The Heart of Islam
Abu-Alwafa
All thanks and praise are due to Allah and peace and blessings be upon
His Messenger.
A Muslim scholar builds bridges to the West
By Jane Lampman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Amid rising American confusion over the nature of Islam – intensified
in recent months by virulent anti-Muslim statements made in the media
– comes an illuminating new book that explores the spiritual and
social values of the faith of one-fifth of humanity.
In "The Heart of Islam," a renowned Muslim scholar offers to people
"interested in authentic Islam and its relation to the West" an
introduction into the inner dimension of Islamic teachings, as well as
its external expressions in law, history, art, and community.
The book begins, for example, by exploring Islam's concept of the one
God, whose essence is considered both masculine and feminine, and
whose qualities "are reflected throughout creation." Man is seen not
as a sinful being, but one who still carries his primordial nature
within, yet has forgotten it. "[God] created man in the best of
stature with an intelligence capable of knowing the One," says the
Koran. The message of Islam is a call to recollect that nature and to
surrender to the will of God.
Few would seem better suited to explain Islam to Westerners than
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a man steeped in the learning of both
civilizations, whose formative and professional years have been spent
half in his Iranian homeland and half in the US.
Author of some 50 books on the sciences and spirituality, Dr. Nasr
calls himself a traditional Muslim. Neither "modernist" nor
"fundamentalist," he belongs, he says in an interview, to that vast
majority – outside the media glare – which has found deep meaning in
Islamic tradition as it has developed over the centuries.
But the traditional viewpoint has been challenged by the coming of
modernism and secularism. It's a reaction against modernism that has
given rise to radical Islam, Nasr says. "Without modernism there would
be no fundamentalism."
Fundamentalism has turned violent for several reasons, he adds.
"First, when your identity is threatened, like a turtle you go into
your shell and become hardened. Second, there is desperation –
situations of political repression where solutions cannot come about
by normal processes of society, or where people feel hopeless because
of intractable difficulties, like Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya."
While strongly opposed to fundamentalism, Nasr also sees modernism as
dangerous: "I don't accept the philosophical premises on which it is
based, making man the measure of all things ... rather than God, and
reason the ultimate arbitrator of truth."
This has led, he adds, to devastating consequences such as Marxism and
the desacralizing of nature and the human being, which have brought
the environmental crisis and unsettling directions in genetics and
robotics. He believes Islam has to provide answers for the challenges
posed for it by modern science, psychology, and sociology. "I am
spending my life doing that," he says.
Nasr's work in the fields of science, philosophy, and religion is
recognized in both civilizations. His advanced degrees in the sciences
are from MIT and Harvard. He was the first non-Westerner invited to
deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures on religion at the University
of Edinburgh in 1980.
When he held top posts at Iranian universities in the 1960s and '70s,
he planted seeds for a synthesis of Persian culture and Western
thought that differed from the modernizing trends many found so
alienating. Yet he was forced into exile during the 1979 revolution.
Iran is still "in a period of trial and error, and it will take some
time before viable institutions deeply rooted in society and accepted
by the vast majority can be created," he says.
In "The Heart of Islam," Nasr corrects the Western misconception that
clerical rule, or theocracy, is the classical theory of rule in Islam.
In fact, Iran's experiment is the first time in Islamic history that
clerics have ruled directly, he says. In classical society, caliphs,
sultans, or emirs ruled and promulgated Islamic law. Clerics were
independent and acted as protectors of the law – and of the people
when rulers became corrupt.
Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University since
1984, Nasr has returned to Iran to speak on various subjects,
including religious pluralism.
As a Sufi, he is committed to the spiritual path within Islam –
"seeking a life of sanctity based on the love and knowledge of God."
Sufis are the mystics of Islam, and Sufism is recognized as having
significant influence in spreading the faith throughout history,
including in the West.
For decades, Nasr has dedicated efforts to interfaith dialogue. His
first close contact with Christianity came at age 12, when he was sent
from Iran to a prestigious Baptist secondary school in the US, where
he was required to attend church on Sundays for four years.
"It didn't bother me too much," Nasr says with a chuckle. "I had
always a love for Christ and other religions."
In the wake of 9/11, today "is a dark period for us all," he says. "We
have a situation in which those forces on both sides who want a clash
of civilizations and who want wars for their own purposes and
interests are strong.
"And you have a mirror image of exclusivist voices – people like
[Jerry] Falwell and [Pat] Robertson [here] and others in Saudi Arabia
giving sermons," he adds. "But you also have many voices that realize
the future of Islam and Christianity are intertwined."
His book issues a forceful call to the faithful of all religions to
confront this animosity and also the "powerful forces of
globalization" that promote marketplace values rather than common
spiritual and ethical truths as "the single worldview and value
system."
"Nothing less than the wisdom and love of the religion of the heart
can save us in a world torn apart by so much evil and selfishness, a
world that has the chimerical dream of living in peace in the
forgetfulness of God," he says.
Nasr aims in his book to address the relevant issues about Islam
uppermost in the minds of Americans. He deals with violence and war,
human rights and responsibilities, religious freedom and persecution
within his discussion of Islamic values and ideals. His arguments are
sometimes compelling, sometimes less than convincing to a Western
perspective.
Yet one is given that rare gift of entering into a holistic worldview
that, while different from one's own in particulars, is clearly rooted
in the profound human yearning for goodness, peace, and justice – for,
in his words, "the universal truth that was placed by God in the
hearts of all human beings and that stands at the center of all
heavenly revelations."
