this utterly inscrutable power. In accordance with his doctrine of evolution he holds that this ultimate reality is an infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed, the same which wells up in the human consciousness. He is neither materialistic nor atheistic. This reality is not personal according to the human type, but may be super-personal. Religion is the feeling of awe in relation to this inscrutable and mysterious power. With an aim not unlike that of Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold sought to reconcile the conflicting claims of religion, agnosticism, evolution, and history, by substituting for the traditional personal God the `` Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness.`` Side by side with this movement appeared another led by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, based upon a spiritual philosophy, which found in the moral nature a revelation of God (Aids to Reflexion, London, 1825). This has borne fruit in many directions: in the great poets, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning; in preachers like Cardinal Newman, Dean Stanley, John Tulloch, Frederick William Robertson, and Charles Kingsley; in philosophical writers, as John Frederic Denison Maurice and James Martineau. The idea of God is taken out of dogma and the category of the schools and set in relation to life, the quickening source of ideals and of all individual and social advance. Religious thought in America has fully shared in these later tendencies in Great Britain, as may be seen by reference to John Fiske, Idea of God (Boston, 1886), unfolding the implications of Spencer`s thought, and, reflecting the spirit of Coleridge, William Ellery Channing, Works (6 vols., Boston, 1848), W. G. T. Stead, `` Introductory Essay `` to Coleridge`s Works (New York, 1884), and Horace Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, and Sermons (in Centenary edition of his Works, New York, 1903). An idea of God based on idealism, represented in Great Britain by John Caird, Philosophy of Religion (London, 1881), Edward Caird, The Evolution of Religion (ib. 1893), in Canada by John Watson, God`s Message to the Human Soul (New York, 1907), has received impressive statement by Josiah Royce, The Conception of God (ib., 1897), and The World and the Individual (2 vols., 1899-1901). God is a being who possesses all logical possible knowledge, insight, wisdom. This includes omnipotence, self-consciousness, self-possession, goodness, perfection, peace. Thus this being possesses absolute thought and absolute experience, both completely organized. The absolute experience is related to human experience as an organic whole to its integral fragments. This idea of God which centers in omniscience does not intend to obscure either the ethical qualities or the proper personality of the absolute.

DRUMS---378 & 379

Naoozo-billah(God fobid!) No muslim thinks of the Prophet(saw) as God or Mecca as Eden.This is heresy,blasphemy,& shirk.

The pre-Islamic society was Jahiliyaa because of some very immoral practices which had become tradition & culture.It was in its materialistic glory because of the trade-route boom.The overland route from China to Europe was closed because of Persian war.

They were jahiliyaa just like some present day developed societies are increasingly becoming jahilyaa right amidst us now.

Israel as perhaps you are aware is the title of Jacob(harat Yaquoob) and Bani-Israel is the progeny of his tribe.In arabic it is written with a hamza & yay and not with alif.I`m aware that in hebrew it does translate into what you wrote.

Elohim is for Allah but the true word is YHWH or Jehovah---one who cannot be named.Maybe Ibrahim,Abraham,& Elohim has the same suffix.It is important to note that the Hebrew language has been tremendously influenced by Pehalvi-farsi because of their long sojourn(Cyrus days)in Iran-Iraq.Like Youm(day) e Kippur(kaffara) or RoshHashanaa(Roz e Hasanaa).Present day Hebrew was revived only during the last century by one single immigrant from Russia.With the reconvening of the diaspora in Israel the yiddish,arabic,judaic & other languages have made a Khichhree of it.All the old testament names for angels & prophets are the same.It would be an interesting study though I am more comfortable to trace Indo-Germanic,arabic,farsi roots only.

Joseph son of Jacob of Canaan,present Palestine,was sold into slavery when pyramids were being constructed.I do not think any Egyptian influence,especially for religious terms,would be there among bani-Israel.It was there that Moses received the scriptures while delivering them from Pharoahs` bondage.



The Barhaman connection,if I may conjecture,cannot be ruled out.It is possible that the thirteenth lost tribe of the jews ended up near abouts Afghanistan & Kashmir.The lending on interest is prevalent only among Pathaans in perhaps the entire muslim world.The Kashmiri & Pathaan facial features with the prominent aquiline nose is another lead.

But then let us not make Kashmir another Palestine.;).

The religion of Tagore & so many other ``hindus`` was Brahmoosamaaj(if I`m not misinformed) & therefore,perhaps,as much muslim as christains(true ones) or jews.

WELCOME!

Hamzad: One more thing....

Israel comes from ``one who struggles with God`` God being EL in this case. Are azrael and Gibrael not borrowed from Hebrew? I believe Gabriel means something like ``friend of El.`` So my question, If El refers to God in Hebrew, and u have the same character called Gibril in Arabic, does the Il not refer to God? If it refers to ``one who is`` are u saying there is no correlation between Gabriel and Jibril?

I suppose the EL doesnt carry over in Gabriels other names (Ruh UL a`zam, etc)?

Ive always thought that Allah was directly linked to El and Elohim which come from the Egyptian ``El`` meaning the source-a concept similar to brahma.

Hamzad: Why? Because people are followers and not leaders. Muslims see Muhammed as a God and Mecca as being Eden. They cant understand that Muhammed was educating a primitive people, that his mission was a movement, to begin with him-not end with him. Ameer Ali in ``spirit of Islam`` touches on this. Muhammed didn`t outlaw slavery, yet created an environment in which it would be virtually non existant in a couple hundred years...

Thanks for the etemology. Its interesting that u dont link Allah with the God El, and u dont use ``Ilah`` (god) either. This may be a stretch but can u trace the origins of Elohim?

Sadna/prem: Both your posts are very informative. Ive always had an affinity for Hinduism. Sadna, I inherently agree with your explanation of the inherent nature of things. You and prem have explained very well HOW things work, yet WHY they work still alludes me. Whats the meaning? Whats the point of life?

Recently ive been toying with the idea of there being no bearded white guy up there. That everything we percieve is the materialization of thought. Everything we make (including situations with others) is the result of our creative instincts (in effect we ourselves are creators-we are Brahma). We create the situations we find ourselves in so that we can learn from them (ie a mother who loses her son is here to learn the lesson of independance, not being too connected). A philosopher could ask who created the first thought, but such a question is bound by a linear interpretation of time. Of course none of this explains WHY.

See if we are Allah and Allah is us, and we have a strong link with the spiritual world, why has no religion ever answered the Question of WHY? Shouldnt we be able to find the answer ourselves?

PS: Can someone explain Brahma and its relation to the demigods? Is there sort of a heavenly society out there?

Peace.

WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING

Chowk Editors,

Your site has been taken over by the 12 head.

Wake up...............

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I did not post # 372.

Chowk managers,

Either your system is messed up. Or, someone here is mentally sick.

In either case, you have a challenge on your hands.

Regards.

re: sadna # 373

Guruji??? Jee, aap mujhe sharminda kar rahi hain :)

The anuvAadum is as follows -

Yesham na vidya, na tapo na danam,

Those who have no education (in the widest sense), no determined pursuit, no generosity of spirit

na gyanam, na sheelam na guno na dharmah,

no real knowledge, no sheel (cant find an exact english word for that - perhaps appropriate, courteous behavior), no good traits, no understanding of the right and proper

Te martya loke bhuvi bhar bhutah,

such people are mere burden on this earth

manushya roopen mrigashcharanti.

and, in human form, are nothing but grazing deer.

Prem #370

I understood most of it, but guruji, kshamisi?, tvam anuvAdah karosi, aham grateful :)

Prem,DRUMS,tahmad,dost-mittar--others:

Couldn`t resist sharing this with you guys.

The sacred in a secular age

As the Ramadan debates enter their third week, Omayma Abdel-Latif discusses the Islamisation of the West with John Keane

`Secularity has won a reputation for humiliating the Muslims through the exercise of Western double standards in Kuwait, Algeria and Palestine, through the corrupt despotism of comprador governments and through the permanent threat of being crushed by the economic, technological, political, cultural and military might of the American-led West.`

In 1934, T S Eliot wrote in the Choruses from the Rock: ``It seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why or how or where. Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no god; and this has never happened before.``

Eliot was reflecting upon the secularism that seemed to be taking Europe by storm. The concept was gaining credence among statesmen, academics and journalists. Today, Professor John Keane suggests that, in a wholly unexpected reversal of fortunes, this concept has become the object of cynicism, and even outright hostility.

When Professor Keane published his critique of the doctrine of secularisation, in which he exposed its dogmatic nature and prophesied its inevitable doom, he was accused by many secularists of attempting to turn Britain into a ``theocracy``.

Professor Keane, director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy and a professor of politics at the University of Westminster, has written extensively on the ``nostalgic return to the traditional notion of the sacred``. Among his many works are Democracy and Civil Society (1988), The Media and Democracy (1991), the prize-winning biography of Tom Paine, A Political Life (1995) and Reflections on Violence (1996). For him, this phenomenon calls into question a number of issues. Has secularism lost the battle against faith? Was the marginalisation of religion in Christian Europe at the root of intolerance for other faiths? Will the return to the sacred, which Keane and others believe is sweeping across Europe, set up bridges of tolerance and understanding between Islam and Christianity, or will it revive old rivalries?



The army of Sulayman the Magnificent before Vienna in 1952 -- one of the many images that seem to lie at the root of continuing European anxiety about Islam as an ``external threat``

(source: The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World)



The discussion:



Why is it that, although secularism is now the standard mode of government in most Muslim states, Islam remains the archenemy of secularist claims to universal acceptance?

Today`s ``secular`` hostility towards Islam is obviously a restatement and variation on the old theme of the Satanism of Islam, and helps explain why most contemporary Muslim scholars mistrust or reject outright the ideal of secularism.

There is a widespread impression among most Muslims that European talk of secularity is arrogant, and that it has always been a cover for hypocrites who think Muslims can progress only by following the path marked out by the West, which includes the renunciation of religion.

In the European context, the doctrine of secularism certainly helped to tame Christian fundamentalism and nurture the values of civility and power-sharing, but the attempted secularisation of the 20th century Muslim world has produced dictatorship, state-enforced religion, the violation of human and civil rights and the simple destruction of civil society.

In a word, secularity has won a reputation for humiliating the Muslims through the exercise of Western double standards in Kuwait, Algeria and Palestine, through the corrupt despotism of comprador governments and through the permanent threat of being crushed by the economic, technological, political, cultural and military might of the American-led West.

Do the anti-secular sentiments prevailing in the Muslim world worry the West?

The militant Islamic rejection of secularism within the geographical crescent stretching from Morocco to Malaysia understandably worries many in the West. The material stakes are high, and the concern that anti-secularism will prove to be a cover for brutal power-grabbing instead of benign power-sharing remains high. But this has been untested as yet.

Let me give the example of Hama, the Syrian town, which is a terrifying symbol. In 1982, the armed forces of secularism drowned their opponents -- members of the Muslim Brotherhood -- in a blood bath. For those living in old democracies, such an example has served as a reminder that secularism shelters violent intolerance and, more generally, that we live in times marked by religious protest, the return of the sacred, and the general desecularisation of political and social life.

What are the bases for your conclusion that secularism is a dogma that threatens the free-thinking pluralism of democracy?

Suspicion of secularism is warranted, in my view, by the fact that most contemporary secularists have sacralised it unthinkingly. They suppose that during the past few generations, religious illusions have gradually disappeared and that this is fortunate, since it leads to the extrusion of religious sentiments from such domains as the law, government, party politics and education.

The separation between church and state, they have argued, releases citizens from irrational prejudices and promotes open-minded tolerance, which is a vital ingredient in a pluralist democracy. The modern quest for personal meaning and salvation has taken the place of religion, becoming what some describe as the ``invisible religion of self-expression or self-realisation``.

Secularists believe that there is a decline of organised religion, that, more and more, the religious experience is privatised so that it becomes a matter of personal choice -- of those quiet moments of reflection -- but no longer a public issue. This is the meaning of secularism.

The contemporary defenders of the doctrine of secularism exaggerate the durability and the open-mindedness of ``secular`` ideals and institutions, and fail therefore to provide a more democratic understanding of religion and politics, because they cannot see that the principle of secularism is itself self-contradictory and therefore unable in practice to provide relatively stable guidelines for citizens interacting freely within the laws and institutions of democratic civil societies and politics.

So does that mean that secularism could collapse under the weight of its own contradictions?

I don`t wish to suggest that it will collapse any time soon because it has nurtured among citizens the idea that the struggle for power based on religious differences is something of the past. There is, however, a widespread sense that the doctrine of secularism has had a pacifying effect in countries previously torn by religious conflict, but nevertheless the question of the limits of secularism should be central to political reflection and analysis.

Despite their success, secularist ideals and institutions tend to produce difficulties and provoke demands for the termination of secularism.

What are these limits?

Perhaps the most striking one is its theoretical and practical affinity with political despotism. Secularists will probably consider this remark akin to blasphemy. Another limit is the view that the struggle for secularity was a struggle for toleration of difference, because this view fails to spot the inherent dogmatism of secularism.

It is not just that various political attempts to institutionalise secularism (in France, Turkey, and some Middle Eastern countries in the second half of the 20th century) have been riddled with such violence and coercion that they qualify as experiments in ``internal colonialism`` or, at the level of principle, that the early [Christian] advocates of secular freedoms typically denied others -- Jews (``children of the devil``), Roman Catholics and, most recently, Muslims (``violent, ignorant, uncivilised and fanatical``) -- such freedoms, as if otherwise benign secularists had suffered a temporary failure of imagination, courage or will in extending their own universal principles to others.

The problem actually runs deeper, for the principle of secularism is, arguably, founded upon a sublimated version of Christian belief in the necessity of deciding for non-Christian others what they can think or say, or even whether they are capable of thinking and saying anything at all.

Will the return to religiosity in Europe revive old rivalries in a clash of civilisations, or could it allow the Christian West, which abandoned religion long ago, to grasp the fact that Muslims continue to believe?

There is a complicated process, and there are two areas involved: one is the clash of civilisations and the other is the question of religiosity. On the clash of civilisations, there has been an endless debate of Huntington`s thesis, which, in my opinion, is too simple and has strong Orientalist implications that are undesirable.

It is quite clear now, more than ever, that Islam is a force within Western civilisation, with 20 million Muslims living in the European Union alone, and that there is a slow and sometimes difficult sea change occurring within Europe: for example, the public tabling of the politics of faith, the need for compromise and the need for greater toleration of different forms of religious belief. So Huntington`s Napoleonic forecasting of a future clash of civilisations underestimates those complexities and has potential political implications.

On the question of religiosity, there is a sort of renaissance of religiosity, respect for the sacred and the possible belief in the sacred. This takes various forms, but the trend is definite and there are good reasons for it. How this process is seen from the point of view of Christianity and Judaism within Europe remains unclear. But such a process is contradictory: on one hand, there is the danger of the reassertion of a Christian fundamentalism, or rather a Judaeo-Christian fundamentalism, which will consequently breed hostility toward living, breathing Muslims, and hostility toward what they stand for. There are signs of this, but there are also signs of the need within areas of Church for reconciliation and understanding.

This process needs to be strengthened, and it can only be strengthened by the authorities at various levels, all the way from Prince Charles`s efforts to promote dialogue between the two faiths down to various civic experiments to bring about some understanding between Muslims, Jews, Christians and others.

As I see it, compromise, mutual understanding and living together in a civil society without violence are possible, but politics will determine whether that is the strong option.

So could this be the reason for the outcry in the West when Muslims attempted to defend the sacred from distortion, as was the case with Salman Rushdie, for instance?

I think that today, at what appears to be the end of the saga, there is a sizable body of opinion in Britain and elsewhere in the world which understands why many Muslims were offended by that book [The Satanic Verses]. There was no uprising of Rushdie supporters after the official reconciliation between Iran, Britain and Salman Rushdie himself; no one said that this was proof that Muslims had to back down, that ``we have taught them a lesson, we have humiliated them and shown them what the universal principle of freedom of opinion is all about.``

It has been a very quiet and considered reaction, which again reinforces the point that there was and is a body of opinion which values the importance of compromise, of quiet reconciliation and reducing passions in matters concerning the sacred.

This is a symptom of the long-term quiet revolution in favour of the sacred. What I mean by that is a revolution in which a large number of people develop a certain respect for the possibility that there is a god and that the cosmos has an ultimate meaning.

How would you respond to Rashed Al-Ghenoushi`s statement that a secular state is semi-Islamic?

Sheikh Ghenoushi surprised me in the first ever conversation I had with him, when he pointed out that Christian Europe came late to embrace the principles of a civil society. That was something of a sacrilege, because here -- I thought, and most scholars believed -- civil society was a European invention par excellence and others followed suit.

Al-Ghenoushi argues that the ethos and structure of the civil society came much earlier and had their roots in the Muslim societies, while Europe has had some difficulty in catching up. But my belief is that Christian Europe has to some degree caught up in its growing official respect for human rights, toleration of differences... In this respect, it has come to understand what was always understood within the tradition of Islam: that there is sanctity of human beings.

Christian secularising civil societies in Europe have -- after five centuries of bloodshed and bigotry -- managed to establish spaces in which there could be public consideration of the relationship between human beings and nature, the world and the cosmos. These spaces of public consideration and reflection are -- according to Al-Ghenoushi -- an intrinsic feature of the Islamic doctrine.

There is a growing sense of religiosity outside, and sometimes against, the Church. One could argue that a certain type of ``Islamisation`` of the Christian/secular West is occurring -- Islamisation in the sense that the Church could be still be there, but not as dominant as it used to be.

There is a certain anxiety within Western democracies that the Muslim world will wage an attack on Western values and create disarray. How would you view the notion of political Islam within this context?

The European anxiety has very deep roots -- the Crusade mentality, the war on Islam that dates back to the very birth of Europe. So part of the whole idea of Europe is that it was infected with this bigotry and this anxiety about the external threat.

The anxiety is partly driven by the dislike of violence and the unfortunate association of Islam with guns and terrorism, which produced the phenomenon of Islamophobia -- a major source of the on-going anxiety. Nonetheless, there is an emerging perception that Islam, paradoxically, can be a force for civility, power-sharing, liberalisation of authoritarian regimes -- the highest concentration of which on the face of the earth is now found in that belt stretching between Morocco and Malaysia.

Turkey is a case in point: there is some guilty anxiety among commentators about how support for the Turkish regime requires opposition to power-sharing and civil society. Therefore, some liberal opinion is in favour of an Islamic renascence, because it is seen correctly to be largely a force for tolerance, and that applies to the on-going concern over Algeria. There is no decent civilised power-sharing outcome possible in that terrible terrorised context, unless there is public and international recognition of the legitimacy of Islam as a political, social and cultural force.

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re: Sadna # 365

Thank you. But human beings who can`t, or don`t, or are too timid to think for themselves, who are always running to others asking what they should do with their lives, who can`t stop reading tea leaves, are not much of an improvement over cockroaches.

Kind of like the proverbial mrigas -

Yesham na vidya, na tapo na danam,

na gyanam, na sheelam na guno na dharmah,

Te martya loke bhuvi bhar bhutah,

manushya roopen mrigashcharanti.

Prem,DRUMS,tahmad,dost-mittar--others:

Couldn`t resist sharing this with you guys.

The sacred in a secular age

As the Ramadan debates enter their third week, Omayma Abdel-Latif discusses the Islamisation of the West with John Keane

`Secularity has won a reputation for humiliating the Muslims through the exercise of Western double standards in Kuwait, Algeria and Palestine, through the corrupt despotism of comprador governments and through the permanent threat of being crushed by the economic, technological, political, cultural and military might of the American-led West.`

In 1934, T S Eliot wrote in the Choruses from the Rock: ``It seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why or how or where. Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no god; and this has never happened before.``

Eliot was reflecting upon the secularism that seemed to be taking Europe by storm. The concept was gaining credence among statesmen, academics and journalists. Today, Professor John Keane suggests that, in a wholly unexpected reversal of fortunes, this concept has become the object of cynicism, and even outright hostility.

When Professor Keane published his critique of the doctrine of secularisation, in which he exposed its dogmatic nature and prophesied its inevitable doom, he was accused by many secularists of attempting to turn Britain into a ``theocracy``.

Professor