GHAZALI & SUFISM
Sufism is an esoteric religion that overlaps with philosophy. So, we can posit Sufism is a way of being. Also, I should like to point out that Sufism in Persia (Iran) was a movement that began to transgress the exoteric-and institutionalized- Islam that was appropriated by the rulers of the region to control society. So Sufism was not only a theistic existential movement but also a political movement to escape the doctrinal and oppressive brand of Islam imposed on people in the East.
Out here in the US, Sufism has become yet another exotic way of mysticism that gets appropriate by the New Agers to fit their “desires.” You can find superficial writings about Rumi (Molavi) and Hafiz, translations of their poetry in accordance to what “sells.”
Mysticism is, of course, very sexy in privileged circles. Those who can afford it, pay lip service to Sufism. Alas, this is how it is sometimes.
As for Sufi thinkers, the first name that comes to mind is Ghazali.
He was the Persian philosopher, known in the West as al-Ghazali. Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali was born at Tus, Persia, in 450 AH (1058). He was an erudite scholar, so much so that he was appointed a professor of Islamic theology at the university in Baghdad {where the Greek knowledge was kept alive during the dark ages in the West]. A few years later, Ghazali had an emotional and spiritual crisis and came to believe that his way of life was too worldly. He left his academic post and became an ascetic, studying both the teachings and the practices of Islamic mystics. He later returned to teaching . His most important text is Deliverance from Error, which arguably constitutes Ghazali’s spiritual and intellectual autobiography.
Ghazali’s inquiry was a quest for certainty. He studied theology, but was disappointed with its intellectual achievements. His inquiry prompted him to study philosophy, but once again it seems that he was disappointed, especially with philosophy’s unfounded metaphysical claims and with the fact that many philosophers held beliefs contrary to Islamic revelation. Thinking this way, he turned to the Batiniyah, who teach that truth is attained not by reason, but by accepting the pronouncements of the infallible imam (religious leader). At the time, this teaching had important political implications since it was the official ideology of the Fatimid caliphate with its center in Cairo. However, Ghazali recognized that the teachings of the imams were quite trivial. He characterized their knowledge as “feeble” and “emaciated.” Finally he investigated and interrogated Sufism. It is among the Sufis that his restless soul found peace.
Ghazali was not satisfied with empiricism, rationalism, or skepticism. Hence, he sought to discover a source or means to knowledge that escapes the skeptic’s doubts and provides a firmer foundation than either empiricism or rationalism. He believed that he had found such a source in mystical experience, an intimate union with the “divine.”
This mystical experience is what attracts many Westerners to Sufism.
While Ghazali’s motivations were philosophical and scientific, above all, his inquiry has its impetus in a quest to know about the divine. His (creative) inquiry may reveal to us something about the limited nature of epistemological theories.
To be sure, Ghazali’s paradigmatic views are controversial (especially in the Western academy) to say the least. How could adequate knowledge be grounded in some sort of mystical experience? How do we know that mystical experience is not an illusion, just like some sense experiences?
Here’s a passage from “Deliverance from Error” that I think reveals a facet of Sufi thinking (here he is having a dialogue with sense-perception),
My reliance on sense-perception also has been destroyed. Perhaps only those intellectual truths which are first principles (or derived from first principles) are to be relied upon, such as the assertion that ten are more than three, that the same thing cannot be both affirmed and denied at one time, that one thing is not both generated in time and eternal, nor both existent and non-existent, nor both necessary and impossible.
Now, what did Ghazali think about the mystic experience of ecstasy, as understood by the Sufis? He wrote,
It may be that that state is what the Sufis claim as their special ‘state’(sc. Mystic union or ecstasy), for they consider that in their ‘states’(or ecstasies), which occur when they have withdrawn into themselves and are absent from their senses, they witness states (or circumstances) which do not tally with these principles of intellect. Perhaps that ‘state’ is death; for the Messenger of God (God bless and preserve him) says: ‘The people are dreaming; when they die, they become awake.’ So perhaps life in this world is a dream by comparison with the world to come; and when a man dies, things come to appear differently to him from what he now beholds, and at the same time the words are addressed to him: ‘We have taken off thee thy covering, and thy sight today is sharp’(Q. 50, 21).
SOME THOUGHTS ON HABERMAS
I believe that an inquiry into issues of social justice can benefit greatly from critical theory. Habermas has believed that human beings are unnecessarily oppressed by implicit cultural ideologies. Therefore when a research uses critical theory as its framework its goal will necessarily become one of making the implicit belief systems explicit. In other words the role of this type of inquiry is to free individuals by formulating theories that can be practiced towards social change. So, in that sense the research that is anchored in critical theory should be able to offer alternative ways of knowing, reflection, and finally, social action.
However, judging from his recent actions (e.g., the conference in Tehran), one can surmise that Habermas is rethinking his old views and becoming more flexible, dare I say, considering some aspects of what Paulo Freire called “progressive postmodern thinking.”
The Frankfurt theorists at the Institute for Social Research, namely, Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Fromm, and Habermas relied heavily on the work of Hegel and Marx. These thinkers have tried to exhibit dialectically the contradictions imposed upon modern human beings by varieties of social organization that abuse formal rationality in order to deny power to classes of citizens. One look at the Bush II administration, and a creative inquiry that is anchored in critical theory can reveal what this administration is doing to oppress not only the citizens of the Third World, but also the citizens of the United States. Now, you might be thinking, that’s an easy one.
Let us look at the history of cinema with a lens borrowed from Frankfurt school. When in the 1920s Hollywood was shaping to become a powerful institution and played a central role in the “culture industry” (a term coined by Adorno) there was a class struggle happening. There was a struggle between the artists (laborers of movie making) and the owners of the studios, in short, a struggle over movies. This struggle over movies took place in the realm of leisure and amusements, and in a society where to speak of class conflict was a breach of good taste (still that way) it was always masked. Take Charlie Chaplin’s work for example. He was concerned about social justice and used slapstick comedy and melodrama to convey his message of class conflict via movies made within a system that was not interested in social justice.
As a creative inquirer-using critical theory as a framework-I perceive most of Hollywood films as powerful and pervasive communicators of cultural myths that propagate and reinforce the socio-political system. For example most films of Steven Spielberg (one of the gatekeepers of the culture industry) support the dominant ideological values of a conservative America. So, as a critical theorist I shall hope that my theories can lead to practical action towards the elimination of such dominance.
Where does Habermas stand in this sphere of thinking? He too wants the citizens to escape from the dominance of the power structure. This is the same goal that Foucault and Derrida had, however, where Habermas differs from these French thinkers is his staunch belief in modernity and Enlightenment. Where Foucault and Derrida called for a radical approach to the ways of knowing and action towards social justice, Habermas calls for a continuation of Enlightenment.
According to Richard Rorty, “Habermas has said that Marx, Kierkegaard and American pragmatism were the three productive responses to Hegel.” Rorty is a very reliable source, and has had dialogues with Habermas-and many other continental thinkers for that matter.
For Habermas, what takes the place of the urge to represent reality accurately is the urge to come to free agreement with our fellow human beings-to be full participating members of a free community of inquiry.
Habermas coined the term, “communicative rationality,” which is to say that as creative inquirers we have an obligation to be rational, and for Habermas that comes as a result of taking account of other people’s doubts and objections to our own beliefs. This is not unlike what William James believed about being “true,” that true is “what would be better for us to believe.”
He also has a viewpoint that is problematic for creative inquirers. Habermas thinks that inquiry is somehow bound to converge to a single point. Perhaps he is too entrenched in rationality.
IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS
It has been close to thirty years since neoliberalism and what Henry Giroux has called “the new gilded age” has brought us new conditions like globalization and militarism resulting in inconceivable inequalities, which is supported by a corporate-owned media that daily give us empty messages about “war on terror,” “support the troops,” “we need change,” “Israel has a right to defend itself,” “ clash of civilizations,” and other nonsense framed as messages about global justice discourse.
Let us look at some planetary facts:
About 50% of the world (nearly three billion people) lives on less than two dollars a day (see UN figures). If the developed nations spent about 1% of what they spend on military (i.e., building bombs and other weapons), they could send every single person on the planet to school. Approximately 3.5 million people die of AIDS related illnesses every year. In Africa alone children account for over 80% of malaria cases—many die. Close to 700 million people live on less than $2.00 a day, and another 400 million on less than $1.00 a day. Lack of sanitation and access to clean water kills about 2 million children—due to diarrhea—every year. Nearly 40% of the world’s population uses biomass—not oil, but things like bullshit–for their energy needs, and this condition coupled with lack of sanitation and clean water causes many diseases, resulting in many deaths. About 30% of people on the planet do not have access to electricity, and many more get it a few hours a day. 90% of the world’s population does not have access to the Internet. There are only about 500 billionaires in the world. Do the math; that accounts for 0.000007% of the total planetary population, and yet they have total assets that equals close to 8% of the entire world’s gross domestic product. Furthermore, Western or multinational (Western controlled) corporations own 80% of the world’s wealth. One of the wealthiest nations in the world (guess who) has no national healthcare. Close to 90% of the world’s goods and services are consumed by only, approximately, 18% of the wealthiest countries—with an unconscionable 50% of world’s garbage produced by US citizens, which at 300 million only has 5% of the planet’s population. In the EU and the US people spend close to 17 billion dollars on pet food, while, globally, the world spends only 9 billion dollars on sanitation and water filtration. More than ONE million Iraqis have died as a direct result of the US invasion. The US spent close to 700 billion dollars on its military in 2007 while drastically cutting back on public education and other social services.
The list can go on and on…Don’t take my word for it, go to the internet and after reading about Paris Hilton’s latest shenanigan log onto www.unicef.org www.un.org www.ifamericansknew.org www.globalissues.org www.justforeignpolicy.org www.linktv.org etc. and see what you will see.
IT DOESN”T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.
When are we going to realize that we are all members of the same family? When are we going to understand that we are not separate from nature, but only part of it? When are we going to educate ourselves to embrace our differences and, as free thinkers have said it over and over, “disagree nonviolently?” When are we going to take back the public airwaves stolen from us by corporate media, and put a stop to the relentless propaganda about the greatness of neoliberalism and the ghostly war on terrorism, and equation of democracy with capitalism? When?
It doesn’t have to be like this. We can end world hunger, denationalize–and globalize–education, eliminate national borders, drastically reduce national military apparatuses, get rid of all nuclear weapons, clean up the planet, take out land mines and plant trees instead, close down sweat shops and build schools instead, provide universal healthcare to the citizens of the planet, and much more. We can do all of this and still be prosperous, and in pursuit of happiness!