Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society
PURSUIT AND NON-ASCETIC CHARACTER OF SPIRITUALITY
The Qur’anic ethico-religious approach does not lead to mysticism, but to what might be termed as Dynamic Purism based on Sidq and Safa. That is the goal and the pride of the orthodox Sufi orders, in history. They pursued the Qur’anic ethico-religious quest with grace and sincerity,—a quest that is the very essence of Islam.
The ultimate goal of the Qur’anic ethico-religious quest is God-realization. But, its pursuit is impossible without self-realization, which, therefore, becomes a Muslim’s primary obligation.
The struggle for self-realisation emerges in the Qur’anic perspective as basically three-dimensional: the religious, the ethical, and the intellectual.
In spite of the fact, however, that it is to be undertaken fundamentally as the first step in the exercise of God-realisation, it leads simultaneously to a knowledge which might be named as the ‘knowledge of Spiritual Science’. That knowledge is scientific, because it is based, like physical science, on observation and verification. The parapsychologists of today, working at the psychical level alone, have affirmed the ESP, the astral projection, etc. But, Spiritual Science, in the hands of genuine Sufi teachers, has attained immeasurably greater heights. The revelation by men like Rumi and Ibn al-Arabi of certain higher truths discovered only recently by physical science, is a case in point.
Surely, Bid‘ah (i.e., ‘spiritual’ practices that violate Islam) and superstitions should be condemned by every genuine Muslim. But, to condemn the Spiritual Science itself is unwarranted.
Prayer and Fasting play very definite roles in the Qur’anic Spiritual Culture.
Prayer is an exercise in respect of the Communion of the finite with the Infinite. It extricates the finite individual from servitude to the finite and opens to him the road to infinite progress. Prayer is thus for progress. Fasting is the exercise in self-control, which is the key to spiritual progress.
The enemies of Islam have propagated the allegation that, because of its permission of polygamy, the Qur’an teaches sex-indulgence, which does not harmonize with the pursuit of spiritual refinement and progress. Actually, that allegation is based on the age-old misconception of Ascetic ethics, wherein the very fulfillment of the natural biological demand of sex is considered to be unholy, in contra-distinction to the Qur’anic view, which holds it as sacred, because it is in conformity with the Divine Scheme, and which condemns only licentiousness as unholy. Thus, the qualified and restricted Qur’anic permission for polygamy has not been prescribed as a license for sex-indulgence but only as an alternative to promiscuity and prostitution, which it eliminates successfully, in sharp contrast with the Ascetic as well as the Totally-Monogamic social philosophies. As for the former, one has to read only the history of Christianity in the Age of Faith to witness the most ugly storm of licentatiousness that overtook even the pursuers of saintliness, not to speak of the common folk. (Besides other literature on the subject, the “History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church” written by a very devout Christian scholar named Henry C. Lea, published by the University Books Inc., U.S.A., 1966, is enough to provide a correct estimate of the moral disaster perpetrated by that wrong philosophy). Coming to the latter, the modern Western civilization has established the most heinous record of licentiousness,—a record unsurpassed in the history of human civilizations.
The enemies of Islam extend their allegation to the person of the Holy Prophet Muhammad pbuh also, and that to such an extent as to deny to him, with all his superbly-great qualities of character, even basic spiritual goodness and greatness, simply on the basis of his practice of polygamy. But, what are the facts? Firstly, his entire personal life was a life of war against ease, opulence, luxuries, and self-indulgence in general. Indeed, it was through and through a life of Austerity, wherein, even at the height of his material power, he lived in a small thatched mud-hut, passed his days in hunger and toil, and spent his nights for the most part standing in prayer to God. Secondly, he adopted polygamy towards the dawn of old age, having led an exemplary monogamous life from the age of twenty-five to the age of fifty in the company of a twice-widowed lady who was fifteen years his senior. Thirdly, during the polygamous period, while there was a wife like Lady Ayesha, who was a virgin of seventeen at the time of the consummation of marriage, there were those who were widows or divorcees, and there were even those who, at the time of their marriage with him, were already so old as to have crossed the limit of fitness for married life. All these facts demolish the very basis of the aforesaid insinuation completely, and establish, instead, the truth that the Holy Prophet adopted polygamy in the Medinite period of his life solely for the sake of his noble and sacred mission,—and that in the perspective of a two-fold achievement. Firstly, in the tribal society of Arabia of those days, wherein one of the fundamental conditions of the success of his mission lay in the unification of the mutually-hostile tribes, one of the most potent instrument of their unification, in accordance with the mentality of the Arabs of those days, consisted in uniting them through a kinship centered in his person,—and his marriages did make a signal contribution in that behalf. Secondly, through those different marriages he was able to build in the persons of his wives the most accomplished lady-teachers and embodiments of Islam for the propagation of Islamic knowledge among the womenfolk.
to be continued . . . . .
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