A Study in the Philosophy of Islamic Rites

The Link Between the Absolute Is a Two-fold Problem

The observer, scrutinizing the different acts of the stage-story of man in history, may find out that the problems are different and the worries diversified in their given daily formulas.

But if we go beyond these formulas, infiltrating into the depth and essence of the problem, we will find one main essential and fixed problem with two edges or contrasting poles wherefrom mankind suffers during his civilized advancement along history. Looking from one angle, the problem is loss and nonentity which is the negative side of the problem.

And from another angle, the problem is extreme in entity and belonging. This is expressed by connecting the relative facts to which man belongs to an Absolute, thus expressing the positive side of the same problem. The Concluding Jurisprudence (of Islam) has given the name "atheism" to the first problem, which it expresses very obviously, and the name "idolatry" and Shirk (believing in one or many partners with God) as also an obvious expression of it. The continuous struggle of Islam against atheism and Shirk is, in its civilized reality, a struggle against both sides of the problem in their historical dimensions.

Both angles of the problem meet into one essential point, and that is: deterring man's advancing movement from a continuously good imaginative creativity. The problem of loss means to man that he is a being in continuous loss, not belonging to an Absolute, to Whom he can support himself in his long and hard march, deriving help from His Absolutism and Encompassment, sustenance, and a clear vision of the goal and joining, through that Absolute, his own movement to the universe, to the whole existence, to eternity and perpetuity, defining his own relationship to Him and his position in the inclusive cosmic framework.

The movement at loss without the aid of an Absolute is but a random movement like that of a feather in the wind, the phenomena around it affect it while it is unable to affect them. There is no accomplishment or productivity in the great march of man along history without a connection to and promulgation with an Absolute in an objective march.

This same connection, on the other hand, directs the other side of the problem, that of extreme entity, by changing the "relative" to an "absolute," a problem which faces man continuously. Man weaves his loyalty to a case so that such loyalty freezes gradually and gets stripped of its relative circumstances within which he was accurate, and the human mind will derive out of it an "absolute" without an end, without a limit to responding to its demands. In religious terminology, such an "absolute" eventually changes to a"god" worshipped instead of a need that requires fulfillment. When the "relative" changes to an "absolute," to a "god" of this sort, it becomes a factor in encircling man's movement, freezing its capacities to develop and create, paralyzing man from performing his naturally open role in the march:

Do not worship another "god" beside God else you should become forsaken. (Quran XVII:22)

This is a true fact applicable to all "gods" mankind made along history, albeit if they were made during the idolatry stage of worship or its succeeding stages. From the stage of tribe to that of science, we find a series of "gods" which mankind treated as an "absolute" and which deterred mankind, who worshipped them, from making any accurate progress.

Indeed, from the tribe to which man submitted his alliance, considering it as an actual need dictated by his particular living circumstances, he went then to the extreme, changing it to an "absolute," without being able to see anything except through them. Hence, they became an obstacle in his way for advancement.

It was to science that modern man deservedly granted alliance, as it paved for him the way to control nature. But he sometimes exaggerated such an alliance, turning it to an absolute alliance, with which he was infatuated, an "absolute" to worship, offering it the rites of obeisance and loyalty, rejecting for its own sake all ideals and facts which can never be measured by meters or seen by microscopes.

Accordingly, every limited and relative thing, if man wove out of it, at a certain stage, an absolute to which he thus relates himself, becomes at a stage of intellectual maturity a shackle on the mind that made it, because of its being limited and relative.

Hence, man's march has to have an Absolute.

And He has to be a real Absolute capable of absorbing the human march, directing it to the right path no matter how much advancement it achieves or how far it extends on its lengthy line, wiping out all "gods" that encircle the march and deter it.

Thus can the problem be solved in both of its poles. Such a remedy is shown by what Divine Jurisprudence has presented man on earth: The Belief in God as the Absolute to Whom limited man can tie his own march without causing him any contradiction along his long path.

Belief in God, then, treats the negative aspect of the problem, refusing loss, atheism and nonentity, for it places man in a position of responsibility: to whose movement and management the whole cosmos is related. Man becomes the vicegerent of God on earth. Vicegerency implies responsibility, and a reward man receives according to his conduct, between God and resurrection, infinitude and eternity, while he moves within such a sphere of responsible and purposeful movement.

Belief in God also treats the positive aspects of the problem-that of the extreme in entity, forcing restrictions on man and curbing his swift march-according to this manner:

First This aspect of the problem is created by changing the limited and relative to an "absolute" through intellectual exertion and by stripping the relative of its circumstances and limitations. As for the Absolute provided by the belief in God, this has never been the fabrication of a stage of the human intellect, so that it may become, during the new stage of intellectual maturity, limited to the mind that made it. Nor has it ever been the offspring of a limited need of an individual or a group, so that its becoming absolute may place it as a weapon in the hand of the individual or group in order to guarantee its illegal interests. For God, the Praised, the Sublime, is an Absolute without limits, one whose fixed Attributes absorb all the supreme ideals of man, His vicegerent on earth, of comprehension and knowledge, ability and strength, justice and wealth. This means that the path leading to Him is without a limit; hence, moving towards Him requires the continuity and relative movement and a relative acceleration of the limited (man) towards the Absolute (God) without a stop.

O thou man! Verily thou art ever toiling on towards thy Lord- painfully toiling, but thou shalt meet Him ... (Quran, LXXXIV:6)

He grants this movement His own supreme ideals derived from comprehension, knowledge, ability and justice, as well as other qualities of that Absolute, towards Whom the march is directed. The march towards the Absolute is all knowledge, all potential, all justice and all wealth. In other words, the human march is a continuously successive struggle against all sorts of ignorance, incapacity, oppression and poverty.

As long as these are the very goals of the march related to this Absolute, they are, then, not merely a dedication to God, but also a continuous struggle for the sake of man, for his dignity, for achieving such supreme ideals for him:

And if any strive (with might and main), they do so for their souls: for God is free of all needs from all creation. (Quran. XXIX:6)

He, then, that receives guidance benefits his own soul: but he that strays injures his own soul. Nor art thou set over them to dispose of their affairs. (Quran, XXXIX:41) On the contrary, whimsical absolutes and false gods cannot absorb the march with all its aspirations, for these manufactured absolutes are the children of an incapable man's brain, or the need of the poor man, or the oppression of the oppressor; therefore they are jointly are linked to ignorance, incapacity and oppression. They can never bless man's continuous struggle against them.

Second: Being linked to God Almighty as the Absolute Who absorbs all of the aspirations of the human march means at the same time rejecting all of those whimsical absolutes which used to cause excessive entity. It also means waging a continuous war and an endless struggle against all sorts of idolatry and artificial worship. Thus, man will be emancipated from the mirage of these false absolutes which stood as an obstacle in his path towards God, falsifying his goal and encircling his march:

But the Unbelievers, their deeds are like a mirage in sandy deserts, which the man parched with thirst mistakes for water; until when he comes up to it, he finds it to be nothing: but he finds God (ever) with him. (Quran, XXIV:38)

Are many lords differing among themselves better, or the One God, Supreme and Irresistible? If not Him, ye worship nothing but names which ye have named, ye and your fathers, for which God hath sent down no authority. (Quran, XII: 39-40)

Such is God your Lord: to Him belongs all Dominion. And those whom ye invoke besides Him have not the least power. (Quran, XXXV:13)

If we consider the main slogan God put forward in this respect: "There is no god but Allah," we will find out that it links the human march to the True Absolute with the rejection of every artificial absolute. The history of the march, in its living actuality, came across the ages to emphasize the organic link between this rejection and that strong and aware tie to God Almighty. For as far as he goes away from the True God, man sinks in the labyrinth of different gods and lords.

Both rejection and the positive link to "There is no god but Allah" are but two faces for one fact: the fact which is indispensable to the human march along its lengthy path. It is but the Truth which is worthy of saving the march from loss, helping it exploit all its creative energies, emancipating it from each and every false and obstructing absolute.