Ibn Araby on the Inner Life of the Prophet Isa (as) Characteristics to Emulate of the Prophets

Transcription

1 Ibn Araby on the Inner Life of the Prophet Isa (as) Characteristics to Emulate of the Prophets Bismi-Llāhi-r-Rahmāni-r-Rahīm. There must be some reason why the Qur an tells us the names of the early prophets, and tells us that there are 174,000 prophets, and relates to us their lives and stories. It must have some meaning for the reader of the Qur an, and the reader of the Qur an is supposed to be a person who will believe in and benefit from the knowledge contained in it. The Qur an itself says it has benefit and meaning. We add to that a Sufic approach, which is in a way symbolic, and an approach that speaks to us about the nuances of these prophetic traditions we ve been speaking of in Charlottesville this year, [and speaks to us about] how each of the prophets seems to symbolize something, repeating the totality of the prophetic motivation or ideal. As we move from Hazrat Adam (as) to Nūh (as), and to Hazrat Ibrahim (as), and from Ibrahim (as) to Musa (as) to Isa (as), we see that each represents something unique, as well as everything that has come before. We know that there are many ways of looking at the Prophet Isa (as). He is the personification of contemplation or monasticism; he lived a very solitary life as far as we know, or a life of renunciation and sacrifice. Certainly, it was one of union with Allah Swt, if one looks at the Injīl, and as it is presented in the Qur an. The fact is that not very many Christians, Muslims, or scholars focus very much on the role of Isa (as), the role that he plays Qur anically, or in Hadith, or in Tasawwuf. We read certain things in Qur an like, the Messiah, Isa, the son of Mary was only a Messenger of Allah and His Word, which He conveyed into Mary. 1

2 O Maryam, lo, Allah gives you glad tidings of a Word from Him, whose name is the Messiah, Isa, the son of Mary. He is known in the world and the Hereafter, and one of those who are brought near unto Allah. (Surah al-imran) While we consider him a prophet, a rasūl/messenger of Allah, and not any kind of a Divine being, it is not to be dismissed that Allah refers to Isa (as) as the kalama-llāh /Word of Allah, the rūha-llāh/spirit of Allah, and the Messiah. In Christianity when they speak about the logos, it is similar to what is spoken about in the Qur an and Islam. While his mother and the Prophet Mohammed (sal) received their communication or message from Jibreel, in the form of a human being, a revelation (later a book), in Islam the Qur an is the closest reality to what Isa (as) is in Christianity. The Qur an is the Jesus of Islam in the sense that the central, Divine expression to the Christian is the Prophet Isa (as); and to the Muslims, it is the Qur an itself. He is also a manifestation in some way objectively of the rūh, the Breath of Allah Swt. The breath of Allah blew into Adam, and all of the progeny of all of the followers. The same rūh that is the microcosmic rūh in the human being; and is the higher rūh that must be drawn upon in all religions, maybe called the Holy Spirit in Christianity, that creates or transforms the individual from their lower state to their higher state. In this sense, it is sort of a sacrament. Over the process of spiritualizing one s life, one begins to identify themselves more and more with that spirit. In a sense, there have been those scholars who say the ruh is the Jesus of one s being, connected to Allah like a ray of light is connected to the sun. We can t forget that he is referred to as al-masiya in Qur an, the Messiah. We as Muslims are told that there will be a second coming after the appearance of the Mahdi. 2

3 It is from that point of view that Isa (as) is seen as a kind of seal, by Shaykh al Akbar Ibn Araby, who called him the seal of sanctity. He gives wisdom in the present and also in the future, before the Day of Awakening. Qur an also elevates the status of Maryam. O Maryam! Allah has chosen you and has preferred you above all women of creation. Surah al-imran and in Surah Maryam, Maryam says: How can I have a son when no mortal hath touched me? Neither have I been unchaste. Jibreel said, So it will be. Your Lord says, It is easy for Me, and in that way We will make of him a sign for mankind and a mercy from Us, and it is a thing ordained. So we see the role of the Prophet Isa (as) very clearly here. This virgin birth we see described in Qur an and Hadith, according to Prophet Muhammad. Hardly a single descendant of Adam is born without Shaytan touching him at the moment of death. The only exceptions are Mary and her son. And the Prophet (sal) was also reported to have said, If anyone testifies that there is no God but the One God, Who has no associates, and that Mohammed is His Servant and His Messenger, that Jesus is Allah s Servant and Messenger, His word addressed to Mary in spirit from Allah, that Paradise really exists and hell really exists, then Allah will cause him to enter into Paradise regardless of his actions. This is the hadith that is reported. At the same time, we see clearly that Islam is not some outgrowth of Christianity; nonetheless, Prophet Isa has a very important position in Islam and in Tasawwuf. Many, many of our shuyukh have spoken about the function of Isa (as) in Islam al- Ghazali, Jelaladīn Rumi, and many other have manifested a resemblance to the Prophet Isa, [such as] in the stories about the demise of Husayn ibn Ali (ra), and Mansūr al-hallaj, who was also crucified. Of course, if one reads the writings of 3

4 Shaykh al-akbar, you will see a lot of references on Prophet Isa (as). Remember where he came from, out of Andalus at the time of Spain s Golden Age. If we want to understand something more inward about Prophet Isa, other than his life and the differences between himself and between Christianity and Islam, a good place to look is Ibn Araby. His perspective is fairly basic. Each of the saints / walis of Allah, all of the shuyukh, all of the awliya-llāh, take their maqam at some point from one of the prophets. We look at it vis a vis the latā if. Each latifa has a prophet, and a color, etc. Prophet Adam, Prophet Enoch, Prophet Ibrahim, Prophet Daoud, Prophet Musa, the Prophet Isa, the Prophet Mohammed (sal) all have their identities with one of the previous prophets. He says that; I don t know I would agree with him about the Prophet Mohammed. Not because I m a Muslim and I want to say that. It s because I see him as more of the aggregate of all of them. In the writings of Ibn Araby we find a lot of references to things like Ibrahimic-like, or Musa-like, or Jesus-like, which is a way of identifying the very particular quality of a prophet in the awliya-llāh. In a sense, one could say that this is all understood by Muslims through the intercession or intermediary reality of the Prophet Mohammed (sal). William Chittick wrote, In Ibn Araby s view, every age must have at least 124,000 friends of Allah. One heir for each prophet. The prophetic inheritances delineate the possible modes of authentic experience and correct knowledge of Allah, the universe, and the human soul. In other words, to attain true knowledge, one must know and act in accordance with the paradigm of human perfection embodied in a prophet. No one comes to know things as they are without these divinely appointed intermediaries. 4

5 Herein lies, perhaps, one of the incentives, if you will, to sit in muraqabah and to come to realize the dominant prophet of your soul. You can take that as a kind of obsessive-compulsive process. I will get three s tomorrow asking, How will I know which is my prophet? And I ve always felt close to the prophet Enoch. I know most of you do and How will I know it s him? And I will write back something flippant like, Ask to see his passport. What we need to do is study the lives, as we are doing this year, to understand their unique characteristics and role, to understand ourselves, and to identify ourselves with those qualities and aspects that we need to identify with, in order to transform ourselves or change ourselves. It s like coming in the front door instead of the back door. That is to say, Allah doesn t change a person or group of people until they change themselves. You have to know what to change. When you come up against the reflection of one the ambiyā /prophets of Allah, there is something that will rub against you or on you or off on you. You will see, if you don t get caught up in the attraction to the personality, that certain qualities or aspects of your own self are to be manifest through your identification with the specific prophet. How do you see it? You see it in your knowledge, in your maqam/station, and in your attributes that you have and that they have. You see it perhaps in the miracles that they perform, and in the spiritual path they were on. If you take what Ibn Araby says is true (I guess I should say gospel ), that there are 124,000 prophets and 124,000 friends/ awliya-llāh of Allah, we, eventually you, might see them as aspects of the Prophet Mohammed (sal), because he in a sense is the aggregate of all of these prophetic traditions. Hence, He says, Today I have completed your religion for you. Nothing has to come after him; no one has to come after him. Now all you have to do is understand the completed religion. 5

6 The saints in Tasawwuf, we say, derive their purity and their sanctity from Isa (as) and the Prophet Mohammed (sal). Ibn Araby says, Sometimes as death approaches, the prophet from whom the person has inherited will be disclosed to him. As the Prophet said, The possessors of knowledge are heirs to the prophets. Hence, as death approaches, he will see Jesus, Moses, Ibrahim, Mohammed, or some other prophet. And some of them may pronounce the name of the prophet from whom they have inherited in joy, when he comes to them. For the messengers are all among the felicitous. And while passing, such a person will say, Jesus, or will call out Messiah, as Allah himself has done. This is what usually happens. Those present will hear the friend of Allah speak words of this sort and become suspicious, saying, At death he became a Christian (or Muslim), and Islam was negated from him. Or he would name Moses and that he became a Jew. But this person is one of the greatest possessors of felicity in Allah s eyes, for the common people never know this locus of witnessing, only the people of Allah, the possessors of the unveilings. Those of us who take the purity and sanctity and elevation of the ambiyā seriously understand this tendency. It s clear in doing that we don t leave Islam. Quite the contrary, we affirm Islam. We don t say a person cannot achieve some level of sanctity or purity through Christianity or Judaism, or that only Sufis reach nearness to Allah through Islam. Ibn Araby again says, He (Jesus) was my first teacher, the master through whom I returned to Allah. Even preceding his study of Sufic texts, with living teachers, and with his visions and dreams of saints in the ālam al khayal / the imaginal world, he wrote, It was and is Isa s hands that I converted, turned to Allah and the spiritual path. He prayed for me that I should persist in the dīn, and in this low world / dunya, 6

7 and in the other. And he called me his Beloved, and he ordered me to practice renunciation and self-denial. As a result of the influence of Isa (as) on Shaykh al Akbar, a great Muslim saint, he renounced the world for 18 years. He said, I am, without any doubt, the seal of sainthood in my capacity as heir to the Hashemite Mohammed and the Messiah. While he eventually realized that he was the heir of the Prophet of Islam and all of the prophets, he entered the spiritual path in a way as a devotee of Jesus. And he identifies other Sufis who do the same, who walked in the footsteps of the Prophet Isa (as): Ibn Araby s first living master, Abbu Abbas Ya Rabbi, Bayazid Bistami, and Mansur Hallaj. He wrote a poem of the female saint Nizam. He said, Her speech restores to life as though she is giving light, thereby were Jesus. Other Sufis were identified in the Christian Islamic identity, included Hamadani, who was martyred at a heretic at the age of 33; Ubaydullāh Ahrār (ra), of our own Naqshbandi tradition; Sitni Janar from Java, and the Algerian Shaykh Ahmed al Alawi. They had certain characteristics. What were the characteristics? I said at the beginning that all the ambiyā had characteristics. His characteristics, which were also true of the Prophet Mohammed (sal), were that he saw the best in all people and in all things. The Prophet (sal) is the sum total of all the other prophetic traditions and integrates them within himself. You remember the story of him passing the decaying carcass, and his companion said, How awful it smells. The Prophet (sal) said, How white are its teeth! In the case of the awliya-llāh who are in the qualities of the Prophet Mohammed (sal), you find universal compassion and mercy. Because that s the result when you see everything in a positive way. You 7

8 take this quality of Isa (as) to see things in a most positive way, and you integrate it into the Prophet Mohammed (sal), and you get compassion or beauty. Allah is compassion; and He is also effort, or seriousness, or rigor. Sometimes one eclipses the other. You see, for example, the qualities of seeing the best in everything in the Prophet Isa (sal), but when you go to the Injil, what was the last thing he says? Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? That one statement starts to eclipse everything that came before. It is a human statement. Remember the hadith, The learned are the heirs of the prophets. In another hadith, the Prophet Mohammed (sal) says to Imam Ali (as) his son in law, Are you not pleased that your position in relation to me is that of Harun in relation to Musa? He also said of a close companion, The sky has not cast shade, nor the earth raised up green plants growing luxuriantly, to anyone who more resembles Isa, son of Maryam, in truthfulness and in trustworthiness than Abu Dharr. The prophets, and the Prophet Mohammed (sal), knew which characteristics and qualities represented the other ambiyā. He referred to them, and we do that. We say, That person has the wisdom of Solomon, or, His poetry is like the songs of Daoud, or, the patience of Job. We say these things, but we also understand what it means. On our sayr ul suluk, we should understand that when we are experiencing certain qualities, we are accompanied by that prophet. In moments of compassion, [it is] the Prophet Mohammad (sal). In the moments of seeing the beauty in all things, [it is] the Prophet Isa (as). They are your companions on the way. Certain of the awliya-llāh inherit a kind of spirituality of sanctity from that particular prophet. 8

9 What is most important is that those saints whose lives, poetry, writings, words, and legacy bear the resemblance to the other prophets, whether in their life, like al- Hallaj or Imam Ali demonstrate that the souls of all these prophets are intimately linked together. In a sense, we can say that at the time of the mashiya / messiah, the return of the Prophet Isa, and the prayers uttered before the Mahdi, are the compilation that comes in the Prophet Mohammed or the Mohammedan light. The last brick has been placed in the building. That last brick is the last brick of knowledge, of understanding. Of Sidna Hussein, who is also known as Sayyid al Shahadah / the Lord among the martyrs, Jelaludin Rumi wrote, In the fire of its journey, my heart keeps up its cries, hoping that a welcoming call will come to it from the direction of unity. My heart is Hussein, in separation, Yazid. My heart has been martyred 200 times in the desert of torment and affliction (Karbala). (Anne Marie Schimmel says,) Mansur Hallaj, the arch-martyr of the mystical Islam, who was cruelly executed in Baghdad in 922, he, like his namesake, Hussein Ibn Ali, becomes a model for the Sufi. He is the suffering lover in quite a number of Sufi poems. His name appears alongside of that of Hussein. Both were enamored by Allah. Both sacrificed themselves on a path of Divine knowledge. Both are there for the ideal lovers of Allah, whom the pious should strive to emulate. What you have in these awliya-llāh are the models, the prototypes, or the templates for all of the muridīn, all of us who follow. Not that we should be martyred, quite the contrary. What we should do is become lovers of Allah. Lovers of Allah are lovers of all the prophets. And lovers of all the prophets are lovers of all those who follow those prophets. Lovers of all those who follow those prophets are people who have the qualities of those prophets: the patience of Job; the perseverance of Nūh; the devotion and trustworthiness of Ibrahim (as); the vision, strength, and power of 9

10 Musa and Harun; the love of Prophet Isa (as); and the compassion and mercy of the Prophet Mohammed (sal). There is no room in Islam for hate. There is no room in Islam for self-martyrdom. There is no room in Islam for any of these horrible actions we saw in the last two weeks in the name of, again, Islam. The problem is, of course, ignorance and lack of proper education, which means a lack of proper teachers. It just goes to show you how powerful Shaytan is, and by what name he captures people. He captures people by the name Islam. We can go into the parallels between people, but I won t take the time tonight to do that the parallels between Fatima and Maryam, or between Khadija and Asiya. There are many parallels. The point comes again to the fact that Allah repeats these cycles, and everything is analogous. If you don t see the story here, you can see it there. You eventually have to wind up with the aggregate of it all in the Prophet Muhammed (sal) if you want to place the last brick in the building. This last brick is the keystone. If you don t want to call it the last brick, you can call it the keystone from which you build the arch. Finally, where among all these prophets do you find no suffering? Prophet Adam (as) suffers from falling. Prophet Noah suffers from 950 years of frustration and seeing the loss of his family. Prophet Ibrahim (as) has to walk through fire, and then suffers at the thought of the sacrifice of his son. Prophet Musa (as) suffers from being separated from his mother; being in the Pharaoh s court, kills a man, and then has to wander in the desert for forty years. Prophet Isa (as) suffers from being killed, being betrayed, and being outcast, and doubted. Prophet Mohammed (sal)? Children spit on him, people cursed him, and they tried to kill him. In reality, he doesn t suffer, because he has taken all of this compassion and all of this ability to see the good. It has become congealed in him; it becomes his being. 10

11 He speaks to us and tells us the words of Jibreel: With hardship goeth ease. But if he had one handful of rice in his house, it wasn t a hardship. If he had no clothes, it wasn t a hardship for him. It also therefore shows you the sayr ul suluk. It shows you how one attains through these prophets. Are there any questions? Question. Neelam: Would it be correct in saying that only the Sufis look at all the prophets in this way? Shaykh: Pretty much. I don t think I quoted anyone who wasn t a Sufi tonight. Yep. Today I was at a conference with Rabia at Lynchburg General Hospital. It was supposedly going to be a conference about assisted living and elder care. This lecture was on culturally dealing with Muslims. The average Muslim would say, we believe in all the prophets; we respect all the prophets. But what do they understand about that? What does it mean? Why? Did you ever ask the question why did Qur an have all the prophets mentioned in them? What is Allah s purpose in telling us about this? The Injīl doesn t tell you about all the other prophets, does it? Alhamduli-Llāh. Neelam: Is the Buddha not considered a prophet because there was no Divine Revelation? Shaykh: Why would he be considered a prophet? He was not monotheistic. He didn t teach unity. Well, in a way he did, if you understand the teaching. He believed there was only truth. Who s to say that the Buddha is not one of the 174,000 prophets? Why not. Ahlan wa sahlan. Certainly the message is one of compassion. I don t know the advantage of calling him a prophet. We are talking about contained texts of the Ahl al Kitab, the People of the Book. We are talking about the Torah, the Injil, and the Qur an, and you could add to that the Zend Avest of the Magians. These 11

12 are all affirmations of unity coming out of the same tradition. If you are looking at it in terms of values, then possibly. Why? Allah said, I sent to every nation (every community) a prophet. Question. Arifa: I m not sure I understand your statement about the Prophet Mohammed (sal) not suffered. You gave examples of how the other prophets suffered. Shaykh: I don t see him saying anything about suffering. I don t see him complaining about anything. I might have missed it. Jesus is up on the mountain, and all the murīds are asleep. What s happening up there? He s wrestling with Shaytan. He s struggling in the Jordan River with him. The Prophet Micah, I think, was blind. I didn t say he didn t feel any pain, but it was how he treated his suffering. He didn t say he was suffering. He didn t complain. He didn t kvetch. Seriously. I don t remember anything; maybe there s something I m missing. I m sure I m missing something. But it s obvious what the other ones suffered. So now I ended up talking more about the Prophet Mohammed (sal) than Prophet Isa (as). Oh, well, Food for the following one. Hameed: You were talking earlier about how each one of us could identify with or be associated with one of the 174,000 prophets. I was wondering if that could be viewed as a way for us to identify characteristics in ourself that are associated with characteristics with one of the prophets, and then use the examples from stories of their history to enhance and make better Shaykh: That s the point. It s not that you identify and get some magical connection and they cleanse your soul or something. That s why you have the Sirr of Rasūlu- Llāh (sal). In fact, do you want to make it easy for yourself? You see all those 12

13 qualities in the Prophet Muhammed (sal). If you really understand the life of the Prophet Muhammed (sal), you understand the life of all the prophets. However, there are certain things back to suffering. The way a person suffers, needs, or has doubts, then you can identify with certain awliya-llāh or certain prophets. That s the point. You got the point. Alhamduli-Llāh. Asalaam aleikum. 13