Ep 5 — Faith Through Awareness

Session 3: Faith Through Awareness. delivered Saturday, 30 Shahrivar 1353 / 4 Ramadan al-Mubarak 1394 Surat Al 'Imran (3:190-191). Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, there are signs for those endowed with understanding — those who remember God standing and sitting and lying upon their sides, and who reflect upon the creation of the heavens and the earth, [saying:] 'Our Lord, You did not create this in vain. Glory be to You! Protect us, then, from the punishment of the Fire.' In light of the several verses we are reciting today — those written on that sheet — two or three further truths concerning faith come to hand. Faith is one of the outstanding traits of God's prophets, of the believers, and of those who follow them: to have faith, to believe, to be convinced of one's own mission. Herein lies the difference between divine leaders and the political leaders of the world. The divine leader, like one who himself treads the road, is sincerely a believer with his whole being — in what he says, in every step he takes, in the path he walks. Whereas the politicians of the world may at times have beautiful words and charming, eloquent speech, yet they do not have the requisite faith — or even any faith at all — in what they say. Here is a story told of the leaders of one of the greatest countries of the Eastern Bloc — for all their atheistic pretensions, and for all their culture and school of thought that severely condemns every non-materialist idea. After the independence of India, to win the hearts of the millions of the newly independent Indian masses, they made a journey to the land of India. And the Hindus and the Indians generally looked on in utter astonishment: for they saw upon the foreheads of the leaders of this communist country the mark of Tilak. Tilak — or Tilak (Tilak) — was one of the freedom-loving leaders of India who was a clergyman. He was one of the great Hindu holy men, reckoned for a span of time the chief and forerunner of the Indian revolution. It is not amiss for me to mention this to you in the margin of these remarks — though of course it has no bearing on the subject I am discussing, yet it is not bad to know. The Indian movement, which from the day of its blossoming to the day of its fruition lasted a full ninety years, had as its principal leaders, from beginning to end, the clergy. Either Muslim clergy such as Mawlana Shah Mahmud Dihlawi, Mawlana Mahmud al-Hasan, Mawlana Abu al-Kalam Azad, Mawlana Muhammad 'Ali, Mawlana Shawkat 'Ali — for Mawlana means Ayatullah; Mawlana, in the usage of the Muslims of India, is something equivalent to the rank of "Hadrat Ayatullah" that we have. Ayatullah Muhammad 'Ali, Ayatullah Shawkat 'Ali, Ayatullah Abu al-Kalam, Ayatullah Mahmud al-Hasan — these "Ayatullahs" were the great leaders of the Indian movement on the part of the Muslims. On the part of the Hindus, Mahatma Gandhi was a Hindu holy man, a Jain holy man, attached to the school of Jainism. Let me say that Tilak was a Hindu holy man of most astonishing greatness. A very remarkable man, this Tilak — who of course died in the midst of the movement, before its outcome was reached; he passed from this world and did not see the freedom of India. Yet thirty, forty years after his death, those whom he had nurtured tasted the sweet and pleasant drink of freedom. And a mark called the mark of Tilak remained behind, in memory of that great freedom-loving man who was a clergyman. This mark is the mark of a holy man; it carries an aspect of spirituality, a metaphysical aspect — because Tilak himself was a person who possessed spiritual stations in the view of the Hindus. They saw that the materialist leaders of the Soviet Union, who had now come to India, in order to attract the attention of the masses of the people, drew the mark of Tilak upon their foreheads — meaning: yes, we too; meaning, we too are in agreement with you in this matter. And yet their own pretensions belied this statement, and their own school of thought belies it. Such is the standing of a number of leaders who are politicians remote from spiritual responsibilities, from faith, and from the divine. But the prophets of God — no; they have believed in what they have said with their whole being. To what they have summoned the people, they themselves, before all others, have come hastening, eager. It makes no sense for me to recline and sleep at the foot of the mountain, letting my whole being wilt and grow cold, and then say to you, "Gentlemen, up there at the top of the mountain there is delicious water; run, go, hurry, be swift, sari'u (vie with one another), sabiqu (outstrip one another)" — while I myself stir not from here. Everyone would have the right to say: if you were telling the truth, if you really knew of the existence of a refreshing spring, you yourself who are burning with thirst, you poor wretch, would have set out yourself! So you are lying; so you do not believe in what you are saying. The divine leaders, before all others — like the vanguards of a road, banner in hand, foot on the path, firm — were busy moving forward and went on; they themselves were ahead of everyone. Abraham, the Friend of the All-Merciful, says: the first who submitted [in Islam] and yielded before You, O Lord, was I myself; after me came the other people, the rest of God's creation following me. This is the characteristic of divine leaders. The divine leader must be like this, and is like this. The Most Noble Prophet, in the most important and most dangerous events of early Islam, was himself there. It is true that 'Abdullah ibn Mas'ud was beaten, it is true that Khabbab was tortured, it is true that 'Ammar Yasir fell under torture — but the torture of the Prophet himself was no less than theirs; it was greater. Compare the situation of the Prophet — that man who staked his all — with the situation of these Muslims around him, and you will see it plainly: the severity exercised against the Messenger of God himself was greater and more grueling than against them. First to step forward, first to advance. Faith is one of the characteristics found in the prophets of God; and here is acceptance with one's whole being, belief in what one says. Faith means belief, acceptance, and reception with one's whole being — belief in what one says. And the sign of belief is precisely this: that one oneself, ahead of others, takes a step on that road and moves forward. Thus the verse of the Qur'an teaches us in this way; it says: The Messenger has believed in what was sent down to him from his Lord, and so have the believers. Each one has believed in God, His angels, His scriptures, and His messengers. They say, 'We make no distinction between any of His messengers.' And they say, 'We hear and we obey. Grant us Your forgiveness, our Lord, and to You is the final return.' Amana al-Rasul bima unzila ilayhi min Rabbihi — the Prophet has believed in what was sent down to him from his Lord. Wa al-mu'minun — and the believers, those who came to faith in him, those outstanding individuals who gathered around him and became the loudspeakers of his summons, are likewise so. Kullun amana billah — each one, or every one of them, believed in God, accepted God, came to believe in Him; wa mala'ikatihi — and the angels of God; wa kutubihi — and the heavenly scriptures from beginning to end, entirely; wa rusulihi — and all His messengers. The faith of the Prophet and his companions is in all of them, for the road is one road — "In this path the prophets are like caravan-guides; they are the guides and signposts of the caravan." All are caravan-guides of a single caravan, the caravan-leaders of a single road, the guides toward a single goal; with the people everywhere, all have been fellow travelers, charging forward toward a single destination. La nufarriqu bayna ahadin min rusulih — this is from the tongue of the believers — we make no distinction between any of His prophets. For us Jesus is honored, just as Moses, just as Abraham, just as Idris, just as Jacob, just as Jirjis (St. George), just as Noah, just as all the prophets from beginning to end. All were envoys of God, envoys of a single goal, heralds of a single felicity and a single paradise, all upon a single line. La nufarriqu bayna ahadin min rusulih — we make no distinction between any of His messengers. (In the discussion I will, God willing, give on other days within this very series concerning the belief in prophethood, in its own time and turn, I may also touch upon this question.) Wa qalu — pay careful attention to these two or three sentences, for they are a point of evidence for a matter I shall speak of later. So the prophets have faith, our Prophet too has it, and the believers and adherents and those attached to him also — all have faith. Wa qalu — and they say: sami'na — we heard, we understood, we hearkened; sami'na — not that it merely fell upon our ears. Sam', sama', means hearing — the state of hearing, which is other than the ear; the ear, in the sense of that particular bodily organ, is expressed in Arabic by the word udhun. Sam' means hearing. You see this in Persian too: they say of so-and-so that he is "heedful" (literally, "word-heeding"), that so-and-so hears what is said. "Did you hear what I said, or not?" you say to your interlocutor — "Did you hear what I said?" Well, it is obvious; there was no more than half a meter between you, your voice would carry even ten meters; it is obvious that he heard. What you mean is: "Did you understand what I said? Did it sink into your brain? Did it enter your mind or not?" These [believers] say sami'na — we understood with our whole being what God had appointed and sent for us. Wa ata'na — and we obeyed. What does that mean? It means our obedience was not blind; our obedience was out of clarity and awareness and sam' (true hearing). Ghufranaka Rabbana — Your forgiveness, Your pardon, O our Lord. The reward we ask of You, O God, is Your forgiveness and nothing else. Wa ilayka al-masir — and to You is our return. (Here again, concerning the matter of the return to God, there are very interesting things which, God willing, I will explain within this very series in the section on the Resurrection [ma'ad] from the Qur'an — if we are alive and there is life and opportunity.) What have we understood thus far from these verses? That faith and belief are the characteristic of those attached to the summons of Islam. People who have no faith, no belief, who merely go along because others went — going, as it were, just to be on the safe side — these are not within the domain and realm of Islamic thought; there need be no awkward reticence about it. Faith is necessary. Faith means belief, accepting and receiving the matter in full clarity; it means moving in pursuit of an attraction. If this attraction be not present in the school of religion and the Qur'an, and has not captured your heart — that is, if faith be not in this heart — then this heart is dead; it is not alive with the light of Islam; it cannot be called a Muslim. So faith is necessary. This is the first point. The second point (which we marked with a "2" on these sheets ) is that faith is of two kinds. One kind of faith is imitative, prejudiced (fanatical): because our fathers and elders had believed, we too believed; because in our book, in the domain of our religion, they say so, we too say so — even if you bring proof, you have brought it in vain; we do not accept what you say. This too is a kind of faith, but it is a faith that is either out of imitation or out of prejudice — it is of two kinds. Either it is out of imitation, like the common run of people: if you ask one of the common folk, "Sir, on what basis did you say that the Prophet of Islam is true?" they know nothing at all — nothing at all! Because their fathers said so, because the teacher at school said so, because the people in the street and bazaar say the Prophet is true, this person too says the Prophet is true. He does have faith, mind you; that is, he truly does believe that the Prophet is true — but this belief was obtained from the tongue of this person and that, out of imitation, with eyes closed. Like this imitative faith is prejudiced (fanatical) faith — by which some people are prepared, God forbid, to disrespect the other prophets, for the sake of pleasing our own Prophet! They imagine that even in the highest heavens there is contradiction among the prophets: "Moses! Who was Moses, man — our Prophet!" And unfortunately this is not peculiar to the ignorant class. Sometimes among classes from whom one has greater expectations — from whom one expects that they should be more understanding, should have grasped more — errors of this kind are seen, examples of which we have at times noticed here and there, and there is no need to recount them. This is what is called prejudice: because the religion of Islam says so, this is right; and because the other religions say it, it is wrong. Because we Muslims perform such-and-such an act, this is right; because others perform some other act, this is wrong. He has a faith, but this faith does not rest upon proof; it is only out of prejudice. And you know what prejudice means: partisanship without proof, partisanship out of feeling, not out of logic. This is called prejudice. This faith is imitative and prejudiced. I must say, for your attention, my friends, that the faith which has worth in Islam is not imitative and prejudiced faith; that is, imitative and prejudiced faith has no value. You want proof? Of dozens of proofs let me state one, and that one proof is this: that when faith is out of imitation and prejudice, its loss too is easy. Just as the child, without any effort of its own, and the pupil, without any striving of its own, received a faith for free from its father and mother or from the authorities of its school, in the very same way the thieves of faith take this faith from him for free. And suddenly, when you look, there is a faithless generation, the faiths all plundered, gone, the faiths all become hollow; before the flame of materialism, the faiths have melted like snow in the dead of summer and seeped into the ground. Whom am I speaking of? It would be very ordinary and commonplace for me to say "the young generation," but I must say that I do not say that the faithless generation is the young generation; because if we are still observing here and there the blossoms of faith, as a glimmer, a flash, it is in the young generation that we are observing it — bravo once again to the young generation, who seek a faith that is non-imitative, non-prejudiced, and out of awareness. No indeed; I mean to speak of the generation before the young — this generation before our society's youth, these who hold to certain things in the form of blind faiths. Of course such a one goes to the rawdah-recitation gathering, of course he goes to congregational prayer if the chance arises; but because it is not out of logic, because it is not out of awareness and understanding and perception, he is very readily prepared to set even the mosque on fire, to trample even Imam Husayn underfoot, and to sacrifice all of these for the thing that has real worth in his eyes — just as they do, just as we see them do. And one of our misfortunes today is the confrontation with the generation before today's young. They were deprived of the special awareness and clear-sightedness of today's young Muslim, and deprived too — alas — of that deep, firm faith of two generations back, which remained immune to the ravages of the age. They have neither the one thing nor the other. They do not have that understanding and perception and awareness whereby, in its shade, they could bring into being within themselves a settled faith and cast off the bond of money, rank, fame, popularity, comfort, and ease. Nor do they have a firm strongbox and a strong, sturdy enclosure — such as stood around the men of two centuries ago and one century ago — whereby at least to preserve their faith in a strongroom, even if it be that same imitative faith. After all, a hundred years ago, there did not exist this multitude of highwaymen of thought, faith, and creed. In those days the hands of the enemy, those treacherous fingers, had not yet found their way so deeply into the body of our society. The schemes had not yet reached the conclusion that the people's authentic religious faith must be taken from them so that any calamity could be visited upon their heads — these things came later. This generation before the young, this generation that today is not young and was the youth of yesterday, is today exposed to a foundation-uprooting flood of faith and creed, and against this flood it does not have even a sturdy faith. Blessed are those who choose their faith out of awareness, out of understanding, out of perception, out of comprehension. The flood comes and carries off the towering trees; but that plant which, though slender and delicate and tender, has roots beneath the ground twice its own size — it remains sound; it survives. That which is rooted from the foundation is not to be effaced by these things. In any case, this is a truth and a certain point in Islam; brothers! Worthy faith is aware faith. It is faith joined with understanding and perception; it is a faith that has come into being out of insight, with open eyes, without fear of difficulties. As for that faith which a certain Muslim man has — to preserve which we must say: let him not read the newspaper, let him not read such-and-such a book, let him not walk in the street and bazaar, let him not speak with such-and-such a person, let him not suffer cold or heat, let him not see sun or moon, so that it may last — this faith, alas, will not last. What is needed is a faith chosen so consciously that, in the harshest of conditions, that faith is not taken from him. Concerning 'Ammar Yasir, the verse of the Qur'an says: …except one who is compelled while his heart is at rest in faith… If under torture, in order to turn the enemy away from you for a moment, you said a single word — say it; your faith is not a faith that is effaced from your heart by torture. That faith which Khabbab ibn al-Aratt had — they would heat iron and press it to his neck — this is no joke; they would bring glowing iron near his body and press it to the skin of his body — and because of that deep, aware faith of his, he would not give up. Faith is this. When faith out of clarity, out of understanding, out of thought, with correct reckonings, has been accomplished, then there is no need for us to place this faith in cloth and in rags and in a strongbox and in a strongroom, lest heat and cold and dust and grime harm it; no harm reaches it. It is these unaware faiths that keep a person constantly anxious, in dread: lest, lest, lest. If we want faiths to be firm, if we want faiths not to be effaced, if we want faith to be aware faith, we must continually give awareness to those whom we want to be believers. Let us not dread their becoming aware; let us not take pleasure in their remaining shut of eye and ear. The way is this: until a good substance of awareness comes into being in the minds and hearts and thoughts, and with that awareness a correct, sturdy faith — a reinforced concrete — is built within the heart; then, even with a shrapnel cannon, as the old young men used to say, it is not to be effaced. Islam says faith must be aware. These verses at the end of Surat Al 'Imran introduce aware faith to us. Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, there are signs for those endowed with understanding… Inna fi khalqi al-samawati wa al-ard — these are an introduction — wa ikhtilafi al-layli wa al-nahar — indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of night and day. La'ayat — indeed there are signs — for the dull-witted? For the senseless? For those who do not think? Never! Li-uli al-albab — for those of understanding (the wise). The wise one is the one who possesses intellect and the power to understand — and that is all people, provided they put their thought and intelligence to work. For the wise were not, from the moment of birth, set apart by a special emblem such that we might say "we were not among them and cannot become wise, and the wise are thus and so" — no; "wise" means all of us people, along with the other three billion human beings who are in the world, all are wise, on condition that they put to work, a little, this power of intellect that is within them. Suppose you paid money and bought this machine, set it down in the house, and never opened it up, never put it to use. Go to check on it after a while and you will find it has no efficiency, no functioning — it has rusted; and even if it has not rusted, it does not run smoothly. The fault was not the machine's; the fault was yours, for not putting it to work. Ulu al-albab means those who put the power of thought and reflection and intellect to work until they become wise. Who are ulu al-albab? Look — here is one of the subtle points of the Qur'an. When it wishes to speak of ulu al-albab, to speak of the wise and to introduce them — if ordinary people wished to introduce [the wise], they would say: the wise one is he who is foremost in all the affairs of his life, who is never duped in any matter, who in business dealings, in politics, in political maneuverings, in disputes and confrontations with rivals — everywhere has the upper hand over his rivals. The Qur'an accepts none of these games. Because it deems the real worth of a human being to be his connection and relation with God, it introduces the wise one quite differently: the wise one, in the view of the Qur'an, is the one who holds these highest values in regard above everything and everyone else. Alladhina yadhkuruna Allah — they are the wise ones who remember God, qiyaman — while standing, wa qu'udan — while sitting, wa 'ala junubihim — while fallen upon their sides. That is, in every state — in every state they are mindful of God. But this being mindful of God does not mean some ecstatic, mystical, dervish-like state in which some people are pleased to think, "Very well, we too are always mindful of God; we are always crying out 'Hu!'" — no; being mindful of God in an active way, a being-mindful-of-God that counts as a deed. How so? Wa yatafakkaruna fi khalqi al-samawati wa al-ard — and they reflect upon the creation of the heavens and the earth; they are in a state of contemplation. You see, ulu al-albab, the wise, are those who are in a state of reflection: wa yatafakkaruna fi khalqi al-samawati wa al-ard. Then, when they perform this reflection and contemplation, with the tongue of the heart and the tongue of the outward they say thus: Rabbana — our Lord! Ma khalaqta hadha batilan, subhanak — You did not create this in vain; transcendent are You above this work of creating in vain; that is, the most important and most fundamental point of an ideology. Of every life-shaping ideology, the fundamental point is this: that I am here for some purpose. If one believes in God, he says, "I was brought here for a purpose"; if one does not believe in God, he says, "In any case I have some task here." You see, the most fundamental points of an intellectual philosophy that is to inspire an individual and social life are precisely this: Rabbana ma khalaqta hadha batilan. He is a believer in the divine; his Lord — therefore he says: our Lord, You did not create this heaven and earth, all this uproar, in vain and in futility. Subhanak — You are too transcendent and pure to do a vain work; so I have a responsibility; so I must tread a road; so I, in the face of this strange and astonishing order, am a point — and for a purpose. In this strange order, I too have a place, and for a purpose; so that if I do not do it rightly and correctly — that act in the very manner You have willed — I have ruined this order. Subhanak, qina 'adhaba al-nar — so guard us and keep us safe from the torment of the Fire; the fire of the Resurrection, which, while it is a reality, is also the symbol of the fire of God's wrath and anger and retribution, and is likewise [part of] the constitution of the world. You must pay attention: all of these are an introduction — an introduction so that we may rightly grasp aware faith from within these verses. By now you friends yourselves must have noticed how awareness ascends and rises up from these verses; but now pay attention. Rabbana innaka man tudkhili al-nara faqad akhzaytah — our Lord, the one whom You make enter the Fire, You have disgraced and humiliated and abased; wa ma lil-zalimina min ansar — and for the wrongdoers whom You have made enter the Fire there is no helper and no supporter, neither from the constitution [of the world] nor any hand from the Unseen, in no way whatsoever. That is, those who move along the path of injustice and oppression, along the path of unbelief and hypocrisy, along the path of falsehood, are condemned to extinction and nonexistence; nothing in this world supports them. Well, Rabbana — these wise, intelligent ones, these ulu al-albab, these thinkers upon heaven and earth, these who have understood that they did not come into this world in vain and that this world was not created in vain, continue their speech — we are arriving here at faith — they say: Rabbana — O our Lord — innana sami'na — we heard and understood, with the ear of the body and the ear of the heart; munadiyan — a caller, a crier — who yunadi lil-iman — was calling out for faith, sounding the call of faith; an aminu bi-Rabbikum — saying, "Believe in your Lord"; fa-amanna — and then we believed. What sort of faith did these believe with? Someone said "Believe," and they believed [just like that]? No; these are the very ulu al-albab, the very thinkers. This caller may outwardly be a prophet, but inwardly he is the prophet of their own intellect and insight, who summons them toward reflection and faith in God and calls them. So the caller said to them, "Believe," and they, out of insight, out of understanding, out of perception and complete awareness, believed. This kind of faith is what is desired in Islam: aware faith. Well, that is the second point. There is also a third point, which I will state very briefly (since unfortunately a portion of the time was taken up by the beginning of our session). The third point is this: that since aware faith is what is desired in Islam, and since God Most High does not accept unaware faith and assigns it no honor or worth — therefore in several places in the Qur'an it severely rebukes the blind, imitative, prejudiced faiths — for often, too, such faiths slam a person to the ground head-first — it severely censures such faiths. We have written one of its verses here, though if I want to find it in the Qur'an it becomes a bit difficult. And when it is said to them, 'Come to what God has sent down and to the Messenger…' The talk is of the unbelievers and the reactionaries — and when it is said to them, "Come toward what God has sent down, and come toward the Prophet." (The way I translated it here: and when it is said to them, "Come, and test and understand what God has sent down and what the Prophet teaches." Well — come close, understand, then; come and listen, see what the Prophet says; does the Prophet have something to say?) What is their answer? Instead of coming, instead of thinking, instead of trying to understand and to choose their road — qalu — they say: hasbuna ma wajadna 'alayhi aba'ana — "the way and custom upon which we found our fathers is enough for us. We do not go after these new words." The unbeliever — in the words of one of the researchers — the unbelievers in the Qur'an are everywhere another name and expression for the reactionaries of the centuries and the ages. Everywhere the Prophet is the enlightened intellectual of his time; he has a new word, he has a new road, he summons toward the new; whereas the unbelievers and opponents are the prejudiced, the imitators, the rigid-minded, and the reactionaries who do not like and do not accept his new road. Their words too are: "Tread the road just as the [former] travelers trod." We did not see our fathers and mothers this way; we saw our fathers in another way; we want to understand it the same way, to act the same way. Then the Qur'an, in answer, what does it say? A wa law kana aba'uhum la ya'lamuna shay'an wa la yahtadun — these have carried the matter of this imitation of their fathers to such a point that: even though their fathers knew nothing and found no way [aright]. (Unfortunately the translation of this latter passage — this last sentence of the verse — has not been written here, although I had written it on that paper, and it has apparently been forgotten, so that it should be written.) In any case, the Qur'an says to these: even if your fathers understood nothing, found no road, could not rightly distinguish their own good from their own ill — even so, do you imitate them? See how it blames and reproaches imitation. (Well, now these verses at the end of Surat Al 'Imran, our dear reciter Mr. Fatimi will recite today. After he has finished, I have two matters that I wish to present, and I request that you gentlemen pay full attention; after his recitation, do not rise, until I rise, and I wish to present two matters. Mr. Fatimi, if you please.)