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Surrender and Realisation: Imam Ali on the Conditions for True Religious Understanding
By James Winston Morris (Editors Note: This essay will be published in the authors forthcoming volume, Openings: From the Quran to the Islamic Humanities. We are greatly indebted to Professor Morris for permission to reproduce the essay on this Web site. Copyright James W. Morris). Do not seek to know the Truth (al-Haqq) according to other people. Rather first come to know the Truth and only then will you recognize Its people. [1] One of the most striking characteristics about those surviving oral traditions that have come down to us from the earliest periods of each of the world-religions as with the Gospels, the earliest Buddhist teachings, or the Prophetic hadith is the distinctive directness, simplicity, and extreme concision of those original oral teachings. It is as though everything else that follows is only a kind of endlessly extended commentary on those few simple words. Certainly this is true of many of the surviving sayings attributed to Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 40/660) including the short, but highly memorable passage that is the subject of this study, which has inspired repeated commentaries and elaborate theological and even dramatic interpretations down through the centuries. [2] The wider significance of this particular passage is that it illustrates so perfectly Alis emblematic role as the fountainhead of virtually all the esoteric traditions of Islamic spirituality, both among the many branches of Shiite Islam (which revere him as their first Imam) and throughout the even more numerous Sufi paths, where his name is almost always included as the initial transmitter of the Prophetic baraka in each orders chain of transmission. That central initiatic role is beautifully summarized in the famous Prophetic saying: I am the City of (divine) knowing, and Ali is its doorway. And perhaps the most important literary vehicle in the wider transmission of Alis teachings, since it has been equally revered by both Sunni and Shiite audiences down to our own time, is the Nahj al-Balgha (Pathway of Eloquence), a wide-ranging collection of various sermons, letters, and wise sayings attributed to Ali, that was assembled several centuries later by the famous scholar and poet al-Sharf al-Rd (d. 406/1016). [3] The famous saying of Ali placed as the epigraph for this study, with which al-Ghazl begins his own spiritual autobiography, highlights the indispensable if somewhat paradoxical starting point for any well-grounded discussion of religious and spiritual understanding. For all problems of inter-religious understanding and perhaps even more important, of that initial intra-religious understanding on which all further dialogue depends necessarily come back to this fundamental question: What is the ultimate divine Reality (al-Haqq), and how we can come to know and properly conform

to what It requires of us (the Right, which in Arabic is also an inseparable dimension of the divine Haqq)? Almost all the extensive sermons and teachings of the Nahj alBalgha are devoted to one or another of the equally essential dimensions of this question to that ongoing interaction between our purified actions and intentions (amal), and our maturing spiritual understanding (ilm), which together constitute each persons uniquely individual, spiralling process of spiritual realization (tahqq). Now one of the most important keys to approaching this primordial question in the Nahj al-Balgha is the famous passage (translated in full in the Appendix at the end of this study) describing Alis intimate advice to one of his closest companions and disciples, Kumayl ibn Ziyd al-Nakh. [4] The difficulty and intrinsic dangers of that unique lesson are emphasized already in its dramatic setting. Kumayl, who recounts the story, stresses the great pains Ali takes to assure his privacy and solitude, leading his disciple out to the cemetery beyond the city wall of Kufa: that is, to the symbolic home of those who like those rare true Knowers of God described in the rest of Alis saying are spiritually already at once alone with God and dead to this world. In addition, the wider historical setting at that particular moment in time so full of religious intrigues, claims, betrayals, and prolonged bloody civil wars among the triumphant Arabs only highlights the profound wealth of concrete earthly experience which underlies the Imams conclusions and intimate teachings summarized in this saying. No other text of the Nahj al-Balgha is so pointedly set in the same kind of strictest privacy and intimacy. As a result, this famous testament to Kumayl constitutes the indispensable link between the more public, relatively exoteric teachings of the Nahj alBalgha and the wealth of more intimate, often esoteric spiritual teachings of Ali that were eventually preserved at first orally, and eventually often in writing in both Shiite and Sufi Islamic traditions. The contents of Alis lesson to Kumayl are all presented as a clarification of his opening statement that: There are three sorts of people (with regard to Religion, al-Dn). A divinely inspired Knower (lim rabbn); the person who is seeking (that true spiritual) Knowing (mutaallim) along the path of salvation; and the riffraff and rabble, the followers of every screaming voice, those who bend with every wind, who have not sought to be illuminated by the Light of (divine) Knowing and who have not had recourse to a solid support. In the remainder of his lesson, Imam Ali goes on to explain some of the basic conditions for these three radically different levels of (and potentials for) true religious understanding. Each of his points here as throughout the Nahj al-Balgha is of course profoundly rooted in the central teachings of the Quran. However here we can only summarize his most essential observations in the simplest possible terms. First, and most importantly, it is human Hearts (the Quranic qalb al-insn) that are the locus of true spiritual Knowing (ilm) and of our awareness of God and Truth: that is, it

is not simply our mind or intellect or passion. Hence the decisive practical importance, throughout the Nahj al-Balgha, of Alis constant stress on the purification of our hearts, through inner surrender to the divine Will (taslm), as the underlying spiritual purpose of the many divine commandments. Divine, inspired Knowing, however it is outwardly acquired, can only be perceived as such by the Heart that has been polished, emptied of this worlds distractions and attachments, and thereby opened up to the full significance and reality of the divine Word and to the further rights and obligations (another dimension of the Arabic al-Haqq) flowing from that opening. Second, the practically indispensable key to this human potential for religious Knowing is the real existence and efforts of a limited number of divinely guided individuals again, not of particular books, rituals, doctrines or worldly institutions, none of which are even mentioned in this intimate, highly personal lesson. Ali refers here to those very special human doorways to true religious understanding by several profoundly significant Quranic expressions: the divine Knowers; the Friends of God (awliy Allh); Gods Proofs or Clear Signs on Earth (hujja, bayyina); Gods True Servants (ibd Allh); and finally as Gods true earthly stand-ins or Stewards (khalfat Allh). The Imam tells us several other very important things in his description of these true Friends of God:

They are always present on earth, whether openly or in secret. [5] They are directly inspired by the divine Spirit of Certainty (rh al-yaqn). Therefore they pre-eminently possess true spiritual Insight (haqqat al-basra) into the deeper spiritual realities underlying earthly events and experiences, into the actual meanings of the infinite divine Signs constituting our existence. Their spiritual task and mission on earth is to pass on this divine Knowing to those properly qualified souls who are truly ready for and receptive to their divinely inspired teachings.

In contrast to these particular points of Als teaching here, it is surely essential to recall all those manifold dimensions of what we ordinarily, unthinkingly call or presume to be religion which in fact are not central to the particular divine mission of these inspired individuals as it is described in this lesson. Third, Ali describes the divine Knowing that can be conveyed uniquely by these specially missioned individuals as having the following qualities:

It is the Dn (true Religion/true Justice) by which God is truly worshipped and served. It is the indispensable key to realising what the Quran constantly describes as our ultimate human purpose: i.e., to transforming the mortal biped or human-animal (bashar) into the theomorphic, truly human being (insn), who alone can freely follow and truly obey God (the inner state of ita), eventually becoming a pure manifestation of the divine Will.

Their divinely inspired Knowing is the true Judge or Criterion for rightly perceiving and employing all the illusory possessions (ml) of this world .

Fourth, the true Seekers (mutaallimn) of that divine Knowing have at least the following basic pre-requisites, each of which distinguishes them from the large majority of ordinary souls (al-ns). One might therefore say that each of these following five points mentioned by Ali here is in itself an essential pre-condition for acquiring true religious understanding:

Those true religious Seekers have a rare natural spiritual capacity to recognize, absorb, and actualize the inspired teachings of the Friends of God. They know that they need the indispensable guidance of Gods Friends (the awliy), and therefore actively seek it out. That is to say, they actually realize that they are spiritually ignorant and needy. They are willing and able to submit to the guidance of those divine Knowers and Bearers of Truth, especially with regard to acknowledging the true, ultimate aims of this inspired spiritual Knowing. In other words, they have the indispensable humility to recognize their inner ignorance and to overcome the central spiritual obstacle of pride. They have the practical insight and active spiritual perspicacity (basra) to see though the ongoing divine private lessons, the most essential divine Signs (yt) of each souls life. (This particular point is one that Ali especially stresses throughout all the sermons and teachings of the Nahj al-Balgha.) They are not secretly governed by their desires for power and domination, qualities which Ali stresses (along with pride) as the particular psychic passions most likely to trip up the otherwise apt potential spiritual seekers of this group.

Finally, the rest of humanity are clearly indeed even vehemently said to lack, for the time being, the above-mentioned prerequisites for realized spiritual learning and illumination, because of the current domination of their hearts by their psychic passions of the nafs: for power, pleasure, possessions, and the attractions this lower world (alduny) in general. In this particular context, Ali does not openly clarify whether or not purification of our hearts from such worldly passions is in itself the only obstacle to deeper spiritual and religious realization, or whether some individuals are simply born with dramatically greater, relatively unique spiritual capacities and potential. However, his recurrent and insistent practical stress on the ethically purifying dimensions of Islamic ritual and devotional practice throughout much of the rest of the Nahj al-Balgha is a strong indication that revealed prescriptions for religious teaching and practice can and should be understood as well as an indispensable preparatory discipline that can be used to move at least some individuals toward the receptive inner state of these true seekers. Now the practical consequences of all of Alis observations briefly enumerated here are quite visible in the particular structure and emphases of almost all his longer sermons and discourses throughout the Nahj al-Balgha. To put it in the simplest possible form, each longer text in that work typically stresses the dual religious dimensions of both taslm (surrender) and tahqq (realization). [6] That is, almost all of Imam Alis teachings are

directed at the same time toward both (1) the essential purification of our own will i.e., the discovery and gradual distillation of the true human/divine irda from the endless promptings of our domineering ego-self or nafs through true inner conformity and surrender (taslm) to the authentic divine commandments; and (2) the subsequent stage of more active realization (tahqq) of the divinely inspired teachings that can only come about when an individual has developed enough humility and inner awareness of their spiritual ignorance to recognize their unavoidable need for a divine Guide and Knower, along with the many other essential qualities of the seeker on the path of salvation that have just been summarized above. From this perspective, all of the Nahj al-Balgha constitutes an extended, lifelong example of the sort of essential spiritual teaching and guidance (talm) alluded to here in Alis private advice to his close disciple. In conclusion, we cannot help but notice that Alis remarks to Kumayl ibn Ziyd here provide a radical contrast to many prevailing modern-day assumptions about religious understanding and religious teaching, whether our focus happens to be on inter- or intra-religious concerns. Here I can mention only a few of the most salient points of contrast between popular contemporary conceptions of inter-religious understanding and Alis own teachings on this subject, without entering into a more detailed discussion of the deeper philosophic underpinnings and presuppositions on either side. To begin with, the primary focus of most modern attempts at inter-religious understanding is either intellectual and theological, where formal doctrines and religious symbols are concerned; or else on social ethics, where certain historically accumulated external practical precepts and rituals of two religious traditions are being compared. In either case, the particular comparison (or understanding) of the religious traditions concerned is typically carried out in an external, reductive social, historical or political way that supposedly reveals the real, common meanings and functions of the religious phenomena in question. In this widespread approach, the aims of those particular practical or theological dimensions of a given religion are usually reduced, explicitly or implicitly, to a given, presumably familiar and universally accessible set of historical, this-worldly (dunyaw) social, political, or even psychic ends. What is key in each such case, of course, is the reductive, socio-political emphasis and assumptions shared by virtually all such modern approaches. Now no rational observer would deny that every historical religion does indeed function in such ways in this world in ways that are in fact so poignantly illustrated by the endless religious polemics, strife, and open civil warfare of early Islamic history during Alis own lifetime, seminal events that are recorded in such thorough detail throughout the Nahj alBalgha. But modern writers unfortunately too often tend to ignore the equally obvious limits of such reductive forms of interpretation and understanding: what is it, one might ask all the same, that also differentiates, for example, a genuine Sufi tarqa from a social club, real spiritual guidance from psychotherapy, or transformative spiritual music (dhikr and sam in their primordial sense) from any other concert performance? In dramatic contrast to such popular contemporary approaches to religious understanding, Alis remarks in this passage focus on radically different, spiritually

distinctive and difficultly attainable but nonetheless fundamental aspects of religious life and understanding, whatever the particular historical traditions in question: First, for Ali, true inter-religious understanding at any of the three levels he distinguishes here is always between individuals, growing out of each souls individual encounter with the other and their common spiritual reality and relationship with al-Haqq (God, Reality, and Truth). From this perspective, therefore, true religious understanding is always the ultimate fruit of a sort of tri-alogue not a worldly dialogue in which both the human parties, the Knower and the properly prepared disciple, share and gradually discover their common divine Ground of reality and true being. Secondly, the possibilities of religious understanding (again whether inter- or intrareligious) are essentially limited above all by the intrinsic barrier of the specific spiritual capacities, shortcomings and level of realization of each individual. As in the familiar imagery of so many hadith and later Islamic writings, souls here are indeed revealed as mirrors, who can only see in the other whether that be a religious phenomenon or anything else their own reflection. Therefore the basharic rabble of whom Ali speaks so painfully here whatever their particular religion or historical situation are necessarily and unavoidably in the position so aptly described in Rumis famous tale of the blind men and the elephant. Thirdly, for Ali, even the first beginnings of our approach to a true, immediate awareness of God and the divine Religion (dn) are necessarily grounded above all in humility, in an awareness of ones own essential spiritual ignorance and limitations and therefore not in the acquisition of some further external form of knowledge, ritual, or belief. In other words, the greatest, primordial obstacle to any serious religious understanding as Socrates and so many other inspired teachers have repeatedly reminded us down through the ages is our own compound ignorance (jahl murakkab), our own illusion that we truly know so much that we in fact only believe or imagine. Finally, if Ali teaches us as this story itself so dramatically illustrates that the keys to the deepest and most profound forms of religious understanding are to be found in seeking out Gods true Knowers and Guides and our own intimate spiritual relation to them, then the corresponding area of human religious life and experience most likely to lead to genuine inter-religious understanding is that of our particular individual devotional life and prayer, of each souls unique, ongoing inner relationship with its Guide and source of Light, in what has traditionally been termed practical spirituality (irfn-i amal). Not surprisingly, this domain of our personal spiritual experience and practice, where God is so obviously and unavoidably the ultimate Actor and Creator, in reality exhibits an extraordinary phenomenological similarity across all external historical and credal boundaries and socio-political divisions. These brief reflections on some of the central teachings of the Nahj al-Balgha cannot help but remind us of one of the most remarkable Quranic verses on the subject of humankinds recurrent religious misunderstandings and their ultimate resolution in and

by the Truly Real (al-Haqq). Not surprisingly, this verse also serves well as a remarkable symbolic allusion to the strife-torn historical events and conflicts among the early Muslims, those critical, paradigmatic tests (fitan) that are so vividly illustrated and evoked throughout the remainder of the Nahj al-Balgha and which continue to recur, with such poignancy, in our own and every age. The verse in question (al-Baqara, 2:213) begins with the reminder that all people were one religious community, but then: God sent prophets bearing good news and warning, and He revealed through them the Scripture with Truth (Haqq), so that He might judge among the people concerning that about which they differed. And only those differed concerning It to whom (the Scripture) was brought, after the Clear Proofs came to them, out of strife and rebellion among themselves. But then God guided those who had faith to the Truth about which they had differed, through His permission. For God guides whoever He wishes to a Straight Path! ____________ Appendix: Alis Speech to Kumayl ibn Ziyd al-Nakh [7] Kumayl ibn Ziyd said: The Commander of the Faithful Peace be upon him! took my hand and brought me out to the cemetery (beyond the city walls). So when he had entered the desert he let out a great sigh, and then he said: O Kumayl ibn Ziyd, these Hearts are containers: the best of them is the one that holds the most. So remember well what I am going to say to you! The people are (divided into) three groups: a lordly (divinely inspired) Knower [8]; one seeking Knowing along the path of salvation; and the riffraff and rabble, the followers of every screaming voice, those who bend with every wind, who have not sought to be illuminated by the Light of Knowing and who have not had recourse to a solid Support. O Kumayl, Knowing is better than possessions: Knowing protects you, but you must guard possessions. Possessions are diminished as theyre spent, but Knowing multiplies (or purifies) as it is shared. But whoever makes the possessions disappears as they do! O Kumayl ibn Ziyd, the awareness/recognition (marifa) of Knowing is a Religion (dn) by which (God) is worshipped and served: through it the truly human being (insn) acquires willing obedience (to God) during their life (here), and a beautiful, wonderful state after their passing away. For Knowing is the Judge, and possessions are what is adjudged! O Kumayl, those who accumulate possessions have perished, even while they are still alive. But the Knowers endure for all eternity: their particular-instances [9] are lost, but their likenesses are found in the Hearts. O what Knowledge abounding there is right

here! and he pointed with his hand to his breast [10] if only I could reach those who are its (rightful) bearers. True, Ive reached a quick-learner who couldnt be trusted with It, who would seek to use the instrument of Religion for this world who would try to use Gods blessings to dominate His (true) servants and His proofs to overcome His Friends. [11] Or someone submissive to the bearers of the divine Truth (al-Haqq), but without any true Insight (basra) into Its twists and curves, whose Heart is consumed by doubt at the first onset of some difficulty. But alas, neither this one nor that (can truly bear the Truth)! Or someone greedy for pleasures, easily led by their passions? Or someone engrossed in acquiring and accumulating (worldly possessions)? Those two are not among the guardians [12] of Religion in any respect the closest semblance to that sort are the grazing cattle! Thus Knowing dies with the death of those who bear it. Yet indeed, O my God, the world is never without one upholding the Evidence [13] for God, either outwardly and known to all, or secretly and in obscurity, [14] so that Gods Evidences and His illuminating-manifestations may not come to nought. But how many are these, and where are they!? By God, these (true Knowers) are the fewest in number, but the greatest of all in their rank with God! Through them God preserves His Evidences and His Illuminatingmanifestations, so that these (Knowers) may entrust them to their (true) peers and sow them in the Hearts of those like them. Through (those Knowers) Knowing penetrates to the inner reality of true Insight (haqqat al-basra). They are in touch with the Spirit of Certainty (rh al-yaqn). They make clear what the lovers of comfort had obscured. They are at home with what distresses the ignorant. And their bodies keep company with this world, while their spirits are connected to the Loftiest Station. Those are the ones who are (truly) Gods Stewards [15] on the earth, who are calling (the people) to His Religion. Oh, how I long to see them! Go on now, Kumayl, if you want. [1] A well-known saying commonly attributed to Imam Al Ibn Ab Tlib, quoted here as it is cited by al-Ghazl at the beginning of his famous spiritual autobiography, the Munqidh min al-Dall. [2] Many of these same points were later developed by the famous religious author Ghazl (Ab Hmid al-Ghazl) in the influential closing section of his Mzn al-Amal (The Scale of [Right] Action). Already a century before the actual collection of Nahj al-Balgha, this same story of Ali and Kumayl provided the architectonic framework for a highly creative dramatic reworking of these spiritual lessons in Jafar ibn Mansrs Kitb al-Alim wal-ghulm (see our translation and Arabic edition, The Master and the Disciple: An Early Islamic Spiritual Dialogue, London, I. B. Tauris, 2001). [3] To give some idea of the ongoing popular importance and relative familiarity of that text even today, one finds beautifully calligraphed Arabic proverbs and epigrams drawn

from the Nahj al-Balgha on the walls of homes in every part of the Muslim world, framed for sale in suqs and bazaars, and even being sold as postcards. Even more tellingly, the owners (or sellers) of that calligraphy will often explain that this or that saying is simply a hadith. [4] Saying number 147 in the final section of short maxims, corresponding to pages 600601 in the complete English translation by Sayed Ali Reza (Peak of Eloquence, NY, 1978). (Details on the Arabic text in the Appendix below.) [5] It is perhaps important to note that this last qualification (sirran, secretly) can be understood to refer not simply to the outward modesty and relative social and historical invisibility of the vast majority of the true Friends of God a point also strongly emphasised in the famous Prophetic hadith about the qualities of the wal but also to their ongoing spiritual presence, actions and effects, even more visible and widespread long after their bodily sojourn on earth, which is of course central to the manifest spiritual role of the prophets and Friends (awliy Allh) throughout every authentic religious tradition. [6] See the more adequate discussion of this key polyvalent term in our Introduction to Orientations: Islamic Thought in a World Civilisation (London, Archetype, 2004). [7] This particular well-known passage from Nahj al-Balgha, the famous later compilation (by al-Sharf al-Rd, 359/970-406/1016) of the many letters, teachings, sermons and proverbs attributed to Al ibn Ab Tlib, is also included in almost identical form in a number of earlier extant Shiite works, in both the Imami and the Ismaili traditions. The text translated here is from a popular Beirut edition of Nahj al-Balgha (Dr al-Andalus, 1980), pp. 593-595, numbered 147 in the long later section of Wise Sayings (hikam). The setting of this particular lesson is apparently outside the new Arab settlement of Kufa (on the edge of the desert in southern Iraq), during one of the drawn-out, bloody civil wars that divided the nascent Muslim community throughout the period of Alis official Imamate. [8] Alim rabbn: Knower here is used in the strong and inclusive Quranic sense, to refer to profound, God-given spiritual Knowing (ilm). The qualifier recalls the Quranic term rabbnyn and apparently is related both to the Arabic root referring to God as Lord (rabb, hence divine or god-like), and to another Arabic root referring to spiritual teaching and education in the very broadest sense (r-b-y). The latter meaning is emphasized at Qurn 3:79, which probably underlies the special usage here: Be rabbnyn through your teaching the Book and through your studying (It). [9] Ayn (pl. of ayn): that is, their individual, temporal earthly manifestation, as opposed to their images or likenesses (amthl, or symbols) in the Hearts of other human individuals after them. Here we can see how Als perspective parallels and at the same time embodies the Quranic understanding of the relationship between the archetypal divine Names (which ultimately constitute this Knowing) and their infinitely re-created individual manifestations.

[10] Here, as in the Quran, the term breast or chest (sadr) is virtually synonymous with the Heart (qalb) as the locus of all true perception, selfhood, etc. [11] Awliy Allh: see the Quranic use of this key term (10:62). [12] Or shepherds, pastors: rut. [13] Or Proof (al-Hujja) but in the sense of the indisputable living human Manifestation, not any sort of logical or rhetorical argument; this is another central Quranic concept (4:165, 6:149) frequently alluded to in other teachings of Imam Ali in the Nahj al-Balgha. The Quranic expression bayyint (Illuminating-manifestations) used several times in the immediately following passage seems to refer to the same key spiritual figures in this context. [14] Literally, in fear (used in the Quran, for example, of the young Moses fleeing Egypt for Midian) and submerged (by the power of earthly tyranny). [15] This famous Quranic phrase (khalfat Allh) is variously applied to prophets (Adam, at 2:30; David, at 38:27) and to you-all (= all of humanity), at 6:165, 10:14 and 73; 35:39; 27:62; etc. Within a short time after the death of the Prophet and certainly by the time of this story it had taken on a highly charged and disputed political significance in the long and violent decades of protracted civil wars over the worldly leadership of the nascent Arab-Muslim political community. __________________

About the writer: Prior to joining the Theology Department at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, Professor Morris held the Sharjah Chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. He has also taught previously at Princeton University, Oberlin College, Temple University, and the Institute of Ismaili Studies in Paris and London. He has served as visiting professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris), University of Malaya, and University of Sarajevo, and he lectures and gives workshops widely throughout Europe and the Muslim world. Professor Morris serves on numerous international editorial, consulting, and examining boards in his fields. He is the current president of the Rumi Institutes international advisory council, and honorary Life Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arab Society. Professor Morris interests in Islamic thought and religious studies date from his BA work at the University of Chicago. After further studies in Morocco, Egypt and France, he completed his PhD work

at Harvard University and did advanced research at the Academy of Islamic Philosophy in Tehran. His most recent books include Knowledge of the Soul (2006); The Reflective Heart: Discovering Spiritual Intelligence in Ibn Arabs Meccan Illuminations (2005); Orientations: Islamic Thought in a World Civilisation (2004); Ibn Arab: The Meccan Revelations (2002); The Master and the Disciple: An Early Islamic Spiritual Dialogue (2002), and several website volumes.

From the World Wisdom online library: www.worldwisdom.com/public/library/default.aspx THE METAPHYSICS OF HUMAN GOVERNANCE: IMAM ALI, TRUTH AND JUSTICE1 M. Ali Lakhani No individual is lost and no nation is refused prosperity and success if the foundations of their thoughts and actions rest upon piety and godliness, and upon truth and justice.2 Ali ibn Abi Talib I. Introduction The aim of this essay is to demonstrate, through the writings3 of Ali ibn Abi Talib4 (referred to herein as Imam Ali or the Imam) and the sources he venerated, how his conception of justice is informed by certain principles of traditional metaphysics, and to touch upon its relevance to our modern times. 1 This is a revised version of a study that was submitted and delivered to the Inter national Congress on Imam Ali and Justice, Unity and Security, held in Tehran, March 13 through 16, 2001, organized by the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies. 2 Sermon 21, Nahjul-Balagha, Sermons, Letters and Sayings of Imam Ali, trans lated by Syed Mohammed Askari Jafery, Tahrike Tarsile Quran, New York, Second American Edition, 1981 (henceforth referred to as Nahjul-Balagha, Jafery). There are variant translations in English of Imam Alis writings as rendered by Sharif ar-Radi. We will also refer to the translation by Sayed Ali Reza, Tahrike Tarsile Quran, New York, Fifth American Edition, 1986 (henceforth referred to as Nahjul-Balagha, Reza). 3 We have used the term writings to designate the compendium of sermons, letters and sayings attributed to Imam Ali, collected and preserved by Sharif ar-Radi under the title Nahjul-Balagha in 420 A.H. There is evidence that the words of Imam Ali were gathered during his own lifetime and preserved in writing within 30 years fol lowing his death. Many of the sermons and orations of Imam Ali have unfortunately been lost, but it is now generally accepted by scholars that the compendium of Sharif ar-Radi, based on earlier reliable sources, contains the words of Imam Ali, and it is in this sense that we refer to these as Imam Alis writings, though these are not his writings stricto sensu. 4 Ali ibn Abi Talib (c.600 - 661) was the son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad, and the Fourth Caliph of Sunni Islam. Shiite Muslims venerate Ali as their first Imam, the

political and spiritual successor of the Prophet. Imam Ali is generally venerated by all Muslims as one of the foremost sources of Islamic spirituality. 3

M. Ali Lakhani A preliminary observation will serve to place this discussion in its proper context: at the heart of every traditional religious or meta physical quest lie two categories of question central to human exis tence. The first has to do with the discernment of reality. It can be formulated variously as What is the nature of reality?, Who am I?, What is the world?, How can one know what is real?, What is truth and what is the criterion for its discernment? and so on. The second has to do with our relationship to the reality we have discerned. It can be formulated variously as What is the purpose of life?, How should we relate to others?, How should we govern ourselves? and so on. Answers to both these categories of question must be provided by any traditional religious or metaphysical system that claims to be comprehensive. In other words, the system must address both sets of questions by providing, respectively, two elements of response: a doctrine of truth by which reality may be truthfully discerned, and a method of transformation by which one may integrate with and con form to the reality that one has truthfully discerned.5 It is undoubtedly a claim of Islam, as one of the worlds major universal religions, to offer not merely a theological but also a compre hensive metaphysical answer to the central questions of human exis tence: thus the Quran claims to be both a clear proof6 (of reality) and a manifest light7 (guiding all true believers upon the Straight Path8). Consistent with all other revealed religious traditions and with 5 Seyyed Hossein Nasr states: ...every religion possesses two elements which are its basis and its foundation: a doctrine which distinguishes between the Absolute and the relative, between the absolutely Real and the relatively real...and a method of con centrating upon the Real, and attaching oneself to the Absolute and living according to the Will of Heaven, in accordance with the purpose and meaning of human exis tence - Ideals and Realities of Islam, Beacon Press, Boston, 1972, at page 15. 6 Al-Anam, VI:157; An-Nisa IV:174. 7 Ash-Shura XLII:52; An-Nisa IV:174. 8 The concept of the Straight Path or al-Sirat al-Mustaqeem (which will be referred to elsewhere in this paper from time to time) derives from the Surat al-Fatihah, the opening chapter of the Quran, recited by all devout Muslims in their daily prayers. The Quranic supplication: ihdinas-sirat al-mustaqeem (Al-Fatihah I:6) is translated as Guide us on the Straight Path, which is explained in the next Quranic verse as The Path of those upon whom You have bestowed your grace, not of those who have earned Your wrath nor of those who have gone astray. Allowing for the exception

that Gods grace is like the wind that bloweth where it listeth, it can be said that the precondition of being on the Straight Path is that the supplicant must merit Gods grace by having a pure heart. Those who have gone astray can be understood as those who have not awakened to the perception of their intellects and who thereby fail to discern the real from the illusory; while those who have earned Your wrath can be understood as those who, in the face of external guidance from the divine 4 The Metaphysics Of Human Governance: Imam Ali, Truth and Justice the universal principles of traditional metaphysics, the central doc trine of Islam is of the unity of reality, and its sacramental method is aimed at the union with that reality. Doctrine and method, unity and union: these relate back to the two sets of questions of human exis tence as we have defined them. In answering the first of thesethe questions about the discernment of realitywe are taught that reality is essentially integrated and accordingly that we must refine our per ceptions to discern reality as One. This discernment has implications for the second set of questionswhich relate to our relationship with realityfor, unless we conform to the reality we have discerned, we cannot lead integrated lives. The two sets of questions are therefore metaphysically linked, and we shall have more to say about the nature of this linkage later in this paper. For the moment, the key point we wish to emphasize is that Imam Ali time and again in his writings articulates his twin mission as being that of truth and justicea phrase used repeatedly in his khutbas and other writings compiled by Sharif ar-Radi under the title Nahjul-Balagha9and, in so doing, he addresses both themes that are required to be addressed by a comprehensive metaphysical or reli gious tradition, namely, Truth (or the discernment of the nature and structure of reality) and Justice (or the conforming of humanity and all creation to the order of reality). Let us now examine each of these themes in turn. II. Truth: The Discernment of Reality Before one poses any questions about the nature of reality, it becomes necessary to consider an epistemological question: How can reality be known? Common experience teaches us about the unreliability of the five senses, and a moments reflection makes it clear that discur sive reason cannot yield any answers to questions about the ultimate nature of reality, which is transcendent10. How is it possible, then, to discern reality truthfully? The answer provided by traditional meta messengers and the inner discernment of their intellects, yet refuse to perfect their submission to God, in other words those who enslave their intellects to the dictates and temptations of their egoic wills. 9 Refer to note 3 (supra) for a brief explanation of the collection titled Nahjul-Balagha. 10 Frithjof Schuon writes: Reason obtains knowledge like a man walking about and

exploring the countryside by successive discoveries, whereas the Intellect contemplates the same countryside from a mountain height (Stations of Wisdom, Frithjof Schuon, World Wisdom Books, Bloomington, Indiana, 1995, at page 65). In a well-known 5 M. Ali Lakhani physics is simple: truth, being of a universal order, is inscribed within our deepest selfthat within us which is transcendent and universal, our primordial nature, the core of our very being. Knowledge of reality is therefore equated with self-knowledge or gnosis, and can at one level be understood as the centripetal and radial reconnection of the circumference with the Center through the grace of the primor dial intelligence that constitutes our very being. That faculty which is capable of discerning reality in its most subtle naturebearing in mind that the merely human is not privileged to know the Divineis not the human faculty of the common senses or of the discursive reason, but the transcendent faculty of the supra-rational Intellect11, the core of our discerning self, which is sometimes labeled the Heart.12 The Islamic response to the epistemological question is completely in accord with the response of traditional metaphysics: true knowl edge resides in the Heart or spiritual core of our being. Muslim the osophy starts with the Quranic teaching that the divine breath is the phrase, Meister Eckhart has dened the Intellect as something in the soul which is uncreated and uncreatable. It is the Intellect alone that is adequate to Truth. Reason alone cannot discover Truth: this is as futile as a fool who seeks the luminous Sun/ In the desert with a lamp in his hand (an image from Shabistaris Gulshan-i raz). 11 Metaphysic is supra-rational, intuitive and immediate knowledge. Moreover, this pure intellectual intuition, without which there is no true metaphysic, must never be likened to the intuition spoken of by certain contemporary philosophers, which, on the contrary, is infra-rational. There is an intellectual intuition and a sensory intuition; one is above reason, but the other is below it; this latter can only grasp the world of change and becoming, namely, nature, or rather an inappreciable part of nature. The domain of intellectual intuition, by contrast, is the domain of eternal and immutable principles, it is the domain of metaphysic. To have a direct grasp of universal prin ciples, the transcendent intellect must itself belong to the universal order; it is thus not an individual faculty, and to consider it as such would be contradictory, since it cannot pertain to the possibilities of the individual to transcend his own limits: Ren Gunon, Le Mtaphysique Orientale, p. 11, quoted by Whitall N. Perry in his magiste rial anthology, A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom, Perennial Books, Middlesex, Second Edition, 1981, at page 733. 12 The center of oneself, symbolically the Heart, is in traditional cosmology also understood to be the metaphysical center of the world, symbolically the Sun. This radiant Center is, like an eye, the visionary core of ones being, which, in Meister Eckharts terminology, is simultaneously the eye by which I see God and the eye by which God sees me. The symbolism of the Heart is universal: some examples

are: I am seated in the hearts of all, Bhagavad Gita, XV:15; His throne is in heaven who teaches from within the heart, St. Augustine, In Epist. Joannis ad Parthos, cited by A.K. Coomaraswamy in Recollection, Indian and Platonic, Supplement to the Journal of American Oriental Society, No. 3, April-June, 1944, p.1; and the hadith qudsi of the Prophet: My earth and My heaven contain me not, but the heart of My faithful servant containeth Me, cited in Whitall N. Perry, A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom, supra, at p. 822. 6

The Metaphysics Of Human Governance: Imam Ali, Truth and Justice very spirit that is infused into our Adamic clay: Then He fashioned him in due proportion and breathed into him of His Spirit.13 This divine spirit is our fitraour primordial and innate spiritual nature14 which pre-existentially affirms and testifies to its Origin in the Quranic episode of the Covenant of Alast15, and is endowed with an innate knowledge of its fiduciary obligationsthe Amanah16 or Divine Trust, the duties entrusted to humanity and to each of us indi vidually and which constitute our raison dtre. This is the primordial self of whom the Prophet has said: Every child is born according to fitra. Then its parents make it into a Christian, a Jew, or a Magian (Zoroastrian).17 It is a self already endowed with the knowledge of its Maker (in other words, of the ultimate integrity of realityin Islamic terms, tawhid) even before its entry into this world. It is the spirit or ruh, whose discerning faculty is aql or Intellect, not merely the discursive reason or the senses. This is the center and Heart of our consciousness, referred to in the famous hadith qudsi: My earth 13 As-Sajdah XXXII:9. 14 Note the hadith: God created mankind in His own image: Bukhari, Istidhan 1; Muslim, Birr 115. 15 The Covenant of Alast refers to a primordial covenant between each human being and God, referred to in the Quranic Verse, Al-Araf VII:172And (remember) when your Lord took their offspring from the loins of the children of Adam and made them testify as to themselves (saying): Am I not your Lord?They said: Yea, verily, we so testify, lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection: Verily, we have been unaware of this. The term Alast derives from the key Arabic phrase that appears in the quoted verse: alastu bi-rabbikum (Am I not your Lord?). By attesting to the essential nature of reality, humanity affirms its pre-existential bond with God, as both supra-temporal Origin and supra-spatial Center. This attestation requires of humanity an existential re-affirmation of its Source and Nature through discernment, remem brance and virtue, the central features of religious life, which constitute, allowing for the grace of God, the means of all salvation.

16 The Islamic concept of Amanah or the Divine Trust derives scripturally from the following Quranic Verse, Al-Ahzab, XXXIII:72We offered the Trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refused to carry it and were afraid of it. And the human being carried it. Surely he is very ignorant, a great wrongdoer. Humanity, being privileged by the grace of revelation and intellection to know the transcendent and to recognize creation as a manifestation of transcendence, also bears the responsibility of stewardship towards creation. This is an aspect of the principle of noblesse oblige. To know God is also to know all things in God, and God in all things, and to treat all Gods creatures as sacred. The origin of morality is predicated on the discernment that all that lives is holy (William Blake), which in turn is premised on the discernment of the sacred as the radiance of the divine. That humanity in general is content to accept the privilege of its creaturely superiority without accepting the responsibility that such superiority confers, explains the Quranic comment at the end of the quoted verse. 17 Bukhari, Janaiz 80; Muslim, Qadar 22. 7

M. Ali Lakhani and My heaven contain me not, but the Heart of My faithful servant containeth Me; and again in those Quranic surahs that refer to the inscription of faith upon the hearts of men18. This is the Heart which, while capable of containing that in us which is divine, is also capable, in Quranic terms, of being diseased19 or rusted20 or locked21. It is this knowing Heartthe seat of our consciencethat fallen man, now in a state of heedlessness22 (ghafla), must strive, by divine grace, to awaken. This awakening operates as both an illumination and a liquefaction of the heart, simultaneously dispelling the darkness of its ignorance and melting the carapace of its existential hardness23 with the tender love of the spirit24. Truth is an awakening into a state of Presence and the awareness of Presence, into a state of Self-remembering wholeness (or holiness) that is imbued with a sense of the sacred25, a sacramentally charged all-absorbing and immersed awareness of the Omni-Presence of the Divine Countenance26, so that 18 Al-Mujadilah LVIII:22 ...For such, He has written Faith in their hearts... 19 Al-Baqarah II:10 In their hearts is a disease... 20 Al-Mutaffifin LXXXIII:14 ...what they were earning has rusted upon their hearts. 21 Surat Muhammad or Surat Al-Qital XLVII:24 Do they not deeply ponder the Quran? Or is it that there are locks upon their hearts? 22 Al-Hajj XXII:46 ...Verily, it is not the eyes that grow blind, but it is the hearts

which are in the breasts that grow blind. 23 Frithjof Schuon writes: The world is made up of forms, and they are as it were the debris of a celestial music that has become frozen; knowledge or sanctity dissolves our frozen state and liberates the inner melody. Here we must recall the verse in the Quran which speaks of the stones from which streams spring forth, though there are hearts which are harder than stones, a passage reminiscent of the living water of Christ and of the well of water springing up into everlasting life in the hearts of saints (Understanding Islam, Frithjof Schuon, Unwin, London, 1976, at page 41). 24 Grace operates as a Divine Ray of Love that is operative within the serenity of the contemplative mind and in the vigilance of spiritual ardor. Frithjof Schuon writes in Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts, translated by P. N. Townsend, Perennial Books, Pates Manor, Bedfont, Middlesex, 1987, at page 158: Peace is absence of dissipation. Love is absence of hardness. Fallen man is hardness and dissipationIn the peace of the Lord, the waves of this dissipation are calmed and the soul is at rest in its primordial nature, in its center. Through love, the outer shell of the heart is melted like snow and the heart awakens from its death; hard, opaque and cold in the fallen state, it becomes liquid, transparent and aame in the Divine life. 25 The term sacred denotes the theophanic radiation and resonance of the Absolute in the contingent: The sacred is the presence of the Center in the periphery, of the Motionless in the moving (Understanding Islam, Frithjof Schuon, supra, at page 48). 26 The notion of the theophanic Countenance of the Divine derives scripturally from the following Quranic Verse, Al-Baqarah, II:115 Wherever you turn, there is the face of God. 8

The Metaphysics Of Human Governance: Imam Ali, Truth and Justice its consciousness is illuminated with and moistened by the knowledge of its Maker. This realizational knowledge (gnosis), which the believer had pre-existentially affirmed in the Covenant of Alast, now (that is to say, in this privative existence) becomes incumbent on the devout Muslim as an existential affirmation in the first part of the shahadah. The formula for this affirmation is the testament, la ilaha illa llah literally, There is no god if not the God, which could, for this pur pose, be rendered esoterically as: Nothing is real if it is not discerned as a manifestation of Absolute integrated reality. In other wordsto anticipate our argumentTruth is to be discerned as a theophany. This is a point that we will elaborate upon later. Having dealt with the epistemological question about the basis of knowledge, one can begin to deal with the substantive question of the nature of reality itself. From the viewpoint of traditional metaphysics, creation progressively exteriorizes that which is principially interior. Reality, while being essentially One, is at the same time a hierarchical descent or objectivization from the subtle and transcendent Essence to gross and immanent Forman unfolding concretization of the

Absolute to the Infinite, from the Center to the periphery. At its most subtle level, Supreme Reality is beyond knowledge, indefinable and ineffably mysterious, and all human approaches to this ultimate knowledge are therefore characterized by paradox and bewilderment: the Absolute cannot in any ultimate sense be apprehended by man, as such, being transcendent and beyond-being. However, because Supreme Reality is Absolute, it is necessarily Infinite, and all possibili ties are prefigured within it at an archetypal level that can be said to be relatively-absoluteto admit of which is not in any way to derogate from the essential Self-Sufficiency, Ipseity and Oneness of Supreme Reality. The forms and possibilities of all beings are thus gathered within this qualified level of reality and are projected or manifested out of principial Reality, in a given or defined measure, as creatures within existence. This projection has a reality that is entirely contin gent on the Absolute, which is its fount and, more accurately, the Sole Existent. Creaturely or contingent existence is thus a theophany, a radiation of transcendence through which all creation sacrally partakes of and reflects the metaphysical transparency of the Divine. This metaphysical view of reality is affirmed within Islam. The Quranic view accords perfectly with the metaphysical view by dis tinguishing between transcendent reality (tanzih)27 and immanent 27 See, for instance, Ash-Shura XLII:11 Nothing is like Him. 9

M. Ali Lakhani reality (tashbih)28. God is the Supreme Reality, whose essentially unconditioned quiddity (dhat) is distinguished from His qualified attributes (sifat) but without in any way derogating from His essen tial metaphysical Oneness (tawhid). As Absolute and unconditioned reality, God is without likeness or peer or privation or cause: this is the Absolute reality of the Surat Al-Ikhlas29. But as Absolute reality, God is also Infinite, both transcendent and immanent. The Quran there fore speaks of the attributes of God, ascribing to Him various names and qualities30. It is these names and qualities, prefigured within the archetypal or imaginal realm of the Infinite (the storehouses of Gods creation31), that are projected into existence by divine fiat or Command32 but only in a known measure33. And it is through these names and qualitieswhich human beings are privileged among all creatures to know34 that man can attain the humanly possible knowledge of God: in other words, the created world (the macro 28 See, for instance, Al-Hadid LVII:4 He is with you, wherever you are; or AlBaqarah, II:115 (supra) Wherever you turn, there is the face of God. 29 The Surat Al-Ikhlas is Verse CXII of the Quran, the Verse of Divine Purity

or Metaphysical Oneness. It forms part of the daily prayer of devout Muslims, a reminder of the principle of the integrity of reality (tawhid) and of the Absolute uniqueness, self-sufficiency and transcendence of the Deity. The Verse states: In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Say: He is God, (the reality that is metaphysically) One; God, the Self-Sufficient; He does not begat, nor was He begotten; and there is none that can be compared to Him. As to the notion of Metaphysical Oneness, Imam Ali states in Sermon 190 (Nahjul-Balagha, Jafery): He is one but His unity is not a mathematical quality... Metaphysical Oneness is thus a true whole (which) is logically anterior to, and independent of, its parts, as explained by Ren Gunon in The Multiple States of Being, Larson Publications Inc., New York, 1984 (translation by Joscelyn Godwin from the French book Les etats multiple de letre). 30 These are the asma wa sifat, sometimes referred to as the Ninety-Nine Names of God (though there are many more), such as the Compassionate, the Merciful, and so on. 31 The reference to storehouses relates to Al-Hijr, XV:21 of the Quran -- There is no thing whose storehouses are not with Us, but We send it down only in a known measure. This is the archetypal realm in which existence is prefigured in the Mind of God (if we can be permitted to use this expression, without intending to anthro pomorphize the Divine). 32 An-Nahl, XVI:40 Verily, Our Word to a thing when We intend it, is only that We say unto it: Be!, and it is. 33 See Al-Hijr, XV:21, supra. 34 According to Islamic tradition and scripture, humanity is privileged among all creatures by the scope of its knowledge and by an intellect that is adequate to the Absolute. The Quranic Verse Al-Baqarah, II:31And He taught Adam the names of all things... attests to the symbolic knowledge endowed upon humanity. This pre sumes the requirement of a symbolist spirit of interpretation. One should bear in 10 The Metaphysics Of Human Governance: Imam Ali, Truth and Justice cosm) is constituted of signs which resonate within the pre-existen tial memory of man (the microcosm) as the names and attributes of God, which are reflections of the spiritual realities of the Divine (the metacosm). It is by the grace of spiritual literacy that man, not through merely human intelligence but through the blessing of the innate spiri tual intellect, can know God. This gnosis (irfan) is the drops knowl edge of the Ocean that it contains within itself. Man, as such, cannot know the Divine Essence or Godhead35, but the transcendent spiritual facultythe Intellect operating within manis privileged to know Itself. This is the knowledge of unveiling (kashf), which operates externally as the perception of the revealed reality as a theophany, as a sacred text comprising of signs36 pointing to Godand internally, mind that the names of things signify an anagogical understanding of reality because, as the Quran states, in Al-Araf, VII:180, for example, the Most Beautiful Names

belong to Allah. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, commenting on Al-Baqarah, II:31, notes that man was given power and dominion over all things by virtue of being Gods vicege rant (khalifah) on earth. But with this function of khalifah was combined the quality of abd, that is, the quality of being in perfect submission to God. Man has the right to dominate over the earth as khalifah only on condition that he remains in perfect sub mission to Him who is the real master of nature (from the essay, Who is Man?: The perennial Answer of Islam, by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. The essay was delivered by Nasr as a Noranda Lecture at Expo 67 in Montreal on September 4, 1967, later published in the traditionalist journal, Studies in Comparative Religion, Winter 1968, Volume 2, No. 1, and reprinted in The Sword of Gnosis, edited by Jacob Needleman, Penguin Metaphysical Library, Penguin Books, Baltimore, 1974, at page 203. The quoted pas sage appears at page 207). 35 Thus we see in the Quran that even the Holy Prophet, during his exalted miraj in which he journeyed to the seventh heaven, was proscribed from transgressing the bounds of a lote tree (Sidrat-ul-Muntuha), and was thereby veiled from Supreme Realitysee An-Najm, LIII:17. This is in keeping with the hadith: God has seventy veils of light and darkness. Were they to be removed, the glories of His Face would burn away everything perceived by the sight of His creatures: al-Ghazali, Ihya 1:144. Man, as such, is veiled from the Godheadthough man can know the attributes of God, as these are disclosed by revelation and experiencethough even here it is important to emphasize that the Divine Attributes are qualitatively different from their human equivalents, which are their existential approximations. Only Godor that which is transcendent within mancan know God. Thus Schuon has noted that the individuality as such will always be a veil before the Divine Reality, for the individual as such cannot know God. The Intellect, whether it is envisaged in its created aspect or in its uncreated reality, is not the individual. The individual expe riences it in the form of a fulgurating darkness and he grasps only the flashes which illumine and transfigure him. (Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts, by Frithjof Schuon, supra, at page 155). 36 There are numerous passages in the Quran that speak of created things as the signs of God. See, for instance, Surat Yunus, X:6 and 67 (night and day); Ash-Shura, XLII:32 and 33 (ships in the sea); Al-Jathiyah, XLV:3 Verily, in the heavens and the earth are signs for the believers. 11 M. Ali Lakhani through sacred recollection37, as self-identification with the spiritual nature of these signs. This is one of the meanings of the Verse: We shall show them Our signs upon the horizons and in their selves.38 Thus far we have set out a traditionally metaphysical response to the first category of questions central to human existence, namely, the questions dealing with how to discern reality, and we have argued that this metaphysical response is in accord with the Islamic response based on Quranic scripture and the hadith. As both of these sources were venerated by Imam Ali and are referred to deferentially in his

writings, it might suffice to argue that Imam Alis response cor responds to the metaphysical and Islamic schema we have outlined earlier. However, a few illustrations of Imam Alis views will serve to better demonstrate this correspondence. On the issue of the epistemological question of the basis of knowledge, it is well known that the Alid tradition is an intellectual tradition, and there are numerous references throughout Imam Alis writings to demonstrate that he advocated an intellectual approach to the discernment of reality. For instance: Use your intellect to understand something when you hear about itthe intellect that examines, that is, and not just the intellect that repeats what it hears, for surely there are many who repeat the knowledge that they hear, and there are few who examine it.39 Intellectual appreciation occurs through examination and under standing, not through unexamined acceptance, even if the latter involves mental processes. It is significant in the following excerpt that the Imam distinguishes between the mind and intellect. Censuring his recalcitrant followers, he states: 37 The practice of divine invocation or dhikr is a method of realizing reality, of awakening to the Presence of the Divine Countenance and of being experientially one with the Divine Substance. The connection between the practice of invocation and the notion of names is derived from various traditions and Quranic passages, for example, Al-Isra, XVII:110Say: Invoke God or invoke the Most Gracious, by whatever name you invoke Him (it is the same), for to Him belong the Best Names... 38 Surat Fussilat, XLI:53. There are three sources of Truth in Islam, all rooted in God: these are the Revelation as Scripture (the Quran, in Islam, which is the criterion of Truth), as the Objective Creation (the horizons or macrocosm), and as the Subjec tive Self (the microcosm). 39 From The Sayings and Wisdom of Imam Ali, The Muhammadi Trust, Zahra Pub lications, ISBN 0946079919. 12

The Metaphysics Of Human Governance: Imam Ali, Truth and Justice O people! You behave as if you have bodies and minds but no intel lects: as if you have extremely divergent views and do not want to gather round and obey an authority.40 Implicit here is the notion that intellection is to be distinguished from the ordinary functioning of the mind. The authority to be obeyed can thus be understood, not only externally, as the spiritual authority of the Caliph or Imam, but also internally, as the transcen dent and critical intellectthe discerning eye of the spirit, which is distinguished from the discursive reasoning capacity of the merely human mind. It is the universality of this intellect that endows it with

the criterion of objectivity, hence the capability to resolve divergent views. Note also that this view of the superiority of the transcendent intellect over the merely rational mind accords with the metaphysical hierarchy of the spirit, mind and body, the ascendancy of the spiri tual over the psychic and corporeal, or spiritus vel intellectus over the psycho-physical res.41 Similarly, Imam Ali expressly acknowledges the Heart as the locus of the intellect, the source of innate metaphysical knowledge of reality. For instance, a celebrated prayer that is ascribed to Imam Ali, known as the Dua Kumayl,42 contains the assertion that the heart has been filled with (pure) knowledge of the Maker. This accords with the Quranic descriptions of the Adamic clay being infused with the divine Spirit43, and of archetypal man being taught the names of all things44. In the celebrated First Sermon, Imam Ali describes the process of creation and of the infusion of the divine Spirit into Adam: ...He infused into it the Divine soul (intellect) and the figure stood up as a man.45 It is this spiritual Center within humanity, 40 Sermon 100, Nahjul-Balagha, Jafery. 41 This universal cosmological principle is found in all religious traditions. For example, a clear statement of this principle is to be found in the Bhagavad Gita: It is said that the senses are powerful. But beyond the senses is the mind, beyond mind is intellect, and beyond and greater than intellect is He (the Spirit) (translated by Shri Purohit Swami, 1994, Shambhala, Boston, Massachusetts, Chapter 3, pages 35 and 36). 42 According to tradition, the prayer known as Dua Kumayl was a supplication attrib uted by Imam Ali to the Prophet Khidr and was taught by the Imam to his disciple, Kumayl ibn Ziyad Nakhai, by whose name the prayer is now generally known. 43 As-Sajdah, XXXII:9 Then He fashioned him in due proportion and breathed into him of His Spirit. 44 See note 30, supra. 45 Sermon 2, Nahjul-Balagha, Jafery. See Nahjul-Balagha, Reza, Sermon 1: Allah collected from hard, soft, sweet and sour earth, clay which He dripped in water till it got pure, and kneaded it with moisture till it became gluey. From it He carved an 13

M. Ali Lakhani with its privileged pre-existential faculty of intellectual, intuitive,

and profound knowledge (called gnosis or irfan), that enables human beings to discern reality to its core and to testify as to its spiritual basisthereby reaffirming the knowledge attested to in the Covenant of Alast46. To know ones essence is to know the substance of all reality, the metaphysical Center and Origin, which are One. Echoing the hermetic maxim of self-knowledge as the path to realization47, the Imam states: Whosoever knows himself well knows his Maker.48 And the intrinsic nature of this intelligence is salvific. Because true knowledge is transformative, as we shall later see. Thus Imam Ali states: God does not entrust anyone with intelligence without saving him thereby someday.49 The khutbas contain numerous passages in which Imam Ali describes the spiritual basis of reality, that is to say, the nature of God, the supreme and manifest reality discernable by the human Intellect. For instance, in one sermon, we read: Praised be God who knows the secrets of things, and the proofs of whose existence shine in various phases of nature. No physical image with curves, joints, limbs and segments. He solidied it till it dried up for a xed time and a known duration. Then He blew into it out of His Spirit whereupon it took the pattern of a human being with mind that governs him, intelligence which he makes use of, limbs that serve him, organs that change his position, sagacity that differentiates between truth and untruth, tastes and smells, colours and species. He is a mixture of clays of different colours, cohesive materials, divergent contradictories and differing properties like heat, cold, softness and hardness. 46 See note 15, supra. 47 Thus, for example, the metaphysician, Frithjof Schuon writes: to know the intellect is to know its consubstantial content and so the nature of things, and this is why Greek gnosis says, Know thyself, the Gospels say The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and Islam Who knows himself knows his Lord. (Understanding Islam, Frithjof Schuon, supra, at page 109).

48 Quoted by Whitall N. Perry in A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom, supra, at page 863. 49 Living and Dying with Grace: Counsels of Hadrat Ali, translated by Thomas Cleary, Shambhala, 1995, page 103. 14 The Metaphysics Of Human Governance: Imam Ali, Truth and Justice eye has or will ever see Him. But those who have not seen Him physically cannot deny His existence, yet the minds of those who have accepted His existence cannot grasp the real essence of Divine Nature. His place is so high that nothing can be imagined higher. He is so near to us that nothing can be imagined nearer. The Eminence of His position has not placed him further away from His creatures, and His Nearness has not brought them up to His Level. He has not permitted the human mind to grasp the Essence of His Being, yet He has not prevented them from realizing His Presence.50 In this eloquent passage, we see that Imam Ali describes the reality of God as both transcendentand therefore places His Essence beyond our mere human faculties51 and immanentand therefore places us intimately within His Presence, for the discerning spiritual Intellect. In this description, we also glean that there are levels in the structure of reality, the highest being His Level, in other words the transcendent Essence; and also that there are degrees of intimacy or Nearness. The significance of the polarities (High/Low and Near/ Far) and the continuum of gradations implied by these polarities will be discussed later. For the moment, it suffices to note that reality is metaphysically hierarchical, that it has verticality. In a famous passage from the First Sermon, Imam Ali emphasizes the doctrine of tawhidthat is, the essential integrity and Unity of reality, notwithstanding its apparent differentiation through multi plicitywhen he states: The first step of religion is to accept, understand and realize Him as the Lord. The perfection of understanding lies in conviction and confirmation, and the true way of conviction is to sincerely believe that there is no god but He. The correct form of belief in His Unity is to realize that He is so absolutely pure and above nature that nothing can be added to or subtracted from His Being. That is, one should realize that there is no difference between His Person and His attributes, and His attributes should not be differentiated or distinguished from His Person. 50 Sermon 54, Nahjul-Balagha, Jafery. This appears as Sermon 49 in Nahjul-Balagha, Reza (supra). 51 Affirming the primacy of the transcendent Intellect, Imam Ali has said: God is not that which can enter under one of the categories of knowledge. God is That which

guides reasoning toward Himself - cited in Bihar al-anwar of Majlisi, Tehran, 1305 - 15, vol. II, p. 186. 15 M. Ali Lakhani Whoever accepts His attributes to be other than His Person actually forsakes the idea of the Unity of God...52 Elsewhere, he states: Remember that He is Absolute and Infinite, a Being without limita tions, attributes or qualities of His creatures.53 Through these, and many other, passages in the Nahjul-Balagha, Imam Ali affirms a view of reality that corresponds to the traditionally metaphysical view found in the Quran and hadithof a reality whose substance, notwithstanding any outward differentiation, is spiritual. This spiritual foundation is, as it were, a radiance or effulgence that is discernable by the spiritually critical intellect. It is the ontological conviction that undergirds cognition: the knowledge of the very foun dation of being. It is the discernment that all of creation is wondrous, imbued with an intelligence that resonates sacramentally within the spiritually receptive intellect. The Imam invites us to open our eyes to wonder at the design of creation, to be alive to the Sacred Ocean in which we all swim. Thus, for example, there are many passages in the khutbas that deal with the intricate architecture of creation and how these creations (whether a bat, an ant, a date palm, a locust or a peacock) are all signs pointing to a supreme Architect. For instance, after describing the marvelous design of an ant, Imam Ali states, in a passage that is interesting to read in todays post-Nietzschean and neo-Darwinist world: It is a pity that man refuses to accept the existence of the Grand Architect of this universe and this Mighty Creator of nature. It is a pity that he either believes his own existence to be an accident, or that he has come into being of his own accord and none has created him...Can there be a building without a builder? Can there be an effect without a cause?54 In another wonderfully evocative passage, illustrative of the wondrous qualities of spiritually sensitive observation and vision, he 52 Sermon 1, Nahjul-Balagha, Jafery. 53 Sermon 191, Nahjul-Balagha, Jafery. See Sermon 185 in Nahjul-Balagha, Reza (supra) - This Sermon describes the nature of God in sublimely apophatic language. 54 Sermon 190, Nahjul-Balagha, Jafery. See Sermon 184 in Nahjul-Balagha, Reza (supra): ...woe be to him who disbelieves in the Ordainer and denies the Ruler. 16 The Metaphysics Of Human Governance: Imam Ali, Truth and Justice arouses in his audience an appreciation of what is meant by the omni

science and omnipresence of God, in these terms: He knows where and how the smallest living organisms pass their lives. He knows where ants pass their summers and worms sleep out the winter seasons. He hears the sorrowful cries of speechless animals and footsteps of persons walking quietly and soundlessly. He knows how every bud develops under the covering of green folds and how it blooms into a flower. He is aware of the habitat and the den of every beast in the caves of mountains and in the density of jungles. He knows under which leaf and inside the bark of which tree, mosquitoes live and multiply. He knows from which part of a branch a bud will shoot, and which sperm will pass through its normal and natural course and form (a foetus). He knows which drops of water (from an ocean) will rise (in the form of steam) to form clouds, and which of these clouds gather together and which part of the land they will fertilize. He is aware of the life history of every drop of rain, every particle of sand, how it has started its indi vidual existence, how the wind has blown it from place to place and how one day it will come to an end. He knows all those marks and places that have been destroyed or leveled by floods. He recognizes footprints of insects on sand hills, nests of birds on lofty mountain peaks, and songs of birds singing in the shades of green trees. He knows which shell holds pearls and which does not, what is hidden in the depth of the ocean, what the dark nights try to conceal, what the suns rays reveal...He fully knows every detail of all this gigantic organization and sees that each part of it works according to the plan set out by Him, His power, His might, and His desire, to organize, govern and influence every part, every phase and every aspect of this mighty creation, and His favors and His benevolences reach them all. And they are not able to thank Him as much as His Kindness and Mercy deserves, and to show as much gratitude as they should.55 In these gloriously eloquent passages that draw our attention to the intricate detail of the wondrous design of naturewhether it be the artistic arrangement of a peacocks feathers, or the construction of a bats wings or a locusts limbswe are drawn inevitably to one conclusion: The Grand Architect of the universe has displayed clear, obvious and tangible signs of Elegance and Grace in every design of creation 55 Sermon 94 (Khutba-e-Ashbah), Nahjul-Balagha, Jafery. See Sermon 90 in NahjulBalagha, Reza (supra). 17 M. Ali Lakhani and the Greatness and Glory of His Power in every form and system that He gave existence to... and we are invited by the Imam to:

...wonder at its grandeur, admire its greatness, bow before its subli meness and accept one Sole and Supreme Intellect, One God behind all this.56 It is significant that, despite this theophanic view of creation, which emphasizes its essential homogeneity, Imam Ali clearly main tains, in keeping with traditional metaphysics, that creation is arranged hierarchically. We have noted earlier that the Imam speaks of the pos sibility of being Near or Far from God. Similarly, describing the process of creation, the Imam observes: As soon as things came into existence, every one of them was allotted properties and their place in nature...Thus every creature and every object had a place permanently fixed, was assigned a posi tion in nature which none can change.57 In this scheme, man is pre-eminent, not because of his material superiority, but because of his spiritual intelligence. Describing the creation of Adam, archetypal man, the Imam states: ...then He infused into it the Divine soul (intellect) and the figure stood up as a man. This creation was an intelligent and rational being, using intellect instead of instinct and having complete control of his mental faculties and full command over his limbs. He further had natural sagacity and wisdom, to differentiate between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood and between justice and inequity... Having created such a being, He ordained the angels to hand over to him the trust committed to their care and to fulfill the promise they had made, which was to accept the superiority of man and to recognize his greatness. He therefore ordered them all to pay 56 Sermon 168, Nahjul-Balagha, Jafery. See Sermon 164 in Nahjul-Balagha, Reza (supra): Allah Has provided wonderful creations including the living, the lifeless, the stationary, and the moving. He has established such clear proofs for His delicate creative power and great might that minds bend down to Him in acknowledgment thereof and in submission to Him, and arguments about His oneness strike our ears. 57 Sermon 1, Nahjul-Balagha, Jafery. 18

The Metaphysics Of Human Governance: Imam Ali, Truth and Justice their homage to him and bow down before him. They all obeyed His command except Satan...58 The greatness of humanity derives from its transcendent intel lect, its pre-existential natural sagacity and wisdom. Implicit in the notion of greatness is the concept of hierarchy, inherent in the notion of the ordering of reality, and this concept, premised as it is on the metaphysical principle of verticality59 is, as we shall see, crucial to

the Imams understanding of justice. Nature then is depicted as a theophany, arranged hierarchically and radiating the sacred Presence of the Divine, though the Essence of the Grand Architect remains transcendent. However, that which is transcendent within humanity, namely, the spirit, can, by the grace of its intellectual vision, the Eye of the Heart, intuit that which is ontologically evident, that is to say, it can know its own pervasive nature and substance. And by knowing itself, as the Imam has noted, it can know its Maker. In the face of this sacred Presence, man, as such, is reduced to insignificance, and must therefore have an appropriate attitude of humility and wondrous gratitude, while at the same time, by virtue of the intellects discernment of the pervasive nature of its substancethe sacred Presence in all, must also have compassion towards all beings. Humility and compassion, detachment and love: 58 Sermon 2, Nahjul-Balagha, Jafery. See Al-Araf, VII: 11 and 12: And surely, We created you and then gave you human form; then We told the angels Prostrate yourselves to Adam, and they prostrated themselves, except Iblis, he refused to be of those who prostrated themselves. God said: What prevented you (O Satan) that you did not prostrate yourself when I commanded you? Iblis said, I am better than him (Adam). You created me from fire, and him You created from clay. Satans sin is one of metaphysical blindness, the inability to recognize the spiritual foundation of humanity. This opacity of vision is the genesis of pride. 59 The principle of verticality, which is a fundamental principle of traditional wisdom, is based on the afrmation of transcendence as an aspect of a comprehensive and integrated reality that is Absolute. According to this understanding, reality has both a transcendent Origin and an immanent Center, which are one, rather than being reduced to the merely horizontal dimension of its existential or quantitative elements. Verticality implies both Heaven and Earth, a worldview in which meaning and purpose are dened principally by both height and depth, and secondarily by breadththat is, principally by mans relationship to God, who is simultaneously above and within creation, and who therefore governs all creaturely relationships rather than by breadth alone that is, solely in terms of the relationship between the subject and the world. It also implies that the horizontal is subordinate to the vertical, that is to say, the relationship between man and the world is premised on the primary relationship between God and man: to restate this in Christian terms, the love of ones neighbor is premised on ones love for God.from the Editorial, The Principle of Verticality, by M. Ali Lakhani, in Sacred Web 14, Vancouver, Canada, 2004 19 M. Ali Lakhani these qualities are the foundational elements of the piety that, as we shall see later, constitute the basis of Imam Alis view of Justice. To summarize: Imam Alis view of reality, which is fully conso nant with the principles of traditional metaphysics articulated within the Quran and hadith, point to an essentially unified and integrated view of reality, in which the structure of reality can be differentiated

in terms of polarities rooted within its very structure, as the Divine Subject objectivizes Itself, by deploying from the Absolute to the Infi nite and from Essence to Form. The whole of the continuum of this deployment is a hierarchically constituted theophany, reflecting the sacred core of our innermost spiritual nature. Extract from The Metaphysics Of Human Governance: Imam Ali, Truth And Justice Features in The Sacred Foundations of Justice in Islam: The Teachings of Ali ibn Abi Talib 2006 World Wisdom, Inc. and Sacred Web Publishing Edited by M. Ali Lakhani Introduction by Seyyed Hossein Nasr All Rights Reserved. For Personal Usage Only www.worldwisdom.com 20

ISLAM AND SCIENCE: RELIGIOUS ORTHODOXY AND BATTLE FOR RATIONALITY Written by Prof. Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy Reviewed by Zia H Shah MD This is a book review for the book by Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy with foreword by Dr. Abdus Salam. Hoodbhoy is the Professor of High Energy Physics, and the head of the Physics Department at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He graduated and also received PhD from MIT and continues to do research in Particle physics. He received the Baker Award for Electronics in 1968 and the Abdus Salam Prize for Mathematics in 1984. It is very useful book to demonstrate that science is universal. Dr Abdus Salam is the only Muslim Nobel laureate in physics. He wrote in the foreword for this book, There is only one universal science, its problems and modalities are international and there is no such thing as Islamic science just as there is no Hindu science, no Jewish science, no Confucian science, nor Christian science.1

Dr. Abdus Salam Why then do religious people keep commenting and writing about science? It took someone with Einsteins intellect to propose the theories of General and Special relativity. It took a generation of great minds like Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Pascual Jordan and Niels Bohr to develop Quantum mechanics. These concepts still pose a great intellectual challenge to merely understand them. Yet many an atheist and agnostic scientists propose that a universe with such complexities and order is merely an accident. This is the greatest paradox ever known to mankind! This is why religious people feel the pressing need to write and comment on science and this is indeed where the concept of metaphysics comes in. What is metaphysics? Metaphysics is a term, which literally means, what comes after physics. So, it is a branch of philosophy that studies the ultimate structure and constitution of reality, correlating religion and 2 science. Metaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science, cosmology and ontology. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the universe. The systematic study of the nature is called science and in a theistic paradigm it is the study of the Work of God. The scientific revolution of the last millennium, has established that there is one universal science. It is a shared heritage developed by Christian, atheist, Jewish, Muslim and other scientists. We need to enter this millennium with a more clear and rational thinking, about relationship of science and religion.

The strength of the book by Hoodbhoy lies in demonstrating for the Muslim masses that science is a universal concept and there is no separate Muslim, Christian or Jewish science. Commenting on this book, Edward W. Said, from Columbia University states and it is mentioned on the back cover of the book, A compelling and provocative analysis of the relationship between the scientific spirit and the orthodoxy of one of the great monotheistic religions. Any reader, Muslim or non-Muslim, is bound to be affected by Dr Hoodbhoy's clear and persuasive arguments on the need for a reinstatement of scientific rationalism at a time of social crisis and questioning within the world of Islam and beyond. The vulnerability of the book lies in its not appreciating the concept of metaphysics and the author has limited himself to science and religion only and failed to appreciate as to how they relate with each other as one builds a holistic picture to appreciate the total reality. This becomes most evident when he unfairly criticizes the famous and the well known writer Dr. Maurice Bucaille. The author of this review proposes that there needs to be three very clear domains of human intellectual activity, namely science, religion and metaphysics. The Muslims who are overawed by science and the Western society propose that science and religion aught to be completely separate. But, how can believers shy away from the fact that the study of the Work of God, namely science is in perfect accord with the Word of God. This convergence of evidence gathered from different sources establishes the truth and authenticity of the Holy Quran. To elucidate this point further let us see how the Holy Quran combines the mundane with the sacred and the tangible with the intangible: The disbelievers say: This Quran is naught but a lie that Muhammad has fabricated, and other people have helped him with it. They have, thereby, perpetrated an injustice and an untruth. They also say: These are fables of the ancients which he has got someone to write down for him and they are recited to him morn and eve. Say to them: The Quran has been revealed by Him Who knows every secret that is in the heavens and the earth. Indeed, He is Most Forgiving, Ever Merciful. (Al Quran 25:5-7) 3 Many a Christian writer and clergy claim that the Holy Quran is borrowed from the Bible. Allah refutes this allegation in the words, The Quran has been revealed by Him Who knows every secret that is in the heavens and the earth. The most effective proofs of this Quranic claim were to come after the scientific revolution. Maurice Bucailles book is indeed a landmark achievement in this regards. However, it needs to be understood that the Holy Quran is a book of religion and not a book of science and Bucailles book is a book of metaphysics and not of science. Science by demonstrating that the Holy Quran includes information that could not be known to a desert dweller in Arabia of the 7th

century, becomes a proof of the statement, The Quran has been revealed by Him Who knows every secret that is in the heavens and the earth. In addition to Bucailles book the Bible the Quran and science another book that is instrumental in this regard is by Hadhrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad, Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge and Truth. More on this issue later. The passion to relate science and religion, however, can overshoot and the pendulum can swing too far. This is where the main strength of Hoodbhoys book lies, as he examines the state of science in Muslim countries. SCIENCE IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES The book explores the relationship between scientific thought and Islamic theory and practice, both historically and in the contemporary Muslim world. The author's controversial, but important, contention is that science in these countries today is in an appalling state, and that religious orthodoxy and the rise of fundamentalism are responsible. His book thus deals with one of the critical factors likely to determine the success or otherwise with which the Muslim world responds to the accelerating challenges of scientific and technological advance. The human condition is, as Plato would make Socrates say in the Republic (7.514a ff.), comparable to that of prisoners of an underground cave, whose unfortunate fate is to confuse reality with passing shadows created by a fire inside their miserable abode and kept in motion by clever manipulators, who in the name of politics, religion, science, and tradition control the human herd. The sorry state of science in the Muslim world and different distortions, conflicts and schizophrenic approach towards science arises in myopic view of the politically motivated leadership. The political leadership in their pursuit of short term political, social or economic interests has played havoc with the future of the Muslims. Hoodbhoy explains: "To someone traveling by aero plane, the view of cities from Karachi to Tehran, and Dubai to Riyadh, differs but little. This uniformity comes not from the common faith shared by their inhabitants, but from Western technology in the form of skyscrapers made of steel and glass, modern airports with sleek looking airliners on the tarmac, highways crammed with cars, and television antennae sprouting from every dwelling. Also imported from abroad are the technologies from which these societies derive their basic sustenance. Oil exploration, drilling, extraction, refining, and transportation are particularly important examples. They permit nations like Saudi Arabia and Iran to exchange natural wealth for manufactured goods ranging from AWACS early warning aircraft to rifle bullets, and from oil refineries to can openers. For some

4 decades to come, a slippery, subterranean hydrocarbon will continue to provide the basic sustenance of these countries, finance their wars, allow experimentation with new social structures, and temporarily - but only temporarily - grant exemption from that inexorable law of history which relegates unproductive societies to destruction or marginalization. It is now perfectly routine to lament this critical dependence on oil and Western technology and ritualistically to call for a transfer of technology from developed to developing countries. Often, diabolical theories of international conspiracy, with varying degrees of credibility, are invoked as explanations for Muslim scientific backwardness. But these are not very fulfilling. Indeed, the damage to the collective self-esteem cannot be undone by such means, and thoughtful Muslims must seek sounder reasons. In seeking an explanation for scientific underdevelopment, one must recognize at the outset that the environment for science in Islamic countries today is replete with paradoxes. On the one hand, all these countries are in the full grip of Western technology and market-based consumerism, which are the products of the Scientific Revolution. This has legitimized science as essential knowledge, and mastery over it as necessary for economic development and national power. Hence no group which seeks to win public support can afford to condemn science totally. But, on the other hand, technology and the market bring about homogenization and threaten old collective identities. Perceived as even more threatening to traditional norms and thinking is the attitude prescribed by science - an attitude which demands persistent query and examination of ideas. Muslim modernists and pragmatists have persistently sought to amalgamate the new with the old. But their attitude towards science is oftentimes a schizophrenic one, particularly in those Muslim countries where orthodoxy wields state power. This point is exemplified by the views expressed by Saudi delegates to a high level conference held in Kuwait in 1983. The ostensible aim of the conference, attended by rectors from 17 Arab

universities, was to identify and remove bottlenecks in the development of science and technology in the Arab world. But a single topic dominated the proceedings: is science Islamic? The Saudis held that pure science tends to produce 'Mu'tazilite tendencies' potentially subversive of belief. Science is profane because it is secular; as such - in their opinion - it goes against Islamic beliefs. Hence, recommended the Saudis, although technology should be promoted for its obvious benefits, pure science ought to be softpedalled." 2 Here was a representative of the Saudi Royal family trying to keep the Muslims away from science, reality and truth to unfairly usurp the national resources and national destiny for the benefit of few called the Royal family. Hoodbhoy goes onto examining the sorry state of the Pakistan politics how it introduced distortions in 'science.' "Nowhere is the conflict between scientific and traditional modes of thinking more visible than in the dispute over miracles. Precisely to underscore the belief in the efficacy and existence of miracles, a large-scale international conference entitled Scientific Miracles Of Quran And Sunnah was held in October 1987 in the capital city of Islamabad. Inaugurated by the late President of Pakistan, General Zia-ul-Haq, and organized jointly by the International Islamic University and the Organization Of Scientific Miracles based in Mecca, this much heralded conference was attended by several hundred pious participants from Muslim countries. The Scientific Miracles Conference was a significant event because it was one of the many of its kind supported by the Pakistani state in the recent past, and because it clearly portrayed the mind-set of those who wielded state power in Pakistan. The thrust of the conference was towards the following: (1) Affirmation of the existence of 'scientific' miracles; (2) Proving that all known scientific facts can be traced to either the Qur'an or Sunnah; (3) New conjectures related to physical phenomena, ostensibly based on the holy texts; (4) A condemnation of secular 'Western' science. 5 ... The new moon of the month of Ramazan is the subject of bitter argument between the

scientifically inclined and the ulema (religious scholars), and amongst the ulema themselves. Often the dispute among the ulema over whether or not the new moon had appeared has led to Muslims starting the Ramadan fast at different times, or celebrating the Eid festivals on different days, depending on which community follows which ulema's authority. In order to eliminate the confusion and disputes, the scientifically inclined insist that modern astronomy can predict the position and time of the new moon to excellent accuracy. Hence, in their opinion, disagreements between different observers can be eliminated and the date of Eid announced beforehand. Most of the ulema vehemently disagree and insist that there can be no substitute for visual sighting. The Pakistan government, anxious to avoid divisive decisions on a sensitive issue, has created the Ruet-i-Hilal (moon sighting) committee which is taken aloft in an aero plane at the opportune time. Agreement on even this procedure, however, is not unanimous among the ulema." 3 The philosophical basis for these practical distortions was provided by Maulana Maudoodi. Hoodbhoy explains: "Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami and one of the most influential Islamic thinkers of our times, also bitterly criticizes Western science. In a lecture on Islamic education, he stated that geography, physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, geology and economics are taught without reference to Allah and his Messenger and are hence a source of gumrahi (straying from the truth): Reflection on the nature of modern education and customs immediately reveals their contradiction with the nature of Islamic education and customs. You teach young minds philosophy which seeks to explain the universe without Allah. You teach them science which is devoid of reason and slave of the senses. You teach them economics, law and sociology which, in spirit and in substance, differ from the teachings of Islam. And you still expect them to have an Islamic point of view?

To avoid this evil the Maulana presents a solution wherein all education should be converted into Islamic education. He writes: The entire blame for this sorry state of affairs rests on the separation of dini (spiritual) from dunyawi (worldly) education. As I have just pleaded, this separation is totally Unislamic. In the new system of education a new course on dinyat is not needed. Instead. all courses should be changed into courses of dinyat. With the passage in May 1991 of the Shariat Bill by Pakistan's National Assembly and Senate, the ulema's dream of a completely Islamized education, free from contamination by modern science has presumably been brought a step closer to reality." 4 After the creation of Pakistan there was a power struggle by the Mullahs to take over the political control of the country. Maulana Maudoodi views can be best understood in that context. Prior to creation of Pakistan when India was a British colony and it was a matter of survival for the Muslims, greater rationality had prevailed. One person who can be considered to be a spokesperson for rationality in this domain is Syed Ameer Ali; and it is no wonder that he belonged to the era before Pakistan, before the hunger of power took away the sanity of the so called ulema. Hoodbhoy describes the work of Syed Ameer Ali: "Syed Ameer Ali (1849-1924) educated in England and a firm disciple of Syed Ahmed Khan, Syed Ameer Ali wrote his magnum opus The Spirit Of Islam with a definite goal in mind -- to 6 prove that true Islam is revolutionary, rational, and progress oriented. First published in 1891, and repeatedly enlarged upon until 1922, the book underwent innumerable reprints and was read throughout the Muslim world. For Western educated Muslim modernists of the early 20th century, it was a definitive and comprehensive work which challenged the hostile representations of Islamic history, values, and theology put forward by most Orientalists. But it was also a work for which its author was repeatedly dubbed an apologist who pandered to modern Western ideals at

the expense of true Islamic ideas. Syed Ameer Ali's concern with the issue of scientific progress and Islam permeates much of his book. His views on this can be summarized as follows: The Holy Qur'an and sayings of the Prophet (PBUH) give supreme value to knowledge. Knowledge is to be understood as including science. This is what motivated the early Muslims to study science. Aristotelian philosophy and rationalist thinking were entirely in accordance with Islam, and the Mu'tazilite movement is to be sympathized with even if it went a bit too far sometimes. The Muslim philosophers and scholars - AI Kindi, AI Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn al-Haytham, Ibn Rushd -are true heroes of Islam. It was the fanatics and rigid dogmatists who caused Islamic science and culture to collapse. Syed Ameer Ali identifies those most responsible as AI Ashari, Ibn Hanbal, AI Ghazzali, and Ibn Taymiyya. Science needs to be brought back from the West into Islam; it is not something foreign to Islam and not by any means unlslamic." 5 Dr. Abdus Salam had a great zeal and enthusiasm for development of science in Muslim societies. He suggests a solution for lack of progress in Muslim countries in the Foreword of the book: One of the most perceptive sections in this book concerns the position of the ulema in Islam. As the author says, 'Islam had no church, no formal centre of tyrannical religious authority. Paradoxically, a superior moral position - the right of the individual to interpret doctrine without the aid of priests - appears to have led to a systemic organizational weakness which proved to be fatal to Islamic political and economic - not to speak of scientific and technological power in the long run.'

This, in my opinion, has come about through the wielding of the weapon of excommunication (takfir). The list of those who have been excommunicated at some time or other includes such luminaries as Imam Ali - the Kharjites did that - Imam Abu Hanifa and Imam Malik bin Anas, founders of two of the four recognized schools ofIslamic theology; Imam Ghazali, Sheikh-ul-Akbar Ibn-i-Arabi, Imam Ibn-i- Taymiyya, Sayyid Muhammad Jonpuri and scientists like Ibn Rushd, Abu Ali Sina, Ibn-ul-Haitham, and others. Often, the verdict of excommunication was a local sectarian aberration. However, sentences of death were carried out; among those actually martyred were mystics like Mansur AI Hallaj, Sheikh-ul-Ashraq Shahabuddin Suhrawardi, Sheikh Alaaee and Sarmad. All this happened despite the absence of an organized clergy within Sunni Islam. In recounting the martyrdom of Sarmad, Abul-Kalam Azad wrote: During the last 1,300 years, the pens of jurisprudents have always acted like a drawn sword, and the blood of many of the chosen ones of God have stained their persons this martyrdom was not limited to Sufis and the free thinkers -- even the greatest Muslim men of orthodox scholarship suffered. 7 Thus, not having a priesthood in Sunni Islam has not helped us much because of this propensity of the ulema to wield the weapon of excommunication and for our rulers and the general public to listen to them. What, then, is the remedy so that takfir does not recur - at least so far as scientific beliefs are concerned? One remedy would be to try to deal with the two classes of so-calIed ulema separately. First, there are the lay preachers whose major task is to lead prayers in the rural mosques and who earn their living by performing such functions as officiating at marriage, death and circumcision ceremonies and looking after the upkeep of the mosques. This is a professional class who should have scant interest in fundamentalist persecution once their livelihood is secured. If this can be

guaranteed them (like the Christian priests whom they resemble) they would not retard the progress of science and technology. The second category of ulema is the damaging one. These are men (without spiritual pretensions) who claim to interpret the Holy Quran, issue excommunication fatwas -something the Holy Prophet - Peace be upon him - never did - and give their view on all subjects politics, economics, law--in their Friday sermons. Lest it should be objected that there is no priestly class in (Sunni) Islam, one must state clearly that, in this respect, Islam has had the worst deal of all the great religions of humankind. In most Islamic countries, a class of nearly illiterate men have, in practice, habitually appropriated to themselves the status of a priestly class without possessing even a rudimentary knowledge of their great and tolerant religion. The arrogance, the rapacity, and the low level of commonsense displayed by this class, as well as its intolerance, has been derided by all poets and writers of any consequence in Persia, India, Central Asia and Turkey. This is the class which has been responsible for rabble-rousing throughout the history of Islam and for the repression which matched (fortunately, only sometimes) the systematic persecution perpetrated by the Inquisition in Christian societies. The only long-term remedy for the situation is to deprive these persons of their power to make mischief through their Friday sermons which, instead of being spiritually elevating, are usually political tirades. This politicizing should be stopped. DR. MAURICE BUCAILLE One weakness of the book is where Prof. Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy extends unjustified criticism against Dr. Maurice Bucaille. We will quote that section in its entirety, in a piece meal fashion, accompanied with a defense for Bucailles approach.6 A French surgeon who turned spiritualist, Monsieur Bucaille shot into prominence throughout the Islamic world with the publication of his exegesis, The Bible, The Qur'an, and Science. Translated into numerous languages, hundreds of thousands of copies of the book have been printed and

distributed free of cost by Muslim religious organizations throughout the world. At international airports and American university campuses, it is the spearhead with which evangelical students seek to win conversion to Islam. Most Muslim intellectuals that I know of have either read the book, or at least have heard about it. As for the author, his popularity is unquestionable. One wonders how much of this arises from the fact that he is a white man; for it cannot be denied that even with the demise of colonialism the white skin still commands much authority. In any case, Monsieur Bucaille is in great demand at conferences, such as the First International Conference of Scientific Miracles of the Qu'ran and Sunnah, of which he was a chairman. Most of this is statement of facts. However, when he suggests, One wonders how much of this arises from the fact that he is a white man; for it cannot be denied that even with the demise of colonialism the white skin still commands much authority, this has to do more with many a secular Muslims being overawed by science than playing in favor of Bucaille. 8 Bucaille's method is simple. He asks his readers to ponder on some Qur'anic verse and then, from a variety of meanings that could be assigned to the verse, he pulls out one which is consistent with some scientific fact. He thereupon concludes that, whereas the Bible is often wrong in the description of natural phenomena, the Qur'an is invariably correct and that it correctly anticipated all major discoveries of modern science. To this end, he marshals an impressive number of Qur'anic references to bees, spiders, birds, plants and vegetables of different kinds, animal milk, embryos, and human reproduction. His discussion of inanimate matter ranges from the planets of the solar system, to galaxies and interstellar matter, and then to the expansion of the universe and the conquest of space. He ends the discussion of each topic with the ritual conclusion that the marvelous agreement of Qur'anic revelations with scientific facts is proof of its miraculous nature. Bucaille is not suggesting any scientific method but suggesting a philosophical or metaphysical proof of the truth of Islam. This is where the concept of metaphysics comes into play. Once again, metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that studies the ultimate structure and constitution of reality, correlating religion and science.

Whereas Monsieur Bucaille appears eminently satisfied with his methodology, Muslims who wish to combine reason with faith will readily detect at least two fundamental flaws in it even though they accept the divine nature of the Qur'an. First, it will be recognized that the proof of a proposition is meaningful only if the possibility of disproof is also to be entertained. What sense does it make to assume that the sum of the angles of a triangle equals 180 degrees, and then 'prove' the same? Since believers know that it is impossible for the Qur'an to be wrong in any manner, all attempts at 'proving' its divine nature are entirely specious right from the start. Yes, disproof is to be entertained, but not on just one piece of evidence but on preponderance of evidence. It was on such evidence that Bucaille drew the conclusion that there was conflict between the Bible and science. Here is an example that is developed in detail by Andrew Dickson White, in the chapter on astronomy in his book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, originally published in 1896: Among various rude tribes we find survivals of a primitive idea that the earth is a flat table or disk, ceiled, domed, or canopied by the sky, add that the sky rests upon the mountains as pillars. Such a belief is entirely natural; it conforms to the appearance of things, and hence at a very early period entered into various theologies. ... But the strictly biblical men of science, such eminent fathers and bishops as Theophilus of Antioch in the second century, and Clement of Alexandria in the third, with others in centuries following, were not content with merely opposing what they stigmatized as an old heathen theory; they drew from their Bibles a new Christian theory, to which one Church authority added one idea and another, until it was fully developed. Taking the survival of various early traditions, given in the seventh verse of the first chapter of Genesis, they insisted on the clear declarations of Scripture that the earth was, at creation, arched over with a solid vault, a firmament, and to this they added the passages from Isaiah and the Psalms, in which it declared that the heavens are stretched out like a curtain, and again like a tent to dwell in. The universe, then, is like a house: the earth is 9 its ground floor, the firmament its ceiling, under which the Almighty hangs out the sun to rule the day and the moon and stars to rule the night. This ceiling is also the floor of the apartment above and in this is a cistern, shaped, as one of the authorities says, like a bathing-tank, and containing the waters which are above the firmament. These waters are let down upon the earth by the Almighty and his angels through the "windows of heaven." As to the movement of the sun,

there was a citation of various passages in Genesis, mixed with metaphysics in various proportions, and this was thought to give ample proofs from the Bible that the earth could not be a sphere.7 The whole text of the two volumes of the book can be read on www.archive.org or www.questia.com. The book is filled with scores of genuine examples wherein the Bible is at odds with the modern science. One can bend the text so far and the reality eventually begins to show. Second, hanging an eternal truth on to the changeable theories of science is a dangerous business. Our understanding of the universe may change drastically with time, and science is quite shameless in its abandonment of old theories and espousal of new ones. Will this not wreak havoc if one attempts to anchor a theological idea on to these shifting sands? If the Holy Quran is truly the Word of God and nature is Work of God, then there is no risk of the metaphor of shifting sands, becoming a big issue. Any apparent conflict will be limited in time and will be more than compensated by a large body of clear agreement and congruence. It would be a scenario where it will be apt to say that exception proves the rule. A well founded and reproducible science will only confirm a genuine and preserved scripture. Consider the following. Monsieur Bucaille has 'discovered' that the Qur'an speaks of a universe which is continually expanding. Now, let us overlook the fact that it was only after astronomical observations established the truth of this phenomenon that the expansion of the universe was suddenly 'discovered' as a long-known religious fact. Consider, instead, what would happen if some new astronomical observations were to indicate that the universe was contracting rather than expanding. Indeed, cosmologists suspect that a few billion years hence, the universe will cease expanding and then start contracting. Under the extreme assumption that life will continue to exist in the present form, we can ask what options a Bucaillist living a few billion years hence will have when faced with the contracting universe. Possibly, he may refute the astronomical evidence in favor of what he believes to be a religious truth. But, more likely, he will discover hitherto undiscovered subtleties of the Arabic language which persuade him that earlier interpretations were incorrect, and he will then find a suitable passage which fits the new facts.

Hoodbhoy has to go several billion years in the future to pick up a metaphor to make his case. This shows the frailty of his case against Bucaille. When authors make a case for correlation of the Quran and science, very often the language of the Holy Quran is very specific. If Hoodbhoy thinks that retrofitting randomly is such an easy task, why should not we ask him or other secularly biased writers to try to do the same to one of the other scriptures, other than the Holy Quran or to the books of ancient philosophers like Aristotle and Plato? Aristotle for example believed in a universe that is eternal and static. It would be a worthwhile exercise to demonstrate how we can fit big bang and expansion of the universe in the Bible, Gita or Vedas. 10 Observe that in Bucaille's book there is not a single prediction of any physical fact which is unknown up to now, but which could be tested against observation and experiment in the future. Here we would like to quote the work of Dr. Abdus Salam. He was the co-recipient with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Lee Glashow of the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physics for their work in formulating the electroweak theory, which explains the unity of the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism, had inspiration of his work from his belief in Unity of God. It is stated in the book, Ideals and Realities, To a Muslim mystic, Allah is to be sought in eternal beauty. And for Salam, beauty comes through finding new, subtle, yet simplifying patterns in the natural world. Anything that threatens to confuse the issue seems to him ugly, filling him with an utmost physical revulsion and driving him to clean it away, much as one would remove mud from a shrine. The physicists are now working on a string theory that will unite all forms of matter and energy into one. The string theory can be considered to be an extension of his work to other forces of nature. Additionally, based on the verses of the Holy Quran, Hadhrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad has prophesized extraterrestrial life and its meeting with the mankind in due course of time. To read rest of the story about extraterrestrial life go to: http://www.alislam.org/library/books/revelation/index.html Pseudo-scientific attempts, of which the above are examples, to derive the physical sciences from the Qur'an have been courageously criticized by some of the great Muslims of modern times. One finds, for example, a point of view diametrically opposed to fundamentalist thinking of the Bucaillist variety in the works of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the founder of Aligarh University in India. Syed Ahmed Khan believed that it was futile to regard the Qur'an as a work on science. A

good portion of his own labors as a religious scholar were, in fact, aimed at disentangling what he considered to be the essential message of the Qur'an from certain confusing and wrong beliefs of Greek astronomy. This actually serves the purpose of Bucaille that wrong beliefs of Greek astronomy could be refuted from the Holy Quran. Although he believed the Qur'an to be divinely revealed, he also held the view that attempts to derive scientific truths from the Book were entirely misplaced. Syed Ahmed Khan wrote that: The Qur'an does not prove that the earth is stationary, nor does it prove that the earth is in motion. Similarly, it cannot be proved from the Qur'an that the sun is stationary. The Holy Qur'an was not concerned with these problems of astronomy; because the progress in human knowledge was to decide such matters itself. . . . the real purpose of a religion is to improve morality. . . . I am fully convinced that the Work of God and the Word of God can never be antagonistic to each other; we may, through the fault of our knowledge, sometimes make mistakes in understanding the meaning of the Word. This is indeed what Bucaille is doing, by showing the congruence of the Work of God and the Word of God, he is providing a glorious proof for the truth of the Holy Quran. Bucaille is not extending or distorting the meaning or scope of science. He is merely indulging in metaphysics to make a thesis for his claims about the Holy Quran. 11 Here is the crux of Syed Ahmed Khan's belief: 'the real purpose of religion is to improve morality'. Let scientific truths be established by observation and experiment, he says, and not by attempting to interpret a religious text as a book of science. By having explicated these beliefs in such clear terms, and by virtue of his well recognized role as the protector of Muslim interests in British India. Syed Ahmed Khan's philosophy provides in principle a credible antidote against the various strains of Bucaillism which have gained such enormous currency in the Muslim world today. 8

We applaud Syed Ahmed Khan's contributions to education of the Muslims but he lacked in knowledge in some aspects of religion and metaphysics. For the sake of example we quote from the foreword of a book, the Blessings of Prayers by Promised Messiahas , Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Barakatud Dua, or the Blessings of Prayer, written by the Promised Messiahas in 1893, is a refutation of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khans view that there is no such thing as the acceptance of prayer, and that prayer is no more than a form of worship. The Promised Messiahas rejects this view and proclaims that Allah hears and accepts the supplication of believers which are offered in humility and sincerity, and that the acceptance of prayer sets in motion its own chain of causes which culminates in the fulfillment of the objective prayed for. In the second part of the book, which deals with Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khans other book Usulut Tafsir (On the Principles of Commentary of the Holy Quran), the Promised Messiah presents his criteria or guiding principles for the correct interpretation of the Holy Quran.9 The book the Blessings of Prayer can be reviewed at the following link: http://www.alislam.org/library/books/Blessings-of-Prayer.pdf EPILOGUE In human intellectual pursuits there are three fairly separate domains, consisting of science, religion and metaphysics, with very little overlap. The source of knowledge in religion is mainly revelation. The source of knowledge in science is observation and experimentation. One could draw inspiration for scientific pursuits from religion. This is one self evident area of overlap between the two disciplines. Metaphysics, however, allows for much wider speculation and correlation between the domains of religion and science, without spoiling the discrete and independent existence of both. One of the reasons why scientific pursuits had died in the Muslim societies, during the middle ages, was the fact that the freedom and pursuits of the scientists were hijacked by the fundamentalists. That is what Hoodbhoy wants to avoid at all cost in Muslim societies and that is the main thrust of his book. One day the Holy Prophet Muhammadsaw happened to pass near a date-palm garden where some people were grafting trees. He inquired what they were doing, and when they explained the process he asked them why they did not do it another way. The following year these people complained that they had adopted his suggestion, but that the trees had yielded less fruit. But I had merely made an inquiry from you, he said. You know more about these things than I 12

do. You should have followed the method which experience had taught you was the best.10 This incident clearly establishes that Islam does not give any license to the self-righteous to hijack the independent study of nature. The philosophical works of Averroes or Ibne Rushd were studied carefully by Western philosophers and theologians, helping them establish nature as an autonomous realm of intellectual endeavor. This lead eventually to the principle of reductionism in science which implies that nature, the way it is created by its Creator, lends itself to study in small pieces and small aspects. This helped Newton to look at the motion of things and state his laws of motion and helped Louis Pauster find that disease can be caused by bacteria and that life is not created from non-life. Eventually the chemists could study the different elements in isolation, one at a time, separate from each other. This was the founding and unyielding principle for the scientific revolution in Europe. As we get science free from the politics of the fundamentalists we should not destroy or ignore metaphysics that serves as a proof for the truth of the Holy Quran. In the words of Allah: The Quran has been revealed by Him Who knows every secret that is in the heavens and the earth. Indeed, He is Most Forgiving, Ever Merciful. (Al Quran 25:7) 1 Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy. Islam and Science: Religious orthodoxy and the battle for Rationality. Zed Books Limited, London and New Jersy, 1991, page ix. 2 Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy. Islam and Science: Religious orthodoxy and the battle for Rationality. Zed Books Limited, London and New Jersy, 1991, page 28-29. 3 Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy. Islam and Science: Religious orthodoxy and the battle for Rationality. Zed Books Limited, London and New Jersy, 1991, page 46. 4 Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy. Islam and Science: Religious orthodoxy and the battle for Rationality. Zed Books Limited, London and New Jersy, 1991, page 53-54. 5 Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy. Islam and Science: Religious orthodoxy and the battle for Rationality. Zed Books Limited, London and New Jersy, 1991, page 57-58. 6 Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy. Islam and Science: Religious orthodoxy and the battle for Rationality. Zed Books Limited, London and New Jersy, 1991, page 67-68. 7 Andrew Dickson White. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. Volume: 1. Appleton and Company. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1914.

Page Number 89-92. 8 Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy. Islam and Science: Religious orthodoxy and the battle for Rationality. Zed Books Limited, London and New Jersy, 1991, page 67-68. 9 http://www.alislam.org/library/books/Blessings-of-Prayer.pdf 10 Muhammad Zafrulla Khan. Islam: its Meaning for Modern man. Happer and Row, 1962. Page 66. ame: Ali ibne Abi Talib (as) Father: Abu Talib bin Abdul Muttalib bin Hashim. Mother: Fatimah bint Asad bin Hashim bin Abd Munaf. Kunniyat (Patronymic): Abul Hasan and Husayn, Abu Turab Laqab (Title): Al-Wasi, Amir al-Mu'minin Birth: He was born in the Ka'ba , in thirty 'Am al-Fil (the year of the elephant). Martyrdom: He was martyred by the Khwariji named Abd al-Rahman ibn Muljam at Kufa during the month of Ramadhan in the fortieth year of Hijrah and is buried in Najaf on the outskirts of Kufa. Biography Amir al-mu'minln Ali (upon whom be peace) was the son of Abu Talib, the Shaykh of the Banu Hashim. Abu Talib was the uncle and guardian of the Holy Prophet (sawas) and the person who had brought the Prophet (sawas) to his house and raised him like his own son. After the Prophet (sawas) was chosen for his prophetic mission, Abu Talib continued to support him and repelled from him the evil that came from the infidels among the Arabs and especially the Quraysh. According to well-known traditional accounts Ali was born ten years before the commencement of the prophetic mission of the Prophet (sawas). When six years old, as a result of famine in and around Mecca, he was requested by the Prophet (sawas) to leave his father's house and come to the house of his cousin, the Prophet (sawas). There he was placed directly under the guardianship and custody of the Holy Prophet (sawas).

A few years later, when the Prophet (sawas) was endowed with the Divine gift of prophecy and for the first time received the Divine revelation in the cave of Hira', as he left the cave to return to town and his own house he met Ali on the way. He told him what had happened and Ali accepted the new faith. Again in a gathering when the Holy Prophet (sawas) had brought his relatives together and invited them to accept his religion, he said the first person to accept his call would be his vicegerent and inheritor and deputy. The only person to rise from his place and accept the faith was Ali and the Prophet (sawas) accepted his declaration of faith. Therefore Ali was the first man in Islam to accept the faith and is the first among the followers of the Prophet (sawas) to have never worshipped other than the One God. Ali was always in the company of the Prophet (sawas) until the Prophet (sawas) migrated from Mecca to Medina. On the night of the migration to Medina (hijrah) when the infidels had surrounded the house of the Prophet (sawas) and were determined to invade the house at the end of the night and cut him to pieces while he was in bed, Ali slept in place of the Prophet (sawas) while the Prophet (sawas) left the house and set out for Medina. After the departure of the Prophet (sawas), according to his wish Ali gave back to the people the trusts and charges that they had left with the Prophet (sawas). Then he went to Medina with his mother, the daughter of the Prophet (sawas), and two other women. In Medina also Ali was constantly in the company of the Prophet (sawas) in private and in public. The Prophet (sawas) gave Fatimah, his beloved daughter from Khadijah, to Ali as his wife and when the Prophet (sawas) was creating bonds of brotherhood among his companions he selected Ali as his brother. Ali was present in all the wars in which the Prophet (sawas) participated, except the battle of Tabuk when he was ordered to stay in Medina in place of the Prophet (sawas). He did not retreat in any battle nor did he turn his face away from any enemy. He never disobeyed the Prophet (sawas), so that the Prophet (sawas) said, "Ali is never separated from the Truth nor the Truth from Ali."

On the day of the death of the Prophet (sawas), Ali was thirty-three years old. Although he was foremost in religious virtues and the most outstanding among the companions of the Prophet (sawas), he was pushed aside from the caliphate on the claim that he was too young and that he had many enemies among the people because of the blood of the polytheists he had spilled in the wars fought alongside the Prophet (sawas). Therefore Ali was almost completely cut off from public affairs. He retreated to his house where he began to train competent individuals in the Divine sciences and in this way he passed the twenty-five years of the caliphate of the first three caliphs who succeeded the Prophet (sawas). When the third caliph was killed, people gave their allegiance to him and he was chosen as caliph. During his caliphate of nearly four years and nine months, Ali followed the way of the Prophet (sawas) and gave his caliphate the form of a spiritual movement and renewal and began many different types of reforms. Naturally, these reforms were against the interests of certain parties that sought their own benefit. As a result, a group of the companions (foremost among whom were Talhah and Zubayr, who also gained the support of A'ishah, and especially Mu'awiyah) made a pretext of the death of the third caliph to raise their heads in opposition and began to revolt and rebel against Ali. In order to quell the civil strife and sedition, Ali fought a war near Basra, known as the "Battle of the Camel," against Talhah and Zubayr in which Ummul Mu'mineen A'ishah, was also involved. He fought another war against Mu'awiyah on the border of Iraq and Syria which lasted for a year and a half and is famous as the "Battle of Siffin." He also fought against the Khawarij at Nahrawan, in a battle known as the "Battle of Nahrawan." Therefore, most of the days of Ali's caliphate were spent in overcoming internal opposition. Finally, in the morning of the 19th of Ramadan in the year 40 A.H., while praying in the mosque of Kufa, he was wounded by one of the Khawarij and died as a martyr during the night of the 21st of Ramadan.

According to the testimony of friend and foe alike, Ali had no shortcomings from the point of view of human perfection. And in the Islamic virtues he was a perfect example of the upbringing and training given by the Prophet (sawas). The discussions that have taken place concerning his personality and the books written on this subject by Shi'ites, Sunnis and members of other religions, as well as the simply curious outside any distinct religious bodies, are hardly equalled in the case of any other personality in history. In science and knowledge Ali was the most learned of the companions of the Prophet (sawas), and of Muslims in general. In his learned discourses he was the first in Islam to open the door for logical demonstration and proof and to discuss the "divine sciences" or

metaphysics (ma'arif-i ilahlyah). He spoke concerning the esoteric aspect of the Quran and devised Arabic grammar in order to preserve the Quran's form of expression. He was the most eloquent Arab in speech (as has been mentioned in the first part of this book). The courage of Ali was proverbial. In all the wars in which he participated during the lifetime of the Prophet (sawas), and also afterward, he never displayed fear or anxiety. Although in many battles such as those of Uhud, Hunayn, Khaybar and Khandaq the aides to the Prophet (sawas) and the Muslim army trembled in fear or dispersed and fled, he never turned his back to the enemy. Never did a warrior or soldier engage Ali in battle and come out of it alive. Yet, with full chivalry he would never slay a weak enemy nor pursue those who fled. He would not engage in surprise attacks or in turning streams of water upon the enemy. It has been definitively established historically that in the Battle of Khaybar in the attack against the fort he reached the ring of the door and with sudden motion tore off the door and cast it away. Also on the day when Mecca was conquered the Prophet (sawas) ordered the idols to be broken. The idol "Hubal" was the largest idol in Mecca, a giant stone statue placed on the top of the Ka'bah. Following the command of the Prophet (sawas), Ali placed his feet on the Prophet (sawas)'s shoulders, climbed to the top of the Ka'bah, pulled "Hubal" from its place and cast it down. Ali was also without equal in religious asceticism and the worship of God. In answer to some who had complained of Ali's anger toward them, the Prophet (sawas) said, "Do not reproach Ali for he is in a state of Divine ecstasy and bewilderment.

" Abu Darda'', one of the companions, one day saw the body of Ali in one of the palm plantations of Medina laying on the ground as stiff as wood. He went to Ali's house to inform his noble wife, the daughter of the Prophet (sawas), and to express his condolences. The daughter of the Prophet (sawas) said, "My cousin (Ali) has not died. Rather, in fear of God he has fainted. This condition overcomes him often." There are many stories told of Ali's kindness to the lowly, compassion for the needy and the poor, and generosity and munificence toward those in misery and poverty. Ali spent all that he earned to help the poor and the needy, and himself lived in the strictest and simplest manner. Ali loved agriculture and spent much of his time digging wells, planting trees and cultivating fields. But all the fields that he cultivated or wells that he built he gave in endowment (waqf) to the poor. His endowments, known as the "alms of Ali," had the noteworthy income of twenty-four thousand gold dinars toward the end of his life. ZIARAAT Ziarat-e-Ameenallah To be recited at his shrine Ziarat-e-Mutlaqah

To be recited on Sunday To be recited on 17 Rabiul Awwal To be recited at Eid-e-Ghadeer (1) To be recited at Eid-e-Ghadeer (2) To be recited at Shab-e-Besat Wida / farewell ziarat Salwat recited when visiting Madina Salwat on Imam Ali (as) Dua after Ziarat of Imam Ali (as)