A Reflection on Truth, Certainty, and Faith

“We shall show them Our signs in every region of the earth and in themselves, until it becomes clear to them that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses everything?” (41:53)

My brother, Amir, asked me: “when you were Marxist, you were so sure, how can you be so certain about your religious belief now?”  I try to respond to his question in this reflection.

My initial response is this: I realize that it is not that much important that one passionately follows what rings true to one, it is more important that one is not entrenched in an ego-identity.  Most of us continue doing what we do, because change is difficult.  My role model in this regard is Wittgenstein.  Early Wittgenstein wrote Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in a strict atomistic view and a picture theory of the correspondence of atomic propositions to the world.  Late Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, is a radical critique of atomistic understanding of language.  One might argue, well if in his first work, Wittgenstein was sure that he revealed ultimate truth to the extent that he quit his education in Oxford, how could he dare to write his now famous Philosophical Investigations with the same certainty?  The point is that no faith or certainty should create an ego-identity who evades truth, with the rationale that after all change is difficult.

We are all one way or another immersed in our situation and take our perception and emotions as true.  We open our eyes as thrown into a situation, a culture, a way of life, and a zeitgeist.  If we are lucky, we strive to make sense of our lives and search for the truth.  If you remember, we followed sciences and philosophy from childhood.  We didn’t have a spiritual guidance.  We had to find our way by our own effort and through trial and error.  And we had a deep feeling for justice and political change.  Marxism seemed to be the best choice.  It was called ‘scientific philosophy’, and it quenched our political-spiritual thirst for justice.  I didn’t understand its philosophy fully, but I was sure about its sense of justice.  Dialectical materialism seemed liberating, because it grounded consciousness and ethics in relations of production and material conditions of life.  I didn’t understand that a subtle hedonistic-well-being was the ultimate meaning-goal of life for materialists.  This is the only life, let’s enjoy it, at best, in peace and socialism.  We all know this rationale.  “Let’s enjoy this one life” is the common current now in a secular world—devoid of spirit.  I passionately followed Marxism, because I think now Marxism hijacks the noblest spiritual feelings in human beings, a desire for justice and empathy, and takes them to the spiritual desert of hedonistic socialism: self-actualization and principle of pleasure, including aestheticism.  This is also now a common coinage: self-actualization.  So, at best we have three things coming together: subtle hedonism-aestheticism, self-actualization, and socialism.

Everything changed for me when I was on death row and facing my pending death.  I was two years on death row and my spiritual quest has started since then.  I asked myself: “can you find dialectical materialism a satisfying response to your existential-spiritual thirst now that you are going to die young?”  I didn’t find it satisfactory.  So, after my verdict changed from death sentence to 8 years in prison, I started studying philosophy in prison and then in the US.  During years studying philosophy for the last 25 years, I went through so many changes and made so many mistakes.  At each point, I lived my philosophy passionately and paid the price.  So, the second part of my response to you is that: I can’t help it, I always live my thoughts passionately.  However, given my youth and lack of experience and knowledge, my certainty about Marxism is not comparable to my faith in God now.  Simply because I am now 57 years old (2017) and studied philosophy for decades and had spiritual experiences that completely changed my perspective about life.  I couldn’t elaborate my faith in Marxism deeply then, but I have written and will write thousands of pages to show how faith in God is possible and necessary.  In the following, I will try to answer the philosophical aspect of your question: we constantly make mistakes, scientifically or spiritually, we are always absorbed in our condition of existence and emotions, and even astute rational thinking for a life cannot be a guarantee that one might not be in wrong.  How can we be philosophically and spiritually sure about anything?  What is “truth” after all and how can we believe (holding-as-true) anything?

After so much ups and downs and self-reflection, I could finally create a wedge into my eyes and shift my outlook to see behind and beyond its domination.  I was living in that congealed perception for too long to be able to see the other side.  Ethical-spiritual sickness is like mental sickness.  Severely mentally ill, such as bipolar or schizophrenics can’t realize that they are sick.  For a long time, psychiatrists and ordinary people thought that these patients are in denial.  However, later they realized that the problem of lack of self-observation is indeed part of sickness.  It is now called anosognosia, which means without-disease-knowledge, or not-being-aware-of-disease, which is a neurological disorder.  But I don’t think it is only a neurological disorder.  It seems that more or less all humans are in the state of anosognosia.  It is not difficult to imagine that when one is immersed in a situation or state, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to separate oneself from that state and see oneself clearly as others can see us, or as we can see others, or more importantly as God sees all sub specie aeternitatis (from the perspective of the eternal). 

However, it seems there is something more to this self-blindness.  I try to sketch it as I can envision.  Even if one might be in the state of lethargic ennui and acedia, toxic guilt, lifelessness, depression, lack of motivation, or feeling-thinking life is absurd, still there is something about human beings that they would like to stick to their self-perception, whatever it is, even if it is killing them, rather than admitting that they are in a special sense “blind” and their overwhelming feelings and declarative assertions might be fictitious and delusional through and through.  In a sense, we worship our self-perception and assume it carries an all-embracing truth about reality, and “I” am the center of this truth.  It reminds me of a psychopath who killed his own mother because she criticized his girlfriend.  His sentence was life in prison.  He killed two of his parole officers, who were interviewing him, with a hidden knife.  Then he was condemned to death.  In an interview, I saw him saying: “I proved I am the master of my life.  I forced them to kill me.” 

One might call it our childish narcissism.  But I see it as our essential blindness to our position in the world.  How can I be sure that my certainty now is not another self-deception and indulgence?  Should I adopt skepticism as my major disposition?  As Chomsky once put it, radical skepticism is a theory, in practice we all know what to do and do it.  We might be wrong but we learn through trial and error.  How can I find a measure to keep me alert about self-deception, because after all I can’t live without certain self-interpretation and taking it as true?  It doesn’t matter how many times I examine my views scientifically, at the end, as Kuhn puts it, I form a dogmatic adherence to whatever I came to believe based on experiment and scientific consensus. 

In a sense, history of philosophy is this impassionate self-examination, which in so many points go astray.  However, now, in twenty first century, we have come to some understanding about ‘truth’, whether in analytic or continental traditions, whether through Wittgenstein, Gödel, Quine, or Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Sartre, Foucault, or Heidegger.  It seems so obvious now, after the puzzle is solved, that we can’t prove our axioms, postulates, or presuppositions.  We postulate as truth certain propositions and build up a theorem or theory based on them.  As long as the theory consistently works, which means it is not self-defeating or self-contradictory AND practically gives result, we take it as true.  Pierce, James, Dewy, Rorty call it pragmatic conception of truth.  Truth is what works.  Foucault says knowledge is for cutting, not for understanding.  Thomas Kuhn basically excludes the pursuit of Truth as the major motivation of sciences: the mechanism works from interactions of institutional elements to form experientially and dogmatically what is held-as-true (belief) and gives results.  Nietzsche is sure that our physiology and will-to-power is the measure of truth.  In his Politics of Truth, Foucault writes: “Critique is to question truth on its effects of power and to question power on its discourses of truth.”  In objection, Popper posits truth as a regulatory principle for sciences. 

  

Marx was also so sure that material conditions of life determine consciousness.  He was so sure he could find a scientific description for historical development based on relations of production. Now, we know that science doesn’t work like this.  Even though Marx’s economic analysis is insightful, his philosophical-spiritual view is flawed through and through and, in other reflections, I argued that why it is fundamentally nihilistic.  As well, Popper showed well how Freud and Marx invented a religion rather than a science.  In twenty first century, still we are dealing with mind-body dualism.  The question of consciousness is not resolved.  Despite all the self-complacent declarations of AI and cognitive science industry that we are about to make an artificial consciousness, we don’t know what consciousness is.  Chomsky and Nagel are raising new questions about evolutionary theory and consciousness.  They are accused of new mysterianism. 

So, the first lesson of 21 century is about limitation of knowledge.  In his paper, Science, Mind, and Limits of Understanding (https://chomsky.info/201401__/), Chomsky questions the dream of Western Enlightenment that principally we are able to know ‘everything’.  We can’t, because of the inherent limitation of human understanding, the relation between scope and limitation.  Even though Chomsky and Popper and others still follow Socratic spirit that truth has a regulative value and gives us a direction, none of them believe that capital T-Truth is achievable.  In a sense, as long as human knowledge goes, we can’t be one hundred percent sure about our scientific perception of the world.  By definition, science is refutable. 

Now, all these philosophical and scientific discussions happen within the sphere of a special worldview: it is looking at the world like an alien is looking into our anatomy.  It is a reductive microscopic or analytic investigation of how things work based on certain theory or hypothesis.  The measure as always is “if it works”.  So many take our technological advance as the measure of veracity of our scientific views.  But now that we are on the verge of six mass extinction and the Working Group on the Anthropocene (WGA) voted to formally designate the epoch Anthropocene and presented the recommendation to the International Geological Congress on 29 August 2016, we ought to ponder our handy measure of truth as “if it works” and reevaluate it, because it seems depending on our worldview, we can make things work in different ways.  In another word, we ought to evaluate whether our sciences are grounded in a spiritually barren and nihilistic worldview or not.  In a sense, ethical-spiritual truth ought to precede scientific truth[1].  And it doesn't mean rising a new censorship for sciences, but creating a new science.  I believe that to see the world from the point of view of a subject against the world of objects is destructive, regardless of the fact that how creative it has been. 

Heidegger fundamentally changed the direction of questioning and in a genuine and rigorous way criticized the problem of subjectivism and the history of Western philosophy.  Since Descartes, we took our subjectivity as the most certain and the measure of truth.  For a few centuries now, we have been looking at how things happen from an inside (a subject) to an outside (object).  Empiricism has been transfixed on the disjunction-conjunction of our senses and the world.  If we could figure out how our senses, dissimilar to reality, grasp the reality as such, then we could arrive at the truth of perception.  Reading Heidegger’s philosophy feels like awakening from an addiction or dream.  We have been addicted to dismantle all the systems from inside and to see how they work and build up similar structures.  It has been working all along, so why should we doubt it?  We can see how neurons in brain interact and give rise to consciousness.  This seems so self-evident.  Our anatomic physiology and atomic physics take it for granted that we can see the working of a system by analyzing the components that make it tick.  Find how the particles in atom work and you arrest the nexus of reality.   As Max Planck put it: reality is what can be measured. Mathematics is the essence of reality.  And mathematics is a property of self-grounding ego cogito.  The “I” became the self-positing and self-proposing ground of all being.  Kant’s Copernicus Revolution, to posit the subject as the center of knowledge rather than empiricism’s tradition of the relation of dissimilar subject-object, enclosed the whole world into the prison of phenomenal (what appears to us) vs. noumenal (what is in itself).  We were then ensnared in the delusion of autonomous subject.  The history of thinking seems like constant entrapping ourselves into dead ends.  But this is the way we learn.  We are excessive beings and can’t see the big picture.  We are self-blind.  We overdo everything until we knock our heads against the limit and come back to our senses and try to find some equilibrium.  

   

Let’s now briefly reflect on Heidegger’s holistic philosophy.  Heidegger, phenomenologically shows that the subject (an inside) is not standing against the world of objects (outside).  Moreover, not only we are not understanding the world from encountering-additions of objects but also the world (having a world) is the condition of possibility of understanding objects in the world.  If we can let go for a moment of the addiction of seeing truth as correspondence of our statements to the state of world, then the world, the Open, the horizon of possibility of statements and objects come into light.  How can I see an object if it is not in this open space to which I can attend and thus discover the truth or untruth of my statements?  If I am at home and think that the statement ‘there is a world out of my home’ corresponds to the fact that there is a world out there, the condition of possibility of this statement is the openness in which this relationship can interplay.  The traditional way of thinking (Cartesian way), posits the essence of truth in the subjectivity of subject and logical possibility.  So, it seems obvious that it is logically possible that my home can be in a vacuum, and if I open the door it is possible to imagine that there is no world out there.  A moment reflection shows that even analytically the word ‘home’ presupposes the world.  Indeed, being-in-the-world is the ontological condition of possibility of imagination.  Reducing ‘truth’ to subjective logical possibility, disregards the fact that we are not a brain in a vat.  Not only thinking and being come together (i.e., it is fallacious to say, “I think, therefor I am”), but also Being and the Open in which everything is free to act and become is the condition of possibility of propositional truth. We are grounded in the world, and the world is grounded in Being, which in a holistic sense is not rule-governed or rule-described, as it is the condition of possibility and the horizon against which rules can be perceived.  This is a miracle: each single concept is (and implies) an indicator and a directive sign to “language”, “the world”, “Being”, and “freedom” as such.  And the world and Being can’t be grasped through any concept once for all.  This is called ontological difference between Being and the entities we perceive in the world.  Heidegger shows that the condition of possibility of ontological truth resides in the Open: “All working and achieving, all action and calculation, keep within an open region within which beings, with regard to what they are and how they are, can properly take their stand and become capable of beings said.” (On the Essence of Truth, Basic Writings, p.122). 

We understand ‘truth’ as ‘accord’.  True gold is the measure and then we measure different kind of mixtures to that original and authentic gold.  My words accord to who I am or I am a liar and conceal it.  Foucault’s statement that “knowledge is not for understanding, but for cutting” must accord to real function of knowledge in order to be true.  Regardless of the fact that Foucault holds that all values and knowledges are ontologically posited in historical discourses at the disposal of power.  So, in a circular way he defines knowledge as power and disregards the ontological horizon of everything existing, power included.  What is this ontological possibility of everything existing?  It is so simple that it falls on our blind spot.  We are like fishes in water who can’t see the water as the condition of our existence.  It is relatedness and freedom as such.  This freedom and relatedness is not only a property of human beings.  It is the freedom “for what is opened up in an open region” (p.125).  A tree is free to grow and gives fruit.  I am free to move around and graciously eat that fruit to survive.  There is an open region of relatedness between me and that tree.  We are both free to appear in the open, to be.  Then I am free to examine and discover flowers and fruits.  And in this uncoveredness and unconcealment of fruits and leaves and my movement and statements about the fact that “the fruits are not ripe” the essence of truth reveals itself as a domain of relatedness and freedom in terms of letting be.  Being lets beings (including me and the tree) be so that in our relation we can arrive at disclosedness of fruits, leaves, roots, hands, homes, life, death, and our awe of being-in-the-world:

“Here ‘existence’ does not mean existentia in the sense of occurring [an actual object] or being at hand [an instrument].  Nor on the other hand does it mean, in an ‘existentiell’ fashion, man’s moral endeavor on behalf of his ‘self’, based on his psychophysical constitution. Ek-sistence, rooted in truth as freedom, is exposure to the disclosedness of beings as such.  Still uncomprehended, indeed, not even in need of an essential grounding, the ek-sistence of historical man begins at that moment when the first thinker takes a questioning stance with regard to the unconealment of beings by asking: what are beings?” (p.126) 

There is a major difference between freedom-to-be of trees and animals, the gift given to existence, and freedom of human beings to be and to be free: a distinctive relatedness to Being as a whole as such.  The moment I open my eyes the miracle lightens up—as it happened for Helen Keller when she grasped “general concept” in language in her blind, deaf, mute state of being— through which I simultaneously pre-ontologically recognize the Open, Being, the world, the whole, the core of my existence as a longing-belonging for and to the Truth, as the horizon against which I ontologically and thematically recognize myself and objects in the world.

[“We shall show them Our signs in every region of the earth and in themselves, until it becomes clear to them that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses everything?” (41:53)]

Now, if you ask me how can I be one hundred percent sure about anything, I can say this much: I came to see the pendulum swing of philosophical and scientific discourses in the course of history.  To make it simple, it looks like a swing between Chomsky, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger.  Chomsky focuses on the innate and inherent capacities and Heidegger brings the world into this ek-static (standing-outside) capacity.  Kierkegaard experiences the mystical and religious as deeply personal and subjective [thus, his 'truth is subjectivity'], to which Heidegger is blind.  We can join interesting parts of all of these views; however, by itself none of them gives us absolute methodical-philosophical certainty.  They give us insights, and in the case of Heidegger and Kierkegaard, a spiritual-mystical awareness.  This is all I can say. 

Now if I want to answer your question: how sure can I be of my faith in God now?  By myself, I couldn’t.  You know I was working on writing my dissertation on Nietzsche-Foucault philosophy.  I was far from religions and faith, though postmodern philosophy can have a liberating effect, which usually ends up to nihilism.  The liberating effect of postmodern philosophy and its nihilism were not satisfactory to me.  I didn’t know where to go and what to do.  By myself, I couldn’t form any universal certainty, but aesthetic fashioning myself in some ways that pleased me; Nietzsche-Foucault call it ‘self-creation’, which is a hopeless way to say that we really don’t know what is the point of living, so let’s do whatever it feels okay to us, because there is no answer to the question who is creating who, and what does “creation” mean here?  It is oxymoron to talk about certainty and faith in Foucault’s philosophy. 

It is a fact that Heidegger’s philosophy and his conception of Being has a resonance of Godhead in Meister Eckhart and late Heidegger talks about the Fourfold of the earth, the sky, mortals, and divinities:

“Mortals dwell in that they await the divinities as divinities.  In hope they hold up to the divinities what is unhoped for.  They wait for intimations of their coming and do not mistake the signs of their absence.  They do not make their gods for themselves and do not worship idols.  In the very depth of misfortune they wait for the weal that has been withdrawn.” (Poetry, Language, thought, p.150)

Heidegger’s philosophy is deeply spiritual and awakens a deep understanding of God, for those who can hear.  However, none of these could create faith in me.  So, am I now one hundred percent sure about religious truth?  This is a long story and I will elaborate the details in my memoir, but to make my point, I can say this much: it happened to me.  This is Kierkegaard's notion that religious truth is subjective and deeply individual and personal.  It is a happening to a soul who longs for divine.  God responds to those who call God hopelessly and sincerely, not for gain or at the time of misery only.  God responded to me; I was startled in fear and trembling in encountering God's signs.  I thought I was losing my mind.  It took twelve years investigation and teaching philosophy and world religions that everything fell into place and made sense to me.  I have seen it, heard it, experienced it, and then based on the given guidance, God helped me to cultivate myself through knowledge and philosophy, and it became my destiny and mission.  Later, I learned that the Quran and Bible call it divine grace or in Farsi we say: عنایت الهی I am a believer now, in the original sense of "belief": to hold dear, desire, care, love.  However, all these are empty claims if my faith is fruitless.  Real faith brings fruits and encourages one to do good and gives a helping hand to others.  I hope I can show my faith, not in words but in action.  

Also, I think scriptures and the Quran by themselves are enough to bring faith in God.  The problem is that I was ignorant of this tradition.  I never read scriptures with understanding.  Teaching World Religions cemented my faith in God.  This is a general problem with all atheists.  They are quick to reject without doing their empathetic investigation.  In another reflection, I wrote about Russell's response to a student's question: "Professor Russell, what would you say to Lord, if after death God asks you: why did you not believe in me?"  Russell responded: I would say, "Lord you didn't give me enough evidence."  I imagined that God would say: "I sent numerous scriptures through thousands of years; but you never read them or put your heart in them."  Now in the age of internet, we can easily read and have access to all variations of scriptures and the Quran.  Most translations and so many analyses of the verses are now available online.  We don't have any more excuses.  However, God is merciful and if a lost soul like me is yearning for the Source desperately, God would guide that person.  God is the most forgiving, the most merciful.

To end this letter, I should say God guided me to explore God’s signs and this disclosure of God’s signs also strengthened my faith, to the extent that one can see God as the poet of existence[2] and everything in the horizon and in ourselves is a poesis of God:

“We shall show them Our signs in every region of the earth and in themselves, until it becomes clear to them that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses everything?” (41:53)

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[1] http://philosophyweeklyreflections.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-religio-philosophicalreflection-on.html

[2] The Poet is there, who no one speaks until He speaks, and no one creates until He creates. 

 .شاعر آنجاست که هیچکس سخن نگوید تا او سخن گوید و هیچکس خلق نکند تا او خلق کند

http://philosophyweeklyreflections.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-universe-as-signposts-of-poet-of.html

The Inherent Connection between the Ethical, the Ontological, and the Light within: A Reflection on the Surah Light (24)

This is my point: we are walking on a Razor’s Edge: We can fall into darkness either by indecency and following our lowest desires, or by rigid puritanism and seeing evil all around ourselves in those who don’t fit into our measure of purity.  We need to start from ourselves and with setting clear boundaries and punitive laws, and coextensively with love and forgiveness help others to walk the Razor’s Edge from darkness to Light. 

The 24^th surah, Al-Nur or The Light, is named after the Verse of Light (verses 35-6) where God’s light is contrasted to the darkness in which the disbelievers find themselves engulfed:

“God is the Light of the heavens and earth. His Light is like this: there is a niche, and in it a lamp, the lamp inside a glass, a glass like a glittering star, fueled from a blessed olive tree from neither east nor west, whose oil almost gives light even when no fire touches it– light upon light– God guides whoever He will to his Light; God draws such comparisons for people; God has full knowledge of everything– shining out in houses of worship. God has ordained that they be raised high and that His name be remembered in them, with men in them celebrating His glory morning and evening: men who are not distracted, either by commerce or profit, from remembering God, keeping up the prayer, and paying the prescribed alms, fearing a day when hearts and eyes will turn over.  God will reward such people according to the best of their actions, and He will give them more of His bounty: God provides limitlessly for anyone He will.

But the deeds of those who disbelieve are like a mirage in a desert: the thirsty person thinks there will be water but, when he gets there, he finds only God, who pays him his account in full–God is swift in reckoning.  Or like shadows in a deep sea covered by wave upon wave, with clouds above– layer upon layer of darkness– if he holds out his hand, he is scarcely able to see it. The one to whom God gives no light has no light at all.” (24:35-40)

Before these moving Verses, 1) the surah consists of a series of instructions and laws about sexual, marital, and ethical conduct such as adultery and how to enter houses and deal with people.  I will come to these verses later, but for now I wish to show the structure of the surah.  Then, 2) after the Verse Light, 3) God shows how everything is prostate to this Light, how everything is under the control of this Light.  In the next step, 4) the surah discusses the rule of obedience to the Prophet in judging between them.  Afterward, 5) the surah briefly reminds the believers that if they follow the light of God—pray and do charitable deeds—God will make them inheritors of the land.  Penultimately, 6) God sets the rule of privacy, eating, and greeting.  And finally, 7) the surah ends with God’s knowledge of inner state of people and that everything will be revealed about their conduct on the Day of Judgement.  In this reflection, I will just focus on (1) and (2).

My question is: What do ethical rules have to do with the Verse Light?  It is not difficult to guess the connection, but I wish to highlight an important ontological relationship between the Light of God and Ethics: our being here, as human beings, ought to be structured in a way that we let the Light in.  The existential point is that in order to attend to the Light of existence, I ought to let this Light structure my behavior.  There are ways of conduct that hinder the light and ways of conduct that facilitate it.  Prayer and clean conscience open the gate of existence to spiritual-ontological Light.  Following one’s whims and desires, setting one’s passion as a god[1], hinders it. 

For secular ethics, the point of ethical conduct has no ontological import, but only rational or practical significance for the sake of survival, pain or pleasure, or at best, self-actualization.  I would argue that my claim is more than promoting a ‘divine command’ ethical theory, it is to show there is an inherent connection between ethical conduct and the spirit or soul.  The root of the ethical is in the divine Light and so the spiritual connection between the ethical and the divine defies the modern and postmodern ethical relativism (anything goes based on culture) and secular ethical realism (intuitions of good and bad based on pragmatics of life).  Understood in the right way, divine ethics as well defies fanaticism and rigid absolutism, because in every action one ought to see the connection to this Light, the mechanism of spirit, rather than empty legalism. 

What does this mean?  It means the destiny is set that in the last analysis we learn to let the Light of God in, through digested-understood-owned up ethical behavior, not only for fear of punishment and hope for reward, but seeing that the punishment and reward, the reckoning and the Day of Judgment are tied internally to our light or the lack thereof—and this is connected to the nexus of our biology.  It means to see God present in each moment and to refrain from shameful behaviors-those which are buried under social norms but register in our conscience.  It means to understand the logic of Light, to understand God’s presence and observance in every moment, not in terms of policing—but as that which renders our ontological-existential being-in-the-world meaning and directs it to an awe-inspiring and ineffable eternal Light.  To Remember, constant Remembrance (zikr[2]) of God’s presence, not only as fear and trembling in falling into the abyss of darkness or the hope for entering into the eternal Light, (whose undercurrent I feel all the time now), but in terms of what overcomes the friction of our duplicity and duality and releases us into Oneness, at-one-ment.  This is the meaning of ethical behavior which rejects nihilism and moral relativism and legalistic-absolutism and redeems (buy back) the individual into freedom of owning up to one’s ethical choices in seeing its inherent connection to the Light of God.  Desiring Eden and thoroughly listen (obedience), with understanding.    

In this Light, let’s look at God’s instruction for ethical behavior in this surah (24).  God let’s this scenario unfolds: “The initial context for the surah is the false rumor against Aisha, the Prophet’s wife, who was left behind unwittingly by her travelling companions after wandering away in search of a dropped necklace. She was escorted back to Medina by a Muslim man coming later who found her there.” 

Now this is the situation: a rumor about Aisha, the Prophet’s wife, committing adultery with another Muslim man was spread, mostly by Mistah, one of relatives supported by Abu Bakr, father of Aisha, just for the fact that she was escorted by that Muslim back to Medina.  The surah starts with these verses:

“In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy

This is a sura We have sent down and made obligatory: We have sent down clear revelations in it, so that you may take heed.  Strike the adulteress and the adulterer [Jalada in Arabic means ‘hit the skin’ with the hand or anything else. There are reports that people used shoes, clothes, etc. (Bukhari, Hudud 4)] one hundred times.  Do not let compassion for them keep you from carrying out God’s law––if you believe in God and the Last Day––and ensure that a group of believers witnesses the punishment.  The adulterer is only [fit] to marry an adulteress or an idolatress, and the adulteress is only [fit] to marry an adulterer or an idolater: such behavior is forbidden to believers.  As for those who accuse chaste women of fornication, and then fail to provide four witnesses, strike them eighty times, and reject their testimony ever afterwards: they are the lawbreakers, except for those who repent later and make amends––God is most forgiving and merciful.” (24:1-5)

Remember that the Light Verse (24:35-40) quoted above comes later in the surah.  And to our modern and postmodern ears, floating in the waters of succumbing to desires, striking an adulterer and adulteress one hundred times sounds so harsh.  Pay attention that no accusation is accepted and the accusers must bring witnesses to adultery prior to punishment being executed. 

There is no physical punishment for adultery and excess in the West, besides some financial consequences in some states in the U.S. At the other extreme, we have honor killing and violence against women for educational and cultural poverty and lack of understanding the logic of God’s commands and laws in some of the countries in the East.  Indeed, those who become intolerant and oppressive against women have made their own whims into their god, their own passions and lowest desires, narrow mindedness, jealousy, revenge, empty piety.  But what is the option?  Neither excesses, east or west, takes us to the Light.  Any excessive pendulum swing opens a door to Satan.

Aren’t we, in the West, now living in a permissive culture of fornication and lack of proper boundaries due to being already reduced to animals in our general secular perception of life?  Our state of falling is partly because of nihilism--the devaluation of all values and separation of ethics from spirituality—a strong tendency among the youth.  The package paradoxically defines an “agent” who proceeds more and more in our scientism and reduces individuals into “sovereign individuals”. These ‘agents’ are essentially animals through and through, and carriers of selfish genes, lost in moral relativism, identify themselves with machines and electrical circuits, and see themselves as the subclass of death, whose dream is getting lost in the principle of sensual-aesthetic pleasure, fame, honor, wealth, because our sciences and secular philosophy can’t give them anything better.

Adultery and sexual indulgence—following the principle of pleasure—diminish the divine light within us and push us to the darkness of animality.  Setting social-ethical boundaries with understanding and without falling into dry legalism is essential for securing this Light.  God asks for punishment for fornicators and those who accuse women of fornication.  However, in each step there ought to be ‘witnesses’ from believers to prove the adultery occurred in the first place, and if is proven, a group of witnesses ought to monitor the execution of punishment so that it doesn’t fall into excess and cruelty.  We need education and setting examples; we need as well clear boundaries with understanding.  The kernel of all these instructions is that the individual ought to start from himself or herself, rather than accusing others.  “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” (Mathew 7:5).  So, in the story of slandering Aisha, God refers individuals to their inner voice, the place that the Light shines or dies through our own actions in the microlevel:

“When you took it up with your tongues, and spoke with your mouths things you did not know [to be true], you thought it was trivial but to God it was very serious.  When you heard the lie, why did you not say, ‘We should not repeat this– God forbid!– It is a monstrous slander’?” (24:15-16)

This point is missing from our secular ethics: there is an essential ontological relation between the way we think, speak, and act and the state of our soul/body.  Our body registers every lie and every case of cheating, because we are well aware of the shame of doing them, and the awareness returns back to us at our cellular level in terms of discordance.  To clean this darkness and to let light in, the Quran is clear: we need to repent and to repel evil and darkness with good.  This fundamental relation of our intentions and actions to our body/soul and salvation is immanent.  This is the point that Mill’s Utilitarianism misses and ends up into separation of moral behavior from the individual’s disposition.  His consequentialist principle, maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain for the most, sounds liberating but indeed it exorcises the spirit of the ethical, because the hedonistic measure of pleasure and pain doesn’t elevate our spirit and disconnects it from the purpose of all these precepts: Socratic cultivation of the soul and connection to the Divine Light, the ontological-existential need that brings us to oneness and at-one-ment and ends internal bleedings, frictions, contradictions, and restlessness.

The Quran is clear that pain and pleasure are ramifications of our internal disposition.  What we do returns to us as pain or joy and is immediately connected to our actions and purification of our souls—how we hinder Light or let it come in:

“A painful punishment waits in this world and the next for those who like indecency to spread among the believers: God knows and you do not.  If it were not for God’s bounty and mercy and the fact that He is compassionate and merciful . . .!  Believers, do not follow in Satan’s footsteps– if you do so, he will urge you to indecency and evil. If it were not for God’s bounty and mercy towards you, not one of you would ever have attained purity. God purifies whoever He will: God is all hearing, all seeing.” (24:19-21)   

The goal is purification and letting Light in—it is the ontological condition of our existence and the internal nexus of our soul.  The consequence of this process is pain and agony or peace and joy, internally AND externally—in body and soul.  However, as much as Satan distances us from the Light by tempting us to succumb to our whims and lowest desires and so lie, cheat, commit adultery, or indecent behaviors, the evil also works through rigid demands for purifications, where one falls into the devilish state of seeing evil all around oneself, and forgets the messianic message: start from yourself and be forgiving.

Mistah, who was supported by Abu Bakr, participated in spreading the rumor against Abu Bakr’s daughter, Aisha, the Prophets’ wife.  When Abu Bakr swore that he would never support Mistah again, God teaches the lesson of mercy and forgiveness to him and to all instead of rigid righteous indignation:

“Those who have been graced with bounty and plenty should not swear that they will [no longer] give to kinsmen, the poor, those who emigrated in God’s way: let them pardon and forgive. Do you not wish that God should forgive you? God is most forgiving and merciful.” (24:22)

This is my point: we are walking on a Razor’s Edge: We can fall into darkness either by indecency and following our lowest desires, or by rigid puritanism and seeing evil all around ourselves in those who don’t fit into our measure of purity.  We need to start from ourselves and with setting clear boundaries and punitive laws, and coextensively with love and forgiveness help others to walk the Razor’s Edge from darkness to Light. 

By default, we are self-and-other-blind.  It means while we can partially know ourselves and others, we can’t fully see ours and others internal disposition.  God judges us on the Day of Judgement.  While God is forgiving and merciful, if we pass certain threshold of darkness, due to our own actions, then our own body will bring witness to our fallen state in the Day of Judgement:

“Those who accuse honorable but unwary believing women are rejected by God, in this life and the next. A painful punishment awaits them on the Day when their own tongues, hands, and feet will testify against them about what they have done– on that Day, God will pay them their just due in full– and they will realize that God is the Truth that makes everything clear.  Corrupt women are for corrupt men, and corrupt men are for corrupt women; good women are for good men and good men are for good women. The good are innocent of what has been said against them; they will have forgiveness and a generous provision.” (24:23-26) 

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[1] “Think [Prophet] of the man who has taken his own passion [hawahu; Al-Ahwaa’; singular: hawaa' (Arabic:الھوٰی)] as a god: are you to be his guardian?  Do you think that most of them hear or understand? They are just like cattle– no, they are further from the path.” (25:43-44) (Araayta mani ittakhatha ilahahu hawahu afaanta takoonu AAalayhi wakeelan)

[2] A form of devotion, associated chiefly with Sufism, in which the worshiper is absorbed in the rhythmic repetition of the name of God or his attributes.

A Reflection on Surah Believers (23): Poverty of Existence, Wretchedness, and The Way Out: Repel Evil with Good

A long epigraph from the ending of this reflection, repeated here:

I realize the truth. It is so obvious to me now after years of going astray. Good deeds will repel evil. And I have done some wrong in my life. I walked against religion and followed the dream of modernity while my country was in an unjust war imposed on it by Iraq. I was blind and hoped that Marxism can bring heaven on the earth, but twenty-five years study showed me that the dream of materialism and atheism is a mirage. I couldn’t find my way by myself. God guided me, and I can’t be more grateful to God for the guidance. I have improved personally and spiritually since then. However, my waywardness [شَقَأ سختی و بدبختی=wretchedness, difficult to control or predict because of unusual or perverse behavior] has not been overcome yet. Still I am on the way and still I fall back on my impatience and erroneous behavior sometimes. I ask God to help me and don’t get disappointed in me. The first step to healing, before it gets too late, is to see the sickness of the soul. We have a little time to stay on the earth compared to eternity. Not much time left for me and I must overcome my wretchedness (شَقَأ).

“But the deeds of those who disbelieve are like a mirage in a desert: the thirsty person thinks there will be water but, when he gets there, he finds only God, who pays him his account in full– God is swift in reckoning. Or like shadows in a deep sea covered by wave upon wave, with clouds above– layer upon layer of darkness– if he holds out his hand, he is scarcely able to see it. The one to whom God gives no light has no light at all.” (24:39-40)

But as Abū-Sa'īd Abul-Khayr (not Rumi) says:

باز آ باز آ هر آنچه هستی باز آ
گر کافر و گبر و بت‌پرستی باز آ
این درگه ما درگه نومیدی نیست
صد بار اگر توبه شکستی باز آ

Come, Come, again whatever you are,
Whether you are disbeliever, fire worshipper, or idolater,
This gate of ours is not the gate of despair,
If you have broken your vows of repentance hundred times, come again.

The chemist Sir Humphry Davy wrote:

“I envy no quality of mind or intellects in others—not genius, power, wit, or fancy; but if I could choose what would be most delightful, and I believe most useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to any other blessing; for it makes life a discipline of goodness, creates new hopes when all earthly hopes vanish, … awakens life even in death, and from corruption and decay calls up beauty and divinity; makes an instrument of torture and shame [the cross] the ladder of ascent to Paradise; and far above all combinations of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of palms and amaranths, the gardens of the blest, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the skeptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair.” (Quoted in Light in My Darkness by Helen Keller)

A Reflection on Surah Believers (23)

In reading surah “Believers” (23), first and foremost, I am struck by these verses:

1)      “We have the power to take it all away if We so wish”:

“We created seven levels above you: We are never unmindful of Our creation.  We sent water down from the sky in due measure and lodged it in the earth––We have the power to take it all away if We so wish––with it We produced for you gardens of date palms and vines, with many fruits there for you to eat, and a tree, growing out of Mount Sinai, that produces oil and seasoning for your food.” (23:17-20)

After Western Enlightenment, we take things for granted.  Even if we talk about “natural laws”—we see them as dead ordinances domineering our lives mercilessly.  We hold the natural laws that preserve our blood and flesh and keep us breathing and walking as blind, dead, and indifferent order of universe.  This is called ‘secularization of the world’.  No wonder that we think now we are just robots and by simulating the same or similar natural laws (say, computation) we can create computers who can think and act and have moral consciousness just like us, because we have already turned into immoral nihilistic robots by exorcising the divine from nature (secularization of nature).  The laws of nature indicate the divine wisdom and sustenance and God has the “power to take it all away” if God so wishes—Memento.

2)     “If the truth were in accordance with their desires, the heavens, the earth, and everyone in them would disintegrate.”

“Have they not contemplated the Word of God? Has something come to them that did not come to their forefathers?  Do they not recognize their Messenger? So why do they reject him?  Why do they say he is possessed? He has brought them the truth and most of them hate it, but if the truth were in accordance with their desires, the heavens, the earth, and everyone in them would disintegrate. We have brought them their Reminder and they turn away from it.  Do you [Prophet] ask them for any payment? Your Lord’s is the best payment: He is the Best of Providers.  You call them to a straight path and those who do not believe in the Hereafter turn away from that path.  Even if We were to show them mercy and relieve them of distress, they would blindly persist in their transgression.  We have already afflicted them, yet they did not submit to their Lord: they will not humble themselves until We open a gate to severe torment for them– then they will be plunged into utter despair.” (23:68-77)

When I was an atheist, I couldn’t like the Quran, even before reading it one time thoroughly, because I desired different kind of truths—materialistic truths, a humanistic anthropocentric truth.  The assumption that we can make our heaven on the earth by some notions of “equality and democracy”.  I thought Marxian utopia—“from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” can solve all human problems, social as well as existential-ontological problems.  I was wrong, a materialistic heaven without God is Hell.  And as we saw USSR and now China, and other so called existing socialist societies hostile to religion, are falling apart like houses of cards, we learn that without resorting to divine laws within and without, without moderation and prayers, everything will disintegrate.   No material need and sense of equality can quench our spiritual needs.  No amount of rational articulation and application of reason alone can save us—reason without God will become a hedonistic instrument of exploitation, objectification, and reification.

3)    Everything we have is from God and we are oblivious: our hearing, sight, and hearts, our multiplying on the earth, our life and death, alternation of night and day—and the most important fact is our resurrection that most in the past and now think it is an ancient fable.  God owns the earth and seven heavens.  God controls everything.  He protects everything while there is no protection against Him.  The universe is not the field of competition between gods.  Human being is one species and has one God.  God is ‘far above’ any partner—God is distinctly Other who knows what is not seen as well as what is seen.  And finally, the remedy is the sickness of heart is mentioned repeatedly in the Quran: Repel evil with good.

“It is God who endowed you with hearing, sight, and hearts– how seldom you are grateful!  It is He who made you multiply on earth. It is to Him that you will be gathered: it is He who gives life and death; the alternation of night and day depends on Him; will you not use your minds?  But, like others before them, they say, ‘What? When we die and turn to dust and bones, shall we really be resurrected?  We have heard such promises before, and so did our forefathers. These are just ancient fables.’  Say [Prophet], ‘Who owns the earth and all who live in it, if you know [so much]?’ and they will reply, ‘God.’ Say, ‘Will you not take heed?’ Say, ‘Who is the Lord of the seven heavens? Who is the Lord of the Mighty Throne?’ and they will reply, ‘God.’ Say, ‘Will you not be mindful?’ Say, ‘Who holds control of everything in His hand? Who protects, while there is no protection against Him, if you know [so much]?’ and they will reply, ‘God.’ Say, ‘Then how can you be so deluded?’  The fact is, We brought them the truth and they are lying.  God has never had a child. Nor is there any god beside Him– if there were, each god would have taken his creation aside and tried to overcome the others. May God be exalted above what they describe!  He knows what is not seen as well as what is seen; He is far above any partner they claim for Him.  Say, ‘Lord, if You are going to show me the punishment You have promised them, then Lord, do not include me among the evildoers!’  We certainly are able to show you the punishment We have promised them.  Repel evil with good–We are well aware of what they attribute to Us– and say, ‘Lord, I take refuge with You from the goadings of the evil ones; I seek refuge with you, Lord, so that they may not come near me.’” (23:78-98)

As I mentioned, there are so many insights in the above verses.  However, I wish to pause on one notion: “it is God who endowed you with hearing, sight, and hearts.”  We take our senses for granted, our outer senses as well as our inner sense (heart).  In Light in My Darkness, Helen Keller (blind-deaf genius) wrote:

“My life is so complicated by a triple handicap of blindness, deafness, and imperfect speech that I cannot do the simplest thing without thought and effort to rationalize my experience… Even if I commit errors in forming concepts of color, sound, light, and intangible phenomena, I must always try to preserve equilibrium between my outer and inner life.” (p.130). 

What did keep Helen Keller going for 88 years in absolute darkness?  Her response is illuminating:

“Truly I have looked into the very heart of darkness and refused to yield to its paralyzing influence, but in spirit I am one of those who walk the morning.  What if all dark, discouraging moods of the human mind come across my way as thick as the dry leaves of autumn?  Other feet have travelled the road before me, and I know the desert leads to God as surely as the green, refreshing fields and fruitful orchards.” (p.125)

The inner sense (the heart in the Quran) which guided Helen Keller to be creative and excited about life, at the same time guided her to understand her ‘dependent origination’ and God.  She is more insightful than the host of arrogant philosophers and scientists of our time who take their sight, hearing, and heart for granted and turn a blind eye to the gift given to them by God, through evolution and mutation of the inner, and not by blind Darwinism.  Helen Keller elucidates:

“I, too, have been profoundly humiliated and brought to realize my smallness amid the immensity of creation.  The more I learn, the less I think I know, and the more I understand of my sense experience, the more I perceive its shortcomings and its inadequacy as a basis of life.  Sometimes the points of view of the optimist and the pessimist seem so well-balanced to me that it is only by sheer force of spirit that I can keep my hold upon a practical, livable philosophy of life.  But I use my will, choose life, and reject its opposite, nothingness.

Edwin Markham has exquisitely wrought into his poem, “Take Your Choice,” the opposing moods and different beliefs that contend for supremacy today:

On the bough of the rose-tree is the prickling briar,

The delicate lily must live in the mire,

The hues of the butterfly go at a breath;

At the end of the road is the house of death.

Nay, nay! On the briar is the delicate rose;

In the mire of the river the lily blows,

The moth is as fair as the flower of the sod,

At the end of the road is a door to God!” (p.125) 

Those who choose the second path, the path of God, use their ‘heart’ and keep it bright and clean to guide them to the straight path.  Helen Keller was one of them and a witness to truth.  And those who take the path of God understand the inner meaning of “repel evil with good”—the alchemy of life in this world and in the world to come.

     

4)     Only the weight of good deeds remains with us, and there is no returning back beyond the point of no return.  How can one lose one’s way and become “wayward” and how can one ignore God’s warnings again and again?  How many of them do we have in our modern time? ‘You stayed but a little [on the earth], if you had only known.  Did you think We had created you in vain, and that you would not be brought back to Us?’

“When death comes to one of them, he cries, ‘My Lord, let me return so as to make amends for the things I neglected.’ Never! This will not go beyond his words: a barrier stands behind such people until the very Day they are resurrected.  On that Day when the Trumpet is blown, the ties between them will be as nothing and they will not ask about each other: those whose good deeds weigh heavy will be successful, but those whose balance is light will have lost their souls forever and will stay in Hell–the Fire will scorch their faces and their lips will be twisted in pain.  ‘Were My messages not recited over and over to you and still you rejected them?’  They will say, ‘Lord, our waywardness overcame us and we went astray.  Lord, take us away from this and if we go back to our old ways, then we shall really be evildoers.’  He will say, ‘Away with you! In you go! Do not speak to Me!  Among My servants there were those who said, “Lord, We believe. Forgive us and have mercy on us: You are the most merciful of all.”  But you kept on laughing at them: so intent were you on laughing at them that it made you forget My warning.  Today I have rewarded them for their patience: it is they who will succeed.’  He will say, ‘How many years were you on earth?’ and they will reply, ‘We stayed a day or a part of a day, but ask those who keep count.’  He will say, ‘You stayed but a little, if you had only known.  Did you think We had created you in vain, and that you would not be brought back to Us?’” (23:99-115)

I realize the truth.  It is so obvious to me now after years of going astray.  Good deeds will repel evil.  And I have done some wrong in my life.  I walked against religion and followed the dream of modernity while my country was in an unjust war imposed on it by Iraq.  I was blind and hoped that Marxism can bring heaven on the earth, but twenty-five years study showed me that the dream of materialism and atheism is a mirage.  I couldn’t find my way by myself.  God guided me, and I can’t be more grateful to God for the guidance.  I have improved personally and spiritually since then.  However, my waywardness [شَقَأ سختی و بدبختی= wretchedness, difficult to control or predict because of unusual or perverse behavior] has not been overcome yet.  Still I am on the way and still I fall back on my impatience and erroneous behavior sometimes.  I ask God to help me and don’t get disappointed in me.  The first step to healing, before it gets too late, is to see the sickness of the soul.  We have a little time to stay on the earth compared to eternity.  Not much time left for me and I must overcome my wretchedness (شَقَأ).   

“But the deeds of those who disbelieve are like a mirage in a desert: the thirsty person thinks there will be water but, when he gets there, he finds only God, who pays him his account in full– God is swift in reckoning.  Or like shadows in a deep sea covered by wave upon wave, with clouds above– layer upon layer of darkness– if he holds out his hand, he is scarcely able to see it. The one to whom God gives no light has no light at all.” (24:39-40)

But as Abū-Sa'īd Abul-Khayr (not Rumi) says:

  
باز آ باز آ هر آنچه هستی باز آ
گر کافر و گبر و بت‌پرستی باز آ
این درگه ما درگه نومیدی نیست
صد بار اگر توبه شکستی باز آ

Come, Come, again whatever you are,

Whether you are disbeliever, fire worshipper, or idolater,

This gate of ours is not the gate of despair,

If you have broken your vows of repentance hundred times, come again.

The chemist Sir Humphry Davy wrote:

“I envy no quality of mind or intellects in others—not genius, power, wit, or fancy; but if I could choose what would be most delightful, and I believe most useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to any other blessing; for it makes life a discipline of goodness, creates new hopes when all earthly hopes vanish, … awakens life even in death, and from corruption and decay calls up beauty and divinity; makes an instrument of torture and shame [the cross] the ladder of ascent to Paradise; and far above all combinations of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of palms and amaranths, the gardens of the blest, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the skeptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair.” (Quoted in Light in My Darkness by Helen Keller)