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A Shia mosque gets bombed and a certain kind of Sunni scrolls past. A Sunni village gets levelled and a certain kind of Shia shrugs. Then Trump threatens to flatten Tehran and the same people who couldn’t locate Qom on a map suddenly remember that Iran is Shia. As if that settles anything. This is ta’aṣṣub: the reflexive arbitrist group-impulse that at best shuts down dialogue and at worst lets you cheer the bombing of people who pray toward the same Kaʹba as you.

Freud (لعنة الله عليه) had a phrase for it — the narcissism of small differences — the cruel fact that the closer two groups stand to one another, the more ferociously they need to invent a chasm between them. And underneath the ferocity, almost always, is ignorance. We mock what we don’t understand, and we hate most fluently what we’ve never bothered to learn.

So before any of the polemics — before the takfir, before the rafidi slurs, before the smug little “you’re Shia innit! All Shia are kuffah!!!” — it’s worth actually looking at what Sunnism and Shi’ism are, and at the strange, beautiful symmetry by which each tradition has, over centuries, grown the other inside itself. That’s what this piece is about.

If the batin crystallized into a distinct form within the exoteric world of Sunnism as Sufism, one might ask whether there is a parallel ‘sedimentation’ in the other direction: the zahir assuming a distinct, concentrated form within the esoterically pervaded world of Shi’ism. The answer, I think, is Usulism. The rationalist-juridical methodology that developed over centuries and achieved dominance when Bihbahani defeated the Akhbaris in the late eighteenth century. It represents the exoteric asserting itself as a recognizable presence within a tradition whose founding impulse is gnostic, just as Sufism is the esoteric asserting itself within a tradition whose governing impulse is legal.

The two processes are not temporally symmetrical though. And this asymmetry emerges from an essential asymmetry, or rather complementarity, between the zahir and the batin.

Sufism has roots in the first Islamic century; Usulism only begins to take shape centuries later. In Sunnism, the batin had to organize itself early or risk being lost within the exoteric whole. In Shi’ism, the zahir did not need its own distinct form for as long as the living Imam provided both dimensions directly. It was only after the Occultation, and slowly, against persistent Akhbari resistance, that it sedimented at all. This, however, is not to suggest that Akhbaris were any less zahir than the usulis; rather the ‘sedimentation‘ pertains to systemisation and stabilisation of Shi’ism after centuries of post-Occultation fragmentation during which total dissolution of Shi’ism was kept at bay only by the sheer momentum of its esoteric spirit.

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In his Library of Babel, Borges describes a world in which the protagonist finds himself inhabiting an indefinite library. The library comprises shelves upon shelves of books where each book is a unique permutation of symbols from a finite alphabet. Every possible permutation, somewhere within those interminable book-shelves, already exists. The library is total; and yet, precisely because it is total, it yields nothing. The books are, in their overwhelming majority, gibberish. Mere concatenations of opaque symbols. There is no hidden cipher, no book of books that unlocks the rest, no centre from which meaning radiates outward. Men, trudging through the library, go mad wondering whether it is limitless or finite, why it exists at all, and whether there is a way out.

Clearly, this is an allegory for how the modern man phenomenologically encounters the world he inhabits. Fallen as he is, he casts the universe in his own fragmented image and perceives it as a pointless accumulation of ultimately absurd symbols. Time too, as it moves ever faster, seems to muffle and suffocate him. Angst, apathy, and anxiety are what condition his internality as he finds himself ferociously flung into a world ridden with Fanged Neumena.

Even so, Borges ends his short story with:

It is with such elegant hope in the orderedness of existence, coupled with the certitude of a traditional man, that Martin Lings, analogising between the microcosm (man) and the macrocosm (cosmos), writes: “The mellowing of spirituality, which is the highest aspect of old age in itself, is thus crowned with illumination which belongs more to youth than to age…analogously, in the macrocosm, the nearness of the new Golden Age cannot fail to make itself mysteriously felt before the end of the old cycle.”

Such hope, however, must be tempered with the sobriety with which Guenon writes:

Even so, to quote Lings again, “If human societies degenerate on the one hand with the passage of time, they accumulate on the other hand experiences in virtue of old age.” Analogously, from the microcosmic perspective, “there is a mode of wisdom which belongs to old age in particular, and which is even susceptible of being assimilated, to a certain degree, by those who were not wise in youth and middle age.” As such, from the macrocosmic perspective, the Spirit of our times has “something positive to offer which is characteristic of no previous era.”

What, then, keeps us from assimilating the positives that our age uniquely offers? The following passage, penned by Gai Eaton, may prove to be instructive here:

The bystander had a responsibility and he abdicated it. His lack of openness to the possibility of being utterly mistaken and delusional is not as innocent as we may want it to be. To make man the measure of all things is not a neutral philosophical posture. It is arrogant foreclosure to dialectic; and hence, to Truth.

That such an arrogant disposition is not normally struck down by life does not diminish its enormity any more than His Mercy renders His Wrath ineffectual. The modern world is hell-bent (literally) on cultivating and rewarding such arrogance. It occupies us so swiftly with such self-centered distractions that “when Reality breaks through the carapace of time” we are, at best, not there to meet It; or, at worst, ready to spit in Its Face.

And yet, paradoxically, the swiftness of this age which pacifies and forecloses us also contains within it the possibility of active radical openness. The same macrocosmic acceleration that overwhelms the passive can propel the active. The absurd accumulations of The Eleventh Hour can be alchemised into knowledge; but there’s much unlearning that we must first do.

If the nature of this age is to stagnate, we must choose to be Dionysian. Our posture must be apophatic, less a grasping than a relinquishing. And this openness, by its very nature, would place us exactly where we ought to be. That is, nowhere in particular. Squarely in the Great In-Between.

Bibliography:

Abdul Latif, Sa’īd (Hilarion Heagy). “The Nomad Archetype and the Great In-Between.” 8-part series. Medium, September–October 2024. https://medium.com/@SaidAbdulLatif
Parts: Introduction · Part 1: Deleuze and A Thousand Plateaus · Part 2: The Biblical and Christian Tradition · Part 3: The Islamic Tradition · Part 4: The Nomadism of Dajjal · Part 5: Flannery O’Connor and Dark Nomadism · Part 6: Abdal Hakim Murad on Arabic, the Quran, and Nomadism · Part 7: Ernst Jünger and the Anarch

Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Library of Babel.” In Ficciones. Trans. Anthony Kerrigan. New York: Grove Press, 1962.

Eaton, Charles Le Gai. King of the Castle: Choice and Responsibility in the Modern World. Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1977.

Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Mountain Interval. New York: Henry Holt, 1916.

Guénon, René. The Crisis of the Modern World. Trans. Arthur Osborne. London: Luzac & Co., 1942.

Iqbal, Muhammad. “La ilaha illAllah” (Zarb-e-Kalim, poem 5). 1936.

Land, Nick. Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987–2007. Ed. Robin Mackay and Ray Brassier. Falmouth: Urbanomic / Sequence Press, 2011.

Lings, Martin. The Eleventh Hour: The Spiritual Crisis of the Modern World in the Light of Tradition and Prophecy. Cambridge: Archetype, 1987.

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Part 3 of ‘Nomads: Freemen of the Liminal In-Between:

The Great-Inbetween

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For once, O awaited Reality, Manifest in a material garb;
For a thousand prostrations lie quivering in my submissive brow.
When I put down my head in submission, a cry arose from the ground:
“Idols are sought by your heart; to what could your prayers amount?”
— Iqbal —

Malevich called his ‘Black Square’ the ‘absolute symbol of modernity.’ A modernity which, as Abdal Hakim Murad describes, “he hoped would be pure and spiritual, as opposed to the congealed decadence of 19th-century Western materialism.” The Black Square is “the total inversion of the Western tradition of recording the writhing diversity of the manifest world.” Malevich wrote later, in the words of Sh. Murad, “that when painting it he felt ‘black nights within’, and ‘a timidity bordering on fear’, but when he neared completion he experienced a ‘blissful sensation of being drawn into a desert where nothing is real but feeling, and feeling became the substance of his life.’” For Bruce Chatwin:

Mavelich’s ‘Absolute Symbol of Modernity’ “is the equivalent in painting of the black-draped Ka‘ba at Mecca, the shrine in a valley of sterile soil where all men are equal before God.’”

The princes of this sterile world we now inhabit would have us believe that:

In the beginning, there was nothing
And nothing happened to nothing
And nothing, for no reason, exploded and initiated everything.
And out of this everything, some things inexplicably started to replicate themselves;
And these replicating bits became whatever the hell we are;
But all we really are is just a bunch of atoms, clustered together,
In this gigantic optimisation problem,
Meaninglessly maximising entropy across time.
And that’s all there is to life.

And yet, reflecting on this darkness that has possessed our age, Malevich somehow, according to Sh. Murad, “stumbled upon the principle of pure beauty. Only the Real is real; manifestation and its diversities are chimera. The line between the two is razor-sharp: ‘Say: Reality has come, and falsehood has vanished; falsehood was ever evanescent.’ This was, after all, the ayah recited by the Prophet (s) as he rode around the Ka‘ba, pointing with his stick to each of the 360 idols in turn, upon which they fell over into the dust.”

Dust is what all idols must fall into. But neither man nor his world is just dust alone. For indeed;

Reality is One, be it dust or light
Sun’s blood gushes when Atom’s heart is striked!
— Iqbal —

Man must, therefore, search for Light, both within and without, unencumbered by the darkness he finds himself in. He must never despair; for, The Reign of Quantity is simultaneously, God-willing, The Twilight of Idols. However, The Eleventh Hour demands that he wields not Nietszchean hammers but ‘Alid two-pointed swords!

Bibliography:

Guénon, René. The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times. Trans. Lord Northbourne. London: Luzac & Co., 1953.

Iqbal, Muhammad. “Kabhi Ae Haqiqat-e-Muntazir” (Bang-e-Dra, poem 169). 1924.

Iqbal, Muhammad. “Tulu-e-Islam” (Bang-e-Dra, poem 163). 1924.

Lings, Martin. The Eleventh Hour: The Spiritual Crisis of the Modern World in the Light of Tradition and Prophecy. Cambridge: Archetype, 1987.

Murad, Abdal Hakim. “The Sunnah as Primordiality.” 1999. masud.co.uk.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin, 1968.

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One mist-laced twilit morning, as Hasan rose to work in his orchard, a figure appeared at the edge of the trees. It was an old man. A wandering stranger. The young orphan said “peace be upon you” as the old man, returning his greeting, moved slowly towards him. He introduced himself as Ibrahim Qanduzi.

The boy approached the Shaykh, kissed his hand, and gestured towards a spot beneath a large fruit tree. Without a word, he gathered some of its finest fruits and presented them to his guest. The Shaykh accepted the offering with a gentle smile that seemed to light up his ancient face. He looked deeply into the boy’s eyes, discerning in him a soul polished by patient sorrow and ripe for Divine grace.

After eating the fruit, the shaykh reached into his simple cloth bag and pulled out a piece of dry bread. He broke off a piece and after chewing it held it out to Hasan. “Eat,” he said. Without hesitation, the boy took the morsel and consumed it. That very moment, the boy saw the world, as he knew it, change forever. It was as if a spark had fallen on his heart and what had once been dormant in him was now set aflame. The cyclic mundanity of his little world with the rustling leaves, the creaking windmill, and the chirping birds, all receded into a faint hum. The bread proved sacramental.

When this state subsided, and the world seemed familiar again, the shaykh was nowhere to be seen. But the boy knew the significance of his experience. He recognised that it was time to leave behind his little orchard. He sold all his possessions, donated the proceeds among the town’s destitute, paid his respects at the graves of his parents, and set forth on his journey in search of The True, The Good, The Beautiful…The One. Posterity would later recognise him as the great saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti.

This tale carries within it the fragrance of a spiritual archetype, enigmatically emblemised by the figure of Ibrahim Qanduzi, that in our times is exceedingly rare and yet seminally needed. In this series of essays, Nomads: Freemen of the Liminal In-Between, we seek to elaborate on this.

Bibliography:

Amir Khurd Kirmani. Siyar ul-Awliya (سیر الاولیاء). 14th century.

Jamali, Sheikh Hamid bin Fazlullah. Siyar ul-Arifin (سیر العارفین). 16th century.

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The word ‘belong’ conveys the sense of ‘being along with’ or ‘being properly related to’ something [2]. And so the question “Where do I belong?” can be rephrased as “With what/whom can I be properly related to?”. Upon reflection, one can see that three distinct notions—that of the Self, the Other, and the ‘proper relationship between the two’—emerge out of this kernel of meaning. While the first two notions establish the I-Thou dichotomy, the last notion paves the way for ethical considerations which can potentially resolve this dichotomy.

Let us begin by first discussing the I-Thou dichotomy. To paraphrase Shaykh Al-Attās, [3] we are like “islands set in isolation within a fathomless sea enveloped by darkness”. Our “loneliness is so utterly absolute that we do not know even ourselves completely”. However, our lonely ‘Self’ gets mysteriously perturbed when it encounters an ‘Other’. When we gaze into the eyes of someone else, we recognise an elusive, yet familiar Other, gazing back at us. It is through this initial moment of encounter between the ‘I’ and a ‘non-I’, that the I-Thou dichotomy is born. The Other which gazes back at us, is simultaneously similar to and different from our Self. Perhaps, by somehow resolving this dichotomy of similarity and difference, the Self will be able to find its belongingness to the Other.

But why does this dichotomy need a resolution? In other words, why does this Self long to belong? In the opening verses of Masnavi-e-Ma’navi, Maulana Rumi paints the image of a reed-flute whose song laments and longs for the distant reed-bed from which it was once plucked. These verses are metaphorically describing the human condition. We are born and we find ourselves in a world of constant change and flux. Our family, friends, community, and indeed we too, undergo change. And yet, paradoxically, we intuit that something within us, this ‘I’ that we refer to our Self by, remains the same. This ‘I’, therefore, seems to be in this world, and yet, not of this world. Not completely being of this world, we cannot completely belong to this world; and hence, we long for the Beyond.

Levinas calls this longing of the Self for the Beyond, ‘the metaphysical desire’ [4]. Regular desires (desire for a drink, say) spring from a lack in the Self (thirst) and aim at a concrete Other (water), which when consumed satiates the Self. By contrast, the metaphysical desire neither springs from a sense of lack in the Self, nor does it aim at any discernible Other. According to Levinas, it aspires to an indiscernible ‘Absolute Other’ that is infinitely and completely other than our Self, and is so utterly out of our reach that we cannot possibly even relate to it in any way. However, the Other within our reach, i.e. the proximate Other (say, another human being), although not completely other than us, is still infinitely other than us. For Levinas, this infinite otherness of it with respect to us is an infinitesimal intimation of the Absolute Other and it is through the “face” of this proximate Other, that we can catch a glimpse of the Absolute Other.

But can a mere glimpse satisfy our metaphysical desire? And is this desire even satisfiable? According to Drew Dalton, the Absolute Other, which the metaphysical desire craves, lies “beyond the realm of Being.” [5] The metaphysical desire can therefore never be satisfied. Moreover, none of our regular desires that selfishly seek to consume the proximate Other, will suffice because the proximate Other is no substitute for the Absolute Other. Through this insatiability of our metaphysical desire, which makes selfish engagements with the proximate Other futile, Levinas ingeniously calls us to engage with the proximate Other, selflessly.

This Levinasian attempt to resolve the I-Thou dichotomy involves negation of the ‘I’. But is this self-negation even possible? For Levinas, the initial moment of encounter with the Other only leads to a recognition of difference. However, we know that the Other gazing back at us is similar to us, in at least some way. So this attempted Self-negation fails because the Other, although infinitely other than us, is not completely other than us. Some of our Self will linger within the Other, un-negated. As such, “the God of Levinas, which stands beyond even transcendence (since even transcendence implies a relation)”[6] whose “presence is felt only in absence”[6] fails to account for the presence of the Other—fails to ground an actual encounter with the Other.

In one of his works, [6] Shaykh Murad points to this failure of Levinas to resolve the I-Thou dichotomy. He says that “the I-Thou dichotomy can only be resolved by the third self” and that the God of Levinas, i.e. the Absolute Other, will not suffice. The non-existent Absolute Other needs to be replaced with the living God of Islamic Monotheism. The Levinasian “face” of the Other then becomes an infinitesimal intimation of God. The I-Thou pair can then be seen as pointing to The One (God) and the unity arising out of the complementarity of the pair resolves the pair’s dichotomy. As Shaykh Murad says, “The Other (God) calls us forth through the Other (creation)” [7] because “wherever you turn there is the face of God” [8].

Shaykh Murad’s insight shows that our insatiable longing is ultimately a longing for God, and that we can completely belong only to God. We can belong partially to an Other, only to the degree this Other points us to God. Moreover, it is only by ethically relating with others, that we can come to completely belong to God. As Shaykh Murad says:

“Ignore thyself and love The Other (God) through the Other (the creation).” [9]

References

[1] Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rūmī; Masnavi-e-Ma’navi, Book 1, Song of the reed, verses 5 & 6. These verses have been translated for persianpoetics.com by Muhammad Ali.

[2] Online Etymology Dictionary; www.etymonline.com/word/belong

[3] Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attās; Islām and Secularism, Chapter 3, pg. 81.

[4] Emmanuel Levinas; Totality and Infinity, Section I, Chapter A, pg. 33.

[5] Drew Dalton; The Vaccination of the Infinite: Levinas’ metaphysical desire and the Call of the Other.

[6] Abdal Hakim Murad; Commentary on the Eleventh Contentions, Contention 25.

[7] Abdal Hakim Murad; Contentions 4:88, masud.co.uk/contention/contentions-4/

[8] Qura’an; 2:115.

[9] Abdal Hakim Murad; Contentions 13:37, masud.co.uk/contention/contentions-13/

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Perhaps no other poet has captured the difference between the traditional and modern impulse more succinctly and beautifully than Iqbal here. Indeed history is ripe with arrogant alchemists turning to dust, like Shelley’s Ozymandias. And indeed providence has punctuated all ages with the select few who, in putting their foreheads on dust, tasted in this world the elixir from the fount of life. In dying before dying they were immortalised. They were remembered in history, loved by multitudes, celebrated in countless poems and stories that passed from heart to heart, generation to generation. The elixir of their names still carries a fragrance today.

And yet, is this age not best described an age of dust? An age of matter. An age when the stench of matter pervades and distracts us away from fragrance of the pious.

Materialism is in its most complete triumph today. Arrogance reigns supreme. Technocrats are worshipped as they turn dust into silicon chips in hopes of alchemising it into AGI. Countless hordes occupy themselves in this pursuit of dust; never realising that though they may be made of matter, they mattered more than it. Such is the effect of this stench that our senses have dulled to the point that even fragrance now disgusts us. The stories of the pious are viewed by both the religious and the secular as fables, figments of imagination, with no grounds in reality, and no ethical implications.

This modern condition is defined by Syed Naquib al-Attas as “disenchantment of nature.” Reality has been systematically stripped of spiritual significance, leaving behind only brute facts and material processes. The universe is no longer a vast book of signs waiting to be read. Rather it is a concatenation of ultimately absurd symbols to be measured, exploited, and alchemised by an arrogant will. This disenchantment afflicts both the religious and the secular today.

The secular view these traditional stories with an air of arrogant amusement. Troubled by their snobbishness, the literalists among the religious, and many even among the non-literalists, reactionarily begin characterising the stories as “inauthentic”, thus chopping away at the intellectual and imaginal produce of their ancestors; i.e., chopping away at the very branch which connects them to the authentic tree of Truth.

What these modern minds, possessed by the spirit of quantity, fail to grasp is that the primary function of these stories was pedagogic. It was to transmit the spirit of the tradition in a form that could bypass prideful instrumental reason and speak directly to the true intellect. Transmitted orally, passed down through generations in decentralised networks of wisdom, these stories cultivated an imagination that recognised the immediacy of the Divine. These narratives kept the world enchanted and reminded people that reality had depth, that matter mattered in so far as it brimmed with Meaning.

Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad observes that the “deepest instinct of the Islamic tradition concerns initiation, authorisation, and transmission.” It is precisely this instinct that has been assaulted, twisted out of shape, and ultimately unravelled. The result is a generation inheriting words without their spirit, forms without their substance. Modernity, in Shaykh Murad’s phrase, is “an accelerating attempt to shovel matter into the growing hole where religion used to be.” Any attempt at countering this necessitates that we fill these voids with the perfumed water in which the pious of the past made wudū. We must retain and revive the culture of the pedagogically intentional storytelling that has suffered so much today. We must pay heed to Iqbal when he says:

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Perhaps this quote is the most succinct description of the philosophical impasse one inevitably encounters when one elevates doubt to the status of an epistemic virtue.

The following blogpost provides an eerie depiction of this state of affairs:

As opposed to this state of affairs, the following meme succinctly depicts what simple affirmation looks like:

Bahut Kathin hai dagar panghat ki,
Kaisay main bhar laaun madhva say matki?
— Ameer Khusrow —

---

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Consider the following quote from Marshal McLuhan’s Understanding Media:

By putting our physical bodies inside our extended nervous systems, by means of electric media, we set up a dynamic by which all previous technologies that are mere extensions of hands and feet and teeth and bodily heat-controls-all such extensions of our bodies, including cities-will be translated into information systems. Electromagnetic technology requires utter human docility and quiescence of meditation such as befits an organism that now wears its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide. Man must serve his electric technology with the same servo-mechanistic fidelity with which he served his coracle, his canoe, his typography, and all other extensions of his physical organs. But there is this difference, that previous technologies were partial and fragmentary, and the electric is total and inclusive. An external consensus or conscience is now as necessary as private consciousness. With the new media, however, it is also possible to store and to translate everything; and, as for speed, that is no problem. No further acceleration is possible this side of the light barrier.

Clearly, McLuhan had foreseen what is currently transpiring.

Consider, furthermore, what the american computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil said about the question of God:

Does God exist? Well, I would say, ‘not yet.’

Prometheus unbound? Such Promethean views epitomise the guiding spirit of modern transhumanist ‘rationalist’ technocrats…

In relation to these Promethean movers and shakers of our world, David Icke, widely considered to be deranged, said the following:

Humanity is actually under the control of dinosaur-like alien reptiles called the Babylon Brotherhood who must consume human blood to maintain their human appearance.

Such ramblings may seem schizo to many. But they seem to me to be not that far away from the truth. In fact, as someone like Sh. Abdal Hakim Murad suggests in one of his contentions quoted below, David Icke may actually be underestimating the depth of the rabbit hole!

David Icke defames lizards.
—Abdal Hakim Murad, Contentions 21:99

Further Resources to Consult:

• The Human As An Automaton with James Tunney:

• Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Double and Demons.

• Painting by Sr. Safia Latif: (Very cool to reflect upon) https://x.com/safialatif/status/1651693822601211913

• That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis

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Thus begins the Tao Te Ching:

Contrary to this, the gospel states:

In such wise, the sunlit East seeks Him in the mysterious shadows heaven casts upon the earth; while, the twilit West searches for Him in the heavenly light which makes the earth manifest.

Islam, however, between East and West, sees no duality here. It sees only “Light upon light!”

Islam, the subtle isthmus between yin and yang, is neither of the East nor of the West.

Being and Beyond Being are One!

Islam is the Tao that can be told. It is the straight path to the Eternal Tao.

Questions concerning ideas of citizenship and statelessness have perennially troubled us and are likely to continue to do so. The heated political discourse on this matter that we find today, therefore, is fuelled by something far deeper than just some accidental aspects of contemporary politics. Such hostile discourse is rooted fundamentally in a kind of primordial awe and fear of the ‘stateless wandering stranger.’ The following story^[2] may instruct us on the dual nature of this archetype:

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Walking into a village, exhausted from the long journey, a man watched intently as his green-cloaked companion fixed his gaze upon a child playing among his friends. The cloaked figure approached the child and with one fluid motion of his dagger slit the child’s throat. He had promised not to question the green man, and yet, as the blood dripping from the dagger stained the earth red, questions swirled within him like violent desert winds. He could not contain himself any longer. His promise shattered like pottery against stone as words erupted: “Have you killed an innocent who harmed no one?” The green-cloaked figure turned and said, “Did I not tell you that you could not bear with me?” Days passed in strained silence. When finally, they prepared to part ways, the stranger, with saintly certitude, spoke of things hidden beyond the veil of appearance: “The boy’s parents were believers. He would have grown to overwhelm them with darkness. God will give them another child—one of mercy and light.”

The man then chanced upon a wild man, trudging through the hot desert sand, mumbling to himself “When will he return? When will he return?” Concerned, the man asked if he was well and offered him some water. “That cannot quench me!” shrieked the mad wanderer as he held the man with his glittering eyes and related the tale of a day when, through the narrow streets of a city, a procession moved toward the execution grounds. A craftsman stood in his doorway, watching the condemned man stagger beneath a wooden beam. When the condemned one leaned against his wall seeking momentary rest, the craftsman fiendishly shoved him away and said, “Move on! You delay your fate and disrupt my trade.” The beaten man looked up with unsettling clarity. “I go now,” he said softly, “but you shall wander until I return.”

Such archetypal antinomianism of the ‘stateless wandering stranger’ found in this story is what fuels our primordial fears and engenders the ugly political discourses that we find rampant today. And yet, it is safe to say that the stateless strangers of the story are qualitatively different than the immigrants we find amidst us. Aristotle captures this difference well through his distinction between essential and accidental statelessness:

“It is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity.”^[2]

The central question this passage provokes is: how can an essentially political animal be essentially stateless? Being a political animal, surely, essentially entails participation in a just state; or, in any state to the degree it is just. As such, a bad man, an essentially state-less man who cannot participate in a state even to the degree it is just, can be a man only in semblance: a man no longer human. Such a man is essentially rogue, or, dare we say, demonically possessed. If this were true, someone “above humanity,” by contrast, may refer to a saintly individual of an angelic disposition.

The sceptic will surely be displeased by this distinctly moral and Abrahamic reading of this passage. For the sake of such a sceptic, let us assume to the contrary that a Bad Man is still essentially human, despite the contradiction such a view may imply. If it were so, then why is a Bad Man being juxtaposed against someone who is “above humanity” and hence essentially non-human. Aristotle surely knows his rhetoric and his metaphysics. Why would he draw an essential parallel between two things that are not of the same kind relative to the subject being discussed? There can only be two hermeneutical possibilities here. Either Aristotle blatantly contradicted himself, or indeed an essential difference here is truly meant. The latter is clearly more plausible.

However, even this argument may ring hollow to the sceptic. The passage, as we have quoted it above, certainly does not necessitate the moral reading we proposed. As an alternative reading, the sceptic may say that a bad man may refer to ‘sub-human’, while someone above humanity may refer to a ‘super-human’ entity like a god. This reading, at least prima facie, interprets away the apparent contradiction and tension between the notions of essential politicality and essential statelessness by positing that, while no humans participate in essential statelessness, two kinds of non-human entities, the sub-human and the super-human, participate in it. This reading seems to make more sense in Aristotle’s cultural milieu than the Abrahamic reading we stated. Furthermore, it also scrupulously avoids any moral scruples which may make the sceptic uncomfortable.

Such a reading, however, is mistaken. In original Greek, the words used for bad man and someone ‘above humanity’ are phaulos (φαῦλος) and kreisson (κρεῖσσον) respectively. While the connotations associated with phaulos include worthlessness, baseness, and wickedness; kreisson is related with ideas of might, strength, and excellence. Clearly, these connotations imply a moral reading and the juxtaposition between kreisson and phaulos is a juxtaposition between good and evil. But are good and evil not anthropocentric notions? Do they not essentially relate to humanity?

Thus, we find ourselves in a bit of a pickle: any reasonable interpretation of the above passage should not only maintain a difference between the essentially political man and someone who is essentially stateless, but also simultaneously carry moral connotations which seem to imply anthropocentricity and hence a kind of similarity. How can we maintain this essential difference while also retaining such seminal similarity?

It is here that the idea of transubstantiation can serve as a powerful means of interpretation. Transubstantiation refers to the process of essential change of an object while its accidental attributes, and hence its appearance, remain unchanged. In the Christian context of eucharist, it refers to the essential change of bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Christ. This notion, although perhaps aesthetically unpleasant to the Muslim, may nevertheless serve as an interesting means of interpreting the essentially stateless man of Aristotle as being almost no longer human: a human only in semblance.

“Verily, Satan flows through the human being like the flowing of blood”^[3]

In light of these words of the Chosen One ﷺ, can we not think of complete demonic possession, a phenomenon no confessional Muslim will have trouble affirming the existence of, as a substantial change in the human being in such wise that he is reduced to being a mere vehicle of something else? And yet, do such possessed individuals not retain all the accidents of a human being? By contrast, does a true saint not possess a radical qualitative difference than non-saints? This difference is certainly clear in the case of the prophets (a.s.) with their miracles bending the “laws” of space and time under Divine command. But the awliyah of Allah too have their karāmāt. Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad subtly referring to this qualitative difference writes:

“Ijazah is transfusion”^[4]

Interpreting this way, we may think of phaulos as a man who has undergone a kind of twisted transubstantiation and become a demon, and of kreisson as a man who has undergone a kind of sublime transubstantiation and become a saint. The symbolism of blood, found in the prophetic hadith and Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad’s contention quoted above, only serves to strengthen this interpretation. Furthermore, does Khizr, as he slits the child’s throat, like a kreisson not transcend the statutory laws and normative convention? And are demonically evil individuals not dispensed with (slain or banished) in traditional polities? Interpreting essential statelessness in this way, it seems to us, will enable a better understanding of where the mass-hysteria surrounding citizenship rights and statelessness comes from. Such hysteria is rooted in the primordial awe for saints and primordial fear of the possessed.

^[1] Safia Latif’s art website: https://www.safialatif.com/product/the-judgment-original-oil-painting

^[2] A creative intertwined rendition of the stories of Moses’ encounter with Al-Khizr (a.s.) and the story of The Wandering Jew.

^[3] From Book 1 of Aristotle’s Politics

^[4] Source: Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2174

^[5] Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad’s Contentions 3:26

Arabic equals Greek minus tragedy.
—Abdal Hakim Murad^[1]

As I walked towards my house late at night, moments seemed to pass by me more slowly than usual. I had worked too much that day. Knackered, hungry, and delirious, I decided to sit on an empty bench in a run-down park. The stench of weed, absurd graffiti on the opposing wall, and ominous stillness of the park began to overwhelm me. Naturally, I sought refuge in nostalgia. Drifting with the stream of my memories, I saw myself sitting on a different bench, in a different park, on a different day. A day when the park seemed colorful, and the world meaningful. A joyful day spent in the warm embrace of a fair companion. I wondered, can such joy last? Certainly not. Time burns everything to ash. Life is as absurd as graffiti on a wall.

The above account epitomizes the erotic, yet elegiac, prologues, nasībs, of ancient Arabic love poems, qaṣīdas. Such prologues, the only genre of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry open to philosophical introspection,^[2] depict “nature as a wasteland”^[3] and “a landscape of ruins.”^[4] Quite often, such prologues “culminate in the evocation of a writing on a rock, waḥy, which forces itself on the beholder without, however, disclosing its meaning to him.”^[5] The relentless flow of time leading to existential angst and the consequent epistemological pessimism which characterizes nasībs, parallels similar motifs found in Greek tragedies. For instance, the illegible waḥy mirrors sphinx’s riddle and both reflect the absurdity of life as viewed by the ancient Arabs and Greeks respectively.

Greeks, like Aristotle, regarded tragedy as superior to the other genres of poetry prevalent in their culture.^[6] Many key figures in the West have continued to maintain it in high regard. While Nietzsche viewed it as emerging from the spirit of music,^[7] Roger Scruton thought of it as a formal reflection of human suffering.^[8] The likes of Jordan Peterson even seem to suggest that it reflects human life itself.^[9] These perspectives seem to allege the universal “reality of drama and tragedy in the spiritual, or transcendental, or inner life of man.”^[10] Furthermore, they lead people to claim that since tragedy reflects man’s life, it deserves preeminence over other artforms. In our modern age, such a view of the tragic has indeed spread far and wide.

Prevalence of this view, however, does not determine its truth or falsehood. Although, we must acknowledge that the parallels between nasībs and tragedies, poetic forms emanating from deserts of Arabia on the one hand and mountains of Greece on the other, certainly show that distinct cultures and civilisations have historically had an appreciation for the tragic. This certainly gives at least a semblance of credence to the universal value of the tragic. But can this view bare serious scrutiny?

The Islamic tradition offers us a clear counterexample to this view. According to Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, the tragic finds no expression in the Quran; for, in every Quranic story “the good people win.”^[11] Moreover, Shaykh Naquib Al-Attas makes the same claim about Islamic cultures in general.^[12] Even Rumi, the quintessential Islamic poet, does not have a tragic bone in his body. Furthermore, most Muslim cultures around the world, artistic produce of whom is second to none, do not seem to have any fixation on the tragic. Artistic heritage of the Islamic tradition, therefore, refutes anyone claiming the complete universality and preeminence of tragic artforms.

A mere counterexample, however, rings hollow; since, a question remains unanswered. As described above, ancient Arabs did have a prevalence of the tragic in their poetry and culture. How, then, the Islamic tradition, which seemingly emerged from the tragedy-struck desert of Arabia, suddenly change the nature of Arab artistic expression? What led to the sudden death of tragedy in the Arab; and later, the broader Islamic world?

These questions have troubled many orientalists over the past few centuries. For Angelika Neuwirth, the Quran appears “seemingly out of a void.”^[13] She points to the complete lack of discursive speech and theological concerns in pre-Islamic poetry and then mentions “one important exception;”^[14] the exception of poetic nasībs which, as mentioned above, are uniquely open to poetic and philosophical introspection. Being the only philosophical artistic expression of the ancient Arabs, nasībs reflected their worldview which saw life as absurd, and the world as a concatenation of illegible symbols, waḥys.

The advent of Quran, therefore, led to a radical semantic inversion of the linguistic space of ancient Arabs which codified and expressed their worldview. The existential angst emanating from a severe epistemic pessimism which so seminally characterized their tragic worldview collapsed under the weight of the Quranic rhetorical and philosophical intervention. In particular, and most importantly, the Quran replaced the illegible waḥys, with intelligible āyāt.^[15] It turned the world from a concatenation of absurd symbols to a tessellation of meaningful signs. Furthermore, in the Quran, “God Himself takes the role of fate and restructures the time of man;”^[16] and, in doing so, inverts the prevalent conception of time which viewed fate and providence as ultimately arbitrary.

The appeal of the tragic, therefore, emerges out of existential despair, and it can only take root in cultures where such despair is prevalent. With the advent of Islam, however, tragedy died in Arabia; or rather, was slain by the just blade of Muhammad ﷺ, the blessed prophet of Arabia and beyond.

Bibliography:

[1] Shaikh Abdal-Hakim Murad, “Contentions 6,” MishkatMedia, March 8, 2017, https://mishkatmedia.com/contentions-6/.

[2] Angelika Neuwirth, “By the Pen and What They Write: Angelika Neuwirth,” VCUArts, YouTube video, 0:16:21, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrO87uve9Ag.

[3] Zadie Smith, The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 773.

[4] ibid.

[5] ibid.

[6] Aristotle, Poetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

[7] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Douglas Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

[8] Roger Scruton, “Faking it,” in Confessions of a Heretic (New York City: New York Review Books, 2021).

[9] Jordan B. Peterson, “Everyone’s Life Is A Tragedy,” Jordan Peterson Fan Club, YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcxPHGngSN8.

[10] Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, Islam and Secularism (Kuala Lumpur: Art Printing Works Sdn. Bhd., 1993), 135.

[11] Hamza Yusuf, “Don't Be Sad - Hamza Yusuf,” Blue Peace, YouTube video, 0:00:20, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqfP4ADWHEQ.

[12] Al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, 136-137.

[13] Angelika Neuwirth, “By the Pen and What They Write: Angelika Neuwirth,” VCUArts, YouTube video, 0:11:40, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrO87uve9Ag.

[14] Angelika Neuwirth, “By the Pen and What They Write: Angelika Neuwirth,” VCUArts, YouTube video, 0:10:38, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrO87uve9Ag.

[15] Angelika Neuwirth, “Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community (Part 1),” American University of Beirut, YouTube video, 0:29:25, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS4r0Lg3gT0.

[16] Angelika Neuwirth, “Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community (Part 1),” American University of Beirut, YouTube video, 0:28:54, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS4r0Lg3gT0.

American pyscho is one of the cult classics of all time. Naturally, many people have analysed it from a variety of perspectives. However, I could not find a single account of the movie from a Muslim's perspective. I believe that the movie conveys something deep about our modern condition and, if we pay attention, we can learn a lot from it. So, here is a 'A Muslim's Perspective on American Psycho'!

We have even become so unaccustomed to living that we sometimes feel a kind of loathing for ‘real life’ and that’s why we cannot bear to be reminded of it.

—Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky ¹

Iqbal once beautifully said, “While the head is still pondering on the edge; the heart plunges into Nimrod’s fire.” ² This opposition between the head and the heart—between thought and action—that Iqbal is highlighting here, has come to increasingly characterise modernity, ever since Descartes. As dwellers of modernity, we have all fallen into this ‘Cartesian-chasm’ to a greater or lesser degree. Many of us, with our ears plugged into phones and eyes fixed on screens, seem to trudge through cities like zombies. Others, trapped in their dark rooms, remain entangled in the sticky web of the internet like helpless insects. We all seem to be afflicted by a kind of solipsism—an urge to retreat into ourselves, to be left alone and keep ourselves distracted from life.

Being a ‘modern man’, I have often struggled with this kind of solipsism. I have a tendency to overthink and seek reasons for everything. This tendency often has a paralysing effect on me, which is difficult for me to snap out of. Were it not for the five prayers forcing me out of such paralysis, I am sure I would have been perpetually trapped in my own thoughts. However, I have often wondered, what is so wrong about being trapped in one’s thoughts? What is so wrong about trying to tease out reasons for everything? Surely, to act correctly, do we not need a complete understanding of the state of affairs? Reading ‘Notes from the Underground’ by F. M. Dostoyevsky made me realise why I was mistaken.

Dostoyevsky’s underground man spends his days confined to his little room. He is a creature filled with intense rage, spite, and resentment. Unlike the ‘common people’, who take life as a given, he is hyper-conscious of everything and he endlessly searches for reasons behind his thoughts and actions. He is paralysed by his mind and trapped by the ‘inertia’ of his thoughts. He envies, and deeply longs for, the friendship and love that common people experience in their lives. Yet, every time these things are extended to him, he rejects them in the vilest of ways. He is a man trapped within his own consciousness and tormented by his own conscience. But why is he this way? How did he come to be like this?

The answer lies in the zeitgeist of the world in which he lives. The scientific spirit of modernity is the cause of the underground man’s torments. From the scientific perspective, man is viewed as being merely a part of nature, with absolutely nothing metaphysical about him. The underground man understands the grave implications of this perspective. He knows that when he puts himself ‘under the microscope’, his volition and individuality, that make him who he is, are nowhere to be seen. He is made from the same matter as everything else, and like everything else, he is bound by the iron chains of natural laws. All his actions and emotions are caused by his surroundings; his volition seems to be an illusion. Scared of his surroundings, the underground man chooses to retreat into the realm of his thoughts. There, in his own fantasies, he dreams up new ways of tormenting himself, for it is only while suffering that he feels he exists.

Reading ‘Notes from the Underground’ was a terrifying experience for me. The book left me alone, in an underground of my own, trapped in perpetual thought which allows no respite and offers no certitude. In the dark underground, I endlessly wondered about what got me there and whether there was a way out. For a long time I was alone with my tormenting thoughts, but eventually, my silent solitude was interrupted by words which echoed in my heart like a sudden thunder on a quiet night:

To me, on the first morn, Gabriel did remind;
Accept not the heart which is enslaved by the mind!

—Iqbāl ³

The tragedy of the underground man is caused by his inability to accept that some truths are beyond reasoning; that some beliefs, like that of human volition, arise purely out of intuition. The underground man could not see that his intense self-obsession was the cause of his misery, and that only a genuine concern for others could cure him. He could not see that the way out of the underground was not through his head, but through his heart. His heart was enslaved by his mind and this doomed him to slow and painful decay.

In an age such as ours when underground men not only exist, but are mass-produced, ‘Notes from the Underground’ offers us a much-needed critique of modernity. What makes this book truly great, is that although first published in the 19th century, this text remains very relevant and profound. Personally, this book is significant to me because it taught me that the head has its limits, and that in some matters, the heart takes precedence. It gave me, as Roger Scruton once said, “the real reasons, for not having reasons.” ⁴

Bibliography:

1. F.M. Dostoyevsky; Notes From the Underground, Part 2, Section 10.

2. Iqbāl; Bang-e-Dara, 166, verses 5 & 6.

3. Iqbāl; Zarb-e-Kaleem 78, verses 7 & 8. (Translation is my own.)

4. What Conservatism Really Means- Roger Scruton & Hamza Yusuf. YouTubeLink