Ingrid Mattson – Let’s Get Real The Body as the Locus of Ethical Action
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I'm very concerned
for how
people in my community feel these days. What
I
see, and what I see as a lot
of trauma,
disappointment,
disconnection,
and trying to understand
how
how
Muslims can once again
center themselves
and to understand,
what they're supposed to do in this very
complicated
world in which we live.
I see confusion about so many things about
political
ethics and decisions.
In the medical field, I've been working on
bioethics
in the area of gender
and rights,
in the area of the environment,
and people who are marginalized and displaced
all over.
And one of the things that I noticed
as I I've been contemplating these areas and
thinking about them,
again and again is the importance
and the place of the body.
And so, I'm trying to look tonight really
at the body as the place
that we need to spend some time
focusing on and understanding
the importance of being embodied
people
and what that means in Islam.
I think of this
one of the reasons why I've thought about
this is,
also
my confusion about so many actions where I
see so called idealistic
people
who engage in horrendous
actions,
people who have high ideals
engaging in real harm against real people.
And this is
the reason why I say let's get real
because I think we need to,
argue for a recommitment
to the
primacy of the embodied person.
To be against idealism
in the philosophical sense, not in the common
sense,
or common usage sense of the term of
trying to achieve something better or believing that
society can be better than it has been.
We need to have we need to be
idealistic in the sense of wanting something better
for ourselves and for others.
A community
and an individual should have principles and values
as well as a vision
of what it would like to achieve.
To be against idealism is also not to
be against normativity.
It is instead
to be against a utopian vision,
an ideal society in the sense,
of,
of
looking at things and issues and people
as
a kind of platonic
essentialized
thing
rather than actual,
subjects in and of themselves.
Selves. I noticed that it is the most
idealistic people in the sense who become the
most bitterly disappointed
in human institutions
because people are not ideas.
They are bodies in space and time.
It's these people who also can become the
most disappointed in themselves
and
lead to,
lead to a situation where they are,
dissociate
from their own selves and their own visceral
selves, their bodies leading to,
destruction of themselves.
We've seen in the last few days in
the news this conference
on
violent what's it called? Countering violent extremism.
And I see a lot of talk about
ideas.
It is not my sense from talking with
some people who have been in engaged
in this
caught up by or whose friends have been
caught up by
these actions that it is necessarily
just about ideas.
Why is it that converts and those who
are newly religious,
Muslims who are newly religious, you know, the
criminals,
the gangsters,
the,
thugs, or all the all the derogatory words
that have been used with respect
to people who had tough lives and and
engaged in some kind
of compensatory
behavior,
criminal behavior,
why is it that they're so vulnerable,
to this kind of these kind of movements
and I believe it has a great deal
to do with the hatred
of,
the memory
that is carried within their body bodies of
what they have done and what has been
done to them?
Why does someone
want to go
to a place where there's a very strong
risk
of
their body being destroyed?
And I heard a story,
about a young man from my students, a
young man who, in fact, did this, who
left Canada and went
to fight and was killed.
And what I was told is that he
was one of the guys, one of the
teenagers, Muslim teenagers used to go out and
used to party
until
a bunch of them decided, you know what?
We've probably done enough of this. We should
probably get a little bit religious, and they
all got a little bit religious. Not you
know, they still were not perfect, but they
said let's stop some of the things. Let's
stop drinking alcohol
and
let's stop partying with women.
And he couldn't.
My student said this guy couldn't and he
felt so disgusted by himself
that he,
felt the only way
that he could stop
from
being condemned to hellfire for his sins
was to go and put himself in that
place.
So I want us really to think about
what that
what this means,
to be an embodied person
and what it compels us to do
and how that relates to our ethics.
Now, some may ask don't Muslims already focus
too much on the body,
you know, with their concerns about sexuality and
hijab and beards and these kind of things.
I think there is a selective focus and
attention.
It's not that I see any of that
as superficial or unnecessary
and it is one of the strengths of
the Islamic legal tradition
that importance is given to certain desires,
but it is selective,
and certainly there is a privileging of certain
bodies.
I mean, if we look and I don't
have to with Keisha Ady in the audience
who's an expert in this, I should bring
her up to talk about
what I would call the jurisprudential
gymnastics
that are done to accommodate the sexual taste
preferences and desires of privileged
heterosexual
men in in our tradition and continues until
today. We all know about the fatwas
that give permission for so called vacation marriages,
men marrying with the intention to divorce,
even though temporary marriage isn't allowed, but he
wants citizenship or to have a sexual outlet,
taking,
a second wife in secret, not telling his
first wife.
So if we look at all of the
accommodations made
for the sake of a realistic view
of the needs,
of a certain kind of body and contrast
that with the refusal
to find any way to accommodate
or ease the real suffering
suffering of many other categories of people,
single women,
migrant workers who cannot
have any of their family with them,
homosexual,
Muslims.
We see that there is a a great
selectivity. And this isn't just about men, but
we could also look at elite women
who are assured that they have no obligation
to perform the tiring and boring
housework, cooking, or even taking care of children,
but then the question is who does the
work?
Non elite women whose bodies are exposed and
overworked and separated from the embraces of their
children and their husbands.
So a pragmatic or realistic
approach is taken in considering the needs and
bodies of the privilege, but not of
so many others.
So we have to
be very honest about the narratives
we tell of ourselves. We talk about how
the media frames news, how the misdeeds of
some people
receive a great deal of attention, while others
are ignored,
how some narratives are used to, elicit sympathy
towards certain human lives and certain human needs
and not others, the whole is homophobic discourse.
But we have,
also,
selective narratives and dehumanization
that can occur within our communities and we
need to be aware of that
and begin to,
take
a more,
well, we'll talk about how we get those
other narratives in and it isn't by asking
other people to remember us.
That's for sure, I could preempt that.
But, let's look back,
before we enter into that, really look at
this issue of the body and why it
is so important and why it's not some
kind of,
just,
we're talking about it because it's some kind
of feminist trope or or,
some new
aspect that we're introducing into Islamic thought. Not
that there would be anything wrong with that
whatsoever.
But this is,
at the heart of what it means to
be a person in Islam.
We can begin with this parable that the
Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, told to
his companions.
He said, There was a man who had
never done a pious deed in his life,
so he said to his children, When I
die,
burn me to ashes and divide the ashes
into 2 parts.
Scatter one part on the land and the
other in the ocean.
By God, if my Lord gets a hold
of this body, he will punish it like
never before.
When the man died, his children obeyed his
instructions, but God commanded the land to gather
his ashes.
So the land collected every particle of his
ashes from itself.
Then God commanded the ocean and it too
gathered all the particles even from its depths.
Then, God asked him, why did you do
that? And he said,
my Lord out of fear of you.
So God
forgave him. Now, Muslim preachers and theologians derive
a number of lessons from this parable. The
most important of which is that the mercy
of god is without limit.
God is unconstrained
by the human conception of justice and judgment,
including a person's self assessment of being utterly
worthless.
Some theologians would suggest that the man was
forgiven for his evil actions
because although he was
a a a consistent sinner,
he did not disbelieve in God. Indeed,
he took extensive action
to disappear precisely because he recognized God's authority
to judge and punish him.
The man's failure to act morally was less
important
than his acknowledgement of God
and God's divinely established moral order.
I think actually, Doctor. Jackson has a beautiful
short article.
What's it called?
About about the, about the man who's punished
for for for alcohol, drinking alcohol.
I forgot. You forgot the article.
Beautiful.
And I I think there's a there's a
similar message here.
So as we
consider,
you know, this issue,
for our purposes, I would like to draw
attention here beyond mercy, beyond love of God,
to
the centrality of the body in this parable.
The man sees his body as the locus
of God's judgment,
which he wishes to escape.
Hence, his desperate strategy to make his body
disappear after
death. God, of course, is fully capable of
reconstituting any part of his creation no matter
how dissipated it is.
But it's only upon the reconstruction
and reanimation of the body that the man
comes back into existence.
The person is there when the body is
there, capable of engaging in an audience with
god.
The person is present when the body is
present.
The Quran describes in vivid terms the bodily
and emotional pleasures of heaven and the torments
of *.
Now, whether it's possible for a person to
conceive of himself or herself as existing
as a disembodied spirit, the Quran leaves no
doubt that the person who experiences the afterlife
is the same man or woman one identifies
as self today.
Judgment, however, must proceed the ultimate reward or
punishment, and at this juncture, the Quran describes
people having a kind of dissociative experience,
can to the person's action.
God says, on that day, we shall set
a seal on their mouths and make their
hands
speak to us, and their feet will bear
witness to what they have done.
In light of such passages,
perhaps, we could see the man in the
parable who wanted his body burned and ashes
scattered.
To have been hoping, not only to avoid
the bodily punishments of the afterlife,
he also wanted to destroy the evidence.
Here, we might see another moral of the
story after the first lesson, which is that
God will ultimately be,
that a person will ultimately be judged by
an external subject that is God, and it
is God's judgment
that is supreme not the person's.
And the second lesson that after his judgment,
God's mercy will prevail.
But what it is further implied in the
story is the message that there is no
escape from the body until that time.
In life and until the final judgment, there
is no flight from a body that constantly
reminds a person of what it has done
and what has been done to it.
The body is the reality from which can
one cannot dissociate,
at least not for long.
The major scholars of Islam
have all have agreed that belief in the
resurrection of the dead is a necessary part
of faith.
For example,
the 12th century theologian, Al Ghazali argued,
along with others, that philosophers such such as
al Farabi and Ibn Sina, who adopted a
platonic mind body dualism
and argued that only the soul survived after
death should be considered unbelievers.
Now, while they argued against this, at the
same time, the majority of dogmatic scholars asserted
that the nafs is a soul that can
separate from the body.
Now here I can't get into a long,
very complicated
history of discussions
about the difference or is there a difference
between the soul and the spirit, the
and what they are. But let's say, in
a book like,
Ibn Qayyim's
Kitab Arruh,
he
mostly conflates,
the two terms.
As for the Quran, the Quran does not
define naf so much as refer to it
and thus remains ambiguous and open to a
range of interpretations.
And when it comes to the state of
the person
after
death, but before the resurrection,
the Quran displays a noticeable lack of interest.
Re embodiment of the person
since it is this which makes the divine
judgment of persons possible.
Islamic discourse outside of the Quran in contrast
is rich with discussions of the state of
the pre resurrected dead.
The literature reflects a deep level of concern
about this liminal state.
A concern that's widely displayed across Islamic cultures
through the attention paid to burial rituals as
well as the contentious debate
over visitation practices and the intercession of the
saintly dead.
And if you want to really see, how
different forms of knowledge,
are introduced
into Islamic discourse in a very interesting way,
I would suggest reading an an edited, there's
it's not easy, there are no
good translations of Kitab Barukh by Ibn Khayyim.
But even in the faulty ones, you see
that he he suddenly allows for a wide,
you see that he he suddenly allows for
a wide
range of,
of sources of knowledge he would otherwise dismiss.
So, for example, the fact that people see
spirits after death.
He says there's no evidence
Quran
So this kind of this kind of liberal,
letting in, in order,
in order to
tell a good
tell a good
story or to bring a good moral to
people,
is quite clear.
So there's no doubt that,
a certain dualism
of body and soul dominates
most Islamic discourses.
This is not a dualism, however,
that degrades the body.
It is,
even
even in,
Sufi discourses, that's the case.
Valer Hoffmann says, as for the Quran itself,
it does not speak of a body spirit
or body soul dichotomy as the problem behind
the evils of human existence.
The cause of human abasement is not in
Quran language, the flesh,
but pride and self greed and deception of
Satan who whispers his temptations to receptive humans.
So aesthetic practices
are generally limited,
to enhance spiritual awareness, not to punish an
evil body and here there's a a clear
difference between
classical Christian thought
and classical Islamic thought, where Christian thought sees
the body
as
as,
part of matter and in a in a
dualistic,
platonic view sees the body as inferior,
to the soul and as corrupt.
In Sufism
where,
in some forms of Sufism where it is
encouraged to inflict some discomfort on the body
and it's justified.
It's not because the body is evil but
because this is a way to discipline the
inner self which directs the body.
So in this sense,
ego mortification
rather than flesh mortification is the goal.
But for the external observer, the impression that
is given is of punishment to the body.
Extreme forms of bodily denial to tame an
evil nafs or an evil self or soul
or ego
ego
have, not gone unchallenged in Muslim society. The
majority of Muslims, including most Sufis, have rejected
extreme practices as contrary to the example of
the prophet and his companions.
For the majority, means moderation and simplicity
of lifestyle.
But here, we we,
turn to ethical
reasoning. What does moderation and simplicity mean? These
are relative terms
and
the the places where we see a concept
like moderation invoked,
need to
have some attention paid to them.
If we look at
we at this conference, we had a lot
of talk and we'll have more tomorrow about
Halal food and the expansion of
of
halal,
to Taib, the Taib food market, or the
Islamic food market that includes not only,
how the animal is slaughtered, but how the
animal is raised and treated from the time,
how it's how it's treated its whole life.
And it could also
include, what is done to the earth or
the environment on which the animal is raised,
the workers who are involved in the process.
So this is a this is a holistic
approach.
We would we could call this supply chain
ethics,
and it's something that you could easily learn
about by going to your local Whole Foods
and looking at the numbering system for the
different levels of of meat, you know. Number
1 to up to
5 or at least that was my local
Whole Foods.
You know, the best is number 5 where
all of these factors are taken into account.
Now, it might seem that this, supply chain
ethics is a new hipster phenomenon,
but actually it's part of Islamic
theological,
ethical discourse from the beginning.
The concept of blocking the means in Islamic
ethics,
If we look at Ahmed ibn Hanbal's Kitav
al Wara
where he says that,
you know, things like,
even if you're if you're in a mosque
and you notice that someone is burning incense
that you know was donated
by a prince
or some authority who got the money from
stolen property
that you should hold your breath and run
out of the mosque so you don't breathe
in
this,
this smoke, this incense that originated through a
kind of supply chain back to
unlawful wealth.
So he was I mean, if you if
you wanna go back to supply chain ethics,
Kitab al Wara is, is all about that.
Imam Abu Hanifa as well when he was
asked why did you not write a book
of Warah of righteous Warah is righteousness?
He responded, I wrote a book of commerce
instead. So this is a different aspect of
being very realistic about things
and about, the supply chain or the lawfulness
not only of what you have but where
it came from. So following that chain of
transmission back to something to something good.
Of course, not everyone's interest and concerns are
given the same attention in these books.
There are certain things that are prioritized and
others that are not. But here, you could
say,
here is a discourse that really is rooted
in the body, in what you consume,
in what you breathe,
in what in what,
you bring into your home. So there is
a a a very strong tradition here.
But I want to make, another point,
a kind of side point before I go
on with this is that
just my my advice,
as we go forward in this Islamic ethical
discourse and
develop it, is that when we talk about
things like supply chain ethics, we really need
to distinguish
priorities from tactic or principles from tactics and
priorities.
As someone who is a teenager boycotted
grapes from Chile, apples from South Africa, and
chocolate from Nestle, those of you who,
you know, grew up at the same time
as me know why all those companies were
boycotted,
because of the exploitation
of the workers and apartheid in South Africa.
I know what it means to be a
very
enthusiastic
activist
in this area and how annoying that can
be to to your parents.
And also how that can divide people who
who live together.
I think we have to be very careful
about litmus test that are set by activists,
and those with an ethical outlook.
And the litmus test is it's not only
a litmus test that this cause is the
is the cause that defines
righteousness
or purity
or sincerity,
lack of hypocrisy,
but also as if their cause is the
only one that should be prioritized.
So we have to distinguish the principles which
are justice and equality from tactics
like boycotts
and from perspectives,
I e, that this cause
must be the priority, and if you abandon
this cause or you don't care about this,
then it must it means that you really
don't care. You really don't have faith. It
is a form of hypocrisy.
So, with ethical reasoning, we need to try
to take into account as many relevant concerns
as possible in time to make a decision.
We have to make decisions. But what are
some of those concerns?
Those concerns also include things like maintaining relationships.
You know, doctor Jackson talked about,
that Islam can't be reduced to the law.
And certainly, ethics isn't all of Islam. Ethics
is a form of law or a form
of legal reasoning, but it is not all
of Islam.
So, we look at when the Quran says
something
like, Someone is the reward for kindness or
a kindness or good goodness towards you, anything
else than goodness towards that person.
How often are those who cut off off
or are rude,
to those who don't sign on to their
cause? And here, I'll just give a a
personal,
aside.
My my daughter, Sumayya,
who was,
much more
enthusiastic,
supply chain ethicist even at
12 or 13 years old
than than I ever was, and and, was
a vegetarian.
Very very strict about this, strongly believed in
it.
Later in her life,
she became very ill, and she's been many
years
now,
very sick and and quite isolated,
bedridden.
But her mind is as sharp as anything
and she's, really my Sheikh. She's taught me
so much.
And she she said to me, she was
talking to me the other day and she
said, remember when I lived with,
with, a wonderful woman, a widow from Syria
who,
took her into her home. We used to
live with her, and then when when Sumayya
wanted to go back,
to Chicago to school, she let her live
with her for a year. And by that
time, Sumayya was a vegetarian.
And how, poor Khaleda did I, she would
keep giving Sumayya dishes of food and she's
the best cook in the whole city.
And Sumay would say, but I'm a vegetarian,
I can't eat that. And she said, well,
it's it's not it's not meat, it's just
little pieces, and with the roast rice and
the peas. She's like, but that's meat. I
can't eat meat.
And and Sumay was saying to me, you
know,
I really wish I hadn't been like that.
That my relationship with her
is the thing that is more important to
me now.
Then why could she said, why couldn't I
just have let it go for her?
You know, and really understanding in a more
holistic way.
Not that she should have not been vegetarian,
but understanding here, this food was not just
me, it was love,
attention,
care. It was a relationship.
It's not just about food in a in
a bag as it were or a dish
but about eating together, about having concerns.
And
concerns?
And as I say, we have to be
very careful about terms like extreme and moderate
because the
the response
of those
who do not want to care about these
things is to say that's too extreme,
Muslims are moderate.
Or as I've heard before,
Muslims aren't supposed to be dusty dervishes,
you know, when you when you argue against
consumerism,
I literally heard that that term as if
as if, to argue for some moderation,
means that we are resorting to some kind
of extreme form, of asceticism.
But we have to realize that we live
in a time
in particular, and this is where where this
idea of moderation really
is,
almost a meaningless term now.
Because
the reality is that consumption in our time
simply is not like consumption in other times.
Rather, it is more fraught with moral peril
due to the nature of some of the
goods and products that have been developed in
modernity,
period this been subject to an ongoing experiment
without their consent to see how their labor
and land could best be exploited to improve
the lifestyles
of privileged
individuals and communities across the world.
And more substantially, to further the economic interest
of the politically
dominant nations,
including our own.
Greed, selfishness and avarice, of course, are not
distinctly modern characteristics.
These are human failings to to which all
people are subject,
the ancients and the moderns, the illiterate, and
the most educated.
Our time, however, is characterized,
among other things, by the rapid development of
new tech technologies,
and the reorganization
of social structures, and the intensive exploitation of
the environment to optimize the use and impact
of such technologies.
New technologies,
materials, and methods of production are introduced with
dizzying speed and with the course of power
of modern nation states,
and are sometimes imposed on whole populations
in a very short period.
Now, very often, these things,
bring significant improvements to people's lives.
The cash earned from export crops is used
to advance the development of an economy.
Technology freeze children from the burden of laboring,
and makes it possible for them to be
educated when schools are available.
There's no doubt that plastic buckets, food containers,
and medical supplies have significantly
contributed to improved health and hygiene across the
world.
We've only realized lately, however, that many of
these products which in themselves in themselves
are beneficial
result from a manufacturing process that generates noxious
waste.
Further, when many of these products are broken
or replaced by more advanced models, they become
pollution because they do not
biodegrade.
Before the
synthetic products,
every man made object would or could eventually
degrade back into the earth. That's why you
can find people,
you know, sites where people have lived for
3000 years in the near east, and they
were able to live one on top of
the other. And all they left behind are
the little shards or sherds and dust
of their previous existence. Not anymore. Those places
are all filled with water bottles.
What is saddest and most sinful in all
of this is that the millions of poor
people across the world
experience few or none of the benefits of
modern industry and agricultural methods, but they suffer
the most directly from their toxic outflows.
I remember when we went to Indonesia with
the Nowhere Foundation,
passing through the countryside in Java, through very
small villages, along waterways. The inhabitants evidently own
very few of the modern products that can
improve health and well-being. They did not have
well roofed and screened homes
can improve health and well-being. They did not
have well roofed and screened homes to keep
out the rain and mosquitoes. They did not
have a medical clinic or sturdy footwear.
At the same time, these people had been
robbed of any kind of pristine or bucolic
rural environment that offers its own
benefits.
Their stream, for example, was clogged with plastic
garbage and poisoned by the industrial chemicals produced
by factories far upstream.
And we see this in America too.
South side of Chicago, where I used to
live, that's where the garbage is incinerated.
And the toxic
outflow from that falls on the population there.
Consumption and material progress in the modern modern
age therefore poses,
just like warfare and terrorism, challenges that are
qualitatively
different
than those proposed in pre modernity.
Terrorism, for example, is not new. It's well
known that the term assassin has its origins
in the Ismaili
extremists who were dedicated to overthrowing the Abbasid
Caliphate.
The assassins
performed there would often sneak into crowded public
mosques during Friday services to kill officials with
their daggers.
Of course, as soon as they attack, they
themselves were killed by guards of the crowd,
so these were essentially suicide attacks.
However, the damage to human life was always
limited because a single person can kill a
limited number of people with a dagger.
Contrast this with our modern age where a
single person can kill 100 of people with
an explosive vest or even 1,000 by releasing
a poisonous vapor into a crowded public place.
More restrictive
security measures or more robust
security measures can certainly be justified when the
harm that would be caused by such an
attack
is so vast.
Similarly,
no pre modern human product or form of
manufacturing could ever have caused anything near the
damage
to people, water, fish, and birds,
and the rest of the environment
that the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986
caused.
One could insist that more nuclear power plants
are currently needed to meet our power consumption
needs, but we could also insist that there's
an ethical imperative to reduce our power consumption
even if we can afford to pay for
it.
And this is where we get to the
problem with fatwas.
Fatwas that reduce complex
problems to ideal types.
So there is no, you know, to say
something like, is it lawful
to,
to use,
you know, electricity? Of course, it's lawful. But
there's no
electricity.
They're just
actual
forms of electricity. They're actual
electrical generation. There's no beef
in an ideal or essential sense. There are
only specific cuts of
beef. So here,
where we return,
we see the federal literature is completely incapable
of dealing with these issues
because they constantly revert to ideals and not
to actual situations.
Or even when they refer to actual they
believe they refer to actual situations, they they
are not.
They're still idealized or generalized,
forms of questioning.
And if this is the case, and here,
I think, where where
doctor Jackson and I agree
is that, our our scholarly tradition, our Sharia
tradition is not capable of
dealing
with many of these things.
That the methodology,
has some something to contribute,
but it really is outside
of the
authority,
understanding,
ability,
of the sharia tradition to deal with this.
People,
ordinary people, the people who are affected by
these need to set their own limits,
but religious leaders
still have a role.
And I believe their role primarily is to
remind us of the morality upon which these
rights are established,
and to narrate and preach a moral vision.
A moral vision that for Muslims is based
in the Quran and the teachings of the
of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
We How do we
how do we even embody a sense that
or embody a commitment
to do these things? It is by learning
them through a kind of imaginative
exercise
and through storytelling.
And preaching really is that. Preaching is the
the narrative and the stories that we hear
mostly.
And so, here we can,
you know, the ability of of preachers
to reference Quranic verses that talk about
the consumption of wholesome things. Oh, you who
believe do not make unlawful the wholesome things
that God has made lawful for you, but
commit no excess.
For God does not love those given to
excess.
Oh, children of Adam, wear your wasteful. I'm
terrified because we are the most wasteful,
God does not love the wasteful. I'm terrified
because we are the most wasteful
people. And to say, God it's a very
strong
language,
you know.
God does not love those who are wasteful.
So I think we need to and we
need reminders of that. We need reminders because
we love stuff.
We love to buy stuff. We love to
get stuff. We love to say that,
hey,
we love to quote the first part of
the verse,
you know, do not make unlawful the wholesome
things that god has made lawful to you,
but we just leave the the other part
off. So we need
though we need narrations of these. We need
to be reminded of these things.
We need to be reminded of the spiritual
teachings,
that Islam recognizes that desire if not controlled
by intellect and conscious conscience can be insatiable.
Desire for things.
But if we seek our happiness in those
things,
if we confuse our satisfying our desires with
happiness,
then we're seeking in a mirage.
It's in our own spiritual benefit than to
realize
the things of this world are not ends
in themselves,
but they are
can be useful and that what we need
to seek is the face of God as
those who say in the Quran, we feed
you face seeking the face of God. We
wish from you no reward or thanks.
One of the Prophet Muhammad's teachings is that,
that is particularly compelling from a spiritual and
psychological perspective in this respect is when you
see someone who has more look to one
who has less.
Here we have a double movement beginning with
the elicitation of desire and envy provoked by
seeing someone who has a thing which one
lacks oneself.
Feeling this rising desire within oneself,
an initial state for which we are not
necessarily
the believer must take the deliberate
moral and spiritually sound action of moving
his or her gaze from what he or
she has not
to the one who has even less.
Now, envy and desire for more things should
subside
leading to a greater satisfaction in one's own
state.
Beyond satisfaction,
compassion for the one who has less. Compassion
can lead to further action to help the
person who is relatively
deprived.
But this looking is a gaze and a
gaze is a physical action.
We turn our heads,
we turn our eyes. It means we pay
attention
to the people who are beside us, who
we walk by.
I was in Minnesota a couple years ago,
and it was the place where, the Republicans
had their national convention.
And, they told me that when,
before the convention was in town,
they insisted
that the city put up a,
it was almost like a a curtain. They
were dividers,
in front between the sidewalk
and the convention where all of the homeless
people were. So that the people coming to
the convention didn't have to look at
the homeless people on the street.
So if we
refuse to look
unless we decide to turn
and
look, we can't begin this process
of
controlling our desires
and of engendering compassion towards others.
It means that we need
to take that
action. But we also need to understand that,
and here,
I'm not gonna have much time for it,
but I want to go back to my
question at the beginning
about people who sacrifice themselves, who leave this
country, or leave their countries, leave their communities,
or even turn against their communities for the
sake
of
the Muslim community, the Muslim Ummah, the greater
community.
One of the things that,
they refer to is the statement of the
prophet Muhammad when he said that
the
simile of the believers in regard to mutual
love, affection, and fellow feeling is that of
1 body.
When any limb of it aches, the whole
body aches because of sleeplessness
and fever.
Now,
this really is extremely profound because psychologists
have shown that, in
fact, when people identify,
another other people as
as part of them or as part of
the same group that watching that group even
by by television,
even distantly,
watching harm being inflicted
is a form of secondary trauma to themselves.
As long as there's an identification
with that
person,
that person will,
begin to experience physiological
symptoms of trauma.
And I think we see it in a
lot of our American Muslim community who spend
a lot of time watching,
trauma,
traumatized Muslims, Muslims who are being
hurt and beaten. So it isn't just a
question of identity. It's not just an idea.
It's not just that we have this idea
of the Ummah
that is that is,
about identity.
It's about a physical feeling,
to really take seriously the idea that the
body, the the community that is a body,
the communal body is also a body
to which we're connected and how profound that
is.
We live in this time of great displacement.
Due to political, environmental,
economic instability
and disparities, many feel uprooted and distant from
the place they consider their home as a
result of forced migration.
Others move easily in search of economic
without ever grounding themselves deeply in the place
that they live.
The tremendous movement of people in the 21st
century has been a challenge to nationalism,
an ideology that depends on subscribing
to a mythical narrative of a unified people.
Multiculturalism
has been attacked as a failed response to
nationalism on the ground that it does not
provide norms for common action and interests.
The doctrine of shared values,
promoted by many policy makers in response to
the perceived failure of multiculturalism,
is mostly presented in a jingoistic manner with
little
substance.
And here is where,
I believe,
again, returning to the body and thinking about
habitat not homeland is important.
Thinking about neighborliness
not
not patriotism
is important.
To return to the statement
that the Prophet gave Aisha when she said,
I have something to give away and I
have 2 neighbors to which one should I
give it? He said, to the one whose
door is closer.
Particular
place a particular place and space.
I believe that a return to
looking at our our identity
as in the place where we are, what
our ethical and moral responsibilities are, paying attention,
looking, turning our heads
is the thing that will make us feel
grounded, is what will allow us to regain
our ethics.
At the same time, not being parochial.
Because if we do focus on the body,
it does mean that we return to that
supply chain. It does mean that we care
about the clothes that are made in Bangladesh
that we put on our bodies.
It does mean that we care about
the fruits and vegetables that come from Mexico
we're
just focused on our nation. I don't think
we should be focused primarily on nation. Yes,
you have, you follow the law, but that
isn't what makes people feel and care about
others,
and and do what's needed to make a
good, and and and happy, and beneficial, and
wholesome, and peaceful
society. So we don't do that, we focus
on on where we are and everything that
comes in and everything that goes out as
well. This is the this is the, the
one of the problems with the the halal
consumeristic
model. It has an awful lot to do
about what comes in, but not what we
discard, both from our bodies and and,
from the consumer goods that we use.
Finally,
and there's so much more to say,
but I think
a connection with
between our body and the land is the
thing that is really going to be the
key.
The body of the human being is made
from the earth.
And the
Muslim
Imam al Shafi'i said no child of Adam,
the body of no child of Adam is
impure. And that means,
that is the thing that unites all people.
It unites Muslims with non Muslims.
It unites men and women,
and it unites people with the earth, and
the earth from which all other creatures come
as well.
I believe that a deeply embodied and landed
return to ethics,
will be important in helping us overcome
some of the,
false ideologies,
false essentials,
that have plagued our, ethical reasoning and legal
reasoning. Thank you.