A Study in the Philosophy of Islamic Rites

The Inner Feeling of Responsibility /2

Except at the cost of the other. Therefore, in order for him to spiritually grow and be elevated, he has to deprive his body from the good things, shrinking his presence on life's stage battling continuously against his desires and aspirations in different fields of life, until he finally achieves victory over all of them through long abstention and deprivation and the practice of certain rituals.

Islamic jurisprudence rejects this trend, too, because it wants rites for the sake of life. Life cannot be confiscated for the sake of rites. At the same time, it tries hard to ensure that a good man pours the spirit of worship over all of his behaviour and activity. This must not be taken to imply that he has to stop his different activities in life and confine himself between the altar's walls; rather. it means that he converts all his activities to rituals.

The mosque is but a base wherefrom a good man sets to conduct his daily behaviour, but it is not limited to that behaviour alone. The Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) has said to Abu Tharr al-Ghifari: "If you are able to eat and drink for the sake of none save God, then do so!"

Thus, worship serves life. Its upbringing and religious success is determined by its extension, in meaning and spirit. to all fields of life. Worship And The Senses Man's perception is not merely by his senses, nor is it merely an intellectual and nonmaterial reasoning.

It is a mixture of reasoning plus material and non-material feeling. When worship is required to perform its function in a way with which man interacts perfectly, and whereby it harmonizes with his character, worship is composed of a mind and senses; worship then must contain a sensitive aspect and a non-material intellect, so that worship will be compatible with the worshipper's personality, and the worshipper, while performing his worship, lives his attachment to the Absolute with all his existence.

From here, the intention, as well as the psychological contention of worship, always represents its intellectual and non-material aspect, for it links the worshipper to the True Absolute, the Praised, the High. There are other aspects of worship whicl1 represent its material aspect:

The qibla towards whose direction each worshipper must direct his face while praying; The Haram, visited by both those who perform the pilgrimage and those who do the Umrah, around which they both perform tawaf;

The Safa and Marwah, between which he runs; Jamratul Aqabah, at which he casts stones; The Mosque, which is a place especially made for adoration wherein the worshipper practices his worship.

All these are things related to the senses and tied to worship: there is no prayer without a qibla, nor tawaf without a Haram, and so on, for the sake of satisfying the part related to the senses in the worshipper and giving it its right and share of worship.

This is the midway direction in organizing worship and coining it according to man's instincts as well as his particular intellectual and sensual makeup.

Two other directions face him: one of them goes to the extreme in bringing man to his senses, if the expression is accurate at all, treating him as if he had been a non-material intellect, opposing all sensual expressions of his in worship's sphere. As long as the True Absolute, the Praised One, has no limited place or time, nor can He be represented by a statute; then H is worship has to stand on such a premise, and in the manner which enables the comparative thinking of man to address the Absolute Truth.

Such a trend of thinking is not approved by Islamic jurisprudence, for inspite of its concern about the intellectual aspects brought forth by the Hadith: "An hour's contemplation is better than a year's adoration." it also believes that pious worship, no matter how deep, cannot totally fill man's self or occupy his leisure, nor can it attach him to the Absolute Truth in all his existence, for man has never been purely an intellect.

From this realistic and objective starting point rites in Islam have been based on both intellectual and sensuous bases. The person performing his prayers is practicing by his intention an intellectual adoration, denying his Lord any limits, measurements. Or the like. For when he starts his prayer with Allah o Akbar (God is Great). while taking at the same time the holy Kaaba as a divine slogan towards which he directs his feelings and movements. he lives worship by both intellect and feeling, logic and emotion nonmaterialistically as well as intellectually.

The other trend goes to the extreme in the part related to the senses, changing the slogan to an identity, and the hint to reality, causing the worship of the symbol to substitute what the symbol really stands for, and the direction towards him instead of the reality it points to; thus, the worshipping person sinks, in one way or another, in shirk and paganism.

Such a trend totally annihilates the spirit of worship and it stops its function as a tool linking man and his civilized march to the True Absolute, converting it to a tool for linking him to false absolutes, to symbols which changed-through false intellectual stripping of the matterto an absolute. Thus, false worship becomes a veil between man and his Lord, instead of a link between both of them.

Islam has rejected such a trend because Islam convicted paganism in all its forms, smashing its idols and putting an end to all false gods, refusing to take any limited object as a symbol for the True Absolute, God, the Glorified, or as a personification of Him. But it deeply distinguished between the meaning of the idol which it crushed and that of the Qibla it brought, whose meaning conveys nothing more than a particular geographic spot to have been divinely favoured through linking it to prayers for the sake of satisfying the worshipper's aspect related to the senses.

Paganism is really nothing but a deviated attempt to satisfy such an aspect, and Islamic jurisprudence has been able to correct it, providing a straight path in harmonizing between the worship of God, as being dealing with the Absolute Who has neither limit nor personification, and the need of man who is composed of feeling and intellect to worship God by both of his feeling and intellect!