Abdal Hakim Murad – The Ark of Salvation
AI: Summary ©
The upcoming Easter weekend is a recitation of prophetic events and series of prayers. The importance of Easter weekend for the spiritual world is highlighted, including the holy month and the use of black and white culture as a bridge between heaven and earth. The transcript describes various stories and events related to the Bible, including the use of animals as carriers of evil and the use of animals as carriers of evil for political purposes. The speakers also discuss animal pride and its importance in spiritual orders of Islam.
AI: Summary ©
Bismillah AR Rahman AR Rahim. I'm going to begin in a perhaps
initially surprising and unexpected place, looking back
just a few days to the commemoration, marked by recitals
of various kinds across the Muslim world of the occasion of the
ascension, the Mirage. So traditional event, which has
historically and to this day continues to allow communities to
reflect on a trans historical moment, which in many ways is seen
as the culmination of prophetic history,
described in many Hadith reports and elaborated in sometimes rather
Baroque ways by 1000s of poems and litanies in just about every
Muslim language. The event has the man of praise, praying in
congregation with the earlier prophets in Jerusalem, and then
taken up by Gabriel, on a great ascent to the seven heavens into
the Divine Presence. A number of symbolic events then occur, and
I'd like to begin by reciting one text which summarizes much of The
traditional teaching.
The Holy Prophet perceives majestic oneness take formless
form, clear is a full moon in the night sky. Thus perceiving Allah
as lovers of reality will perceive him in the highest dimensions of
paradise.
Essence communes with the Beloved Prophet in moods unimaginable,
where neither word nor voice nor sign nor touch is needed.
With divine tenderness far beyond even the prophets enlightened
expectation, the voice of truth resounds through his entire being,
I am your secret heart, your true desire is your perfect refuge your
only love. I am the divine reality you worship for me alone, oh,
Muhammad of light you have side unceasingly throughout the long
journey of prophecy.
You secretly called out why can I not directly behold the beauty of
the essence of beauty? Come now friend of all souls. The love I
feel for you is beyond my love for the whole creation. All humanity
is your humble servant. Whatever you desire from the infinite
treasure house of divine power and blessing is yours for the asking.
thousandfold healing 1000 fold illumination 1000 fold love.
Beloved messenger, your soul will never turn from the experience of
this. Return now into temporality and invite humanity, the creative
expression of my essence, to come unto me to gaze at last upon the
source of truth and beauty,
traveling the on time and eternity of interceded for them all at the
abode of essence. I grant to your community the daily prayers of
Islam, which when performed with purity of heart, will lift them
into paradise while still on earth.
Every level of heavenly experiences contained in the
prayer the prayer will lead them along the very way of ascension
that I lead you.
And quote,
the fundamental Muslim practice of the five daily prayers is thus
believed to be a recollection of the prophetic ascension is basic
postures of standing, bowing, prostrating and sitting is said to
be based on the worship full forms of the angels whom the man of
praise saw on his celestial journey.
The Australian theologian rod Blackhurst evinces this Quranic
ethos in an essay on Muslim prep.
For Blackhurst the prayer gifted at the ascension is a primordial
enactment of humanity's status as bridge between heaven and earth.
The prophetic follower worships in a fully embodied way, in a mind
body synergy particularly characteristic of Islam sense of
itself as the reclamation of the last Abrahamic, primordial ality
and honey via
the entire Muslim life is shaped by forms of worship, which engage
the body engage the body and spirit with the movements of Sun
and moon, and hence represent the believers for belongingness to the
created order.
Nonetheless, he is like Adam between water and clay, the water
which is of heaven, and the clay, which is the stuff of which he has
made.
This Abrahamic cosmology depicts Adam as being off the fedora
fitrah, the Quranic term which denotes nature and what is
natural, not as fallen but as a theophany made of grace and
reminder of God's presence as el Caribe, the near.
The prayer is also a recollection of the salvation to be offered by
the prophetic intercession, since the man of praise is directly
addressed in the final invocation.
The response prayer to the other man likewise recalls the
praiseworthy station and McConnell MagMod understood as the
intercessory right
out of the ceiling, Israelite messenger.
And so on the ship of Salvation The Ark which carries the last
Abrahamic community over the firming seas of the eschatological
age. The intercessor is not only the one who has saved, but the one
who's example in this life and whose intercessory prayer in the
next delivers others.
Here the name of the ox builder North is recalled. He has an Agila
in the Hadith, the one saved by God, but he also prays to save
others, who are a numberless host Abrahamic clear as many as the
stars in the sky.
In other ascension narrative, we encounter a second well known
incident, which also concerns salvation.
Here Gabriel comes to the man of praise and offers him two
chalices, one of wine, and another of milk. When he chooses the
latter, Gabriel tells him You have been guided to the fitrah or
detail fitrah a word, often translated simply as nature.
These Hadith send the luxuriant commentary literature which grew
upon them, evidently constructed to make a defining point about the
nature of this ship of faith.
If we begin with the two chalices, we find very probably a polemic
against Christian sacramental ism, understood in a particular way.
The wine is not for the prophets people. Muslim commentators
explaining this well known Sherry And negation claim that
intoxication diminishes the Imago Dei and hence commits an offense
against God's purposes. moralists predictably add information about
alcohols social effects. Alcohol is in this sense, a symbol of the
Sun who fails to board the ship, and becomes the weapon and sign of
his profane mastery over what remains of the world.
Others will note that a polemical point about salvation is
apparently being made as well. Wine is nature denatured the
fermentation being a sign of humanity's departure from what God
has originally made. The milk by contrast is a useful and
straightforward symbol of a pure nourishment, unaltered by human
plans, ego or intervention. So you have been guided to nature will
detail a fitrah is being constructed as an important
structural principle in the newest Abrahamic dispensation.
Let's consider another of Islam's founding stories about salvation,
this time a seemingly much more earthly one.
This is the religions retroactive recital of the story of Isaac and
Ishmael. The latter or their firstborn was for the biblical
authors the air according to the flesh. Only the former with his
sacrifice understood by Christians as a Eucharistic anticipation is
claimed by pre Muslim interpreters to be the air in the spirit. A
fierce and unyielding binary is thus introduced.
Christian art frequently alluded to this by contrasting Israel's
mother Hotjar with the Virgin Mary Rubens, for instance, in his
depictions of the women paints Mary in blue, the color of heaven
and virginal purity, while Hajer wears red, the color of the flesh,
Eros carnality.
And medieval Christian polemic sometimes used concupiscence
represented by Hotjar as a sign of Islam's falsity. Islam is a garden
of nature. And here in fact, we are not very far from the fitrah
apparently assumed by the ascension narratives.
So fitrah is in some way constructed as a kind of watchword
of Islam and its soteriology its theory of salvation. Islam is Deen
al fitrah, the fitrah faith. The medieval commentator, a
Tubbercurry wrote that fitrah is what differentiates Islam from the
baptism of Christianity, or the circumcision of Judaism. There is
something covenantal and initiatory about it.
All this seems to make sense against the backdrop of Islam
understanding of itself as the ceiling or closing dispensation
within the history of monotheism. Islam as the unexpected Israelite
religion, the vindication of the outcast is the third third side of
the great equilateral triangle. It is the third of the three visitors
to Abraham, beneath the oak at memory. And as the ascension
narratives affirm, it seems to be linked not only to an Abrahamic
restoration, and of course, the blessing of Abraham forms a key
component of the canonical daily prayers. But there's something
more ancient, a natural form of religion, the religion of milk of
unmediated encounter with the divine in the substance of nature.
This is possibly why the shrine of the ascension the day
If the rock is constructed according to an octagonal plan,
up to grams of overlapping squares are called in Islamic geometry,
knowledge metal goods, the Jerusalem star,
eight pointed stars and the octagons which is related to them
a very ancient Near Eastern symbols, once even representing
Ishtar or Venus as the Evening Star. The overlapping squares are
understood as a reconciliation of duality, dualities and complements
and hence of fertility.
According to the Hutchinson dictionary of symbols, the shape
is linked to creation, fertility and * is gradually came to
adopters. This is also the primary resonance of the present and star
motif which Islam came to adopt as its symbol cyclical Solenn ik
fertile, nocturnal, the present again connects with Hotjar and
Ishmael Abraham's family according to the flesh, who live buried, of
course, in the Hatim the crescent shaped enclosure, beside the Kaaba
in the great sanctuary.
This theological awareness of Islam is that latter day retrieval
of a very primordial, pre axial form of religion, the fitrah helps
us to understand certain very recurrent themes of the Quran.
The Scripture presents the natural world as an array of divine
theophanies saying that, wherever you turn, there is the face of
God. The word for natural signs, yet is the same word used for
scriptural verses. So as well as alcohol and a TED weenie. Written
Quran, there is alcohol and a tech weenie the creation Quran, who
signs were invited to read and which, like the written scripture,
comprise a budding fourth of the effulgent Divine breath.
So the Quran says, this is Surah 41, verse 53, we shall show them
Our signs on the horizons and in their own souls until it becomes
clear to them that it is the truth.
Even more notably, we find a range of verses insisting that all
things Praise God. For instance, Surah 17, verse 44, there is no
thing which does not glorify Him with praise, and also 2441. Have
you not seen that everything in the heavens and the earth and the
birds in the arrays seeing God's praise? Each one knows it's
prayer, and it's glorification, and God knows what they do.
The seeming archaism of the Muslim scripture and the insistence on
chanting in a natural Cosmos, which seems to be animated and
alive, inclined the philosopher herder to describe Islam as a sort
of shaman ism. Shy marker to in considering the religious claims
of Islam also dismisses it as a shaman ism.
Here is an example of Shah Marquez judgment, quote, Islam is
presented as a self consciously monotheistic religion, that
nevertheless emphasize the action of the central world upon the
emotions, thus bringing it closer to pagan, polytheism.
And Schlegel, so in Islam is God and like paradise, the vestiges of
hedonism.
These judgments on Islamic theology of nature in some ways,
continued medieval Christian criticisms. The Renaissance too,
had not been terribly interested in virgin nature. Islam here is to
use the old category, essentially Semitic, reverting substantially
to Hebrew ideas of the indica activity of nature, and the value
of the body and of its natural functions in the spiritual life.
And celibacy has seldom been celebrated as a virtue among
Muslims. Muslims here, as quite often agree with Rabbi Joseph
Soloveichik, where he says Judaism rehabilitates the flesh, attaching
the quality of divine image to the biological forces in man. It
affirms the goodness of the whole of man of the natural.
And the American Muslim writer Nora al jurati even says,
physiology is theology. Recalling, I think the Brazilian idea of
prophetic compliance, as the creation of a harmonious human
body subject maximally open to divine effulgence. Nature itself
is the ship of salvation. It is not the storm which we hope to
survive.
We might say then, that the son who refuses to board the ark, thus
denying the healer for principle and whose defiance and ignorance
is recorded in Surah At hood is the principle of Cain murder of
April or perhaps the Neolithic over the Paleolithic, the writer
who scorns memorization, the divider of the sensory from the
super sensory, and ultimately, the technologists to as Heidegger
depressingly observed, blankets the garden world in graininess and
makes it a wasteland.
It is the appearance of images, the belief in a linear time in
which God can appear because he had somehow been absent. It is
that
intercollege every month, it is the replacement of the organic
with steel and glass and with a similar corrosion of the human
soul, leading in our time not only to the environmental collapse
which defines our so called Anthropocene age, but to the bio
pause the self sterilization of modern elites whose birth rates
and reproductive capacities are steadily and apparently terminally
declining. So Quranic phrase may well be applied against this
Islamophobic class in the Shanika, who will abtot for his one
moderate and commented explains it, the most noble animals refuse
to breed when in captivity.
This idea of the full membership of the saint in the natural world
is further underlined by the recitals vision of paradise, which
is eroticized sexuality in this life is understood not only as an
invitation to be fruitful and to multiply, but as a proleptic
anticipation of the life of the blessed. Again, this drew
predictable and fierce condemnation from some medieval
Christians, who assumed that the celibacy of the saint was itself a
proleptic and lived anticipation of an asexual heaven.
Death and in a sense becomes simply a transferable from one
garden to another, now replace free of the element of trial, as
in Judaism and the primordial religions there is no doctrine of
original sin of the Augustinian type.
Shamanism ism a characterization intended probably as an insult was
the judgment of many European readers of the Quran in the 18th
and 19th century. But other minds of European enlightenment
particularly in its Romantic literature, rather liked Islam
sacrificing of nature, and its teaching about an integrated body
subject. This is evident, for instance, in Curtis poem on the
man of praise, and Muhammad ska sang, which describes him as a
mountain stream full of life, which brings the pure water of
heaven to the land, raising up not only great cities, but also
enhancing the fecundity of nature.
As he says later, lower in the valley, where his steps toward
flowers bloom, and the green meadow has been given life by his
breath.
Gutter in his no doubt insufficient and very partial
reading of the Quran and Muslim poetry had been attracted to the
Biophilia and world affirming aspect of the prophetic charism
and the poem enjoyed a certain traction being set twice to music
by Schubert for instance.
But to return to the Muslim Scriptures, the idea of the man of
praise as an emblem of the lifeforce springs over into a
range of Hadith which record is encouragement of planting trees
and other plants. For instance, this hadith narrated in the
collection of Muslim Evanoff had judge
Nevertheless, a Muslim, plant a plant or sow a seed, so that a
bird or a man or an animal eats from it, but that it shall reap be
recorded as a charity for him.
And a famous eschatological Hadith, if one of you is planting
something that the Day of Judgment begins, finished planting it.
So that prophets color is green, his turban, the dome over his
grave, his city is the verdant oasis of Medina, one can imagine
the Ark has ship of salvation, Safina 10 jet, flying a green
Ensign, a banner of praise anticipating his famous role as
lifegiving standard bearer of Divine Mercy and Revivification at
the judgment.
So focused on the animated quality of the natural order is the
recital that we even find passages about insects, notably the Quranic
tale of Solomon, who diverted his magnificent army at the request of
the Queen of the ants, who wanted to protect her anthill from
trampling.
And in another Surah, this is 16 Verse 69, your Lord has granted
revelation to the bee, make your home in the mountains and on the
trees and the trellises, which they erect, then eat from every
fruit and follow humbly the ways of your Lord
and other yet could be cited building this Safina tender jet.
Evidently, the recital of the final Abrahamic replenishment sets
out to sacralized biodiversity. Virgin nature is our most proper
habitat in this primordial list with naturalist vision, which sees
the ship of faith as onboarding nature. The animals sail with us
we preserve them they have the right to this almost as though in
this world that Hilaire for principle of human shepherding and
custodianship delivers a sort of saving grace to the animals as
well.
However, this is not as in division of the modern as the
localized and rather desperate conservation of endangered species
in parks and zoos. Concentration camps for animal survivors,
removed from their habitats by materialism is lust for
Lebensraum. What is saved is implicitly cruel.
Aviation itself in its natural and balanced plenitude. Khilafah
entails the preservation not of examples of what humanity has
almost destroyed, but of the means and the Biophilia balance itself.
It is a ship of life, conserving the stupendous miracle of the
double helix, which is the matrix for consciousness and hence for
the conservation of the divine purpose.
Well, this for Muslims is going to confirm the idea of Islam as the
religion of milk of unfallen nature, to be joined through the
movements of worship which emphasize our proper belongingness
in the world, as in most primordial communities, the
direction of prayer is horizontal, not vertical time is lunar, and
not solar. There is no intercalation and we exercise our
innate ability to recognize holiness, when living properly in
our bodies, recognizing the nature and sanctity of non human persons,
and the entire natural world.
Again, this reveals modernity as an exercise in alienation. As
Leila Abdur Rahim writes, a function of civilization is to
stamp out our yearning for wildness. Children are born wild
and dream of a wild world that exists for its own mystery.
The Sunnah, then the Islamic instantiation of primordial living
functions as a shield against the alienation imposed by technical
modernity. To follow its norms is to wear a kind of hazmat suit,
which shuts out the chemical toxins of a disrupted world. And
its insistence on natural living and moderation. It has not only
preserve its adherence for many entailments of the toxic world of
secular consumption, but even more importantly from the diseased
attitudes which has initiated it. The Sunnah by allowing us to live
in accordance with how things are, is an ark of salvation.
In a text which many Muslim eco warriors like to cite, the Quran
says this. This is Surah 31st 41.
Corruption has appeared on earth and in the sea because of what the
hands of men have wrought. Thus does God make them taste some of
the consequences of their actions, so that they might perhaps return?
By adopting the Sunnah by boarding the Sunnah, if you like, we find
ourselves shielded from the worst poisons of a necrophiliac
modernity, we connect again with emotions of Sun and moon, we
celebrate the sanctity of nature. We fast we venerate holy places,
we repeat an oracular chart whose origin was received in the July
Allah, the mysterium tremendum, which made its holy recipient
sweat and shake. We understand and honor agenda. We live for a
transcendent purpose. And that form of life is is all embracing
the Sunnah Ark is not for boring part time. This dental fitrah is
not a leisure activity and we do not recognize a spurious dualistic
division between sacred and profane any more than our
Paleolithic ancestors did.
Perhaps one of the most striking demonstrations of this saving
primordial ality of the Quranic voice is its insistence that we
are in community with non human orders of creation. fellow
travelers on this ship, which are also considered to be sentient
communities.
One of the Paleo anthropological criteria for distinguishing the
Paleolithic from the Neolithic is that the former created a self
which was defined by coordination with nature and other humans.
Whereas the Neolithic self we learn to find itself in
relationality with other humans.
And here we face something that does seem strangely reminiscent of
shamanism. In particular, I would like to focus on one verse, which
appears in sorbitol and arm, which is of course, the surah of the
cattle Ayah 38. Here is a possible translation.
There is not an animal in the earth nor bird flying on two
wings, but that there are nations like yourselves, we have neglected
nothing in the book, then unto their Lord, they will be gathered.
passages such as this, obviously form part of the recitals
condemnation of Arab pagans who had long defined their tribal
identity in terms of animal totems the man of praise himself had been
born into the clan of the shark, or a fish.
As part of its function of delineating tribal identities,
paganism had maintained elaborate rituals of animal mutilation, and
other animal linked practices which the new ship of salvation
viewed as abominations, and this chapter of an arm. An arm receives
its name because it deals with various such sacrificial and
votive rights
in place of the universe directed by tribal debt
in which humanity was divided by totems and fetishes. The new
monotheism preached a fellowship of believers, which was summoned
to see the animal order as a sign of creations unity and integrity
under the one God, with the right to share in the salvation from the
deluge offered by NOAA.
The IEA this remarkable verse in an arm seems straightforward in
its affirmation of animal and bird life, fellow passengers, presented
and valued as sentient orders of creation, and yet it triggered
centuries of quite difficult and complex debate.
Two themes proved especially taxing for the commentators, the
siting of animals as nations like yourselves, Oman and fellow Khan
and the gathering of animals unto their Lord.
In what sense NATO authors of Tafseer commentaries wondered,
could animal communities be like us? And is it true that like their
human counterparts, they will be resurrected to face God's final
judgment is the Ark delivering them with us? In that sense,
not in Tunisia, Tunisian theologian and commentator even
ashore laments that, as he says, this is a verse which begins
obscurely and ends more obscurely still.
The Quran is initial targeting of indigenous Arab religion quickly
took on wider implications as part of the continuum of late antique
debates over the implications of monotheism for attitudes to the
world.
The markedly upbeat, affective and all of the Quranic revelation
reflected the texts and self understanding as a historic
reparation, as it says as she felt a healing
not only of paganism, but as it asserted off the religions of the
book.
When the new recital burst into the former provinces of Christian
Byzantium, it was widely received by its audience as a synthetic
corrective repairing, as Muslims saw it, the penitential and
severely ascetical temper of early Christianity and pushing the
dominant monotheistic style back in a generally Semitic direction,
or be it in an axial mode which could not accommodate the
principle of a chosen people.
In a Mediterranean world where a pessimism about the world and the
body had become normal among Christians who had inherited many
of the world and body denying assumptions of late Hellenistic
religion. The Ishmaelites Ark saw itself as sailing in with an
unmistakably life affirming the hardly indulgent worldview, the
purpose of the ship being precisely to conserve
reproduction, and therefore life among the human and non human
orders of the biosphere.
It's anthropology reputed, repudiated the usual patristic
teachings on original sin and encouraged a pious style of
traveling to God through the world, rather than reaching him by
creeping around its edges.
The new scriptures ceaseless and repeated conjurations with the
material universe as a palette of signs, pointing to God, and
brimming with his imminent qualities stood at the heart of
Muslims styles of contemplation in a new and noticeably more positive
dispensation, which was unmistakably pro nature and
lyrically celebratory of the natural order.
The poetry of Islam with its typically ecstatic invocation of
love, focusing on nature, humans rose garden, the divine beloved,
was the natural voicing of this new Biophilia culture.
It's perhaps due to this twofold Quranic challenge to Arabian and
ancient Christian views of the natural world, that we find it
early Muslim scribes keen to record a very large bulk of
prophetic directives on welfare, how to treat fellow passengers.
These have been investigated in a recent book by Richard false, a
text alert to the vast improvement as he sees it brought to
territories by the arrival of this new and reparative dispensation.
False even says, go so far as to conclude that, quote, The
mainstream Islamic legal tradition accord more rights to non human
animals than do the legal systems of the contemporary West. Quite a
polemical statement, but one which he believes is supported by the
witness of the classical Sharia texts are the true nature vision
of the new ceiling revelation with its retrieval of the fitrah
principle of primordial ality
the founder as a man exampling what that person identifies as
Islam's distinct blend of a primordial sense of a pertinence
to nature with an extremely uncompromising and simple
monotheism seems to have dispensed a good fraction of his moral
teaching with reference to the animal kingdom.
So
A few sayings and evidently attacks on pagan practices, as in
the Hadith where he says, may God curse anyone who mames animals.
But the larger genre indicates a more general insistence on ethical
treatment of the animal order, which are symbolically protected
by his ark. The Sunnah Ark, some examples, Hadith, it is a great
sin for a man to imprison the animals which are in his power.
Again, a dog was once panting by a well almost dead with thirst by
holding it, a harlot of the children of Israel removed her
slipper, dipped it in the water and gave it to drink. For this God
forgave her her since
the Hadith we were once on a journey with Allah's Messenger who
left us for a short while.
We saw her from Mara bird with two young and he took the two young
fledglings, the whole matter hovered with fluttering wings and
the Prophet returned saying, Who has injured this bird by taking
its young return them to her.
The Prophet forbade that animals should be set to fight each other.
In some cases, we find the man of praise challenging the culture of
hunting which had existed in Arabia from time immemorial. While
hunting game for food is still permitted. sport hunting is to be
forbidden.
Hadith, there is no one that without reason kills a sparrow or
anything higher there too, but that God should ask him about it.
Hadith, the prophet cursed anyone who took an animate creature as a
target. So I guess no bullfighting.
Such texts have
straightforward moral and hortatory purpose, emphasizing the
essential goodness and worth of our fellow passengers, the
evidencing of which is to be a particular theme of the final
stage in the Abrahamic story.
more curious at the Hadith, which seemed to invest animals around
the founder with a near human degree of consciousness, and it's
here that the Tafseer authors, puzzlement over verse originates
unrefined, perhaps some sort of explanation for the Enlightenment
descriptions of Islam as shamanistic.
What are we to make, for instance as the following tale, right in
abdomens collection of Hadith?
That Hadith has the man of praise going into a farm where a camel is
experiencing a fit of groaning with its eyes streaming.
The Prophet unafraid walks over to it and rubs its ears and it
quietens down. He asks who the camel belongs to, and a man
identifies himself as its owner. The Prophet says, Do not fear God
concerning this beast, which he is let you own. It complained to me
that you starve it and tire it by overworking it, and using it
beyond its capacity.
In the same hagiography is we find that key instances in the founders
career depend on animals for their successful outcome?
These animals, our fellow passengers, are presented as
recipients of some kind of divine inspiration.
Perhaps the best known example is the founders choice of a site that
his home and mosque when he arrived as a refugee in Medina,
saying that rival clans wish to have the political advantage of
having him as their guest to preclude disputes. He let go of
the reins of his camel and said that Providence would guide it to
the correct place. The site the camel chose is now of course, the
location of his mosque and his grave.
In another very famous incident, that Addisonian Christian army
which had come to destroy the Kaaba is confounded by two animal
interventions. Firstly, its fearsome battle elephant refuses
to march on the Holy City. And secondly, the invading army is
pelted with stones by birds
are no less celebrated cases the rescue of the man of praise from
pagan pursuers, during his exodus to Medina, as he hides in a cave,
pigeons make a nest and a spider weaves a web over the cave
entrance and miracle would serve to persuade the search party that
of course, nobody could have entered the cave. For days these
are stories known to every Muslim child.
In these Hadith, which show the man of praise and his city saved
by the intervention of animals, one is struck by the fact that
these creatures are presented as consciously acting under divine
tuition.
The seems rather strange, anomalous in a religious culture,
which was in full revolt against the pagan animism in which desert
creatures even trees and rocks had been reckoned to contain spirits,
Shin of various kinds,
kind of generalization about the rationalizing shift from
polytheism to monotheism. We presume that ancient superstitions
about souls
inhabiting the natural world, will be vigorously suppressed in favor
of a belief in divine and human monopoly of consciousness and
agency. But in the primal Islamic case, the prophetic age, something
much more complex seems to have emerged.
Again, we seem to revert to our characterization of the Israelite
religion as a reprise of really very ancient, even primordial
styles of sucker ality coupled Of course, nonetheless, with a fierce
rejection of any hint of polytheistic belief.
The Muslim tradition itself promotes this self understanding.
The Meccan shrine is claimed to have been the worshipping place of
Adam long precedenti predating the Jerusalem temple. Islam taking
itself to be the final moment in the monotheistic drama also claims
to be a significant rehabilitation and invocation of pre Abrahamic
forms of worship and relationship with the world. It is thus that
the mediator sage who can communicate with animals bears a
book which instructs his audience to consider them as nations like
unto yourselves.
Having very briefly sketched Islam self understanding as the ship of
salvation, which entails particularly a recovery of
biophilia can really ancient primordial religious style. This
now go on to survey the Tafseer literature on our chosen Quranic
crux, which seems to deepen the Noah story so Indicatively here's
the verse again. There is not an animal in the earth nor bird
flying on two wings, but that there are nations like yourselves,
we have neglected nothing in the book, then unto their Lord, thy
will be gathered.
Firstly, we have to consider the puzzle represented by animal
nations, fellow passengers, our nations. The word is all ma'am,
the plural of OMA, the familiar Arabic word which almost
invariably applies to human collectivities. Muslims
themselves, of course, constitute an ummah.
In arguing against pagan cruelty. Scripture here appears rhetorical
in suggesting that birds and animals formed communities, their
peoples, their non human peoples, but the rhetoric does not
invalidate the comparison and the commentators needed to determine
exactly what kind of nations these animal passengers form. The
preferred view is that each species was an onma. So Fakhruddin
Razi, for instance, dies 1209 produces a hadith in which the
prophet describes dogs as comprising an ummah.
more tricky is the question of how these species might be like
ourselves, and fair local.
The Tafseer commentaries offer the following possible
interpretations.
Number one, nations indicates that their members resemble each other
can reproduce with each other and find comfort wounds in each other.
Interpretation number two, they are like humans in that they are
also created by Allah and depend on his provision.
Three, they are like us and unlike the inanimate realm, in being
capable of mutual communication.
For they are like us insofar as they're reached by God's grace
care, mercy and compassion.
Five they resemble us in being resurrected to receive their
rights hawk. We're going to take a look at this startling claim a bit
later on. Number six, each species is an alma in as much as it
prefigures some set of human potentialities. So some humans are
a bit like dogs. Others are like peacocks, or lions and so forth.
It's another interpretation in the Tafseer literature, you can see
that that kind of struggling with this text.
So these views are certainly all present as possible. Views in
Roz's huge commentary, and others appear elsewhere. For instance, so
called Toby who dies in 1273, thinks that animals are like
ourselves in that it is not right for humans to wrong them. That's
what he says that's indicating that the word Alma specifically
denotes a community possessed of rights. It's a kind of legal
definition.
There is evidence that the founders companion cited this
verse in order to urge kindness to animals as the basis for birth to
this view.
So these interpretations are really very disparate, but they
all share an essentially ethical conclusion. Whatever its exact
sense, the verse clearly enjoins us to behave morally towards these
orders of creation, which ride the Ark along with us, because God has
deliberately stated that they bear a valid resemblance to our human
selves.
They segue into a second set of interpretations which one might
All cosmological raazi cites the companion if an abbess as holding
that these communities are like ourselves, quote, because they
know God attest to his unity and praise and glorify Him and quote,
this he links to the text of the recital which we mentioned few
minutes ago, there is nothing that does not him his praise, and also
verse about living creatures, each of which knows its form of prayer
and worship solat test via usual commonplace words that Muslims
apply to their own devotions. God Himself and His messengers have
spoken to non human animals, like ant the be the famous story of the
hood.
Hence, the animals may be seen as somehow possessing a form of
consciousness which may be used to promote God's purposes. Here we
return to the strange curious crypto animism or
anthropomorphism, which some have claimed and which we discussed
earlier. Razi cites a hadith in which we learn whoever kills a
sparrow in jest it will come on the Day of Judgment, chirping to
God, saying, oh, Lord, this man killed me in jest, and took no
benefit from me, and did not leave me to eat the fruits of the earth.
eliminated in this way by actually very large number of prophetic
homeless, the verse becomes
a key Crux for Muslim debates over animal consciousness and animals
souls the Sufi tradition in particular with its ecstatic focus
on the Koran's mystical vision of all creation. Witnessing to God
and its own distinctive way, picked it up to produce some very
lyrical outpourings. Here, for instance, is one of the great
Persian Sufis rows behind Buckley, who dies and troller nine in his
tafsir, which is called Ara is Diane.
God created the animals, birds, predators and insects with a
primordial nature fitrah of monotheism and instinctual
knowledge of Him, which is why he speaks to them and has created for
their minds pathways to his eternal presence and secrets. It
is by that presence that they live. There whistling, glowing
singing and roaring are from the sweetness of the spiritual world
which is reaching them and the manifest lights of His glory. They
long lovingly for God and to taste the oceans of His mercy.
Rose behind and supplies some Sufi stories. The Mystics unknown was
one preaching on love, and a bird which had been listening
ecstatically fell from the sky, and died in front of him.
He also gives us a legend about a lizard that recited a poem before
the Prophet in his praise.
For rows behind nations like yourselves means, like humanity in
seeking the true God and in intuiting him from his subtleties
in creation, which bring out the lights of his attributes in the
world.
Interestingly, the animals are seen not just as passive
substrates for the divine properties but an active pursuers
and agents of his truth.
So again,
what is the meaning of like unto ourselves? Here he tries to
explain, quote,
all the nations share a basic creative nature in being composed
of the four elements, and are made with animal and spiritual natures
and are equal in eating and drinking motion and congregation,
the qualities of the self and properties of identity, such as
desire, anger, passion and pride, this equality to Serway is based
in the stuff of the primordial nature, according to which God has
made them as see who he is, as he has said, from it, did we create
you, to it do we return you and from it, we shall bring you forth
one more time, or 20 Verse 55.
They all have their drinking paces says what was behind in the ocean
of God's speech and his eternal words, which indicate the parts of
his unity. The nature of animals, birds and insects and predators is
mingled with knowledge of their Maker and Creator whose qualities
and essence they know, this discourse is not difficult or
insufficient for them to understand.
This leads naturally to the second of the great puzzles thrown up by
the verse. Are the animals really to be resurrected? As the text
seems to indicate? And if so does the strengthen the case that
they're to be judged and are hence not only sentient beings, but
moral ones as well? That they travel in the ark with us to
salvation?
The verse ends with the prediction that all will be gathered to their
Lord.
This appears to be underlined by another Quranic text, and when the
wild beast shall be in gathered, what he then will also push it
out, which is to be a sign of the cataclysmic Last Judgment.
The concept in both verses is that of hasher
which is a perfectly normal Quranic designation for the
resurrection at the end of time. Some commentators balked at the
picture of the resurrection of all animals for judgment, and propose
that resurrection hasher here simply meant that all animals will
be united in death, gathered to death, not to resurrection. And
there were companions who could be cited in support of this view.
However, such attempts really to defuse the plain sense of the
verse. were confounded by a cluster of perfectly respectable
Hadith, whose concern was to emphasize the plenitude of God's
justice, and which brought animals undeniably onto the eschatological
stage. He is one of these texts.
On the day of arising, all of creation will be gathered together
the cattle the writing beats, the birds and every other thing, and
it shall be by God's justice, the tea takes the homeless sheep's
case against the horned one, then he shall say, be dust.
The concern of these Hadees is to show that animals are incorporated
within God's structures of justice. So another well known
Hadith describes the man of prey seeing two sheep fighting each
other. He asks his companion Apple data if you knew why they were
fighting, but an apple data confessed that he had no idea he
replied, But God knows, and she'll judge between them on the Day of
Resurrection.
So clearly, here we confront the second of even our shores,
obscurities, there was really no deep problem with the idea that
God would show justice to the animals which ride with us, the
Ark of wholeness. But on closer consideration, the exact nature of
their accountability seemed extremely taxing.
The early Morteza Light Movement, eventually dismissed as schismatic
had included the doctrine that a perfectly just God was obliged to
put right all animal suffering at the end of time, by providing
heavenly compensation.
The vision of a heaven filled with every animal and insect that had
ever lived, was not widely appealing, would even vermin be
found in the heavenly abode? Fleas, cockroaches and Paradise.
Mainstream orthodoxy denied in any case, for
that God could be subject to any obligation. He will quickened dead
animals not because he has to, but from his free Fiat and glory.
Moreover, the Orthodox reason that a god obligated to impose strict
justice on animals will also have to send some of them to *. And
this was widely agreed to be unlikely.
So Morteza let's also held the animals would be in heaven
forever. After all if God killed them, that his justice would
oblige him to compensate them for that, which would be impossible
since they would no longer exist. Considering these paradoxes the
mainstream thinkers concluded that after the exam, animals had
experienced full recompense, God will painlessly turn them to dust.
But many orthodox writers like the idea that at least some animals
will be received into heaven. My warranty for instance, says that
in paradise the believers will enjoy writing them and looking at
them.
So divine recompense of some sort for animal suffering is thus
generally accepted by normative Islam. The deliverance of the
animals is not just so that they can provide us a Frucht after the
waters of the deluge has subsided, but because they are communities
that have a right to survive as we do.
What about the reward for moral conduct? As we've seen, writers
have the stamp of rules behind thought that animal consciousness
as detected by the saints is so human, like the animals receive
profits and moral codes.
And these writers could easily appeal to the Hadith, the sheep
fighting each other will have their dispute resolved, presumably
through God punishing the culpable party. But the more exoteric
authorities attribute a rather vague kind of lesser morality to
them. As both to be said, the pen does not move for them, but they
will still be taken to task, the pen being the divine record of
virtuous and vicious acts. For the theologians, animals are not more
qlf not subject to for moral accountability, as humans are.
They note that there are other entities such as the mad or
children who will be resurrected, but insufficiently morally
accountable under hence not more Calif. Not every mind that faces
eternity in heaven is fully competent.
further insight is supplied by even ashore who cites the Sicilian
jurist and Missouri who dies in 1141, who taught that the
resurrection and recompense of the animals exists to show mankind
God's perfect justice. Thinking legally, Misery continues by
observing that the verse requires but
levers to be kind to animals, because the animals have rights
for pork. If animal resurrection and the restoration of their
rights at that time applies to animal on animal injustice, that
is even more appropriate that animal should be recompense for
wrongs visited upon them by human beings. Here even ashore cites the
well known Hadith which describes a woman who went to * for
starving her cat to death.
So this context classical Islamic law accepts the animals, our
fellow passengers possess rights. While animal rights are treated in
a rather scattered way in the legal manuals. The following
definition by one of the leading jurists and a spin up the salon,
who dies and 1262 may be taken as normative. This is what he says.
These are the rights of a man which invested in animals, man
must spend on them appropriately, even on animals which are old or
sick and are no longer of benefit. An animal has the right not to be
burdened beyond its capacity, it must not be placed in the same
enclosure as any animal which would harm it by breaking its
bones, wounding it or Goring it.
That's in his for those who know about these things, his book can
feel more solid.
And he had some further rights, including the right to access
animals of the opposite gender. That's a right.
Of course, the jurists also permit animals to be slaughtered for
food. But this is strictly on the grounds of a divine permission,
which is invoked at the moment of slaughter to eat an animal killed.
Without such a blessing is to commit the sin of eating carrion.
The permission exists not because it reflects the purpose of the
animal's creation, but simply because of divine fear, which
confirms the human species in its place in the food chain, if you
like the natural order, and so even Abdus Salam adds to his list
of animal rights, the right to a good death.
So it's time to try and find my way to a conclusion.
The symbolism of the prophetic ascension indicates rather clearly
that the immediate function of Islam as discursive of the
ontological togetherness of heaven and earth, soul and flesh,
inaugurate a new prophetic age, which while universal and non
tribal, requires its adherence to adopt a pattern of life, and a
theology of imminence, which emphasize our entire belongingness
to the biological order.
Understanding this is precisely to board the Safina to Nejat, the ark
of salvation. It seems that the will of Providence for this last
Abrahamic replenishment is that Islam as Dino fitrah, will be both
axial and primordial. This is our image of the Sunnah as a hazmat
suit, needed needful in a time of pestilence, a sane and visionary
centering, amid what Nora jurati calls the modern circus of the
blind.
Hence follows that the man of praise are charged with a
universal killer for nature belongs on Noah's Ark, because
Noah belongs to nature.
By divine gift the forms of worship on board this vessel are
intact. To enter into a mosque itself an emblem of the Ark is to
be comforted and uplifted by an authentic memory of sacred
history's culminating event, which ushers in the final age in which
the ancient human awareness of the sentience and praise of all
creation is recovered as a precious sign to those who need
metaphysical, not only physical reasons, to fight for the animals
and trees. The ego like no sun is of us, but at the same time is not
what we are. It is familiar, but alien. It is the part of us which
must be left behind. The archetype of intercession knows pleading
with God to save his son records the fuller and more universal,
more successful scope of the banner of praise of the
praiseworthy station. And yet the ego is not willing to approach the
ship in the hole Lisa Menelik ignorance and drowning in the
Deleuze glory battle I see on remains a possibility intrinsic in
the mystery of human freedom.