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Home , Ameen Rihani, Kahlil Gibran

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especially those of different traditions who share a common homeland. and the Unity Rihani’s messages of tolerance, spiritual quests leading members of of Religion: various faiths toward one God, and loving respect for one’s fellow humans The Politics are more important now than ever, as the potential for destructiveness of Time and increases with the proliferation of the Politics new and terrifying weapons. Rihani was modest and unassuming of Eternity by nature. This remarkable man— poet, essayist, novelist, and philoso- pher—believed implicitly in the truth of the motto, “say your word and go away,” placing his considerable gifts at the service of mankind with- In a world that is shaken daily by vio- out differentiating between Christian, lence, hatred, and destruction, we are Jew, or Muslim. He was a passionate drawn to reflect on the urgent need for believer in the oneness of the world’s reconciliation and mutual understand- religions and the brotherhood of all ing between nations if such atrocities nations, devoting his entire life to are to be avoided in the future. It is promoting the cause of East-West sobering to reflect that Tomás Ma- understanding. saryk’s words, written in The Making Virtually able to claim dual nation- of a State (1925), remain as pertinent ality, Rihani assimilated two widely as ever over seventy-five years later: differing cultures to an unprecedented “Chauvinism, racial or national intol- extent, retaining, despite his links with erance, not love of one’s own people, is the West, a deep attachment to the rich the foe of nations and humanity. Love cultural heritage of his homeland of of one’s own nation does not entail and of the wider Arab civi- non-love of other nations (435).” lization. Politically, he was a dedicated Masaryk, the first president of a liberal, but his idealism was tempered country that was later split into its with a highly practical recognition of components—Czechs and Slovaks— the need for an ordered, disciplined after a little more than eighty years, society; and while firmly opposed to had much in common with Ameen blind fanaticism, extremism, and big- Rihani, one of the strongest and otry, Rihani always retained a healthy subtlest advocates of understanding respect for tradition. between religions and between peoples, Ameen Rihani was born to 40 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

Maronite Christian parents on 24 divine revelation is continuous, that November 1876 in Freike, Lebanon, a religious experience is progressive, few miles northeast of the country’s and that all religions are, essentially, capital, . He died sixty-four one. years later in his native village on 13 Gibran stated, “If we were to do September 1940, after long periods away with the [non-essentials of of moving between East and West, the] various religions, we would find especially between Lebanon and his ourselves united and enjoying one second home, New York, traveling great faith and religion, abounding widely throughout the Arab world. in brotherhood” (Secrets of the Heart Like his contemporaries Kahlil 135). Naimy similarly wrote that “if Gibran and , Rihani all those belonging to a religion were was indebted throughout his life to to understand its essence and ultimate Lebanon for an abiding love of her purpose, the world will have but only nature and landscapes, typified by one Faith.”1 Ameen Rihani declared, the sacred cedar groves and snow- capped mountains. He had a profound I counsel you to heed every new appreciation of the richness of a land in light. And know that a heart full which three languages and cultures— of many lights is better than a Arabic, French, and English—existed mind full of much knowledge. side by side, and he also had a powerful For in each one of the World’s apprehension of the dangers likely to Faiths there is a light that shines arise, should such coexistence become for a while—and that “while” may imperiled. extend to three or four, or five All three men were Christians. thousand years. But no light van- Gibran and Rihani were , ishes before a new light appears in 2 and Naimy was a member of the Greek its place. Orthodox Church and was educated in a Russian seminary. All three felt they Another related characteristic of understood Lebanon’s mission—the Lebanon from its earliest times has shaping of a model interreligious been the adaptable and adventurous society, a multi-faith community in nature of its sons and daughters. Ever which diversity of belief would be ready to venture all over the world as celebrated and respected by all alike, 1 Mikhail Naimy, during an interview irrespective of individual affiliations. with Suheil Bushrui, Beirut, 1972. They also had no difficulty in 2 Ameen Rihani, Will and Testament proclaiming their new perspective: (Beirut: The Arab Foundation for Studies a belief in the spiritual unity and and Publications, 1982), 24. Citation and recognition that no religion represents text corresponding thereto translated by God’s final word to mankind and that Suheil Bushrui. Ameen Rihani and the Unity of Religion 41 mariners, traders, and emigrants, they language I speak and whose blood engaged in dialogue with the peoples runs in my veins. The only other they encountered, sharing their beliefs culture I knew anything about and customs. was the French, and this only su- The young Ameen Rihani was no perficially, my information being exception. At the age of twelve he derived from the French school I left Lebanon for the United States attended in Lebanon which taught with his paternal uncle ‘Abdu; they me that France was the greatest were accompanied by Rihani’s teacher nation in the world, the noblest, ‘Na’oum Mukarzil. The three rented the richest and most advanced; the a simple basement lodging at 58 center of civilization, beauty and Street, in Lower Manhattan, light; a peacock among nations, where Rihani was able to attend a strutting majestically among the neighborhood school. Two years later, domestic fowls of the world’s a bright if truculent pupil, Rihani left barnyard. . . . After arriving in to work as a chief clerk, salesman, America, I became an admirer of and interpreter in the merchandise the vitality of the American peo- business run by his father and uncle. ple, of the freedom they enjoyed He continued his education on his in their thought, speech and deeds, own by negating the tedium of his but at the same time grew to fear working life through the words of his their intense materialistic activity, favorite authors—Shakespeare, Victor their acquisitiveness.3 Hugo, Rousseau, Washington Irving, and Carlyle, who were to be major He was therefore developing a rev- influences on his development as an erence for the Western traditions of author in both English and Arabic. democracy and freedom of speech and His education was proceeding thought, together with a perception rapidly. In his preface to Muluk al-‘Arab of the deficiencies of American so- (“Arab Kings,” published in 1924), ciety at a spiritual level. He was par- Rihani freely admits, ticularly concerned about the harsh materialism and crude jingoism of As a child, I knew little about the the era, in which , and what little I knew was greed for profit for its own sake jostled derived from what mothers tell aside humanitarian concern for those their children about the Bedouin who, through no fault of their own, in an attempt to frighten them into had suffered the effects of global eco- behaving properly (“Shush, the nomic depression. Bedouin is here”). Consequently, 3 Rihani, Will and Testament, 25–26. when I arrived in America I had Citation and text corresponding thereto nothing but fear for those whose translated by Suheil Bushrui. 42 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

The callous disregard for the you imagine mankind living in a plight of the dispossessed and the huge cellar of a world and you living conditions they endured were and I pumping the water out of described in The Book of Khalid, the its bottom? I can see the palaces first novel to be written in English on which you waste your rhymes, by an Arab. Philosophical and largely but mankind lives in them only autobiographical, the book represents in the flesh. The soul, I tell you, a passionate plea for the reconciliation still occupies the basement, even of the material and the spiritual, of the sub-cellar. The soul, Shakib, is East and West, of Christianity and kept below, although the highest , recounting the picaresque places are vacant. (42) adventures of Khalid, an irreverent and sometimes even blasphemous Yet despite his dismay at the crass young Arab from Ba’albek, who, with materialism around him, Khalid/Ri- his companion Shakib, travels from hani still asserted his faith in the vast Lebanon to New York and back to potential of the American people, pro- the Middle East. The book’s three vided they could tame their acquisitive sections correspond to the three levels lust. Even in prison, Khalid continues of the spiritual quest for awareness, to declare, and the book bears the dedication, “To my Brother Man, my Mother Nature [T]he are neither Pa- and my Maker God.” gans—which is consoling—nor But before there can be any question fetish-worshipping heathens: they of addressing the possibility of reli- are all true and honest votaries of gious unity in the city to which Khalid Mammon, their great God, their comes by way of the Via Dolorosa of one and only God. And is it not the emigrant, he must confront the natural that the Demiurgic Dol- perilous spiritual state of the people lar should be the national Deity among whom he finds himself. In a of America? Have not deities passage vividly recalling Rihani’s own been always conceived after man’s early experiences in New York, Khalid needs and aspirations? . . . Change and Shakib rent lodgings in a cellar the needs and aspirations of the “as deep and dark as could be found,” Americans, therefore, and you which shortly afterward floods. This will have changed their worship, incident leads Khalid to observe, their national Deity, and even their Government. And, believe Think you that the inhabitants me, this change is coming; peo- of this New World are better ple get tired of their gods as of off than those of the Old? Can everything else. Ay, the time will come when a man in this America Ameen Rihani and the Unity of Religion 43

shall not suffer for not being a observation in his journals: “if you seeker and lover and defender of cannot be free, be as free as you can” the Dollar . . . my faith in man . . . (Emerson 205). is as strong as my faith in God. In the essay “Change and Ex- And as strong, too, perhaps, is my change,” Rihani writes of the impor- faith in the future world-ruling tance of tradition in both East and destiny of America . . . in these West: United States the well-springs of the higher aspirations of the soul [E]ven a thick layer of tradi- shall quench the thirst of every tions, which may be productive, race-traveller on the highway among better things, of tropic in- of emancipation; and from these dolence and fatality, is better than United States the sun and moon no tradition at all. And as between of a great Faith and a great Art a modern Oriental who has lost shall rise upon mankind. . . . Ay, his attractive qualities, his native in this New World, the higher virtues, who has relinquished the Superman shall rise. . . . He shall purer spiritual heritage of his be nor of the Old World nor the race, and an Oriental of the old New; he shall be, my Brothers, of type, however steeped in supersti- both. (111–12) tion and religious cant, I for one, prefer the latter. (123) In 1921 Rihani published The Path of Vision, a collection of essays in But both will find new inspiration English illustrating basic differences and power, if they turn not to the gods between East and West, and between of materialism, not to the masters of Christianity and Islam, especially in the machine, but to the torch-bearers philosophy and way of life. He rec- of intellectual and spiritual progress ognized that these differences must lighted by the higher mind and fed by be acknowledged before there could the purer spirit of Europe and Amer- be any hope of true rapprochement ica. This is the noble tradition, which, between the two religions, and that in every social and political upheaval, each must be willing to learn from the should be preserved and upheld. It is other in order to achieve a harmoni- a tradition that never becomes effete; ous relationship. The book contains and though only a few uphold it in several references to Emerson, Tho- times of stress and storm, ultimately reau, and Whitman, and much of it is it never fails its purpose. imbued with their transcendentalist The same collection contains “Of philosophy of the unity of existence, Church and Mosque,” in which Rihani in particular man’s oneness with na- contrasts the calm and spaciousness ture as well as the spirit of Emerson’s of a mosque with the purse-proud, 44 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014 self-important atmosphere of a his essentially spiritual, Sufi message church in New England, where of longing for mystical union. The greater importance seems to attach following lines from the title poem to the material fabric of the building, embody one of the essential features with its ugly and expensive stained- of the Sufi way and also echo the main glass windows provided by self- theme, not only of The Path of Vision proclaimed “philanthropists” and its but also of many other of Rihani’s pews like society drawing rooms— writings: the prerogative of the wealthy to enclose and divide the worshippers We are not of the East or the West; by effectively shutting out those No boundaries exist in our breast: not privileged to belong to this elite We are free. community. Nor Crescent nor Cross we adore; Rihani concludes with an appeal Nor Buddha nor Christ we implore; to his “Christian Brother” to join him Nor Moslem nor Jew we abhor; in the simple, reverent atmosphere We are free. (15) of the mosque instead. Yet this is not an attack on one religion’s When, in September 1931, Rihani traditions or practices but on stifling came to compose his Will and Testa- and unquestioned customs that ment, he declared a similar belief in the debase religion into a form of social unity of all religions: observance and control and block the true seeker after God from a closer I am a believer in the unity of reli- approach to the life of the spirit and gion, for in its mirror, I see reflect- from his human brothers and sisters. ed the images of all Prophets and Rihani wrote frequently and tren- Messengers—Confucius, Buddha, chantly in Arabic on the subject of Zoroaster, Socrates, Moses, Jesus, religious intolerance and bigotry, but Muhammad and Bahá’u’lláh. . . . he wrote comparatively little in En- They have all come from one glish, confining himself in The Path source, and their faces merge and of Vision to ironic comments on ultra- unite and become reflected in one conservative doctors of Islamic law unified face, a most holy symbol, confounded by the coming of mod- representing the face of God ern transport to the Arab world and Himself. I counsel you to adhere denouncing it from the pulpit if they to this unity. In theoretical terms, could find divine sanction for railways religion is that luminous living and airplanes in the sacred texts. link between man and his one In 1921 Rihani also published A and only god. In spiritual terms, Chant of Mystics and Other Poems, a col- religion is the joy derived from lection of verse in English expressing discovering, without mediation, Ameen Rihani and the Unity of Religion 45

the mysteries that lie behind that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá served as the primary unique link. In practical terms, inspiration for Gibran’s depiction of religion is, above all, recognition Jesus in his 1928 work, Jesus, The Son of the Divine Truth spoken by of Man. whoever has taught a single let- Rihani and Gibran separately en- ter taken from the book of love, countered the teachings of the Bahá’í of piety and of charitable deeds. Faith, and each was moved to produce It is also in following the example a major literary work resonant with of these teachers and emulating themes that were at least partly in- them in thought, word and deed; spired by Bahá’í spirituality. The sig- each of us attaining this accord- nificance of this fascinating parallel ing to his capacity; for God has between two great thinkers is revealed burdened no soul with more than in the complementary but differing it can endure.4 approach each took to encouraging social progress. To borrow the for- Here we may observe that Rihani’s mulation of George William Russell, belief in progressive revelation and Rihani practiced the “politics of time” in the community of divine guidance while Gibran dealt with the “politics suggests that he maintained an affinity of eternity.” Rihani, as demonstrated for the teachings of the Bahá’í Faith, by his concerns about American mate- which receives extensive discussion in rialism, provided trenchant commen- The Book of Khalid, and strengthens tary on how the ills of society can be the belief that he was greatly influ- dealt with on the material/social level. enced by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Whose visit Specifically, he believed that society to the United States in 1911 to 1912 needed to be more unified and less received much publicity in the Ameri- materialistic in dealing with the chal- can press, and Who was hailed by Leb- lenges it faced. For his part, Gibran’s anese and Syrian communities there as great concern was to highlight and “the Great Teacher from the East.” cultivate those eternal spiritual attri- Rihani’s association with the Bahá’í butes that can transform and empower Faith bears interesting comparison the individual soul. He believed that to the relationship his friend and col- the foundation of a just society was league Khalil Gibran had with the built on the human and humane vir- Bahá’í tradition. In 1912, in New York, tues of individuals. The Bahá’í vision, Gibran met ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and had the one it has always shared with all those opportunity to draw his portrait. Ac- concerned with the emergence of a cording to Gibran’s own account, more perfect society, is to bring these 4 Rihani, Will and Testament, 25–26. two elements—the politics of time Citation and text corresponding thereto and the politics of eternity—together. translated by Suheil Bushrui. The writings of Rihani and Gibran 46 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014 can an important, indeed inspira- For my religion’s love, and love tional, role in this effort. alone. Rihani’s loathing of the Nine centuries later, in an essay titled materialism he found in New York was “al-Tashul al-Dini” (“Religious Toler- to be put to good purpose at a turning ance”), Rihani writes, point in the history of the Arab nations with the discovery of oil—a new How wonderful it would be for currency and source of undreamed-of Westerners and Easterners if they were to learn from each oth- wealth. With his newfound perception, er what is beautiful in their faiths, Rihani could see only too clearly how proper in their traditions, sublime oil wealth might become a nightmare in their arts, just in their rules and source of conflict and covetousness. laws, and perfect in their manners. This awareness equipped him to The essence of that which is true emphasize the continuing importance and perfect in the cultures of East of spiritual humanitarian values and and West, unified and synthe- to act as an ambassador through sized, is the only remedy for the his achievements as one of the most religious, social and political mal- distinguished representatives of Arab adies of our time. Western man civilization in the twentieth century. can then return to God; while I would like to close with two Eastern man can reduce much of passages that illustrate respectively God’s burden. Ameen Rihani’s sense of tradition and (The Rihani Essays 216) his vision of the future, demonstrating Faith, as theologian Paul Tillich the timeless nature of the quest writes, “is the state of being ultimate- for unity between religions and the ly concerned” (5). By this definition, blessings it can bestow. The first Ameen Rihani, with his earnest belief comes from his translation of the in oneness in its fullest sense and in verse of the eleventh-century blind the redemptive power of universal poet Abul al-Ala al-Ma’arri, published love, and with his consistency and uni- in 1918 as The Luzumiyat of Abu’l-Ala. ty of purpose, is not only a religious Stanza LXII reads, teacher and pioneer but a guide whose wise counsel is more vital than ever Now, mosques and churches— as we confront a new “age of anxi- even a Kaaba stone, ety,” offering to a splintered world a Korans and —even a lasting message of hope, healing, and martyr’s bone— reconciliation. All these and more my heart can tolerate, Ameen Rihani and the Unity of Religion 47

WORKS CITED

al-Ma’arri, Abul al-Ala. The Luzumiyat of Abu’l-Ala, 2nd ed. Trans. Ameen Fares Rihani. New York: J.T. White & Co., 1918. Print. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Emerson in His Journals. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1982. Print. Gibran, Khalil. Secrets of the Heart. In A Treasury of . Trans. Anthony Rizcallah Ferris, ed. Martin L. Wolf. New York: Citadel, 1947. Print. Masaryk, Tomas G. The Making of a State. Trans. Howard Fertig. New York: Howard Fertig, 1970. Print. Rihani, Ameen Fares. The Book of Khalid. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1911. Print. ———. A Chant of Mystics and Other Poems. Ed. Suheil Bushrui and J. M. Munro. Beirut: The Rihani House, 1970. Print. ———. The Path of Vision. Ed. Suheil Bushrui and J. M. Munro. Beirut: The Rihani House, 1970. Print. ———. The Rihani Essays (ar-Rihaniyyaat). Washington, DC: Platform Interna- tional, 2010. Print. ———. Will and Testament. Beirut: The Arab Foundation for Studies and Publi- cations, 1982. Print. Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. New York: Harper & Row, 1957. Print.