Understanding Islam by Laude Patrick Schuon Frithjof

Author:Laude, Patrick, Schuon, Frithjof
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-935493-90-7
Publisher: World Wisdom

At this point, something must be said about the priority of contemplation. As one knows, Islam defines this supreme function of man in the hadīth about ihsān which orders man to “worship Allāh as though thou didst see Him”, since “if thou dost not see Him, He nonetheless seeth thee”. Christianity, for its part, enunciates first the total love of God and then love of the neighbor; now it must be insisted, in the interest of the love of God, that this second love could not be total because love of ourselves is not so; whether ego or alter, man is not God.28 Be that as it may, it follows from all traditional definitions of man’s supreme function that he who is capable of contemplation has no right to neglect it but is on the contrary “called” to dedicate himself to it; in other words, he sins neither against God nor against his neighbor—to say the least—in following the example of Mary in the Gospels and not that of Martha, for contemplation contains action and not the reverse. If in point of fact action can be opposed to contemplation, it is nevertheless not opposed to it in principle, nor is action called for beyond what is necessary or required by the duties of a man’s station in life. In abasing ourselves from humility, we must not also abase things which transcend us, for then our virtue loses all its value and meaning; to reduce spirituality to a “humble” utilitarianism—thus to a latent materialism—is to give offense to God, on the one hand because it is like saying it is not worthwhile to be overly preoccupied with God, and on the other hand because it means relegating the divine gift of intelligence to the rank of the superfluous.

Apart from this, and on a vaster scale, it must be understood that the “metaphysical point of view” is synonymous with “inwardness”: metaphysics is not “external” to any form of spirituality, it is thus impossible to consider something both metaphysically and from the outside at one and the same time. Furthermore, those who uphold the extra-intellectual principle according to which any possible competence would derive exclusively from a practical participation, do not refrain from legislating “intellectually” and in “full awareness” of what they are doing29 about forms of spirituality in which they do not participate in any way whatever.

Intelligence can be the essence of a path provided there is a contemplative mentality and a thinking that is fundamentally non-passional; an exoterism could not, as such, constitute this path but can, as in the case of Islam, predispose to it by its fundamental perspective, its structure, and its ambience. From the strictly Shariite point of view, intelligence is reduced—for Islam—to responsibility; viewed thus, every responsible person is intelligent; in other words a responsible person is defined in relation to intelligence and not in relation to freedom of the will alone.30

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